The rights of migrants and refugees must be safeguarded in Libya, interior ministers from Italy, France, Germany, Libya, Egypt, Algeria, Mali, Malta, Nigeria, Austria, Slovenia and Chad agreed on Monday at a meeting in the Swiss city of Berne.
The ministers' joint declaration also urged alternatives to holding thousands of people - including men, women and children - in horrific conditions in detention centres in Libya, intensifying the fight against human trafficking, and a policy of voluntary returns.
"Saving lives, protecting the most vulnerable and continuing dialogue," are the three priorities, said Robert Lacy Swing, director-general of the UN migration agency, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), who was present at the meeting.
"Currently policy is not working," Lacy Swing said, referring to the 65,000 people who have perished since 2000 while trying to migrate to Europe.
The interior ministers pledged to increase the "dignified" voluntary returns of migrants and aid their reintegration in their homelands. The ministers also agreed to boost facilities for asylum-seekers along migration routes, to address the underlying causes of migration and create alternative opportunities in their countries, the Swiss justice department said in a note.
In an opening address to the meeting, Swiss president Doris Leuthhard urged "solidarity of spirit and humanity" in solving the migration crisis, which she called "one of the great challenges of our times".
"No country, no institution, no organisation can respond alone to this challenge," Switzerland's justice minister Simonetta Sommaruga told the meeting.
Corruption is often the problem at the heart of migration, Sommaruga underlined.
Also present at the meeting in Berne were European Union migration commissioner Dimistris Avramopolous, Estonia's interior minister Andres Anvel, representing his country's duty presidency of the EU, Filippo Grandi, head of the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The meeting was convened by the Contact Group for the Mediterranean, which was created in March by Italy's interior minister Marco Minniti, and which includes Italy, Switzerland, Algeria, Austria, France, Germany, Libya, Mali, Malta, Niger, Slovenia, Chad and Tunisia.
