Historical Relations between Italy and Tunisia and the Case Khlaifia and Others vs. Italy from the European Court of Human Rights

Abstract

The Case Khalifia and Others v. Italy, on the detention of migrants in inadequate accommodation centers on the Island of Lampedusa and Palermo, directly confronts the fragility of the protection of the fundamental rights of migrants in the current context of the European Union and they remain treated as securitizable elements, rather than recipients of well-engineered welcoming policies, especially to those in contexts of forced migration. The methodological option went for the analytical-deductive method of research, based on a bibliographic review, with the analysis of information contained in the database of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights, about the specific case and others that support the arguments presented herein. Thus, the present work was developed within a systematization of 2 research phases: a contextual and historical analysis of the relations between Italy and Tunisia and, in a second moment, the Khlaifia case itself. In this sense, the historical past of Europe as colonizers, in the previous centuries and, specifically, of Italy and the Roman Empire, always establishing close ties with Tunisia, reveals a paradox about free movement, within the restrictive limits of the categorization and hierarchy of entry visas in the new Europe, opened to European citizens, but not encompassing of formerly colonized countries and/or former zones of economic interest.