Heidi Kingstone is a journalist and author covering human rights issues, conflict and politics. Her most recent book is “Genocide: Personal Stories, Big Questions.” Slavery is alive and thriving, and it’s wrapped inside shiny chocolate bars that promise to be “fair trade,” “child-labor free” and “sustainable.” In West Africa, which produces more than 60 percent of the world’s cocoa, over 1.5 million children still work under hazardous conditions. Kids, some as young as five, use machetes to crack pods open in their hands, carry loads that weigh more than they do and spray toxic pesticides without protection. Meanwhile, of the roughly 2 million metric tons of cocoa the Ivory Coast produces each year, between 20 percent and 30 percent is grown illegally in protected forests. And satellite data from Global Forest Watch shows an increase in deforestation across key cocoa-growing regions as farmers, desperate for income, push deeper into forest reserves. The bitter truth is that despite decades of pledges, certification schemes and packaging glowing with virtue — of forests saved, farmers empowered and consciences soothed — most chocolate companies have failed to eradicate exploitation from their supply chains. Today, many cocoa farmers in the Ivory Coast and Ghana still earn less than a dollar a day, well below the poverty line. According to a 2024 report by the International Cocoa Initiative, the average farmer earns only 40 percent of a living wage. Put starkly, as the global chocolate market swells close to a $150 billion a year in 2025, the average farmer now receives less than 6 percent of the value of a single chocolate bar, whereas in the 1970s they received more than 50 percent. Then there’s the use of child labor, which is essentially woven into the fabric of this economy, where we have been sold the illusion of progress. From the 2001 Harkin-Engel Protocol — a voluntary agreement to end child labor by the world’s chocolate giants — to today’s glossy environmental, social and governance (ESG) reports, every initiative has promised progress and delivered delay. In 2007, the industry quietly redefined “public certification,” shifting it from a commitment to consumer labeling to a vague pledge to compile statistics on labor conditions. It missed the original 2010 deadline to eliminate child labor, as well as a new target to reduce it by 70 percent by 2020. And that year, a study by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center found that hazardous child labor in cocoa production increased from 2008 to 2019. “We covered a story about a ship carrying trafficked children,” recalled journalist Humphrey Hawksley, who first exposed the issue in the BBC documentary called Slavery: A Global Investigation. “The chocolate companies refused to comment and spoke as one industry. That was their rule. Even now, none of them is slave-free,” he added. As it stands, many of the more than 1.5 million West African children working in cocoa production are trafficked from neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali. Traffickers lure them with false promises or outright abduction, offering children as young as 10 either bicycles or small sums to travel to the Ivory Coast. There, they are sold to farmers for as little as $34 each. And once on these farms, they are trapped. They work up to 14 hours a day, sleep in windowless sheds with no clean water or toilets, and most never see the inside of a classroom. Last but not least, we come to deforestation: Since its independence, more than 90 percent of the Ivory Coast’s forests have disappeared due to cocoa farming. In 2024, deforestation accelerated despite corporate commitments to halt it by 2025, as declining soil fertility and stagnant prices pushed farmers farther into the forest to plant new cocoa trees. But as Reuters Correspondent for West and Central Africa Ange Aboa described them, such labels are “the biggest scam of the century!” | Lena Klimkeit/Picture Alliance via Getty Images Certification labels like “Rainforest Alliance” and “Fairtrade” are supposed to prevent this. But as Reuters Correspondent for West and Central Africa Ange Aboa described them, such labels are “the biggest scam of the century!” Complicit in all of this are the financiers and investors who profit. For example, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund is the world’s largest investor, and Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) is a shareholder in 9,000 corporations, including Nestlé, Mondelez, Hershey, Barry Callebaut and Lindt — all part of the direct chocolate cluster. NBIM also has shares in McDonald’s, Starbucks, Unilever, the Dunkin’ parent company and Tim Hortons — the indirect high-volume buyer cluster. “The richest families in cocoa — the Marses, the Ferreros, the Cargills, the Jacobs — are billionaires thanks to the exploitation of the poorest children on earth,” said journalist and human rights campaigner Fernando Morales-de la Cruz, the