- Bill Frelick is Human Rights Watch’s refugee policy director and the author of “Pushed Back, Pushed Around: Italy’s Forced Return of Boat Migrants and Asylum Seekers, Libya’s Mistreatment of MIgrants and Asylum Seekers“. The opinions expressed are his own. -

On May 6, for the first time since World War II, a European state ordered its coast guard and naval vessels to intercept and forcibly return boat migrants on the high seas without screening to determine whether any passengers needed protection or were particularly vulnerable. That state was Italy; the receiving state was Libya. The Italians left the exhausted passengers on a dock in Tripoli, where the Libyan authorities immediately detained them.

Since then, Italian patrol boats have continued to force the boat migrants, mostly Africans, back to Libya.  Some of the operations are coordinated by Frontex, the European Union’s external borders migration control agency.

The policy is an open breach of Italy’s legal obligation not to commit refoulement—the forced return of people to places where their lives or freedom would be threatened or where they would face a risk of torture or inhuman and degrading treatment.

Today, Human Rights Watch issues a report on Libya’s mistreatment of migrants and asylum seekers.  It is based on 91 in-depth, private interviews with migrants who went through Libya to Italy or Malta, where they could speak to us without fear of retribution.

A 32-year-old Nigerian  I interviewed in Sicily told me how the Libyan authorities treated him after they stopped his boat on October 20, 2008:

“We were in a wooden boat and Libyans in a [motorized inflatable] Zodiac started shooting at us. They told us to return to shore. They kept shooting until they hit our engine. One person was shot and killed. I don’t know the men who did the shooting, but they were civilians, not in uniforms. Then a Libyan navy boat came and got us and started beating us. They collected our money and cell phones. I think the zodiac boat was working with the Libyan navy. The Libyan navy took us back in their big ship and they sent us to Bin Gashir deportation camp. When we arrived there they immediately started beating me and the others. They beat some of the boys until they could not walk.”

Although the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has access to some migrant detention centers and Libyan organizations provide humanitarian services, there is no formal agreement to guarantee access. Furthermore, Libya has no asylum law or procedures. The authorities make no distinction among refugees, asylum seekers, and other migrants. “There are no refugees in Libya,” Brigadier General Mohamed Bashir Al Shabbani,  director of the Office of Immigration at the General People’s Committee for Public Security, told us. “They are people who sneak into the country illegally and they cannot be described as refugees.” He added, “Anyone who enters the country without formal documents and permission is arrested.”

Despite Libya’s poor treatment of migrants, the EU, like Italy, increasingly sees Libya as a valuable partner for migration control. The European Commission is negotiating a general Framework Agreement for enhanced ties, and the Council has stated that negotiating a readmission agreement with Libya is an EU priority.

EU institutions and member states should not regard Libya as a partner for migration control until it formally ratifies the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, adopts a national asylum law and formally recognizes the UN High Commissioner for Refugees — and until its treatment of migrants and detention conditions conform to international standards.

-Arvind Ganesan is the Director of the Business and Human Rights Program at Human Rights Watch. The opinions expressed are his own.-

Equatorial Guinea is a tiny country of about half a million people on the west coast of Africa, but is the fourth-largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa.

Most of the investment in the country’s multi-billion dollar oil industry comes from the United States. ExxonMobil, Hess and Marathon are all there. Right now, the U.S. imports up to 100,000 barrels of oil a day from Equatorial Guinea, or about a quarter of the country’s oil production.

Oil money gives the country the means to be a model for development and human rights. The economy is nearly 130 times as big as it was when oil was discovered in 1995. But as a report released by Human Rights Watch today details, the government has squandered or stolen much of the money at the expense of its people.

It is a sad contrast, since the country has a per capita income comparable to Spain’s or Italy’s and development indicators more like Afghanistan’s. For just one sad example, infant and child mortality actually has increased — from an already-dismal 103 deaths per thousand in 1990 to 124 per thousand in 2007. Similarly, under-5 mortality rates increased from 170 per thousand in 1990 to 206 per thousand in 2007.

The president and his family are doing just fine, though. They lead lavish lifestyles while most people live in crushing poverty.

A series of corruption scandals involving government officials and their families will give you some idea of how bad it is.

In 2004, a U.S. Senate investigation into the country’s dealings with the now-defunct Riggs Bank detailed how President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo used the country’s oil wealth to finance numerous personal transactions, including spending $3.8 million to buy two mansions in a suburb of Washington, D.C. That investigation led to one of the largest fines against a bank in U.S. history, and ultimately the bank’s takeover.

Obiang’s eldest son, Teodorin, bought a $35 million property in California in 2006. In 2004, he spent about $8.45 million for mansions and luxury cars in South Africa. His only known income was a $4,000 monthly salary as a government minister. His $43.45 million in spending on his lavish lifestyle from 2004 to 2006 was more than the $43 million the government spent on education in 2005.

