Amnesty: Italy's migrant detention hubs in Albania breach human rights

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The human rights of people held in Italy’s migrant detention hubs in Albania are not being protected, Amnesty International said as it warned the EU to reconsider the use of return hubs.

“It is abundantly clear that the Italy-Albania model is impossible to implement in line with Italy’s human rights obligations,” said Eve Geddie, director of Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office, as the human rights NGO launched a report on the deal between Rome and Tirana.

“This reality must be a wake-up call for the EU to put any future plans to expand the use of offshore detention and other externalization tools firmly on ice,” Geddie said.

Italy has two migration centers in Albania, including one in the village of Gjadër that was set up in 2024. Initially built as a detention center for migrants intercepted in international waters, the government decided in 2025 to use it to house male asylum seekers who had been ordered to leave Italy and were awaiting deportation. According to Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party , more than 500 people have been sent there.

According to the Amnesty report, 42 “critical” incidents were recorded between April 11 and May 16, 2025, in the Gjadër center, which it said included self-harm, at least two suicide attempts by hanging, and a violent protest.

The report also raised concerns about “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” during transfers to the hub, and it warned that detention in Albania “significantly undermines” people’s right to seek asylum and justice, as they have limited access to lawyers and courts. The NGO also said that the selection process for transfers to Albania isn’t transparent, raising concerns that it could be “discriminatory or punitive.”

What happens in the centers is “largely shrouded in mystery,” Amnesty also said, as the “Italian government has obstructed independent monitoring of the agreement’s implementation, including by restricting parliamentary oversight and bypassing ordinary legislative processes.”

The Italian government did not respond to a request for comment.

Amnesty said it had been denied access to the detention centers, and therefore based its research on correspondence with the ministry of the interior, reviews of court documents, information shared by civil society networks, reports by MPs and watchdogs, and interviews with U.N. agencies and lawyers.

The scheme, while controversial, is gaining traction across the EU, with new legislation allowing countries to send failed asylum-seekers to so-called return hubs outside the bloc.

Earlier this month, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani advocated for “‘Albania-style’ … centres in various African countries” and “more generally, in countries of origin and transit” ahead of emergency EU talks prompted by the arrival of tens of thousands of migrants from Morocco to the Spanish exclave of Ceuta.

The deal has come under intense legal scrutiny both in Italy and at the EU’s highest court. A Rome court ruled in 2024 that the first group of migrants sent to Albania as part of the deal could not be detained offshore because their countries of origin — Bangladesh and Egypt— could not be considered safe.

In a non-binding opinion to the Court of Justice of the EU earlier this year, a top adviser argued that EU law doesn’t prevent a country from setting up detention centers to process failed asylum-seekers outside its own territory, on the condition that the migrants’ rights are fully protected.