Netherlands' Prime Minister Mark Rutte, left, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Tunisian President Kais Saied, centre, right and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, right, at the presidential palace in Carthage, Tunisia, July 16, 2023.
(Brussels) – The European Union (EU) and its member states should publicly denounce human rights violations in Tunisia and stop funding abusive migration control activities, 46 human rights and humanitarian organizations said in a joint statement released today. The statement comes three years after the EU and Tunisia signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on July 16, 2023, largely motivated by seeking Tunisia’s cooperation to prevent boats carrying migrants and asylum seekers from irregularly departing for Europe.
The MoU has fueled and normalized serious human rights violations in Tunisia. In some cases, these abuses have led to deaths. Continued migration cooperation with Tunisia makes the EU complicit in human rights violations by Tunisian security forces, the organizations said. Under the migration component of the agreement, the EU and its member states have provided EUR 105 million for interceptions at sea and border control activities in Tunisia. At least 65 million are already contracted to train and equip abusive entities, notably the Tunisian Coast Guard and the Tunisian Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre.
“People we have rescued from distress at sea have shared with our crew harrowing accounts of torture, sexualized violence and racist abuse they’ve been subjected to in Tunisia,” said Marie Michel, policy expert at SOS Humanity. “The EU-backed Tunisian Coast Guard acts violently against people in distress at sea and forces them back into a system of abuse with a high risk of being deported to the desert or trafficked to Libya. With every Euro paid to the security forces responsible, th