founder of Cacao for Change. “And countries like Norway, which claim to be ethical, profit from slavery and child labor.” The problem is, few are asking who picks the cocoa. And though the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, which was adopted last year, requires large companies to address human rights and environmental abuses in their supply chains, critics say the directive’s weaknesses, loopholes, and delayed enforcement will blunt its impact. However, all of this could still be fixed. Currently, a metric ton of cocoa sells for about $5,000 on world markets, but Morales-de la Cruz estimates that a fair farm-gate price would be around $7,500 per metric ton. To that end, he advocates for binding international trade standards that enforce living incomes and transparent pricing, modeled on the World Trade Organization’s compliance mechanisms. “Human rights should be as binding in trade as tariffs,” he insisted. The solution isn’t to buy more “ethical” bars but to demand accountability and support legislation that makes exploitation unprofitable. “We can’t shop our way to justice,” he said. So, as the trees in the Ivory Coast’s forests fall, the profits in Europe and North America continue to soar. And two decades after the industry vowed to end child labor, the cocoa supply chain remains one of the world’s most exploitative and least accountable. Moreover, the European Parliament’s vote on the Omnibus simplification package last month laid bare the corporate control and moral blindness still present in EU policymaking, all behind talk of “cutting red tape.” “Yet Europe’s media and EU-funded NGOs stay silent, talking of competitiveness and green transitions, while ignoring the children who harvest its cocoa, coffee and cotton,” said Morales-de la Cruz. “Europe cannot claim to defend human rights while profiting from exploitation.” However, until the industry pays a fair price and governments enforce real accountability, every bar of chocolate remains an unpaid moral debt.

Newly released congressional documents show that pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein chatted with the former boss of the Council of Europe about making contact with senior Russian officials. “I think you might suggest to putin that lavrov can get insight on talking to me,” Epstein wrote to Thorbjørn Jagland, who was the human rights organization’s secretary-general at the time, in a June 24, 2018 email. Putin and Lavrov were, and remain, Russia’s president and foreign minister, respectively. Jagland replied that he would meet Lavrov’s assistant the following day and would suggest a connection with Epstein. “Thank you fo a lovely evening. I’ll com to un high level week,” Jagland told Epstein in a missive riddled with spelling mistakes. It is unclear whether any meeting or follow-up discussion ever took place. In the same exchange, Epstein referenced previous conversations he had with Russia’s former U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, who died in 2017. “Churkin was great,” Epstein wrote. “He understood trump after our conversations. it is not complex. he must be seen to get something its that simple.” Jagland could not be reached for comment. The Council of Europe declined to comment. Epstein died in prison in August 2019. A former Norwegian prime minister and longtime Labor Party politician, Jagland also served as Oslo’s foreign minister and later led the Council of Europe as secretary-general from 2009 to 2019. The Strasbourg-based Council of Europe is the continent’s leading human rights organization, and oversees the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). In 2019, Jagland opposed Russia’s potential withdrawal from the body amid disputes over Ukraine’s Crimea, warning it would be a “huge setback” for human rights by depriving 144 million Russians of the right to seek legal redress at the ECHR. The Epstein emails, among the thousands of pages of documents released Wednesday by the U.S. House Oversight Committee, provide new insight into the convicted sex offender’s extensive network of political and business contacts, and his apparent efforts to influence or advise foreign governments during Donald Trump’s first term as U.S. president. In some messages, Epstein claimed he had been advising Russian officials on better understanding Trump’s approach to diplomacy and negotiation. The emails add to evidence illustrating Epstein’s attempts to maintain access to international political figures well after his 2008 conviction for soliciting an underage girl for prostitution until shortly before his 2019 arrest on sex-trafficking charges. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a briefing Wednesday that the broader set of emails “prove absolutely nothing other than President Trump did nothing wrong” — while Trump accused the opposition Democrats of “trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein hoax” to “deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown.”

