Since 2014 more than 25,000 asylum seekers were killed by drowning in the Mediterranean. Since 2016 more than 100,000 others were captured, forcibly transferred to and imprisoned in ‘concentration camps-like conditions’, as a senior German official described them. Since 2017 the ICC Prosecutor repeatedly reports to the UN Security Council that countless Crimes Against Humanity are committed against ‘migrants’ in these camps. In 2019 a case submitted to the Office of the ICC Prosecutor argued that dozens EU and Member States’ officials are responsible for the crimes against humanity of murder, deportation, imprisonment, enslavement, torture, rape and other inhuman acts, in connection with EU migration policies in the Central Mediterranean and Libya. The ICC Prosecutor reported to the EU Parliament that the case was admitted and is being carefully analyzed by the OTP. In 2021, also the UN Fact Finding Mission to Libya, appointed by the Human Rights Council, found that Italy and other EU Member States may be complicit in these crimes. These crimes are ongoing but the case is pending for almost 3.5 years. This talk will explain why.
Please note that this event is in-person only, no livestream will be available.
About the speaker:
Omer Shatz is an international lawyer, lecturer in international law at Sciences Po Paris, and Yale Law School graduate. In Israel\Palestine, he co-founded, with Adv. Iftach Cohen, a human rights law firm specialized in Supreme Court litigation. Together, they also co-founded We Are Refugees, an NGO that provided pro-bono representation to detained asylum-seekers, and co-litigated the 'Anti-Infiltration Law' case, a landmark ruling that led to the release of 1,500 refugees and secured the liberty of tens of thousands others. In France, Omer was a special associate in the international law firm Shearman & Sterling LLP. He gave advice to organisations and individuals such as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and Julian Assange. He is currently focused on strategic litigation that is challenging EU migration policies (ICC, ECtHR, CJEU).