The people of Equatorial Guinea have no way to hold their government accountable. Obiang has been in power since 1979, when he deposed his uncle in a coup. The government severely curtails press freedom and independent civil society, and the political opposition is weak and faces constant government harassment, intimidation, and arrests. In the most recent parliamentary elections in May 2008, Obiang and his allies won 99 out of 100 seats.

The government has joined the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), an effort to make natural resources benefit everyone by setting a global standard for openness in oil, gas, and mining. However, the government has been very slow to implement the initiative’s standards. The danger is that EITI may give the government a veneer of legitimacy even while it stifles its critics and opposes real scrutiny.

Perhaps the best prospect for reform lies with the Obama administration since most of the investment in Equatorial Guinea’s oil comes the US. There are in fact things the administration can do now to break the cycle of corruption in a place like Equatorial Guinea. It should hold the government accountable for human rights and insist that it rigorously enforce anti-corruption laws. Under the Bush administration, that did not happen.

The same month in 2006 that Obiang’s son bought a $35 million Malibu mansion, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Obiang in Washington and called him “a good friend” at a news conference.

Unless the Obama administration makes it clear to Equatorial Guinea’s leaders that they must share the oil wealth with the country’s people , the human cost of the oil that the US imports from that country will continue to be staggering.

- Bonnie Docherty, a researcher in the Arms Division at Human Rights Watch, has conducted investigative field missions on cluster munition use in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, and Georgia and was actively involved in the negotiations for the new Convention on Convention Munitions. The opinions expressed are her own. -

Six months after the new treaty banning cluster munitions opened for signature, half the world has formally expressed its support. So far, the Convention on Cluster Munitions has an impressive 98 signatories, 10 of which have ratified. Those figures are growing, and Albania, Niger, and Spain ratified this month. The convention will enter into force six months after the thirtieth state ratifies. Many observers predict that it will actually enter into force in 2010, a remarkably short turnaround for international law.

The groundbreaking convention absolutely bans the use, production, transfer, and stockpiling of cluster munitions. These large weapons carry dozens or hundreds of smaller submunitions and are notorious for causing horrible civilian deaths or injuries both during attacks and afterward.

The Convention on Cluster Munitions also requires countries that are party to destroy their stockpiles within eight years, clear their territory of unexploded submunitions within 10 years, and provide assistance to cluster munition victims. The convention is already having a positive effect at the national level. In March, Spain became the first among those that have signed to finish destroying its stockpiles – and Austria, Belgium, Colombia, Germany, Norway, and the United Kingdom have started the process.

Countries that have signed the convention are convening in Berlin this week for the first time since the December 2008 signing ceremony in Oslo. Although the subject of the meeting is stockpile destruction, delegates are certain to gather in the hallways to discuss some outstanding matters of how to interpret the treaty.

The topic most debated behind the scenes will be what is called interoperability – that is, how the ban on cluster munitions applies during military operations with states that are not party to the treaty. Human Rights Watch has just released a legal analysis of the issue, and many participating countries are considering how to address it in their implementation legislation.

Despite the international support for a strong treaty, certain states are proposing a weak interpretation that threatens to undermine the purpose of the convention: to eliminate cluster munitions and their humanitarian harm.

The Convention on Cluster Munitions explicitly prohibits assisting others with activities that it bans. Several of those that have signed, notably U.S. allies, are saying that the convention waives the prohibition on some forms of assistance during joint operations. They claim that without this exception the treaty would prevent operations with countries, particularly the United States, that are unlikely to join the treaty in the immediate future.

The interpretation promoted by these states runs counter to the convention’s aim to do away with cluster munitions once and for all. Under their reading, countries that are party to the treaty could conceivably participate in planning an attack in which a country that is not party used cluster munitions, allow foreign stockpiles on their territory, provide security for stores of the weapons, refuel vehicles transporting cluster munitions, provide transportation of cluster munitions to the battlefront, identify the targets for cluster munition attacks, or even call in the strikes.

The convention cannot logically be understood to obligate the countries that are party to work toward eliminating cluster munitions and at the same time permit them to help another country use them.

The international community has demonstrated the political will to rid the world of cluster munitions by signing and ratifying the treaty and starting to destroy stockpiles. While building support is urgent and critical to the success of the convention, developing strong understandings of its provisions is just as important. As countries draft legislation to help them carry out the provisions of the treaty, they should read the treaty’s prohibition on assistance broadly and absolutely to make certain that the convention lives up to its potential.

The convention clearly permits joint military operations, but countries that have joined the treaty should prohibit all assistance with using cluster munitions. They should remember the purpose behind the treaty they negotiated and make no exceptions.