The looming Supreme Court showdown over President Donald Trump’s tariffs amounts to an epic clash between two of the most deeply ingrained tenets of the conservative legal movement. The first is that presidents need and are entitled to extreme deference on matters of national security and foreign policy. That precept suggests the six conservative justices may be willing to uphold Trump’s unprecedented move to bypass Congress and unilaterally impose sweeping global tariffs. On the other hand, an indisputable hallmark of the Roberts court is a deep mistrust for government meddling in the free market. That ideological predilection, which has fueled a slew of pro-business, anti-regulatory rulings, could prompt the court’s conservatives to view Trump’s tariffs more skeptically than they view many of his other, non-economic policies. “I think that some of the justices that matter are going to feel a bit torn,” said Jonathan Adler, a professor at William and Mary Law School. “What’s interesting here is that this case requires some of the conservative justices to confront a conflict between different strands of their own jurisprudence.” In the case set for oral arguments Wednesday, Trump is asking the justices to overturn lower-court decisions that declared many of the tariffs — the centerpiece of Trump’s economic agenda — an illegal overreach. The lower courts found that a 1977 law, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, did not authorize the president to impose such broad tariffs. FOREIGN RELATIONS AND THE KAVANAUGH FACTOR Lurking just below the surface in the case is a key dynamic: Should Trump’s tariffs be treated as a garden-variety economic policy, or are they a core part of the president’s management of international relations and national security? “How this case comes out will depend in large part on what the frame or the lens on it is,” said Vikram Amar, a law professor at the University of California at Davis. “Is this a case about unbridled, unauthorized — at least not explicitly authorized — broad executive authority, or is this a case about presidential ability to discharge foreign affairs and national security responsibilities?” That question could be most acute for Justice Brett Kavanaugh, whose public appearances frequently include an account of his searing experiences working in President George W. Bush’s White House after 9/11. Kavanaugh is often the high court’s most outspoken voice for the president’s need for flexibility and dexterity in response to international challenges. But he is also highly skeptical of government power in the economic realm. A year before Trump nominated him to the Supreme Court, Kavanaugh declared his fealty to the conservative theory known as the “major questions doctrine” — the notion that courts should block executive branch actions of widespread impact when their legal basis is ambiguous. Staking out his position in a case involving net neutrality rules, Kavanaugh said he saw the doctrine applying to “a narrow class of cases involving major agency rules of great economic and political significance.” “If an agency wants to exercise expansive regulatory authority over some major social or economic activity … an ambiguous grant of statutory authority is not enough,” Kavanaugh wrote. “Congress must clearly authorize an agency to take such a major regulatory action.” Under this sort of test, the widespread tariffs Trump implemented would be on shaky legal ground because the 1977 law at issue, known as IEEPA, does not expressly empower the president to enact tariffs. However, just four months ago, Kavanaugh emphasized that the court’s skepticism about legally dubious executive branch actions has an important limit. “The major questions canon has not been applied by this Court in the national security or foreign policy contexts. … The canon does not translate to those contexts because of the nature of Presidential decisionmaking in response to ever-changing national security threats and diplomatic challenges,” he wrote in a solo concurring opinion in a case about funding to improve internet and phone service for low-income and rural Americans. TRUMP CLAIMS TARIFF POWER Trump announced his sweeping, worldwide “Liberation Day” tariffs in April, hitting nearly every country in the world with a minimum 10 percent tariff and including rates reaching 50 percent on some nations. The president claimed the authority to impose the tariffs under IEEPA, which Congress passed to try to rein in broader powers granted by a predecessor statute. IEEPA gives the president the right to “regulate … importation” of items from foreign countries during a presidentially declared national emergency. It’s fairly clear that in such an emergency the president has the power to put an embargo on foreign individuals or particular foreign countries. The administration contends that broader power to regulate and prohibit imports implies the related power to impose import taxes better known as tariffs, but opponents of Trump’s move say Congress knew how to confer that power on the president if it wanted to do so. “Nowhere does it say tariffs, taxes, duties,” noted Elizabeth Goitein, who studies emergency powers at New York University’s Brennan Center. A federal appeals court ruled, 7-4, in August that Trump’s broad tariffs exceeded his authority under IEEPA. However, the Federal Circuit’s majority stopped short of saying the law could never be used to impose more targeted tariffs. WATCHING THE COURT’S CENTER Many experts consider Kavanaugh likely to lean toward blessing the tariffs, although his vote isn’t a sure thing. