Italy

AlertPushbacks and refoulement riskItaly

Basis: the concluding observations of the United Nations Committee against Torture on Italy, adopted 28 April 2026, and four judgments of the European Court of Human Rights. The Coalition does not record a practice of torture by Italy. It records that a United Nations treaty body has told Italy to stop a practice it has found dangerous, that Italy has built the decisive parts of its border control in places where its own courts and Europe’s do not reliably reach, and that Italy told the Human Rights Council it was in full compliance while declining to accept the recommendation that said otherwise.

Committee against Torture, 28 April 2026
“The State Party should immediately cease the practice of pushbacks and ensure that all persons seeking protection within its territory or under its jurisdiction have access to a fair and impartial review by an independent decision-making mechanism.”
Committee against Torture, 28 April 2026
The Committee is concerned at “allegations of pushbacks at the border with Slovenia, leading in some cases to chain refoulement, and at similar reports concerning pushbacks at Adriatic ports”, and at “allegations of ‘privatized pushbacks’, whereby Italian authorities request commercial ships to return individuals in need of protection to the custody of the Libyan authorities”.
Committee against Torture, 28 April 2026
On people Italy detains in Albania, the Committee asked Italy to “ensure legal clarity regarding the State Party’s responsibilities under the Convention in respect of detainees held abroad, including in relation to investigating allegations of torture under article 12, receiving complaints under article 13, ensuring redress under article 14 and responding to individual communications under article 22”.
European Court of Human Rights, 23 February 2012
On the return of intercepted people to Libya: “by transferring the applicants to Libya, the Italian authorities, in full knowledge of the facts, exposed them to treatment proscribed by the Convention”, and the transfer “also violated Article 3 of the Convention because it exposed the applicants to the risk of arbitrary repatriation”.
Italy to the Human Rights Council, 7 April 2025
“Italy ensures full compliance with the principle of non-refoulement.” That sentence appears under the heading Recommendations noted, which is the heading for recommendations Italy did not accept. The recommendation it answers asked Italy to ensure non-refoulement is upheld and that no one is expelled without an individual risk assessment.

What an Alert meansDesignated September 10, 2026Review: on Italy’s follow-up report to the Committee against Torture, due 1 May 2027

Why this page is here. Italy has no part in the United States removal programme, and nothing on this page concerns it. Italy is here because of its own conduct, judged by the same standard the Coalition applies everywhere: what a state has done, what a court or a treaty body has found about it, and whether a person harmed by it has anywhere to go. The Coalition holds every state to that standard, including the states that write the reports about other states.

What has happened

For more than fifteen years Italy has moved the decisive moment of its border control further and further from a courtroom. In 2009 Italian military ships took people off boats in international waters and carried them back to Libya. The European Court of Human Rights held that unlawful in 2012. Since then the pattern has been to arrange for the same outcome without Italian hands on the person: a Libyan coastguard that Italy funds, trains and coordinates; commercial captains asked to hand people back; readmissions at the Slovenian land border and at Adriatic ports carried out informally; and, since 2023, two centres on Albanian territory where Italy detains people it intercepted at sea.

Arrangements. Documented. A Memorandum of Understanding with Libya signed 2 February 2017 and repeatedly renewed. A protocol with Albania concluded 6 November 2023 and ratified by Law No. 14 of 21 February 2024, under which Albania made two areas of its territory available to Italy, treated as border or transit zones where asylum seekers may be detained.

Transfers and pushbacks. Documented. The Committee against Torture recorded allegations of pushbacks at the Slovenian border and at Adriatic ports, and of Italian authorities asking commercial ships to return people to Libyan custody.

Onward return. Documented as a concern. The Committee recorded that the Slovenian border pushbacks lead “in some cases to chain refoulement”. It did not name the onward states, and neither does this page.

People holding protection. Investigating. The Committee recorded that screening at hotspots is “insufficient in identifying persons in situations of vulnerability, including victims of torture or ill-treatment”, and that some people receive no individual decision at all, “resulting in their collective expulsion”. What proportion of those people already held a protected status is not established.

What the Committee against Torture said, and what it is

On 28 April 2026 the Committee against Torture adopted its concluding observations on Italy’s seventh periodic report, symbol CAT/C/ITA/CO/7, issued on 11 June 2026. Concluding observations are the Committee’s observations and recommendations under article 19 of the Convention. They are not a finding that Italy violated the Convention in any particular case, and this page does not describe them as one. What gives them their weight here is what they ask and how plainly they ask it.

