User:Michele Zucchi/sandbox

= Initiatives to counter migrant smuggling on the Central Mediterranean Sea 2013-2018 = The Central Mediterranean Sea (CMS) migrant route has been one of the major, if not the major, access point for migrants who want to reach European countries from 2013 to 2018, and as such its dynamics are deeply interlinked with the perceived European migrant crisis. Numerous Italian, European and international actors intervened with various scopes and degrees of operativity in the area. The counter-smuggling operational network created over the years is complex and heterogeneous, and led to different degrees of efficiency and effectiveness.

Chronology of the main initiatives
The event which angered the public opinion about Italian and European migration management happened on the 3rd October 2013, when a shipwreck in the sea near the Sicilian island of Lampedusa led to the death of 368 migrants trying to reach Europe. The tragic event arose a paramount international attention and underlined the gap between the migration problem on the CMS’ route and the means used to tackle it. In the immediate aftermath of the shipwreck – 15 days later – the Italian navy launched operation Mare Nostrum. The operation had a wide operational area, arriving until the very proximity with the Libyan waters. The aim was “safeguarding human life at sea, and bringing to justice human traffickers and migrant smugglers”. Together with a wide array of Italian law enforcement bodies, there was also a partial cooperation with the European Border and Coast Line Agency (Frontex) and a European cooperation system called Eurosur, established on the 6th November 2013. The latter is still standing, and it is configured as a multinational information and data exchange system for cross-border crime and illegal migration tackling and migrants’ life safeguard, in cooperation with Frontex’ capabilities. Nowadays this system has been complemented with the Seahorse Mediterranean Network, which additionally implies cooperation and information sharing with North African countries.

On the 25th August 2014, the Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS), an international humanitarian organization, begun Search And Rescue (SAR) activities in the proximity of Maltese waters. With their vessel Phoenix MOAS launched numerous humanitarian operations. Their activity inspired numerous non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in their operations in the CMS.

Mare Nostrum raised many issues on the public agenda, first of all for the economic and social burden Italian government and people were perceiving. This is a recurrent issue in Italian discourses over migration management, and it is often argued how the European Union (EU) should assist more directly the countries stroked the most by migrant flows. Responding to this call, on the 31st October 2014 operation Mare Nostrum was substituted by operation Triton. With Triton, Frontex’ operativity – and therefore EU resources – was enhanced in support to Italian efforts. Nevertheless, the operation is directed by the “International Coordination Centre (ICC), a coordination structure composed of Italian authorities, the Coordinating Officer of Frontex and representatives of border guard authorities of participating Member States”, and all SAR activities – including direct calls from vessels in distress and NGOs operations – must be coordinated and managed by the Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC) in Rome. Triton’s aim is to support Italian border control and SAR activities. The main differences between Mare Nostrum and Triton is that the general reach of Triton was focused on a sea area of 30 nautical miles (NM) from the Italian coasts. Only on the 1st July 2015 the reach was extended following the April’s shipwrecks which led to a negative record of 900 casualties in a weekend, in order to reach 138 NM off the Sicilian coasts. A major Triton’s feature, in line with Mare Nostrum’s mandate, was that every SAR mission should have brought the succoured migrants in distress in Italy, easing migration pressure over Malta, but also leading to Italian malcontent over the distribution of migrants over Europe.

On the 12th March 2015, the Italian Ministry of Defence launched operation Mare Sicuro. The operation deploys “an air-sea device with the aim to […] perform activities of presence, surveillance and maritime security in the central Mediterranean Sea” in the area near the Libyan coasts and, from the 23rd of July 2017, even in Libyan territorial waters. This military operation aims at patrolling both terroristic activities – the former aim – and illicit maritime trafficking – a new objective after 2017, in cooperation with Libyan Coast Guard and Navy. The latter aim stands as the executive strategy implemented in force of an Italy-Libya deal in 2017, which has been widely criticized for the suspected violation of human rights – as the customary international law of non-refoulement – it potentially involves.

On the 27th May 2015, the EU Commission developed an action plan against migrant smuggling for the 2015-2020 period, a document calling for practical points and suggesting specific actions – namely, enhanced police and judicial response, improved gathering and sharing of information, enhanced prevention of smuggling and assistance to vulnerable migrants and stronger cooperation with third countries. Stemming from this new conception and call for efficiency, three months later the EU launched the European Union Naval Force in the South Central Mediterranean (EUNAVFOR MED) Operation Sophia. The core mission was to “undertake systematic efforts to identify, capture and dispose of vessels and enabling assets used or suspected of being used by migrant smugglers or traffickers, in order to contribute to wider EU efforts to disrupt the business model of human smuggling and trafficking networks in the Southern Central Mediterranean and prevent the further loss of life at sea”. During the development of the operation, it acquired also the mandate to enforce United Nations (UN) Security Council resolutions about setting an arm smuggling embargo and a much deeper mandate in training Libyan Coastguard and Navy. The operation was crafted as divided into four different phases: while the first consist in the deployment of forces and situational analysis, the second is more detailed in settling the mandate for smugglers’ vessels’ boarding, search, seizure and diversion; the third phase includes also “taking operational measures against vessels and related assets suspected of being used for human smuggling or trafficking inside the coastal states territory” ; finally, the fourth foresees the completion of the operation and the forces’ withdrawal. The operation was not extended after its deadline, the 31st December 2018. Phase two and three required an international law provision, whose force legitimized EU operations in a foreign country’s territorial waters: the latter arrived on 9th October 2015, with UN Security Council Resolution 2240 (2015), which settles a framework for cooperation for counter-smuggling between EU members and Libya.

