Immigration: Boat arrivals on the decline since Malta-Libya MoU

Boat arrivals have been on the decline since 2020, particularly since Malta and Libya signed a memorandum of understanding on illegal migration.

According to statistics provided by the Home Affairs Ministry, the number of people reaching Malta’s shores by boat has decreased significantly over the past three years.

After only 45 people were rescued in 2016 and 2017 combined, arrivals shot up to 1,445 people in 2018, and almost doubled again to 3,405 people in 2019.

When the pandemic came around in 2020, the number of boat arrivals remained steady up until autumn, which saw arrivals decrease suddenly.

From then on, arrivals figures reached 838 people in 2021 and 444 people in 2022.

A spokesperson from the Home Affairs Ministry said that a significant number of these people are no longer in Malta as they have been relocated to other EU member states or have returned to their country of origin. Others might have left the country without renouncing their status.

The decline in arrivals coincides with the signing of a memorandum of understanding on illegal migration between Malta and Libya. The scope of the memorandum was to enhance communication between the two countries.

“Indeed, the decrease in the number of illegal arrivals from Libya is greatly attributed to the collaboration between the two countries,” the ministry told MaltaToday.

As part of the memorandum, Malta is hosting a Libyan officer who is stationed at the Malta-Libya Coordination Centre in Malta.

The MoU was signed in May 2020 for a three-year period to be renewed automatically for another year.

However, the face of migration is changing. Since 2019, migrants largely hailed from African countries, particularly Sudan and Eritrea.

But in 2022, Bangladeshi people made up 51% of those rescued to Malta at sea. In 2021, they made up only 1% of sea arrivals.

The other top countries of origin among sea arrivals in 2022 were Syria (28%), Egypt (8%), Lebanon (7%) and Palestine (4%).

Indeed, very few African nationals arrived in Malta in 2022. While Eritrean and Sudanese people made up almost 40% of arrivals in 2021, there were no sea arrivals whatsoever from Eritrea and Sudan the following year.

The story behind the statistics

In 2017, departures from Libya dropped significantly, owing to a collapse of Libya’s human smuggling industry. This was fueld by Libya’s co-option of human smuggling militias and encouraged by Italy’s cash-for-migration control strategy for Libya.

Over the years, the EU focused on investing in the Libyan coastguard by deploying boats and high-tech surveillance to units operating along Libya’s western coast. However, parts of the coastguard and other Libyan state security branches are run by militia groups.

In the US 2022 Trafficking in Persons Report, the State Department notes how various armed groups, militias and criminal networks infiltrated government ranks and abused their position to engage in human trafficking. This is particularly prevalent among Libyan coastguard officials, immigration officers, Ministry of Defence officials, security officials and members of armed groups.

More recently, Tunisia has become a more popular departure point for people sailing towards Europe. Boats departing from Tunisia tend to reach Italy as opposed to Malta.

Many people are also opting to depart Libya from its eastern coast, according to InfoMigrants. Those taking this route tend to be Egyptian or Bangladeshi, coming into Libya from neighbouring Egypt. While this route is longer than the usual Tripoli-Sicily route, departing from Eastern cities is less risky for those entering from Egypt.

MaltaToday had also revealed an intelligence report penned by Frontex, the EU border agency, that detailed how human smugglers were using Syrian airline Chem Wings to transfer Bangladeshi immigrants from Damascus to Benghazi for their onward trip by boat to Italy.