The Committee wrote that “the practical implementation of the principle of non-refoulement in the State Party appears increasingly undermined by policies that link migration management to security and that prioritize deterrence and forced returns”. It then recommended that Italy “immediately cease the practice of pushbacks”. That is the operative sentence, and there is no qualification on it.

On Libya, the Committee recorded “the substantial risk of torture and ill-treatment faced by migrants who are forcibly returned to Libya by the Libyan coastguard”, and its concern that the 2017 Memorandum “continues to be implemented”. Its recommendation was to review the Memorandum in order to ensure full compliance with the Convention, not to end it. The Coalition reports the recommendation the Committee actually made.

On the detention centres inside Italy, the Committee expressed “serious concern regarding allegations of excessive use of force and ill-treatment by special law-enforcement intervention groups, dilapidated and overly carceral conditions, and an almost complete lack of meaningful activities for detainees in pre-removal detention centres”. It recorded that people leaving prison may be held alongside people with no criminal history, that avoiding detention may require a bond of between 2,500 and 5,000 euros, and that Decree-Law No. 124 of 2023 extended the maximum period of immigration detention to eighteen months, reversing a reduction made in 2020.

The people Italy detains outside Italy

The Albania protocol is the part of this record the Coalition considers most serious, because it is the part that puts a detained person out of reach while insisting he is not.

Article 4 of the protocol provides, in Italy’s own treaty text, that disputes between the authorities and the people held in those centres are submitted exclusively to Italian jurisdiction. Italy told United Nations special procedures in August 2024 that “the regulations regarding the duration of administrative retention and the conditions for the lawful adoption of such measure are identical to the national ones”, and that “the assessment of non-refoulement is an integral part of the motivational part of the measure”. On Italy’s account, nothing changes except the location.

The Committee against Torture did not accept that the location changes nothing. It asked Italy to “ensure legal clarity” on how articles 12, 13, 14 and 22 of the Convention operate for a person Italy is detaining abroad, and to refrain from transferring people before individualised vulnerability screening with the detainee’s participation. Those are questions about whether a remedy exists, not about whether a rule exists. Italy has recognised the right of individual complaint to the Committee since 10 October 1989. The Committee is asking what happens when the person making that complaint is held on another state’s territory, across the Adriatic, under a procedure run at speed.

Italian courts have already found one practical consequence. On 18 October 2024 the Tribunal of Rome declined to validate the detention of a man held at Gjader. Its whole disposition reads “non convalida il trattenimento”, it does not validate the detention. The court reasoned that under the protocol’s own terms a person whose detention is not validated can regain his liberty only through the Italian authorities and outside Albanian territory, so that in the absence of any legally admissible alternative he has the right to be brought to Italy. The court did not strike down the protocol, did not find refoulement, and did not rule on torture, and this page does not suggest otherwise.

The Court of Justice of the European Union gave judgment on 1 August 2025 in the joined cases of Alace and Canpelli, which arose out of two men taken to the Gjader centre. That judgment is about whether a member state may designate safe countries of origin by legislative act and how such a designation may be reviewed. It is not a ruling on the Albania protocol, on detention, or on refoulement, and the Coalition does not present it as one.

What the European Court of Human Rights has decided, in both directions

Four decisions matter, and two of them run against the Coalition’s reading. All four are set out here, because a page that carried only the helpful ones would not be worth reading.

Hirsi Jamaa and Others v. Italy, Grand Chamber, 23 February 2012. Italian military ships intercepted people in international waters and carried them to Tripoli. The Court held unanimously that the people were within Italy’s jurisdiction, that “Italy cannot circumvent its ‘jurisdiction’ under the Convention by describing the events in issue as rescue operations on the high seas”, and that by transferring them “the Italian authorities, in full knowledge of the facts, exposed them to treatment proscribed by the Convention”. It found a second violation of article 3 for the risk of onward return from Libya to Somalia and Eritrea, holding that “indirect refoulement of an alien leaves the responsibility of the Contracting State intact”, and a violation of the prohibition on collective expulsion.

Sharifi and Others v. Italy and Greece, 21 October 2014. Four Afghan applicants were turned round at the port of Ancona. The Court found that the measures taken against them “amount to collective and indiscriminate expulsions”, and found a violation of article 3 by Italy because in returning them to Greece the Italian authorities exposed them to the risks arising from the failures of the Greek asylum procedure. The risk of expulsion onward to Afghanistan grounded the finding against Greece, not against Italy, and this page keeps that distinction. The judgment was delivered in French and is quoted here in French with a translation marked as such. Thirty-one of the thirty-five applicants had already been struck out.