On February 2016, Europol decided to add an additional organizational layer with the European Migrant Smuggling Centre. The aim is to improve cooperation and coordination between law enforcement agencies, while also supporting EU members’ investigations in the fight against migrant smuggling by monitoring online content linked to smugglers’ networks.

In line with Operation Sophia, the 6th September 2016 Frontex’s mandate was strengthened to operate even outside the EU in a wide array of tasks, including intelligence gathering, borders patrolling, general EU coordination and satellite images provision.

On November 2016, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) joined the picture with the Operation Sea Guardian, whose aim is to enhance maritime security capacity building, providing support to maritime situational awareness and to maritime counter-terrorism.

On March 2017, through the means and political will of the former Italian Minister of Interior Marco Minniti, the Central Mediterranean Contact Group was established. This group aims at facilitating the exchange of information among European and African countries affected by migration via the CMS’ route, in line with a similar initiative undertaken by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in 2003. The Contact Group stands for an initiative for information sharing among all the involved countries.

On the 1st February 2018 Triton was substituted by operation Themis, a Frontex-led operation. The operational command remains under the Italian Ministry of Interior, while Frontex is in charge of law enforcement enhancement, aid to Italian authorities in migrants’ registration, intelligence gathering, and foreign fighters’, terrorists’ and other threats’ detection. The operational area in this operation is wide, spanning until Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Turkey and Albania. While this broad area seems to suggest a wider commitment, Themis focuses only within 24 NM from Italian coasts – instead of the 30, later widened, of Triton. Moreover, Mare Nostrum’s and Triton’s operational code which made Italy the only destination for relieved migrants is changed with operation Themis: migrants are to be shipped to the extraction point’s closest port. This factor opens two possible problematics: first, the Maltese migratory pressure is revived. Moreover, if a vessel smuggling migrants is carried out of distress near unstable or unsafe countries Themis’ ratio potentially leads to episodes of refoulement.

The CMS’ migratory issue has been and is currently managed within a complex, multi-actor and fragmented framework. Often the applicable rules are confused in a multitude of overlapping competences and operational areas, and the designed multi-layered information sharing system has arguably a direct and unequivocal positive impact. The only centralized system seems to be the one linked with SAR operations, which report to the Italian MRCC – and, even in this case, the multitude of missions and actors appears as destabilizing. Most of all, coped with an hostile Italian internal jurisdiction and a non-cooperative European environment in migratory issues, the overall migratory interventions’ framework follows a ratio of non-welcoming strategies aimed at blocking the migrants’ departure – in this sense, the deployed Italian and European efforts to increase Libyan law enforcement capabilities in order to block migration flows within North African waters is paradigmatic, and directly aimed at concealing the problem within an already unstable country which collects people escaping from other unsustainable situations.

Exploring the numbers: rescue actors in the CMS
The main actors in rescue activities on the CMS from 2013 to 2018 appear to be the Italian coastguard, the navy, commercial vessels, NGOs, Frontex and EUNAVFOR MED’s operations. Coastguard’s operativity fundamentally follows the migratory flows: while in 2013 it was in charge of more than a half of the rescues at sea – because of other initiatives’ scarcity – from 2014 on the peaks in coastguards’ operativity follow the migratory flows’ peaks, and a smaller number in rescues follows a flows’ decrease. Navy’s operativity, on the other side, has much different phases: after the peak performance in 2014 with 82.952 relieved migrants – corresponding with Mare Nostrum’s mandate – their numbers decreased, arriving to 5.913 in 2017, year in which military operations seems to be left in Frontex’ and EUNAVFOR MED’s hands. The latter, since the beginning of its operations in 2015, immediately boosted in the two years of record migratory fluxes; then it reduced its efficiency together with a reduced migrant flow in 2017. Frontex’ operativity had a similar trend. In here, it is worth highlighting that NGOs in 2016 and 2017 were the most active actors in rescue operations in the CMS, witnessing both NGOs’ dedication to their ethics and national and supranational actors’ difficulties in managing and internalizing the migration issue within their structures. It also explains the reduction of succoured migrants by commercial vessels from 2014 on. Throughout Mare Nostrum and Triton’s implementation, migrants arriving to Maltese coasts first drastically reduced, then completely stopped. With the new operation Themis, as already reminded, we can expect for the number to increase again, at least slightly.