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch are thought by court watchers to be even more likely to uphold the tariffs. Assuming the three liberal justices vote against the administration, that leaves Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett in play, although under that scenario both Roberts and Barrett would have to join the liberals to assemble enough votes to strike down the tariffs. “The center of the court is going to be especially interesting to watch,” Roman Martinez, a former law clerk to Kavanaugh and Roberts, said during a discussion at Georgetown Law. “I think this case will probably split the conservatives,” said Cary Coglianese, a University of Pennsylvania law school professor who specializes in administrative law and regulatory processes. Among the liberal justices, the Trump administration’s strongest prospect for support in the tariffs cases may be Obama appointee Elena Kagan. Like Kavanaugh, she saw presidential decisionmaking up close in White House jobs, although hers were under President Bill Clinton.thathis travel ban policy. That seemed to show deference to the president’s need for flexibility, although she joined the court’s liberal wing in dissent six months later when the court issued a final, 5-4 ruling upholding the travel ban. ‘THE STAKES IN THIS CASE COULD NOT BE HIGHER’ Some court watchers say the conservative justices, including Trump’s three high court appointees, could be hesitant to rule against Trump on an issue so central to his policy agenda. Just as many saw politics at work in the Supreme Court’s 2012 decision to leave a key part of President Barack Obama’s signature health care law in place, the justices might decide not to provoke the political fury that would be unleashed by striking down the tariffs. “This, along with ICE and immigration … is the paramount domestic policy initiative of this president,” said Donald Verrilli, who served as solicitor general under Obama. “One way of thinking about this is that the justices who are going to determine the outcome of this case feel like they need a really pretty strong case on the legal merits before they’re going to decide to cross swords with the president.” The tariffs case also comes to the court amid an extraordinary winning streak for Trump and his policies. Since January, Trump has brought an unprecedented number of emergency appeals to the justices and has prevailed in more than 20 of them, freeing his hand to gut foreign aid, fire leaders of federal agencies, and strip hundreds of thousands of immigrants of deportation protections. Trump and his administration have sought to keep that streak going by painting a potential defeat for his tariff policy as so cataclysmic that the justices would be ill-advised to take that risk. Trump warned on the eve of the arguments that the case “is, literally, LIFE OR DEATH for our Country.” Trump’s lawyers have also pushed the rhetorical envelope. The Trump administration’s formal plea to the high court to take up the tariff case turned heads in the legal community by including language so hyperbolic that it seemed designed to remind the justices of the intense retort they are certain to receive from Trump if they rule against him. “The stakes in this case could not be higher,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote. “The President and his Cabinet officials have determined that the tariffs are promoting peace and unprecedented economic prosperity, and that the denial of tariff authority would expose our nation to trade retaliation without effective defenses and thrust America back to the brink of economic catastrophe.” THE WALL STREET JOURNAL EFFECT That sort of apocalyptic verbiage is a rarity in Justice Department filings with the high court. While the justices will likely be reluctant to mount a direct challenge to those sorts of presidential predictions, the administration’s sky-is-falling claims could actually prompt some of the court’s conservatives to give Trump less running room, lawyers who practice before the court said. Even as the legal challenges have been playing out, Trump has raised doubts about whether the tariffs his imposed are a response to bona fide emergencies or more mundane concerns. Last month, Trump declared he was imposing an additional 10 percent tariff on Canada to express his irritation at a TV advertisement the province of Ontario aired showcasing President Ronald Reagan’s opposition to tariffs. “If the justices think that these assertions are kind of pretextual, I think that could shape their thinking about the other more purely legal issues in the case,” said Martinez, who authored an amicus brief for the Chamber of Commerce opposing the tariffs. “It could … bring into sharp relief in their eyes the dangers of giving the president this broad authority to impose tariffs. So, that’s a dynamic that could play out, as well.” Another factor undercutting the potential political blowback the court could receive from voiding the Trump tariffs: Most of the Republican establishment is profoundly unenthusiastic about them. Even some Trump backers might quietly celebrate a court ruling preventing the kind of broad-based tariffs the president announced in April. For decades, liberals and many legal academics have argued that the Roberts court is beholden to business interests, delivering a broad blow to the power of federal government agencies to regulate businesses, reining