Tens of thousands of refugees crossing the Mediterranean Sea each year are captured by the EU-funded Libyan Coast Guard and sent to brutal prisons in Libya where murder, extortion and rape are common. 

One of the reasons the coastguard has become so effective is that in 2018 Libya extended the reach of its patrols on the high seas. By obtaining UN recognition of a maritime search and rescue zone, the Libyan authorities have extended their jurisdiction to almost a hundred miles off the Libyan coast, in international waters, and halfway to the Italian coast.

The consequence of extending the zone is that humanitarian ships such as those of MSF cannot reach the migrants sooner to pull them out of the water and land them in safe ports, usually in Europe. Instead, with the help of EU-funded planes and drones flying over the migrants' boats, the Libyan coastguard reaches the refugees faster and returns them to prisons in Libya, the country from which the migrants have just fled.

Lawmakers and human rights activists are now raising new questions with the European Parliament and the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), the UN maritime agency that formally recognised the Libyan search and rescue zone. These critics say the Libyan Search and Rescue Zone violates the relevant UN Convention and has been used to facilitate worsening human rights abuses and the violation of non-refoulement, which prohibits the return of people to war zones or other places where they are likely to be tortured or otherwise harmed.

Are there any plans to suspend the registration of the Libyan "search and rescue zone" with the International Maritime Organisation, as it does not comply with international standards or the obligations of individual states to respect the right to asylum and the law of the sea?" a group of 18 European lawmakers wrote to the European Parliament in May.

Under a 1979 UN convention, nations can establish their own search and rescue zones at sea, but certain obligations must be met. To create or extend a SAR zone, a country must first 'establish rescue coordination centres' that are 'operational 24 hours a day with continuously trained personnel who have a working knowledge of the English language'. People rescued in SAR zones must be returned to a safe port under the convention's rules.

When the IMO recognised Libya's SAR zone in 2018, these obligations were not met. Libya did not have an independent rescue coordination centre staffed 24 hours a day by English-speaking personnel, and the country's ports were not (and still are not) classified as 'safe harbours', according to the UN. When migrants are 'rescued' or arrested in Libya's search and rescue zone, the coastguard takes them to prisons where, according to the UN, 'crimes against humanity' are committed.

The IMO was certainly not the main architect of the extension of the Libyan search and rescue zone. That responsibility lies with the EU and Italy, both of which pushed for its creation while making it clear that the basic requirements of the Convention were not being met.

In 2016, the Italian Coast Guard was asked by the European Commission to assist the Libyan authorities in identifying and declaring this zone. In a submission to the IMO in 2017, Italy clarified that Libya did not have a rescue coordination centre and instead promised that one would be established. Years went by and the centre was never built. In 2021, in response to questions from the European Parliament, the European Commission spoke of its ambition to build a 'functional rescue coordination centre', and an internal EU report from January 2022 makes it clear that the centre is still unable to fulfil its core obligations.

Before the IMO announcement, there was no official Libyan search and rescue zone. Italy and independent humanitarian groups were mainly responsible for tracking migrant boats in the Mediterranean. But the new search and rescue zone gave the Libyan coastguard the power to order ships - whether commercial or humanitarian - to take refugees back to the country they had fled. This has raised a number of legal questions: How can ships be ordered to deliver refugees to ports deemed unsafe? Why should the IMO proclaim an area that facilitates such violations and does not meet the terms of the convention it is supposed to uphold?

The law and the current policy are contradictory," said Laura Garel, spokeswoman for SOS Méditerranée, a humanitarian organisation that operates rescue ships in the Mediterranean.

This contradiction is not unique to the Mediterranean. In a study published in 2017, Professor Violeta Moreno-Lax, an expert in international migration law, documented how Australia has consistently failed to meet its obligations under the 1979 Search and Rescue Convention. The study highlights how Australia has militarised its response to migration by sea, focusing on 'deterrence, interception and forced return of boats' rather than conducting 'genuine search and rescue operations', regularly breaching the Convention.

In response, the IMO says it has minimal authority or responsibility to sanction search and rescue zones at sea. The organisation 'does not approve search and rescue zones' but simply 'disseminates the information', Natasha Brown, an IMO spokeswoman, wrote in an email to The Outlaw Ocean Project. There is no provision in the Search and Rescue Convention that would allow us to evaluate or approve the information provided,' she added.

However, the IMO clearly plays a role in deciding whether these zones should be announced and recognised. In December 2017, for example, Libya provisionally withdrew its initial application to the IMO to designate its zone 'after the IMO pointed out that the basic requirements for the SAR zone were not met in the absence of a rescue coordination centre', Peter Muller and Peter Smolinski wrote in the Journal of European Public Policy.

Asked whether the IMO checks the information it receives from countries to ensure that the convention's criteria are met, to protect its reputation and ensure that the convention is not violated, IMO spokeswoman Brown confirmed that her organisation "clarifies or confirms technical points" before formally announcing a search and rescue zone. She added that the convention should be amended to give IMO a greater role in verifying the information it publishes.

