Malta’s use of an immigration coordination centre in Libya will not work and will damage the country’s reputation, a former UN human rights senior official has said.
In a wide-ranging interview, human rights expert John Pace likened Malta’s use of its Libya centre to Australia’s now-abandoned ‘Pacific Solution’, which saw asylum seekers sent to the Pacific island state of Nauru while their applications were processed.
Pace, a former secretary of the UN Commission on Human Rights, was sent by Amnesty International in 2000 to report on the programme, recalling that, when he returned, he had remarked to the organisation it was “not a solution”.
“Now the West, including Malta, unfortunately, somehow copied the Australians on these centres but they ignored the fact that they didn’t work,” he said.
“I don’t think the Maltese model of having a centre in Libya is going to work; it’s going to tarnish Malta’s reputation for sure, sooner or later, and lead to cases that need attention because of human rights violations.”
Prime Minister Robert Abela announced the inauguration of Malta’s immigration coordination centre during a visit by then Libyan prime minister Fayez Mustafa al-Sarraj in 2020.
The centre's work is extremely secretive and little is known about how it operates.
Unlike Nauru, which Australia used to process and host asylum seekers, the Libya centre is said to “offer the necessary support relating to combatting illegal immigration in Libya and the Mediterranean region”.
It remains unclear how that is done, though migrant rescue groups have accused Malta of using its Tripoli centre to help coordinate pushbacks of asylum seekers to Libya.
Migrant arrivals have hit record lows in the years since Malta agreed to set up migrant centres in Libya. In 2024 there were just 238 sea arrivals, according to UNHCR figures - roughly 10% the number that reached Malta in 2020.
Pace said policies that involved processing migrants elsewhere did not address the root of the issue, stressing that migrants making the perilous journey across the Mediterranean were often escaping economic deprivation – which, in turn, led to corruption and conflict.
“The core of this problem, of those people in boats, is the inability of the [multilateral] development system to support and develop economies around the world,” he said.
“So, Libya is a band-aid [plaster] and Nauru was a band-aid. It doesn’t work; the band-aid will fall off and you’ll need another, then another, and what have you done? You’ve created generations of desperate people who become even more desperate.”
Pace spent more than 30 years at the United Nations, during which time he pioneered methods of investigating and documenting incidents of human rights abuses and led human rights missions in various countries, including Iraq from 2004 to 2006.
Towards the end of his term in Iraq, Pace made international headlines after speaking out about torture in Iraqi prisons and the detaining of innocent men by US forces.
In an interview with Times of Malta in 2006, Pace said the US was “aware” that torture was taking place in Iraqi prisons.
You’ve created generations of desperate people
Responding to recent events in the Middle East, which have included US President Donald Trump declaring America would take over the Gaza strip, relocate Palestinians and turn the area into a “Mediterranean Riviera”, Pace described Trump’s plans as “a form of ethnic cleansing”.
But he cautioned against taking the US leader too seriously, suggesting Trump could be simply riding a post-election wave of support: “I would be surprised if what he said had to become reality.”
Pace added the plan, should it go ahead, would likely “not work anyway”, with displaced people – or the descendants of those killed – likely to return to the area and seek revenge.
“What you will have done is sown the seeds for future tragedies – that’s why I’m sad to see a US president saying it or somehow linking it with ‘making America great again’. I don’t see it.”
But Trump’s rhetoric has not been confined to Gaza; since returning to the White House, he has attacked allies, trade agreements and international organisations – including the UN Human Rights Council, which Trump recently announced the US would withdraw from.
Pushing back against human rights laws being characterised as restrictive or biased – Trump, for example, has accused the UN Human Rights Council of being biased against Israel – Pace stressed that techniques for collecting and presenting evidence of abuses had developed over the decades through collaboration between many countries.
“International law on human rights goes up to the point of states undertaking the obligation of reporting to a monitoring body – made up of themselves – about the measures they’ve taken to implement their own obligations. It’s all theirs,” he said.
“And that’s adapted over time, according to new elements that might be introduced by various countries.”
But with recent conflicts appearing to challenge international consensus on human rights – Israel, for example, has been accused of numerous breaches of such laws in its conflict with Hamas – does Pace remain hopeful?
“I don’t think hopeful is the right word but I don’t think we should give up... so long as there are people and societies, whether we like it or not, there is a need for criteria [on human rights] to be applied,” he said.
Pace’s book, The United Nations Commission on Human Rights: ‘A Very Great Enterprise’, was recently translated into Chinese and republished in November.