in federal authority to prevent development on environmental grounds and weakening federal enforcement of securities laws. If one subscribes to the notion that the opinions of some billionaires hold outsized sway at the court, well-heeled business people and investors have been sharply negative about the tariffs, although the markets have shrugged them off at least for now. “Tariffs are taxes,” one of many Wall Street Journal editorials skewering Trump’s tariffs declared. “If he can impose a tax on any imported product any time he wants, he really has the power of a king.” In short, while a ruling against the tariffs would surely infuriate Trump, it wouldn’t do much if anything to hurt the conservative justices’ standing in their legal, political and social circles. A RULING AGAINST HIM WOULDN’T LEAVE TRUMP WITHOUT TOOLS If the justices are looking for some sort of middle ground on tariffs or are divided in a way that makes an up-or-down ruling on Trump’s powers infeasible, they have a couple of options. The court could reject Trump’s broadest and most extreme tariffs, while highlighting his options under laws other than IEEPA. Many legal experts have pointed to powers Congress gave the president in 1974 to put quotas on imports and impose tariffs of up to 15 percent “to deal with large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits,” a concept that trade specialists say encompasses trade deficits. Those experts argue that Congress’ decision to pass that law, known as the Trade Act, undercuts Trump’s arguments that he should be able to use IEEPA to address the trade deficit problem. However, the Trade Act comes with clear limits, declaring that those tariffs and trade restrictions must be “temporary” and last no longer than five months, unless Congress extends them. That may not represent enough of a cudgel for the Trump administration to use in talks with foreign countries in an effort to get them to agree to longer-lasting trade deals. Another concession the Supreme Court could offer Trump is to allow some tariffs involved in the legal fight to remain in effect. Part of the battle is over tariffs he imposed on Canada and China over trafficking in fentanyl and drug precursors into the U.S. and on Mexico to address those problems as well as migration and human trafficking. A ruling upholding those tariffs, but striking down the more global import taxes linked to trade deficits, would allow Trump to claim a partial win but probably won’t insulate the justices from a presidential rebuke. THE OPTICS OF TURNABOUT Despite the efforts some justices may make to distinguish the worldwide tariffs from other policies federal courts have blocked under the major questions doctrine, if the court allows Trump’s tariffs, many politicians and commentators are likely to accuse the justices of a double-standard. Exhibit No. 1 in this argument will be the Supreme Court’s ruling striking down one of President Joe Biden’s signature policies: his student debt relief plan. That 6-3 decision, wielding the doctrine to invalidate student debt forgiveness, was handed down by the same nine justices over two years ago. “It’s arguably quite analogous,” Goitein said. “Will the Supreme Court act consistently? Of course, the justices might say in a ruling upholding the Trump tariffs that they are pivoting based on legal substance and not politics. But for a court that many members of the public already view skeptically, the result may look partisan. “This will be a true test of the Supreme Court in many, many ways,” Goitein said. Erica Orden contributed to this report.

LONDON — A man sent to France under the “one in, one out” scheme agreed between London and Paris has returned to Britain on a small boat. The Guardian newspaper reported on Wednesday that the man, who wants to claim asylum in the U.K., made a second crossing on a small boat as he claims to be the victim of modern slavery at the hands of smugglers in northern France. The “one in, one out” scheme struck between the U.K. and France in July meant undocumented migrants entering Britain via small boats could be returned in exchange for asylum seekers who had never crossed the channel and had a U.K. connection. The first undocumented migrant was returned in September. “If I had felt that France was safe for me I would never have returned to the U.K.,” the man told the Guardian.  “The smugglers are very dangerous. They always carry weapons and knives. I fell into the trap of a human trafficking network in the forests of France before I crossed to the U.K. from France the first time.” He added: “They took me like a worthless object, forced me to work, abused me, and threatened me with a gun and told me I would be killed if I made the slightest protest.” 25 asylum seekers who were returned to France as part of the deal drafted a joint statement shared with the Guardian earlier this month, warning about the “extremely difficult and unsafe conditions” they were living in. The Home Office confirmed Sunday that 16 small boat arrivals had been returned to France last week, taking the total number of returns to 42, while 23 asylum seekers have been brought to the U.K. under the treaty. A Home Office spokesperson said:  “We will not accept any abuse of our borders, and we will do everything in our power to remove those without the legal right to be here. Individuals who are returned under the pilot and subsequently attempt to re-enter the U.K. illegally will be removed.” Bethany Dawson contributed to this report.

