Campaigners filed a complaint with the UN on Wednesday against Italy over a teenage migrant who was sent back to Libya in 2018 along with other migrants, where he was shot, beaten and subjected to forced labour.
The Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) lodged the case with the UN Human Rights Committee aiming to challenge the practice of EU coastal states like Italy engaging commercial ships to return vulnerable people to unsafe locations.
The NGO says it is the first case of its kind to target so-called privatised push-backs.
The complaint maintains that Italy and other states have turned private merchant vessels into instruments of so-called refoulement -- returning asylum seekers to places where they risk persecution and torture -- which is illegal under international law.
"What we are witnessing is a worrying trend where the rescue of desperate people at sea is being out-sourced to ill-equipped and untrained merchant ships," GLAN chief Gearoid O Cuinn said in a statement, warning that "this is a recipe for certain abuse."