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migrant rescue
When the Rich Get a Global Rescue Mission and the Drowning Poor Get... Nothing
A story of two sinking vessels in a world of extreme inequality.
Jun 23, 2023
The sinking of two vessels—the Andrianna, filled with hundreds of desperate migrants, and the Titan, with a handful of multi-millionaires—provides a vivid picture of the world today. All drowning deaths in the ocean are tragic, and one has to sympathize with the families who have lost loved ones. Yet these events also dramatically demonstrate global economic inequality and injustice.
Those who died on the Titan have names. Stockton Rush, chief executive and founder of OceanGate, was the pilot of the Titan. Hamis Harding was a British businessman, chairman of Action Aviation based in Dubai, and an explorer. Paul-Henri Nargeolet was director of underwater research for RMS Titanic, Inc., an American firm that owns the rights to the wreck of the Titanic. And finally, Shazad Dawood and his 19-year-old son Sulem Dawood were scions of one of Pakistan’s wealthiest families.
The rich can pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for an undersea adventure, while the poor spend the last of their savings to crowd onto an overloaded fishing boat in hopes of getting to Europe and finding a job.
The four passengers paid $250,000 each for the macabre adventure of descending to 12,500 feet below the surface to see the wreckage of the Titanic where 1,517 people died after the ship hit an iceberg in 1912. The vessel went missing on June 18. The U.S. and Canadian coast guards did everything possible, dispatching ships and planes to locate and save those five. But debris found on June 22 indicates that the submersible vessel apparently imploded.
By contrast, many of those who died when the Andrianna capsized on June 14 still have no names. The ship, an overloaded fishing vessel, sailed from Libya to Italy, carrying between 400 and 750 migrants from various countries. Some 104 were rescued, hundreds of others remain unaccounted for, many of them women and children who were below decks. There were Egyptians, Syrians, Pakistanis, Afghans, and Palestinians among the survivors and perhaps other nationalities among the dead. These passengers were mostly poor people heading for Europe in the hope of finding a way to make a better living and take care of themselves and their families.
But many European governments don’t want any more immigrants, particularly poor people of different nationalities, colors, religions, and languages. With rightwing governments in power in several European countries, all semblance of solidarity has disappeared. The Greek Coast Guard saw that the vessel was in trouble but declined to assist it.
The sinking of these two vessels should lead Europeans and people around the world to examine their consciences.
Here, then, is the split-screen reality of those who sail the high seas. The rich can pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for an undersea adventure, while the poor spend the last of their savings to crowd onto an overloaded fishing boat in hopes of getting to Europe and finding a job. Governments mobilize their resources to rescue the rich, but turn their backs on the poor in distress. The sinking of these two vessels should lead Europeans and people around the world to examine their consciences.
What would it have been like if the million dollars that those four individuals spent to visit the Titanic had been spent instead on helping those several hundred migrants? Let’s take it one step further. There are about 45 million migrants in the world today, driven by climate change, economic crises, and oppressive governments. Taxing the global rich, who clearly have more money than they need, could provide considerable resources for addressing this migration crisis.
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How the EU Weaponizes Time Against Refugees
Rather than simply a “failed system,” delays in rescue need to be understood as strategic—and deliberate—elements built into Europe's current migration governance.
May 20, 2023
When boats with refugees are at risk of capsizing in the Mediterranean Sea, the speed of rescue operations is essential. Any delay in the emergency response can lead to serious bodily harm or the loss of life.
Still, offering a speedy response in such situations is not one of Europe’s priorities. In a study recently published in the journalSecurity Dialogue, I argue that time has become increasingly “weaponized” in Mediterranean migration governance.
Over the last decade, and in order to prevent arrivals, European Union authorities have sought out ways to slow down rescue engagement while accelerating interceptions to Libya.
The consequence—that arriving late at scenes of distress, or not at all, would lead to a rise in deaths—was clearly acceptable.
The end of Italy’s humanitarian-military operation Mare Nostrum in 2014 marked a turning point. As a response to a devastating shipwreck on October 3, 2013 near Lampedusa, this operation sped up rescue activities off the Libyan coast, leading to the rescue of about 150,000 people. However, it was denounced by critics as a “pull-factor” that would incentivize the arrival of refugees. Mare Nostrum ended and gave way to successive European operations that experimented with delays in emergency responses.
EU naval operations Triton and Sophia, which followed Mare Nostrum in 2015 and 2016, built delays into their operational designs, intentionally patrolling areas of the Mediterranean Sea where few boats were expected. The consequence—that arriving late at scenes of distress, or not at all, would lead to a rise in deaths—was clearly acceptable.
In the period since 2017, which my article calls the phase of strategic neglect, EU member states have found even more draconian ways to weaponize time. By further withdrawing their rescue assets, European actors have produced a rescue vacuum in the central Mediterranean.
This vacuum has expanded over time: A report published in March 2023 by the Civil Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre, a network of non-governmental actors engaging in Search and Rescue activities in the Mediterranean, concluded that “at sea, Maltese authorities regularly abandon those in need of rescue.”