Khlaifia and Others v. Italy, Grand Chamber, 15 December 2016. This one runs against us. The Grand Chamber reversed the Chamber and held unanimously that there had been no violation of article 3 in the conditions at the Contrada Imbriacola centre or on the ships Vincent and Audace, and by sixteen votes to one that there had been no collective expulsion. Khlaifia is the leading authority that a summary, standardised return under a bilateral readmission agreement is not automatically a collective expulsion where each person had a real opportunity to raise his own situation. Italy did lose on the lawfulness of the detention and on the absence of an effective remedy for the conditions complaint. Anyone assessing the pushback allegations recorded by the Committee will have to work through Khlaifia first.

S.S. and Others v. Italy, 20 May 2025. This one runs against us harder. It arose from an incident on 6 November 2017 in which a Libyan coastguard vessel intervened alongside a rescue ship, people died, and survivors were taken back to Libya. The Court declared the application inadmissible, holding that “the applicants were not under the jurisdiction of Italy within the meaning of Article 1 of the Convention”. That is the hinge of everything Italy has built since 2012. Where Italian personnel had people aboard Italian ships, there was jurisdiction. Where Italy funds, equips, trains and coordinates but does not touch, the Court in 2025 found there was not.

The Coalition sets that decision out in full rather than around it, and adds only what the Court itself added. In the same decision the Court said it did “not lose sight” of the fact that the applicants “ran the risk of being sent back to Libya”, that every report before it showed people in Libya at that time were “at risk of torture, slavery and discrimination”, and that the situation there “was no more favourable than it was found to have been in the Hirsi Jamaa and Others case”. It observed that the situation is “nonetheless governed by other rules of international law”, and that “the special nature of the maritime environment cannot justify an area outside the law”. The Committee against Torture is not bound by the European Convention’s test for jurisdiction, and in April 2026 it addressed the same policy directly. That the two bodies reach Italy by different routes, and one of them does not reach it at all, is the point, and it is the reason this page exists.

What Italy said, and what Italy declined

On 7 April 2025 Italy filed its response to the recommendations made at its Universal Periodic Review. Paragraph 32 reads: “Italy ensures full compliance with the principle of non-refoulement, by always carrying out an individual assessment of the risks to which the person would be exposed in the event of removal from the national territory.”

That paragraph appears under the heading Recommendations noted. In the language of the Universal Periodic Review, noted means not accepted. Italy accepted 295 of the 340 recommendations it received. The recommendation that paragraph 32 answers, number 34.330, asked Italy to “ensure that the principle of non-refoulement is upheld for all women and girls in need of international protection and that no asylum-seeker or migrant is expelled from the country without an individual risk assessment”. It is not on the accepted list.

Eight months later, on 10 December 2025, Italy joined twenty-six other Council of Europe member states in a statement to the Conference of Ministers of Justice asserting that the scope of inhuman and degrading treatment under article 3 of the European Convention, “which is an absolute right, should be constrained to the most serious issues in a manner which does not prevent State Parties from taking proportionate decisions on the expulsion of foreign criminals, or in removal or extradition cases”. The Committee against Torture took note of that statement and answered it in a single sentence: Italy “should uphold the absolute nature of the principle of non-refoulement under all circumstances”.

The Coalition records these three documents together because they are the shape of the file. A state that says it is in full compliance, declines the recommendation that would test the claim, and then argues that the prohibition should be read more narrowly, is not describing an oversight.

What runs the other way

The Committee against Torture recorded findings in Italy’s favour in the same document, and they belong here.

It took note of “the positive practice in the State Party of prosecutions of individuals, in particular boat captains, who engage in acts tantamount to refoulement”. It welcomed judgment No. 149 of 28 May 2020, in which the Court of Messina sentenced three people to twenty years’ imprisonment for crimes including torture committed against migrants detained at the Zawiya camp in Libya. It noted judgment No. 30 of the Constitutional Court of 25 February 2025 striking down two-hour daily limits on detainees’ time outdoors. It listed nine legislative reforms and eight policy initiatives that it welcomed, and it thanked Italy for accepting the simplified reporting procedure and for appearing.

Italy has made both of the declarations that decide whether anyone can complain about it. It accepted the article 21 procedure and the article 22 procedure on 10 October 1989, and it ratified the Optional Protocol on 3 April 2013, so its places of detention are open to international inspection and any person subject to its jurisdiction may petition the Committee directly.

The Council of Europe closed its supervision of the Sharifi judgment on 13 June 2024, having satisfied itself that all the measures required had been adopted. Italy will say the Adriatic port practice was remedied, and the Committee of Ministers agreed with it. That resolution is sixteen months older than the Committee against Torture’s record of fresh reports of pushbacks at the same ports.

