EU’s rubber-boat ban could make smugglers’ lives harder

A Maltese expert on human smuggling is hoping that the European Union’s limits on the export of inflatable boats to Libya, will make it harder for traffickers to send refugees and migrants to boats.

The foreign ministers of the 28 member states have decided to restrict the export and supply to Libya of inflatable boats and motors, in a bid to make smugglers’ lives and their businesses even more complicated.

Mark Micallef, of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, says such restrictions might just be one of several measures that can help rumble the businesses of traffickers.

“More importantly than the rubber boats are the outboard engines, and the EU also needs to find a way to target PVC itself,” Micallef said, referring to suggestions that some rubber boats might also be built in Libya.

Smugglers in Libya have been using rubber dinghies which can be purchased on Alibaba.com, the world’s largest online trading platform. The Chinese-made dinghies – impertinently advertised as ‘refugee boats’ – can be bought for $300 and these are transhipped to Libya through Malta and Turkey.

China is in fact the main source of rubber dinghy imports in Malta, whether for sale here or for transhipment through the Malta Freeport: between 2012 and 2016, a total cost value of €1.3 million was imported in rubber dinghies, a total of 5,092 pieces, working out at an average of €256 each. The standard cost of the Alibaba boats retail at between $300-$500.

Smugglers pay for these ‘refugee boats’ by telegraphic transfer, a form of bank transfer or by simply using their credit cards. These are then shipped to Libya, mainly through Turkey and the Malta Freeport.

However, the new EU rules allow concessions for fishermen and others who have legitimate reasons to use the dinghies and motors.

Malta was already on the radar as a transhipment node for rubber dinghies. In a leaked report published on Wikileaks, the head of EUNAVFOR MED, the operation targeting smuggling in Libya, remarked how Maltese Customs authorities had stopped a container with a cargo of 20 packaged rubber boats similar to those used to carry people from Libya to Europe. “As there are no legal grounds for holding such shipments, it was released for delivery to its destination,” the report said.

Smugglers in Libya have been using rubber dinghies which can be purchased on Alibaba.com, the world’s largest online trading platform

Smugglers turned to the use of dinghies after the European naval operation Sophia started destroying the wooden boats which generally could carry up to 500 people.

By June 2015, Operation Sophia had destroyed 452 wooden boats. This affected smugglers’ profit margins, so the criminal organisations turned to the cheaper rubber dinghies.

But Sophia’s actions were criticised in a recent inquiry by the UK’s House of Lords, which insisted that the dinghies simply placed migrants and refugees on completely unseaworthy boats “that have no prospect of ever reaching Italian shores, assuming they will be picked up near or within Libyan territorial waters” – making the journeys increasingly dangerous.

The EU’s plans to restrict Chinese inflatables will still not guarantee that smugglers will not procure them through another port like Turkey. Loopholes for fishermen to acquire the boats can still lead to a black market. That would increase costs for smugglers, most probably leading them to cram more migrants on the dinghies to make up for the higher prices.

“Just because there might be a diversion does not mean you should allow smugglers the logistical luxury of going through European territory,” Mark Micallef says, however.

“The revolution taking place in the smuggling industry in Libya is down to their greater logistical capability. The range of tools to attack human smuggling needs to include measures that undermine that logistical capacity.

“Smugglers stopped obeying strict market principles when the militias got involved in the business. If they could put more people on the boats, they would have started doing it already.”

Micallef says that right now, boats of 12 to 15 metres long are carrying up to 170 migrants on board. Some of them start taking in water almost immediately after departure.

But the vicious circle of human trafficking has wider implications for Libya, Micallef says. “The fact that human smuggling’s proliferation is financing armed groups is furthering the destabilisation of the country. This, to my mind makes the fight against human smuggling networks an even more pressing strategic objective for the EU and North Africa.”