On Tuesday 20 June, the UN special representative for Libya, Martin Kobler, strongly criticised the EU's action on migration, denouncing the "detention" centres for migrants in Libya and saying there was not enough coastguard control.
Kobler told the European Parliament's foreign affairs committee that he will leave his post at the end of the month and said he wondered why the EU did not the monitor the Libyan coastguard. He criticised the fact that the Libyan coastguard pushed migrants back into the water. "Europeans must be more active when it comes to monitoring the coastguard", he said, adding that the EU should ask the Council of the Libyan presidency to be able to send monitors during coastguard patrols. "It is important to start considering this in order to avoid infringements by those you are training", he told MEPs. "If there is no international control system to keep a close watch, I would advise you against continuing the training", he added.
Kobler also criticised the European attitude to the detention centres in Libya. "It is all very well to have health kits and medicines, but there are dead bodies leaving the camps every day from malnutrition (...) Who is making sure that the guards do not confiscate the soap and medicines?", he asked, saying that the human rights situation in the centres was "intolerable". "If we want to remedy the situation in the camps, (international) personnel are needed and round-the-clock monitoring", he said. "This idea has to gain traction. Until monitoring is in place, it is unrealistic to ask for more people to be shut up in these camps", he added.
Kobler also wondered about the €100 million released by the EU to help the government of national accord, stating that Libya was a rich country and that in principle it did not need financial aid.
Kobler spoke about the situation in Libya and called for patience to be shown for the country to become stronger. He said that Libya has never been a state. "In the history of Libya, there have never been strong institutions or a strong state", he said, adding that Libyan society was fragmented. He stated that "the parliament is virtually non-existent. There is a council of the presidency that governs, but it does not imprint its authority and as soon as there is a political void, there is intervention from military forces". Kobler also said that the problem in Libya was not so much religious as linked to "money, power and oil". "We have tried to create an army and political solidity, but the economy is the centre of the problem", he said. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)