GENEVA (Reuters) – A deal allowing Italy to build reception camps in Albania for thousands of migrants arriving by sea raises concerns about arbitrary detention and living conditions, the U.N. human rights chief said on Thursday.
“Transfers to Albania to conduct asylum and return procedures raise important human rights issues, particularly freedom from arbitrary detention; adequate asylum application procedures, including screening and identification; and living conditions,” The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in an address to the Italian Senate.
“Italy’s legal obligations under human rights and refugee law must not be undermined,” he said, adding that similar arrangements had caused “great suffering and harm” in other countries, without naming them.
The Italian right-wing government of Giorgia Meloni, which takes an hard line against illegal immigration, is struggling to stem flows of migrants from Africa.
The scheme, announced in November, would involve Italy, an EU member, opening two camps in Albania, a non-EU member, in the spring. One would screen migrants on arrival and a second would detain them while asylum applications are processed, and hopes they can process as many as 3,000 cases a month.
The project has drawn criticism from human rights groups and evoked comparisons with the British government’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, judged illegal by Britain’s Supreme Court. However, Brussels has since said that the Italian plans do not breach European Union law.
Turk also criticised Italy’s existing migration policies saying that the extensive use of detention for asylum-seekers was “troublesome”. And, in comments apparently referring to Italy’s targeting of Mediterranean rescue vessels, he said that saving lives at sea was a “human rights imperative, which should never be criminalised or prosecuted”.
(Reporting by Emma Farge; Editing by Toby Chopra)
Comments