With Europe increasingly tightening its borders against migrants and asylum seekers, the European Union’s reliance on advanced surveillance technologies and militarized strategies has concurrently surged. Frontex – the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, has evolved into a pivotal player in this ‘border surveillance industrial complex,’ bolstered by a growing budget and a mandate to procure its equipment.
This includes drones from Israeli companies, such as Airbus-Israel Aerospace Industries and Elbit Systems, that are tested on Palestinians, and subsequently deployed in the Mediterranean for surveillance and coordination with the Libyan Coast Guard—an entity accused of human rights abuses.
Critics argue this practice constitutes illegal ‘pushbacks by proxy,’ undermining international law. The EU’s selective application of international law, coupled with the racialized surveillance of migrants, underscores an alarming trend of externalizing border control, merging migration control with militarized and neocolonial practices.
Libya’s rights violations against migrants
The European Union has over the years enhanced its cooperation and partnerships with several third countries in the Mediterranean region such as Libya to manage migration, leading to grave human rights violations against migrants.
According to numbers of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), over 18.000 migrants have been intercepted at the Mediterranean Sea and returned to Libya last year until October. Back in Libya, many of these migrants are imprisoned in detention centers and are put in arbitrary detention, without a charge or trial.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) reports about the human rights violations committed against migrants held in detention centers in Tripoli. Sexual violence, forced labor and beatings are just some of these violations. Moreover, the conditions in the centers are awful, with food, water, and items such as diapers lacking and hygiene absent. This has led to an increase in infectious diseases.
The United Nations (UN) also points to Libya’s torture, starvation, and trafficking of migrants. In March of 2024, a mass grave was found in Libya with presumably the dead bodies of migrants. The UN has referred to evidence of crimes against humanity that are committed against migrants in Libya, including but not limited to sexual slavery and systematic torture.
Agreements and international law
In 2017, Italy and Libya signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and the European Union (EU) adopted the Malta Declaration. These agreements externalize the EU’s migration control, by diverting responsibility for search and rescue operations in a big area of the Mediterranean Sea to the Libyan Coast Guard. In exchange, the EU provides the Libyan Coast Guard with training and equipment, among other things.
Since these agreements, over 147.000 migrants have been intercepted by the Libyan Coast Guard. The principle of non-refoulement comes into play here. According to this international law principle, people cannot be returned to places where they would face the risk of “irreparable harm”, which includes torture and other grave human rights abuses. In the Hirsi Jamaa and Others v. Italy ruling of 2012, the European Court of Human Rights decided that Italy had breached EU law by pushing back a group of migrants to Libya. It, among other reasons, stated that this put the migrants at risk of maltreatment in Libya.
Border surveillance industrial complex
The EU perceives migrants as a security risk to Fortress Europe and has starkly increased the budget of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) in the past years. While, in the past, Frontex had to rely on member states for personnel and equipment, its mandate has now grown into the organization purchasing its border control equipment. As such, Frontex is perceived as an appealing partner in the border surveillance industrial complex, in which the interests of the surveillance and defense industries intertwine with those of political actors such as the EU.1 This complex forms a growing market. According to Antony Loewenstein, Israeli corporations have been at the forefront when it comes to doing business with Frontex in the border surveillance industrial complex.2
In 2020, Frontex reported that it contracted Airbus-Israel Aerospace Industries (Airbus-IAI) and Elbit Systems drones for air surveillance operations in the Mediterranean Sea. IAI and Elbit are Israeli companies. IAI is owned by the Israeli state and Elbit has the Israeli military as its biggest customer. Frontex uses drones from these companies for surveillance flights. Subsequently, it regularly shares information on migrant boats with the Libyan Coast Guard, which pulls back these migrants to Libya.
The Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) and the Irish Centre for Human Rights (ICHR) identify these pullbacks by Libya as European “pushbacks by proxy”, as the Libyan Coast Guard is completely dependent on funds from the EU and Italy. Pushbacks are illegal, as international law upholds the right to seek asylum and the principle of non-refoulement.
Avoidance of human rights duties
Frontex claims that the drones are being used for surveillance and rescue purposes. It also argues that it uses aerial surveillance to uncover irregular migration and border crimes. At the same time, Frontex and the EU try to evade responsibility for border deaths. For instance, Frontex says it regrets the increase of border deaths, while blaming solely human traffickers for this. It also states that it does not collaborate with the Libyan Coast Guard. Indeed, no official agreement between Frontex and Libya exists, but a Whatsapp chain has been found between the two that includes coordinates.
