Rank, Degrading Treatment, and the Italy‐Albania Agreement

ABSTRACT In November 2023, Italy signed a five‐year agreement with Albania to transfer asylum seekers intercepted in international waters by Italian vessels to Italian‐run detention centres in Albania for asylum processing and deportation. The agreement has been controversial and raises several human rights issues. This article examines these human rights concerns and argues that the agreement is degrading by design. Analysing policy documents, legal cases, speeches, international human rights and refugee law, and philosophical and legal scholarship on the concept of degrading treatment, this article argues that the cumulative effect of subjecting people to unnecessary suffering, discrimination, and dehumanisation creates a structural risk of degrading human dignity that brings asylum seekers down in rank. This article makes an important contribution to the policy debates over the externalisation of asylum seekers in Europe by shedding light on the link between policy designs and the risk of degrading treatment.