In the past, the IMO has considered whether the organisation or its rules are being used in a way that facilitates crime. In 2015, Koji Sekimizu, then IMO Secretary-General, made it clear that his organisation must help prevent migrants from being sent to ports deemed unsafe. During a meeting on migration in the Mediterranean, he stressed that signatory governments have an obligation to coordinate and cooperate with rescue vessels to ensure that people rescued at sea are returned to a safe place.

These obligations apply regardless of the status of persons in distress at sea, including possible illegal migrants," Sekimuzu said. These issues are clearly within the competence of the International Maritime Organisation when they call into question the proper application of international rules.

A wide range of academics, lawyers, advocates and legislators say that this is exactly what is happening: the IMO is allowing the improper 'enforcement of international regulations' as well as violations of humanitarian and maritime law. The IMO has the power and the duty to solve the problem by removing the Libyan search and rescue zone, they say, which would prevent the IMO's complicity with the Libyan coastguard in claiming extended jurisdiction to illegally transfer migrants to places of abuse.

There is an urgent need for the IMO, as the maritime authority of the United Nations, to remove the Libyan Search and Rescue Zone from its official records," says a 2020 letter signed by dozens of European lawmakers, humanitarian organisations, activists, legal experts and academics. The letter explains that the IMO has created a system that 'has been used opportunistically to create a fictitious account that allows several states and the EU to waive their obligations under maritime, international refugee and human rights law'. The letter mentions Libya's status as an unsafe port and the violence perpetrated by the Libyan coastguard. It also describes the use of Libya's extended search and rescue zone to 'criminalise' aid groups, such as Médecins Sans Frontières, that carry out legitimate rescue missions.

Because we believe that the IMO does not appreciate states using its procedures as a tool to undermine the law of the sea, maritime safety, human rights and international law, the undersigned request that the formal recognition of the Libyan Search and Rescue Zone be withdrawn,' the letter says. In response to the letter, the IMO wrote that it 'does not have the authority to revoke or deregister' the zone.

This pressure on the IMO is not only coming from outside the UN. In a 2019 report, the IMO's sister organisation, the UN Human Rights Office, also called on the maritime body to take responsibility for its role in facilitating violations by the Libyan Coast Guard. The IMO "should reconsider the classification of the Libyan Search and Rescue Zone until the Libyan Coast Guard demonstrates that it is capable of carrying out search and rescue operations without endangering the lives and safety of migrants," the UNHRC wrote.

Since the creation of the Libyan search and rescue zone, the Libyan coastguard has become much more effective in intercepting migrants. In 2021, the Libyan coastguard intercepted more than 32,000 migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean, compared to 11,891 intercepted at sea in 2020, according to the UN migration agency. These migrants are taken ashore and locked up in migrant detention centres, where a range of abuses take place.

There are videos of the concentration camps in Libya, the concentration camps of the traffickers,' Pope Francis said in a recent television interview, describing the treatment of refugees crossing the Mediterranean as 'criminal' and calling on EU countries to take in more of these migrants.

The IMO's recognition of Libya's search and rescue zone also creates legal difficulties for private ship owners and operators. If the captain of a private ship rescues migrants in international waters (as required by law) and is then ordered by the Libyan Coast Guard to return those migrants to the port of Tripoli, should the captain obey those orders?

Because of the IMO's announcement of the Libyan Search and Rescue Zone, Libyan coastguard captains can claim - as they usually do - that they have UN-recognised jurisdiction over the area, even though the migrants are usually already in international waters. As a result, the captains of the merchant ships believe that they are legally obliged to comply with the Libyan Coast Guard's orders to hand over the migrants.

In doing so, however, these merchant ship captains are committing a crime, as was highlighted in 2021 by the one-year prison sentence of an Italian captain who did exactly as he was told by the Libyan Coast Guard and returned migrants to Tripoli in violation of the humanitarian law of non-refoulement. This situation arose because the Libyan coastguard, with the tacit approval of the IMO, claimed extensive jurisdiction over much of the Mediterranean.

The IMO has attempted to provide useful guidance to captains on these issues, but the organisation has failed to resolve the legal contradiction it has helped to create. The IMO warns ship captains of their legal obligation to rescue migrants at sea and instructs them to obey the orders of the country, such as Libya, that claims jurisdiction over a search and rescue zone. But the same IMO document also says that migrants must be taken to an officially recognised 'safe haven', which the UN says Libya certainly is not.

To prevent further abuse of the regulation and to give the IMO a clearer role in verifying the information it publishes on search and rescue areas, countries that are parties to the Convention can propose amendments, which are then voted on at conferences convened by the IMO. A two-thirds majority of the countries voting is required for the amendment to be adopted.

And there is precedent. In his 2017 study, Moreno-Lax notes that 'following repeated incidents of non-compliance with search and rescue obligations', the Search and Rescue Convention was amended to make clearer the obligations of countries to carry out rescues.

'The IMO must oppose the abuse of procedures by states for instrumental purposes, for the sake of the international legal system as a whole,' said Yasha Maccanico, a researcher at Statewatch, an organisation that monitors civil liberties in Europe. The Libyan search and rescue zone makes a mockery of the law of the sea.