Italy answered three of the four recent United Nations special procedures communications about its migration policy, within two to four months in each case.

What is not established

That the Committee against Torture identified any particular onward route. It used the term chain refoulement and stopped. It named no onward state, and neither does the Coalition.

That any court has held the Albania protocol unlawful. None has, on anything the Coalition has read. The Tribunal of Rome declined to validate one man’s detention. The Court of Justice ruled on safe-country designation.

That any United Nations body has found Italy responsible for refoulement in an individual case. None has. Italy has accepted the individual complaint procedure since 1989, so such a finding is possible. The Coalition cites none because it has verified none.

Any number. How many people were pushed back at the Slovenian border, returned by the Libyan coastguard, or transferred to Gjader is not established in any document the Coalition has verified, and no figure appears on this page.

What the special procedures allege. Four letters have been sent to Italy since 2024, on the Albania protocol, on voluntary humanitarian return from Libya, on the firing on the Ocean Viking, and on the 2026 immigration bill. A communication is an allegation put to a state, not a finding against it, and this site never calls one a finding. Italy replied to the first three.

What this page does not yet carry

A section naming the organisations in Italy and in Albania that act for people held under the protocol, with contact details that have been checked. That is the section the Coalition considers most useful on any country page, and it is the section that takes longest to verify. It is being built.

The contents of the Court of Cassation judgment No. 4557 of 1 February 2024, cited by the Committee as one of its sources. The Coalition has confirmed the citation but has not read the judgment and will not describe what it held until it has.

The Italian court decisions after August 2025 applying the Court of Justice judgment. They exist; they have not been verified here.

If you can correct anything on this page, the Coalition wants to hear it.

Sources

Every source relied on above, linked so it can be read in full rather than through this summary.

United Nations treaty bodies. Committee against Torture, concluding observations on the seventh periodic report of Italy, CAT/C/ITA/CO/7, adopted 28 April 2026, issued 11 June 2026. Committee against Torture, concluding observations on Slovenia, CAT/C/SVN/CO/4, 7 December 2023, cited by the Committee at footnote 9 of the Italy observations.

Universal Periodic Review. Italy’s views on the recommendations, A/HRC/59/4/Add.1, 7 April 2025, paragraphs 4 and 32. The recommendations themselves, A/HRC/59/4, 18 March 2025, recommendation 34.330. Italy’s national report, A/HRC/WG.6/48/ITA/1, 11 October 2024.

European Court of Human Rights. Hirsi Jamaa and Others v. Italy [GC], no. 27765/09, 23 February 2012. Sharifi and Others v. Italy and Greece, no. 16643/09, 21 October 2014, French text, which is the authentic one. Khlaifia and Others v. Italy [GC], no. 16483/12, 15 December 2016. S.S. and Others v. Italy (decision), no. 21660/18, 20 May 2025. Committee of Ministers, Final Resolution CM/ResDH(2024)97, 13 June 2024, closing Sharifi.

Court of Justice of the European Union. Joined Cases C-758/24 and C-759/24, Alace and Canpelli, Grand Chamber, 1 August 2025.

Italian courts. Tribunal of Rome, eighteenth civil section, decree No. 42251 R.G. 2024, 18 October 2024. Italian first instance orders are not officially published; this copy is hosted by the legal journal Questione Giustizia and carries the court’s letterhead, case number and the judge’s name. The name of the man detained appears in the order and is not reproduced here.

United Nations special procedures. Joint allegation letter AL ITA 3/2024, 24 June 2024, on the Albania protocol, and Italy’s reply of 23 August 2024. AL ITA 4/2025, 30 April 2025, on voluntary humanitarian return from Libya, and Italy’s reply of 18 July 2025. AL ITA 6/2025, 15 October 2025, on the firing on the Ocean Viking. OL ITA 1/2026, 6 July 2026, on Bill No. 1869. All at the special procedures communications database.

Treaty status, from the depositary. United Nations Treaty Collection, chapter IV-9 for the ratification of 12 January 1989 and the article 21 and article 22 declarations of 10 October 1989, and chapter IV-9-b for the ratification of the Optional Protocol on 3 April 2013.

Compiled 10 September 2026. Where this page summarises a decision or a report, the full document is linked above and should be read in preference to this summary. Every quotation was taken from the document itself. Three claims that appeared in the Coalition’s working notes were removed before publication because they could not be verified: an onward route through named states, a date of January 2026 for Italy’s statement to the Human Rights Council, and a characterisation of the Court of Cassation judgment. Corrections to the Coalition.