Frontex does not use ships, and aircraft such as drones cannot rescue migrants at sea.3 Instead, the drone operator has to inform a patrol boat. This gives operators the opportunity to postpone alerting a patrol boat when they have recognized the ship in distress as a migrant boat. Moonbird, the aircraft of the NGO Seawatch, maps drone flights over the Search and Rescue Zone of Libya. Moonbird’s documentation includes several occasions of delayed rescues and pullbacks by the Libyan Coast Guard, connecting these with the presence of drones.
Furthermore, when Frontex discovers migrant boats in distress in the Search and Rescue Zone of Libya, it will only request Libya to stage an intervention, even if other ships would be more suited to do so. Knowing Libya’s ill-treatment of migrants, this is a severely inhumane practice and also undermines international law, as for instance, the European Convention on Human Rights prohibits torture and “inhuman or degrading treatment”.
In contrast, the duty to rescue at sea as enshrined in international law does not apply to drones and other unmanned aircraft. Frontex and the EU thus implement international law selectively, only adhering to those laws that fit their own purposes, namely the externalization of migration control and even more importantly, the reduction of migrant flows to Europe. In 2021, Human Rights Watch reported that Frontex “shows a pattern of failure to credibly investigate or take steps to mitigate abuses against migrants at EU external borders”.
“Combat-proven” drones
The drones that the EU acquired from Airbus-IAI are Heron aircraft, those from Elbit are Hermes aircraft. The EU’s use of Heron and Hermes drones does not constitute the first time these drones were used for human rights abuses. Both drones have been used by Israel in offensives against Palestinians in Gaza, for example, Israel used Heron and Hermes drones during “Operation Cast Lead” in the 2008-2009 assault on Gaza and Hermes drones during “Operation Protective Edge” in the 2014 assault on Gaza. In the latter, 37 percent of the deaths were ascribed to attacks by drones. In the ongoing genocide in Gaza, Elbit Hermes drones and IAI Heron drones have also been used by Israel. IAI and Elbit promote their drones as “combat-proven”, i.e. “tested” by Israel on Palestinians.
Israeli weaponry such as surveillance drones are “tested” in both the West Bank and Gaza and subsequently marketed with videos and pictures of Palestine to prove the weaponry’s effectiveness. Israeli corporations such as Elbit also contribute to the building and preservation of the Israeli separation wall, which was rendered a breach of international law by the International Court of Justice already in 2004. Such experience in border security makes these Israeli corporations popular in the international border security market.
Militarization and racial surveillance
Drones are increasingly being used for border security. Özgün Topak argues that drones constitute an inherent part of the militarization of migration controls.4 They explain that in militarized rationale, migrants are seen as threats at the border that need to be neutralized by avoiding their embarkation. For such neutralization activities, drones are used. The fact that drones are unmanned contributes to “moral distancing” between those operating the drones and the migrants at sea.5
This dehumanization of migrants for the purpose of migration control is not an entirely new phenomenon. Monish Bhatia points out how the intertwining of migration control and surveillance stems from colonialism and slavery.6 After all, the freedom of movement is restricted for racialized groups of people, who are identified as “‘unwanted’ and ‘risky’”.7 As such, racial surveillance of migrants with the use of drones forms part and parcel of today’s neocolonial system. The fact that border control equipment to guard Fortress Europe is purchased from companies inherently connected to a settler-colonial occupation state only contributes to the furthering of this system.
Notes
- Antony Loewenstein, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation around the World (Verso, 2023), 105-108. ↩︎
- Loewenstein, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation around the World, 107-108. ↩︎
- Loewenstein, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation around the World, 99-100, 102. ↩︎
- Özgün E. Topak, “Drones: Robot eyes on racialized migrant bodies,” International Migration 61, no. 5 (October 2023): 313-314, https://doi.org/10.1111/imig.13183. ↩︎
- Topak, “Drones: Robot eyes on racialized migrant bodies,” 314. ↩︎
- Monish Bhatia, “Racial surveillance and the mental health impacts of electronic monitoring on migrants,” Race & Class 62, no. 3 (2021): 24, https://doi.org/10.1177/0306396820963485. ↩︎
- Bhatia, “Racial surveillance and the mental health impacts of electronic monitoring on migrants,” 24. ↩︎
