How The Times reported the decision not to hold an inquiry into the riots.

Malta must rip up its mandatory detention policy, remove migrants from military facilities and conduct an inquiry into the August 2011 riots at the Safi detention centre, according to an international report.

This vicious circle can be ended only if both Malta and the EU accept responsibility

The report, by the International Commission of Jurists, also calls on the EU to help Malta financially and institute a permanent and “binding” EU resettlement programme.

Its publication comes in the same week that the minister responsible for migration, Carm Mifsud Bonnici, faces an opposition motion of censure in Parliament for his handling of the home affairs and justice portfolios, which, until some time ago, both fell under his wing. He is now only responsible for home affairs.

Although the report thanks the Maltese authorities for their “cooperation and openness”, praising the dedication of those working in the sector, it paints a stark picture of some issues being faced by asylum seekers.

Entitled Not Here To Stay, the ICJ’s report raps the Maltese government for its “emergency” response to migration.

“Migration arrivals are still, after 10 years, considered as a temporary ‘emergency’ situation and not as an ordinary longer-term reality, which the country must address in accordance with its international human rights law obligations,” says the ICJ, which is composed of leading international judges and lawyers.

The report makes special mention of the Safi detention centre riots, which were reportedly quelled also by the use of rubber bullets.

Although the research was conducted in September, after a particularly high level of migrant arrivals last year, the Geneva-based ICJ says its report remains relevant because such influxes are likely to be repeated.

Malta is correct to see itself as a victim of the EU Dublin system, which obliges it to manage a quantity of migrants “disproportional” to its population and capacities. But, like the EU, the island must stop dealing with the issue as if it were a sudden emergency.

Comparing figures for the past 10 years, the report concludes that it is normal for Malta to receive about 1,500 migrants each year while the arrival of only 47 migrants in 2010 was the “exception”.

Malta must therefore have a long-term plan, which includes a policy of integration, despite the authorities’ assumption that all migrants want to leave the island.

The difficult situation the country is facing “cannot serve as justification” for breaching its core human rights obligations. On the other hand, EU states cannot exempt themselves from sharing responsibility, the report notes.

“This vicious circle can be ended only if both Malta and the EU accept responsibility for securing these migrants’ human rights. This requires Malta to revise the fundamentals of its policies of detention and reception, centring them on the human rights of migrants and on the idea that arrivals are an ordinary reality and not an ‘emergency’. (EU member states) must also move away from an ‘emergency’ approach to migrant arrivals and accept long-term responsibility for a proportion of resettlements and not only as a voluntary gesture.”

The report says Malta must find alternatives to detention, which must be possible seeing that flight from the small island “is highly unlikely”.

“Mandatory detention of undocumented migrants is clearly contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”

Detailing the conditions of the closed and open migrant centres, the ICJ lauds the conditions at Dar il-Liedna, an open centre in Fgura for unaccompanied minors and families as “exemplary”. However, it deplores the scenes it saw in Safi and Ħal Far, where several human rights obligations were, it says, violated.

The use of the Safi and Lyster barracks – “two military bases subject to military jurisdiction” – is at odds with international law and standards, the report states, adding that, except for short periods, detained migrants should be held in specifically designed centres.

The “overcrowded” Safi detention centre has “absolutely no space for even a minimal level of privacy”, the report points out, adding that one section had only a couple of basins in a yard for cleaning, washing items and drinking.

The report had this to say about the Ħal Far hangar open centre: “The conditions appeared to be very unsanitary. The delegation witnessed children playing on the dirty ground and was told by NGOs that there are rats, in particular at night. The toilets appeared to be quite dirty and their floor was covered with sand. The ICJ was told that many of the smaller children in the hangar had been sick and had required hospital treatment.”