Three years after signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to strengthen migration cooperation with Tunisia, the European Union (EU)’s unchecked support for border control in the country continues to fuel serious human rights violations against migrants, asylum seekers and refugees, Amnesty International said today.
The European Commission and Tunisia
signed
the deal on 16 July 2023, despite clear public documentation of a
sharply
deteriorating
human rights situation in the country, including
racist abuse
and unlawful
collective expulsions
by the authorities that often involved torture and ill-treatment.
Since then, and despite the
continuation
of these violations and the 2024
dismantling
of the asylum system removing the only avenue for protection, EU and member state officials have remained resolutely committed to strengthening that cooperation,
celebrating
the resulting significant drop in irregular departures from Tunisia while failing to put in place rigorous and credible due diligence measures, or to embed effective, transparent monitoring or human rights conditionality.
“Despite well-documented evidence of human rights violations against refugees and migrants in Tunisia, the EU looked the other way and signed the MoU without effective human rights safeguards. Since then, the EU has celebrated this migration cooperation as a success despite mounting documentation that the Tunisian authorities continue to subject refugees and migrants to serious human rights violations. These have included dangerous interceptions at sea putting lives at risk, failures to individually assess protection needs of those disembarked in Tunisia, as well as unlawful collective expulsions which have involved torture and other ill-treatment, including rape,” said Heba Morayef, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa.
Given the scale and severity of ongoing human rights violations, and the lack of any protection
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