Rescues of migrant boats by Malta's armed forces dropped by 90% in the years since Malta signed a secretive migration coordination deal with Libya, while interceptions by Libyan militia forces surged by a staggering 230%, recent data shows.

In 2020, migrant boats were roughly three times more likely to be rescued by Armed Forces Malta in Malta’s search and rescue zone than be intercepted by a Libyan militia vessel, recently collated data by a new migration mapping website shows.

That year, there were 21 rescues by Malta’s armed forces compared with just seven known interceptions by the Libyan coastguard – a collection of militias criticised by human rights organisations but sanctioned by the Libyan government.

By last year, however, the situation had witnessed a sharp reversal, with AFM rescues dropping to just two while the number of interceptions by the Libyan coastguard had tripled to 23, an analysis of data from the Malta Migration Archive shows.

The archive is a new online migration research tool launching tomorrow, that Times of Malta and other selected media organisations were granted advance access to.

The findings suggests that by last year, a migrant boat in distress in Malta's rescue zone was around 10 times more likely to be intercepted by Libyan militia than rescued by AFM. 

All the cases listed by the archive were within Malta’s search and rescue zone, a vast territory stretching across the Central Mediterranean for which Malta is responsible for attending boats in distress.

An analysis of data provided by the archive shows Libyan militia vessels becoming increasingly bold over the years, with interceptions rising steadily between 2020 and 2024 while AFM rescues declined.

The most dramatic drop in Maltese rescues took place between 2020 and 2021, with AFM operations dropping almost two-thirds to just eight.

Information held by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees on the number of sea arrivals to Malta appear to back up the findings; the UN agency documented almost 2,300 arrivals in 2020, dropping to 832 the following year. By last year, there were only 238 arrivals.

The numbers of rescues or interceptions pale in comparison to the number of migrant boats whose fates are unknown, however, with the vast majority of the almost 1,900 cases in the archive unaccounted for.

The archive draws on data supplied by NGOs including Alarm Phone and Sea-Watch International which run a hotline for migrant boats in distress and undertake rescues and surveillance, respectively.

The figures point to a sharp role reversal in the attendance of migrant boats in distress by Maltese and Libyan forces since the inauguration of an immigration coordination centre in Libya in 2020.

The centre's work is extremely secretive, and little is known about how it operates.

In July last year, announcing the renewal of the deal, Prime Minister Robert Abela said the centre had contributed to a strong reduction in the number of irregular migrants arriving in Malta.

In recent years, Malta has frequently been accused of ignoring migrant boats in distress within its search and rescue zone.  

Earlier this year, leaked documents from an EU military operation suggested Malta “refuses” to participate in migrant rescue missions, with one document saying that despite such cases mainly happening in Malta’s SAR zone, it is the Italians who take over as “Malta never responds and refuses to follow these operations”.

A spokesperson for the Home Affairs Ministry told Times of Malta then that all emergency notifications received are investigated, assessed, prioritised and acted upon accordingly, regardless of the provenance or legal status of the persons requiring rescue. 

The spokesperson said Malta’s responsibility within its search and rescue zone is to coordinate all search and rescue activities using any available resources, not necessarily its own, which may naturally be farther away. 

This is done in coordination with neighbouring rescue centres, particularly the one in Rome, with which Malta engages “positively and proactively on a daily basis”, the spokesperson had said.

Militia groups

While Libya's militias operating its coastguard service are sanctioned by Libya’s Presidential Council, which acts as head of state for the UN-recognised government, the groups have long faced criticism over alleged human rights abuses.

In November 2022, the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights  called on the International Criminal Court to investigate the groups' activities, including 16 EU officials from European agencies that provide material and operational support to the militias.

It said that migrants and refugees inctercepted and forcibly returned to Libyan detention centers "are subjected to grave human rights abuses".

In June 2024, an Italian court ruled that interceptions at sea by the Libyan coast guard cannot legally qualify as rescue operations due to the groups being armed and having used gunshots to intimidate migrants and civil society actors. 

Dramatic footage captured in 2021 by NGO Sea-Watch International showed a Libyan coastguard vessel opening fire on a migrant boat and ramming it several times. 

The archive 

The archive details the outcomes of thousands of perilous journeys across the Mediterranean over four years, granting users access to an interactive map of distress calls in Malta’s search and rescue (SAR) zone received by NGOs. 

A map of Malta’s SAR greets visitors to the website, accompanied by a description of the site and tabs to browse   

Visitors to the site can filter distress calls by outcome – rescues by Armed Forces Malta (AFM) or interceptions by Libyan coastal forces – while being able to toggle Mediterranean SAR boundaries and view in light or dark mode.  

It also allows users to see the development of cases over time using a playback feature which can be set to autoplay or scrobbled to quickly browse the archive at speed, and features detailed reports of selected cases and migrants' testimonies among other information.

"The migration archive sheds light on border violence in Malta. It systematically documents the many ways that the Maltese state and other actors obstruct mobility and settlement", the website reads. 

"The Archive documents state practices of non-assistance and pushbacks to Libya, while also collecting testimonies of people who are newly arrived in Malta. In both these ways, it counters the erasures of the state, its attempts to conceal this violence and its withholding of critical information about migration at sea and on land."