Italy’s lower house of parliament on Thursday blocked efforts to prosecute three senior ministers over the controversial release of a Libyan general wanted for war crimes. The vote, which saw lawmakers reject the request by more than 2-to-1, reflects the firm control held by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s governing majority and shields her top allies from potential criminal proceedings in the so-called Al-Masri affair. Justice Minister Carlo Nordio, Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi and Cabinet Secretary Alfredo Mantovano were accused of aiding and abetting the escape of Osama Al-Masri Njeem, a Libyan general accused of crimes against humanity including torture, rape and murder by the International Criminal Court during his tenure as head of Libya’s judicial police. The Rome Tribunal of Ministers, the judicial body responsible for overseeing charges against ministers for acts committed in office, had petitioned parliament in August to lift the trio’s immunity and allow prosecutors to move forward with charges over Al-Masri’s release in January — but the bid was rejected Thursday. The plenary result — 251, 256 and 252 votes in favor of denying the tribunal’s request for Nordio, Piantedosi and Mantovano, respectively — confirmed expectations that the governing coalition would close ranks. The secret ballot, however, and a handful of votes from opposition deputies meant the final totals slightly exceeded the government’s formal majority. Meloni was also in the chamber during the decision. “I’m satisfied, because the result went even beyond what the governing majority had expected numerically: This means that even within parts of the opposition there is some reluctance to hand over to public prosecutors responsibilities that should be purely political,” Nordio said after the vote. Al-Masri was arrested at a Turin hotel on Jan. 19 on an ICC warrant but was released two days later after a Rome appeals court cited a procedural lapse as Nordio’s ministry had not responded to the court’s request to confirm the arrest. Italian authorities subsequently arranged for Al-Masri’s repatriation to Tripoli aboard a state aircraft. Prosecutors alleged that the three officials authorized the transfer out of concern that extraditing Al-Masri to The Hague could trigger reprisals against Italian citizens or commercial interests in Libya. Nordio also faced an additional charge of failure to perform official duties. The investigation into Nordio, Piantedosi and Mantovano began in late January following a complaint by lawyer Luigi Li Gotti, who also named Meloni in his complaint. However, the prime minister was formally cleared in August. Meloni denounced the proceedings against her ministers as “absurd,” arguing that the government acts collectively. “Every choice, especially so important, is agreed. It is therefore absurd to ask that Piantedosi, Nordio and Mantovano, and not me, go to trial before them,” she said. Meloni’s right-wing Brothers of Italy party has maintained that the ministers acted appropriately to safeguard national security. Piantedosi said earlier this year that Al-Masri’s expulsion was “necessary” because the Libyan “posed a serious threat.”

