UK aid helping ‘deny refugees their rights’

UK aid is contributing to a system that prevents refugees reaching a safe place of asylum, a report published today by the UK’s Independent Commission for Aid Impact has warned.

This year the UK government will spend some £10 million in Libya to stem the flow of migrants from the Maghreb to Europe with funds going towards the Libyan coastguard and to improve conditions in the camps where refugees are being held.

Read: 970 refugees rescued off the coast of Libya

But whilst the report acknowledged the need to reduce deaths at sea, it also warned that the programme “delivers migrants back to a system that leads to indiscriminate and indefinite detention and denies refugees their right to asylum.” It increases the number of people being detained in Libya and increases the number of people who can be smuggled to Europe.

The report added that the commission has not seen evidence that the implementing partners have analysed the economic and political conditions concerning Libya’s detention centres and the people that operate within and around them, such as smugglers, traffickers and those that extort migrants in detention.

The UK’s aid programmes should be better-targeted, more closely monitored and the risks identified and managed so they do not harm vulnerable refugees, the very people they are supposed to be helping, the report added.