On the other side of the sea, following European and Italian efforts in enhancing Libyan coast guard and navy, most of all from 2016 on Libyan authorities increased their efficiency in rescue activities of about 20 times from 2015 to 2016. This factor also helps explaining the drop in Frontex’ and EUNAVFOR MED’s rescues underlined earlier – once developed Libyan capabilities, they started restricting their operational area.

All the estimates over the numbers of casualties and missing people in this area show how “[t]he Central Mediterranean is considered to be the deadliest migration route in the world”, and it is also necessary to underline that the detected and accounted deaths and disappearances are definitely an underrepresentation of the actual picture. The most complete effort made to track migrant flows’ casualties is made by IOM, with its flow monitoring map and the Missing Migrants project. Seen together, they provide the most accurate and adjourned picture over the numbers of arrivals and casualties. While the migrants' flows skyrocketed from 2014 to 2016, the number of casualties in 2014 is low compared whith the numbers from 2015 to 2017, when the number of deaths on the CMS is extraordinarily high.

Comparing initiatives and numbers
The number of migrants’ arrivals have a peak from 2014 to 2016, but in 2014 there is a lower number of deaths at sea compared with 2015 and 2016. For almost all 2014 the most relevant initiative in the CMS was Mare Nostrum, which noticeably performed much better in rescue activities – not surprisingly, as deploying more assets and resources leads to better results, which in this issue means a lower death toll on the CMS. The assets’ and mission’s mandate reduction had a deep impact on migrants’ security – which fomented NGOs’ call to enact SAR operations. The worst year in terms of number of arrivals over number of casualties at sea’s ratio is 2017: the number of deaths at sea is comparable with the 2015’s one, while the flows’ magnitude is substantially lower. This evaluation leads to the consideration that the overall complex system put in place on the CMS is not improving rescue performances, on the contrary. In 2017, NGOs' SAR missions led to a number of rescues comparable with 2016’s one, which means that, given the reduced flow of migrants in 2017, they improved their performance. Fundamentally, the actors whose rescues are failing in improving are not NGOs, but mainly EU and Italian actors. Nevertheless, especially from 2016 on it is possible to identify a growing phenomenon of NGOs’ blaming and obstruction. This practice have been carried on by Libyan, EU and Italian actors – Catania’s Republic Prosecutor Carmelo Zucco in particular became popular for its antagonism. The actual Italian Minister of Interior Matteo Salvini has also publicly expressed its antagonism towards NGOs’ activities. While on the Libyan side NGOs are obstructed for operating inside their territorial waters, on the European side they are blamed to act as a pull factor for migrants – in migration literature, pull factors are the variables which incentive migrants to go towards a country. As such, some NGOs also sustained investigations for clandestine migration’s facilitation.

Even operation Mare Nostrum has been considered as a pull factor – it was believed that the very fact that Italian navy assured SAR activities allowed migrants’ smugglers to use unseaworthy vessels in a systematic way, increasing migratory flows – and as such was suspended, but “at the end of Mare Nostrum there was no decrease in the numbers of arrivals, with over 33,000 arrivals having been reported in Italy by May 2015 (compared to just over 26,000 in the same period in 2014”. Hence, “the current migratory flows across the Mediterranean, from sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle-East to Europe, seem to be driven much more significantly by push factors that cause migrants to depart their homes, than by the pull factors that draw migrants to Europe”.

It is possible to notice that, while the number of deaths at sea is influenced by the type of initiative – in terms of mandate, territorial extension and deployed assets – put into place to manage CMS’s migratory flows, there seems to be no influences over the number of overall migratory flows themselves. Fundamentally, the initiatives’ variation does not have effect the number of migrants attempting to reach Europe. Moreover, considering some studies over smugglers’ networks and how they work it seems that these networks are based on commercially competitive small groups focused on their part of the overall smuggling route. Furthermore, “migrants respond to political unrest in North Africa by fleeing across the Mediterranean to Europe” and “[t]he response is moderated by smugglers' reluctance to send migrants in sea conditions that are too risky”. An overview on smugglers’ networks suggest that the market-based networked smugglers organization works through smugglers’ reliability as service providers, and that smugglers themselves have a paramount interests in protecting their reputation – for example, quantitative negative correlation between smugglers’ vessels crossing the CMS and risky sea conditions are found. Migrants’ motivation to sail is the only truly relevant factor that determines the migratory flows’ magnitude, which can be influenced by smugglers’ operativity but certainly not by any kind of undertaken initiatives. Only Mare Nostrum had an effect as a pull factor, which can be considered as minor as migratory fluxes, as already argued, increased after its end. The wide array of undertaken initiatives impact smugglers’ choices rather than migrants’ motivations, with the result of not addressing the very initiatives’ raison d'être.