A coalition of human rights NGOs is urging the European Commission to halt cooperation with Libya after it attacked a migrant rescue ship, accusing Brussels of funding forces that “enabled and legitimised abuses.” In a letter obtained by POLITICO and due to be sent to Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner and Mediterranean Commissioner Dubravka Šuica on Wednesday — and copied to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President António Costa and European Parliament President Roberta Metsola — the organizations condemn the Aug. 24 assault on the rescue vessel Ocean Viking by the Libyan Coast Guard. The Ocean Viking, operated by the French NGO SOS Méditerranée, was fired on by a Libyan patrol boat financed by EU funds via Italy’s SIBMMIL program. More than 30 crew members and 87 rescued migrants were on board when hundreds of shots were fired without warning in international waters, according to the NGO. “While the European Commission stated that Libyan authorities are investigating the incident, weeks after the attack, there is no indication that cooperation, or technical and financial assistance, has been suspended during the course of this investigation,” the letter says. The signatories — including Amnesty International, ActionAid, SOS Méditerranée, Emergency, Médecins Sans Frontières, Mediterranea Saving Humans, and Refugees in Libya — argue the assault exposes nearly a decade of failed EU policy.  “Eight years of EU support has not improved these actors’ human rights records, but enabled and legitimised abuses,” they warned, adding that “human lives must not be disregarded in the name of border control.” The NGOs accuse the Commission of turning a blind eye “despite overwhelming evidence” of human rights violations by Libyan authorities; and of mismanaging its own programs by refusing to show the public the safety checks it conducts to ensure EU-funded projects do not harm people. They demand that Brussels restores “the rule of law at its maritime border; suspend cooperation with Libya without further delay; urge Italy to terminate its 2017 Memorandum of Understanding with Libya; and urge other Member States to refrain from similar agreements.” The appeal lands as Libya’s internal turmoil complicates European diplomacy. The country remains split between rival governments in Tripoli and Benghazi, backed by rival powers such as Russia and Turkey. Moscow has expanded its presence with arms deliveries and plans for a naval base in Tobruk, while Ankara has struck maritime deals that Greece deems illegal. On July 8, an EU mission led by Brunner to Benghazi was abruptly expelled, roiling relations with the eastern Benghazi government. Brunner said Brussels had to keep talking with Benghazi strongman Khalifa Haftar as a necessary step to prevent Russian President Vladimir Putin from further weaponizing migration. French MEP Mounir Satouri, from the left-wing Greens/European Free Alliance, who also chairs the Committee on Human Rights (DROI) in the European Parliament, described the EU’s cooperation with Libya as a “slap in the face to those of us who takes European values seriously.” “Europe cannot continue to fuel human rights violations based solely on its obsession with migration,” he said in a statement Tuesday.

The European Union’s efforts to secure its external borders have been questioned after a Libyan naval vessel opened fire on a French ship that was rescuing migrants. Although no one was killed or injured, the incident has led to a major political row in Italy, which gave the Libyans the boat as part of an EU program. On Aug. 24, the Ocean Viking, a ship belonging to the French NGO SOS Méditerranée, came under fire in international waters about 40 nautical miles off the coast of Libya. The Ocean Viking had just rescued 87 people from a rubber dinghy when a Libyan coast guard patrol boat approached and opened fire at close range. “Without any warning or ultimatum, two men aboard the patrol vessel opened fire on our humanitarian ship, unleashing at least 20 relentless minutes of assault gunfire directly at us,” the NGO said in a statement, denouncing what it called a “violent and deliberate attack.” The vessel sustained serious damage: shattered windows, broken antennnae, bullet holes in the bridge and destroyed rescue equipment. Prosecutors in Siracusa, Sicily have opened a criminal investigation into the attack. Last week, police boarded the Ocean Viking in the town of Augusta in Sicily, where the 87 rescued migrants disembarked, to inspect the damage and gather testimony. According to SOS Méditerranée, the boat that attacked them was a Corrubia-class patrol vessel built in Italy and given to Libya in 2023 under the EU Border Assistance Mission in Libya program, part of Europe’s strategy of outsourcing border control. During the attack, the Ocean Viking crew issued a mayday call and alerted NATO, which referred them to the Italian navy. “However, the Italian Navy never answered the phone,” the NGO said in its statement. Valeria Taurino, the director of SOS Méditerranée Italy, called for “a thorough investigation” into the incident and an end to European cooperation with Libya. “An entity that makes illegal claims in international waters, obstructs rescues, and attacks unarmed humanitarian operators cannot be considered a competent authority,” she said. After the 87 rescued people left the ship, the Ocean Viking and its crew were held in isolation for several days on health grounds, as one of those rescued tested