The cement floors are painted green because the colour is soothing, an Italian official explains, as he ushers a small group of journalists, including from CBC News, around the first extraterritorial migrant camp in Albania.
The bleak steel and concrete structure, erected in a defunct airbase on rocky terrain near the remote northwestern village of Gjader, opened this week. It’s void of vegetation, lacks indoor communal space and a cafeteria, and is surrounded by a tall, glaring fence impossible to see through.
The camp includes a centre for 880 asylum seekers, a 144-capacity pre-deportation facility and a 20-bed prison — the material completion of a controversial pact signed last November between Italian far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Albanian leader Edi Rama.
Albania, which sits across the Adriatic Sea from Italy, was until the early 1990s one of the most isolated communist regimes in the world. But the camp, and a hot spot that registers migrants at the port, are under Italian jurisdiction, representing the first time a European Union country has located the processing of asylum claims offshore.
While the EU and even local Albanians approve of the scheme, human rights groups and opposition politicians have denounced it as illegal and opaque.
“It is essentially a prison, a place where you are obligated to go into and that you cannot decide to leave,” Albanian opposition politician Agron Shehaj told CBC News in an interview.
The deal was approved by Albania’s parliament and high court, but Shehaj and others say Rama fast-tracked it to stifle opposition, doing Italy a favour in hopes of speeding up Albania’s entry to the EU. Rama has framed the deal as Albania’s way of thanking Italy for welcoming thousands of migrants after the fall of communism in the early 1990s.
“If you look at the EU’s most recent recommendations to Albania, it was to fight corruption, not to create a prison for immigrants,” Shehaj said.
Others say the pact is fraught with legal risk for the small, struggling Balkan nation.
EU leaders interested, despite legal risks
“Albania will be held responsible for every violation of human rights in these camps, although it is managed somehow by the Italian authorities,” said lawyer Dorian Matlija, head of the watchdog group Res Publica, based in the Albania capital of Tirana.
But European leaders, who gathered late this week in Brussels to discuss migration, are closely eyeing the facility as an appealing model for handling the politically charged issue.
Irregular immigration has dropped significantly in the past decade — down to less than a third of the one million, mostly Syrians fleeing war, recorded at the height of the crisis in 2015.
After the EU struck deals earlier this year with Tunisia, Egypt, Mauritania and Morocco to block migrant departures, it’s down even more. But an anti-immigration wave continues to sweep across the bloc, fuelled by the rise of far-right parties.
Last month, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer expressed “great interest” in offshore camps, while European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen now refers to them as “return hubs,” where quick processing — and repatriation of those whose claims are rejected — can happen.
When the Italian coast guard or navy intercepts boatloads of desperate people who have set off from Libya or Tunisia in rickety boats, it now selects men from “safe countries” — nations such as Egypt, Bangladesh and the Ivory Coast, with which Italy has a deal to send people back.
The Italians then load the men onto what the Italian navy calls the “mother ship” that delivers them to Albania instead of Italy, which they were hoping to reach. In Albania, they undergo a fast-track asylum process, with only one chance to appeal. Rescued women, children, families and sick people will be taken to camps in Italy.
The selection process is already proving problematic. This week, among the first 16 rescued Egyptian and Bangladeshi men the Italian navy selected to send to Albania, four had to be sent to Italy — two, it was discovered, were minors, and another two needed urgent medical care.
Then on Friday, an Italian immigration court ordered the remaining 12 to be sent back to Italy because their countries of origin could not be considered safe. Citing a recent ruling by the European Court of Justice, it said for a country to be considered safe, it must be so in every part and for every person; there can be no persecution, discrimination or torture against anyone in any area of its territory.
Residents grateful for economic boon
While the Italian government deals with legal obstacles, Albanians who live near the camp welcome it.
Alessandro Preka, 67, runs a small grocery store on the main drag of Gjader, a sleepy town where herds of sheep pass through, chickens race around and elders on benches quietly exchange news.
Preka said he and many other villagers understand what it’s like to live in a migrant camp, having spent months in such facilities in Greece and Italy 25 years ago following the implosion of the communist regime, when thousands of Albanians fled the impoverished country.
“They treated us badly, calling us communists,” he said. “I’m sad for the migrants coming here. I know what it means to be in those camps.”
Still, he said he’s grateful the Italians are setting up the centre here, as it brings economic hope to a town that’s shrunk from 2,000 to just 800 people, with nearly all of the young people having left to work abroad.
Preka said locals are now renting out houses to Italian officials working at the migrant camp, with rents for small apartments soaring from $75 to $600 Cdn a month.
Even better, the camp is bringing jobs, from cooking to basic administration, paying as much as $75 Cdn a day, a good wage here.
“All you need to work at the camp is to show you don’t have a criminal record,” Preka said. “You don’t even need an education.”
Valentina Lazdri, 60, a mother of eight who lives around the corner from the grocery store, also welcomes the new camp.
Seven of her children have immigrated to countries throughout Europe. Her only remaining daughter, 45 and unemployed, has applied to work as a cleaner in the camp.
“I hope even more such camps open,” she said. “It could mean that many of the young people who left could come back home. That can only be a good thing.”
Although Prime Minister Edi Rama has ruled out deals with other nations for offshore migrant camps in Albania, the option for Italy to rely on the country to manage migrant numbers remains, as conflicts, poverty and climate-driven displacement persist.
“This is just opening the door,” lawyer Dorian Matlija said. “If you are accepting several thousand, why not several tens of thousands in the future?”
This tiny Italian island isn’t equipped to keep up with the thousands of migrants arriving from North Africa. An estimated 8,000 people have flooded Lampedusa in the past week, doubling the island’s population and straining resources.
