Italy last week announced that joint Libyan and Italian patrols will start as from this month with the aim of stemming the tide of irregular migrant arrivals from North Africa.

Italian Ministers have gone on the record to say that these patrols will see a huge downturn in migrant arrivals, and even said that they will be a thing of the past.

Any news that relieves us of the huge proportional burden of arrivals is good, but there are another two issues that need looking into.

The first is that to believe that these patrols will mean an end to any arrivals is simply folly and naïve. Given the greed of the traffickers and the resourcefulness of these people, arrivals will continue, but they will probably be diminished in number. This year Malta saw 2,700 arrivals in a seemingly changed tactic whereby immigrants arrive on inflatable (and sometimes deflated) rubber dinghies carrying as many as 90 people. The nature of these craft ensures they are slow and cumbersome, but there are still theories that these are set into the water by much larger vessels that have immigrants stowed on board. If this is the case, then the agreement might have to be altered to allow for board and search, if that is not the case already.

Even so, Malta and the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa will still see arrivals. Even with the most sophisticated equipment in the world, there will still be some who slip through the proverbial net and will make it out to other territorial waters. The presence of ships policing the coastline will help, but as we saw with Frontex, they will need a huge amount of assets and human resources to properly carry out this policing. Another aspect which has not yet been counted on is the thoroughness of the Libyan Navy. Will they, or will they not carry out their duties as instructed? Or might they turn a blind eye to the plight of these people. As in every other law enforcement arm in the world, there is also the danger of corruption and bribery. We shall have to see.

The second issue at stake here is human rights. There have been several allegations made in investigatory reports that point the finger at Libya for various forms of abuse committed by both the state and the populace. The first allegation is that Libya will simply repatriate immigrants who come from danger areas, such as Eritrea, Somalia, the Congo and Sudan, sending them to their death or torture.

Others claim that many migrants who arrive in Libya are subjected to torture by the local police when interrogated. There are also claims that Libyan people engage in racial attacks on these migrants. But yet, we cannot have our cake and eat it too. It is logical. How do you stop immigrants arriving in Malta? You stop then setting off from North Africa. Yet we cannot, on the one hand condone the non-departure of these people (and the ensuing fall out) and on the other hand then say that we should not allow the Libyans to send them back. Are we telling the Libyan authorities that we don’t want the migrants and that they should hold onto them? That is surely a case of the kettle calling the pan black. So it seems that this issue is forever going to be a conundrum. People have complained in very loud voices that they want the arrivals to stop. Yet in stopping them, we are surely having a hand in torture and even possibly murder. As we said, we cannot have our cake and eat it too.