positive for tuberculosis. On Friday the NGO announced the Italian authorities had finally lifted the quarantine, allowing the crew to disembark. The Italian government — led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni — has been clamping down on NGOs as part of its drive to reduce migration. On Monday another rescue ship — the Mediterranea — was placed under administrative detention after it let 10 migrants disembark in Trapani — the nearest safe port — instead of following Interior Ministry orders to sail to Genoa, some 770 kilometers away. The move reflects stricter rules introduced in 2023 by Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi, which require that NGO ships notify authorities after a rescue and then sail immediately to a designated port, often hundreds of kilometers away. Critics say the measure cripples rescue operations by forcing vessels to make long detours. The Italian government — led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni — has been clamping down on NGOs as part of its drive to reduce migration. | Fabio Frustaci/EPA “It’s like forcing a burn victim to remain in the flames,” said Laura Marmorale, president of Mediterranea Saving Humans, denouncing the policy as “inhumane” and “unacceptable.” The incidents have led to sharp criticism of the Italian government. Opposition leader Elly Schlein of the Democratic Party urged the government to end its migration deal with Libya, while Green Europe lawmaker Angelo Bonelli condemned the use of Italian-built boats to launch attacks on NGOs. He denounced Meloni’s silence as a “political and moral surrender that humiliates our country before Europe and the world.” However, Piantedosi pointed the finger at NGOs rather than at the Libyan shooters. “It is the State that fights human traffickers and manages and coordinates rescues at sea. Not the NGOs,” he wrote on social media. EU institutions reacted more cautiously. During a press briefing on Tuesday, a Commission spokesperson described the Ocean Viking episode as “worrying,” saying Brussels had contacted Libyan authorities to “clarify the facts.” The EU’s border agency Frontex called the incident “deeply concerning” and called for a swift investigation, stressing: “No rescuer should ever be put in danger while carrying out life-saving work.” Speaking at a conference in Rimini last week, Meloni said her policies had “drastically” reduced arrivals and cut “the number of deaths and missing persons at sea.” She framed her migration crackdown as a humanitarian success: “Nothing is more important than saving a human life, than tearing it away from the claws of human traffickers.” Yet critics argue that Italy’s approach comes at the cost of partnering with abusive countries. Valeria Taurino, the director of SOS Méditerranée Italy, called for “a thorough investigation” into the incident and an end to European cooperation with Libya.| Donato Fasano/EPA In January, the government faced backlash for releasing Osama Al-Masri Njeem, a Libyan general wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes. A 2021 video shared by the NGO Refugees in Libya shows Al-Masri allegedly executing a man in Tripoli. EU’S MIGRATION GAMBLE The attack on the NGO vessel has highlighted Europe’s uneasy partnership with Libya. Since the ousting of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, the country has fractured and become a major transit hub for migrants from Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. Despite widespread reports of torture, sexual violence and forced labor in Libya’s detention system, the EU and Italy have continued to support the Libyan coast guard. Rome signed the Italy–Libya Memorandum in 2017, funding and equipping Libyan patrols. The deal, criticized by rights groups, was renewed in 2019 and again in 2023. Since taking office in 2022, Meloni has tightened those ties further, securing an $8 billion gas deal in 2023. At the same time, the EU has spent more than €91 million on border and migration management in Libya since 2014 as part of a €338 million migration package, while Italy has spent nearly €300 million on containment measures since 2017. But oversight of these funds remains weak. In a report released in September 2024, the European Court of Auditors warned that more than €5 billion from the EU Trust Fund for Africa had been disbursed with insufficient controls. Europe’s reliance on Libya is complicated further by rivalries with other powers. Russia has expanded its presence through arms supplies and a planned naval base in Tobruk, while Turkey is accused of cutting maritime deals with Libyan authorities that Greece deems illegal under international law. In July, EU Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner defended the need for Brussels to activate talks with Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar as a necessary step to prevent Russian President Vladimir Putin from further weaponizing migration. “There is certainly a danger that Russia … [will] use migrants and the migration issue as a weapon against Europe,” he told POLITICO. “This weaponization is taking place, and of course we also fear that Russia intends to do the same with Libya.” In July, Brunner was ejected from Benghazi as “persona non grata” over an apparent breakdown in diplomatic protocol. He had been leading a delegation of senior EU representatives — including ministers from Italy, Malta and Greece — in an attempt to discuss efforts to tackle the flow of migrants into Europe from the country.