Revue Hijra, N:03 – Juillet 2025

Drowned in Silence: North African complicity in Mediterranean migrant deaths?

Younous Arbaoui

Assistant Professor, Amsterdam Centre for Migration and Refugee Law, VU University Amsterdam

Abstract

Deaths of migrants in the Mediterranean have become a persistent and tragic feature of global
migration. While legal scholarship has mainly focused on European responsibility through the lens
of the European Convention on Human Rights, this article shifts the focus to North African States
and their obligations under the right to life, as enshrined in Article 4 of the African Charter on Human
and Peoples’ Rights. Drawing on African, European and UN legal documents, civil society reports,
reports submitted by North African States to the first International Migration Review Forum, media
sources and literature, the present article argues that North African States are not meeting their
obligations under the right to life, and that there is a real potential to hold them accountable before
the African Commission and/or Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights for violating the right to life.

Arbaoui, Younous. « Drowned in Silence: North African complicity in Mediterranean migrant deaths?»,
Revue Hijra, n° 03, juillet 2025, pp.32-52

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