The attempts by the United Kingdom and Italy to externalise their borders have put migrants' human rights at risk

Translated by Annachiara Laino

The British “Stop the boats” plan

In the wake of the slogan “Stop the boats” and in serious violation of the rule of law, in April 2024, both Houses of the British Parliament passed a law (the Safety of Rwanda Bill) that provides for a plan to deport asylum seekers and irregular migrants to Rwanda, considered a safe third country, despite the fact that Britain itself had reported cases of “extrajudicial executions, deaths in custody, enforced disappearances and torture” just a few years earlier.

The approval of the law is the result of a series of agreements concluded by the United Kingdom and Rwanda aimed at creating a policy of externalising borders and asylum applications, to the detriment of the human rights of migrants, including the risk of dying on the English route: just a few hours after the law was passed, five people (including a seven-year-old girl) drowned in the English Channel while attempting to reach the British coast.

Just three months after its approval – and despite the hundreds of millions of pounds already paid to the Rwandan government – the agreement on asylum seekers was repealed, thanks in part to a change of government that took place in July 2024 and strong criticism raised by the main non-governmental organisations defending migrants. In total, only four people were relocated to Rwanda.

Initially presented as a major step forward in eliminating irregular immigration and as a heavy blow to human traffickers, the “Rwanda Plan” was immediately viewed with interest by many European countries, which for a decade now have been attempting to shift the responsibility for managing migration directly to the countries of departure. 

The management of external borders in the European Union

The control of the European Union’s external borders is an issue that, on the Mediterranean front, has been particularly controversial since at least 2010, when migration flows to European shores increased exponentially.

The European Union’s common asylum policy aims to offer appropriate status to any third-country national or stateless person in need of international protection and to guarantee the principle of non-refoulement, in accordance with the 1951 Geneve Convention relating to the status of refugees. All this must be interpreted in the light of a fundamental principle established in Article 80 of the Treaty on the functioning of the European Union, namely that of solidarity and fair sharing of responsibility among  EU Member States.

However, the text of the treaties was quickly disregarded by European governments which proved unprepared to manage the 2015 migration crisis and maintained a stance of clear opposition to any proposal to redistribute migrants within the entire territory of the European Union in order to assist countries of first entry, particularly southern European states.

A decade after one of the biggest refugee crises in Europe, discussions on the management of migration flows have never ended and European governments, riding the wave of growing populism, have increasingly pushed the debate on the issue of extraterritorial management of asylum applications. 

Italian centres in Albania

In this sense, Italy can be considered the first country in the European Union to have implemented a project to deport migrants to specific centres built in Albania, taking the British plan as a reference, which was already showing the first signs of failure. The Italy-Albania memorandum of understanding establishes a system for managing migration flows that differs from the British project: in the Italian system, the management of the detention centres and procedures fall under Italian jurisdiction, which remains responsible for examining asylum applications; in contrast, in the British case, jurisdiction and the management of applications were entirely transferred to the Rwandan authorities. 

Since October 2024, the facilities in Albania have hosted fewer than one hundred asylum seekers, despite the €65 million spent on their construction and the €120 million spent on their annual management. 

Beyond the considerable costs, the most pressing issue concerns the impact on the fundamental rights of migrants: the Court of Justice of the European Union has focused on the definition of a “safe country”, which must meet a series of criteria in every part of its territory and for every minority. 

For this reason, since the people rescued at sea come from countries considered unsafe, each migrant detained in Albania was returned to Italy after a few days, adding further suffering to individuals who had already endured a dangerous and difficult journey across the Mediterranean. 

Designed as facilities to host people rescued at sea, after yet another rejection by Italian judges ordering the return to Italy of people detained in Albania, the Italian government decided to transform the facilities into detention and repatriation centres, violating the human rights and the Return Directive, which establishes that it is not possible to repatriate a person from a country that does not belong to the European Union. 

According to the intentions of European governments and the British government, the prospect of being detained (often for an uncertain period of time) in detention and repatriation centres should serve, also symbolically, to discourage migrants from undertaking unpredictable and risky crossings, such as those in the Mediterranean and the English Channel.

The reality, however, shows that the practice of externalising borders poses a serious threat to the rule of law and, above all, to the human rights of migrants. 

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