Five years. This is the operational period of the Italy-Libya Memorandum, the agreement with which the countries on the two shores of the Mediterranean officially commit themselves to 'processes of cooperation, combating illegal immigration and strengthening border security'. However, what is envisaged contrasts with reality. The effects on the lives of migrant men, women, girls and children are in fact among the most dramatic consequences of a pact that is clearly illegitimate. From 2017 to 11 October 2022, almost one hundred thousand* children, women and men were intercepted at sea by Libyan coastguards, and brought back to a country that cannot be considered safe. Being a migrant in Libya means in fact being constantly at risk: of being arrested, detained, abused, beaten, exploited. It means being stripped of all rights and receiving no protection.

The Memorandum does not merely outline generic cooperation and projects. In fact, the agreement envisages support to the so-called Libyan Coast Guard, through funds, means and training: continuing to support it means not only contributing directly and materially to the repatriation of men, women and children, but also supporting the detention centres - officially defined as reception centres - where people are subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment, are abused and killed.

All this is part of a particularly unstable political framework, where violence against the population grows year by year, as do the number of displaced people, and where countless testimonies and reports from international bodies confirm the intermingling of the Libyan authorities with militias, and their involvement in the systemic arbitrary detention, exploitation, abuse and torture of migrants and asylum seekers. Against this backdrop, it is increasingly difficult to track the funds and means sent through the Memorandum, which increases the risk of them being used in the internal conflict. It is also almost impossible to provide meaningful protection to vulnerable people. Safe and legal options to leave the country are limited in both access and numbers, so many people decide to undertake a return journey by land - particularly seasonal workers from neighbouring countries - running similar risks to those already faced in reaching Libya. Many others, instead, try to cross the Mediterranean, paying money put aside with work often carried out in inhuman conditions, and facing dangerous journeys, in which the probability of drowning is as high as that of being intercepted and rejected by Libyan coastguards.

In spite of all this,Italy and the European Union continue to deploy more and more public resources in Libya and to consider Libya a country with which they can enter into agreements, within a complex system based on border externalization policies, which delegates the management of migratory flows to the countries of origin and transit, with the economic support and collaboration of the European Union and member states. Since 2017, Libyan coastguards have received over 100 million in training and equipment (57.2 million from the Africa Trust Fund and 45 million through the dedicated Italian military mission alone ). Public money and resources intended for cooperation and development, used instead for border reinforcement, without any human rights safeguards or any monitoring and review mechanism required by EU financial rules.

The Italy-Libya Memorandum is not putting a stop to the violations of migrants' rights, on the contrary, it creates the very conditions for their continuation, indirectly facilitating exploitation and torture practices perpetrated in a systematic manner and such as to constitute crimes against humanity, as defined by the UN Independent Fact-Finding Mission. Despite the Memorandum's provision in Article 2 to 'support international organisations present and operating in Libya to pursue efforts aimed also at the return of migrants to their countries of origin, including voluntary return', the actual capacity of these organisations to protect migrants and asylum seekers in this situation is extremely limited and dependent on the choices of the Libyan authorities.

This demonstrates, together with the situation of insecurity and instability in the North African country and the countless testimonies of abuses by foreign nationals in Libya, the complete and total unreformability of the Memorandum system and of blocking departures from Libya in general. There is in fact, as demonstrated, astructural impossibility of bringing about any form of improvement in the living conditions of migrants in Libya, coupled with inadequate access of asylum seekers and refugees to international protection.

For all these reasons , migrants present in Libya and those who, in view of the traumas they have experienced, can be defined as survivors demand that they be granted human dignity as well as full political prominence and, together with all those who refer to the European legal culture, urge Italy and Europe to acknowledge their responsibilities and not to renew the agreements with Libya.

A Buon Diritto, ACAT Italia, ACLI, ActionAid, Agenzia Habeshia, Alarm Phone, Amne- sty International Italia, AOI, ARCI, ASGI, Baobab Experience, Centro Astalli, CGIL, CIES, CINI, Civicozero onlus, CNCA, Comitato Verità e Giustizia per i Nuovi Desaparecidos, Comunità Papa Giovanni XXIII, CoNNGI, FCEI, Focus Casa dei Diritti Sociali, Fonda- tion Migrantes, Emergency, EuroMed Rights, Europasilo, Intersos, Magistratura De- mocratica, Mani Rosse Antirazziste, Doctors of the World Italy, Mediterranea, Doctors Without Borders, Movimento Italiani Senza Cittadinanza, Open Arms, Oxfam Italy, Re- fugees Welcome Italia, ResQ - People Saving People, Save the Children, Sea Watch, Senza Confine, SIMM, UIL, UNIRE, Un Ponte per

*1Approximately 99630 people, our processing of UNHCR/OCHA data (https://reliefweb.int/)