The report said that in 2022, Maltese authorities ignored more than 20,000 people in distress; 413 boats with people needing help were not assisted and only three boats were rescued by Malta’s armed forces. “Non-assistance is now a routine part of a suite of deadly measures aimed at reducing arrivals in Malta,” the report said. So far in 2023, only 92 people have been rescued to Malta.
Italy has also reduced its operational scope, mostly to the areas close to Lampedusa and Sicily. That currently many boats are reaching Italy, with the government declaring a state of emergency in April, does not deny the fact that Italy and Malta continue to leave vast stretches of the sea unattended. Especially in the search and rescue (SAR) zones of Malta and Libya, rescue often comes too late, as recent days have tragically demonstrated once more.
Meanwhile, EU member states have shifted to the skies. Intensified aerial activities, including via drones, search for boats with refugees in the central Mediterranean. Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, often justifies these activities as aimed at saving lives. But its use of “aerial assets under its current strategy has not had a meaningful impact on the death rate,” Human Rights Watch and Border Forensics recently noted.
The measurable impact of these aerial surveillance operations has been elsewhere. Since 2017, Libyan forces have forcibly returned more than 100,000 people to torturous conditions, often using speed boats donated by Italy. Routinely guided by European aerial assets, these Libyan forces chase after boats still intact enough to reach Europe while often neglecting stationary boats with people needing immediate help. This shows where their priorities lie. Attacks on refugee boats and their interception off the coast of Tunisia, where racist sentiments have escalated over recent weeks, have also soared.
A 2021 report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights suggested that “the damage and death along the central Mediterranean route… is the result of a failed system of migration governance,” emblematic of which are the “significant delays and failures to render assistance to migrant boats.”
Rather than simply a “failed system,” however, these delays in rescue need to be understood as strategic—and deliberate—elements built into the current system of European migration governance.
The effects of Europe’s weaponization of time have also been felt among civil rescuers. From 2017 in particular, volunteers and humanitarians working on rescuing refugees in distress have faced increasing hostility and have often been portrayed as taxi services facilitating the arrival of people to Europe. Their rescue efforts have been obstructed and slowed down at every turn.
For example, maritime authorities often withhold information about boats, even if NGOs are closest to the scene of distress. Earlier, NGOs would routinely transfer rescued people to EU military assets and remain operational at sea. Now, they are forced to disembark at EU harbors where they have to undergo cumbersome inspections, often facing lengthy detention and at times criminalization.
Spending more time shuttling back and forth, or stuck at harbors, NGOs have been forced to cut down on their time at sea. This stealing of operational time was amplified by the “closed harbor policies” of Italy and Malta in 2018, where NGO ships were forced to wait in front of European harbors, sometimes for weeks.
The politically-motivated targeting of NGO rescuers continues. In early 2023, Italy passed a decree which obliges the rescuers to sail to a European harbor immediately after undertaking one rescue operation, thus prohibiting them from staying at sea in search of more boats in distress.
Moreover, following recent rescues carried out by NGOs, the Italian authorities assigned harbors in central and northern Italy. This considerably prolongs the disembarkation process. The civil fleet’s absence from the central Mediterranean will, according to the NGOs, “inevitably result in more people tragically drowning at sea.” Three of them decided in April to take “legal action against the Italian authorities’ systematic policy of assigning distant ports.”
When in February this year an overcrowded boat capsized off the coast of Crotone in Italy and more than 90 individuals lost their lives, questions were raised about Italy’s delayed reaction to their distress.
When, only a few weeks later, European and Libyan authorities were alerted to a boat at severe risk of capsizing, they waited instead of intervening without delay. Thirty hours after authorities had been alerted, the boat capsized and dozens of people drowned.
Rather than unfortunate or exceptional cases, these disasters highlight something much more systematic. Namely, a deliberate European strategy that weaponizes time in order to deter refugee arrivals, no matter the cost.
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'Saving Lives Is Not a Crime': UN Expert Tells Italy to Stop Prosecuting Migrant Rescue Teams
Activists "are being criminalized for their human rights work," said U.N. Special Rapporteur Mary Lawlor. "Solidarity is not smuggling."
Feb 09, 2023
Italy must stop criminalizing activists who are rescuing migrants at sea, a United Nations-appointed human rights expert said Thursday, ahead of a trial involving crew members from several non-governmental organizations.
"The ongoing proceedings against human rights defenders from search and rescue NGOs are a darkening stain on Italy and the E.U.'s commitment to human rights," Mary Lawlor, U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, said in a statement.
Last May, preliminary criminal proceedings began at the Court of Trapani in Sicily against nearly two dozen individuals accused of collaborating with people smugglers. Four members of the luventa search and rescue crew and 17 activists from other civilian ships are being charged with aiding and abetting unauthorized immigration during several missions conducted in 2016 and 2017.
Before it was seized in 2017, the luventa, a former fishing vessel, had helped prevent roughly 14,000 asylum-seekers from drowning in the Mediterranean Sea.
“They are being criminalized for their human rights work," Lawlor said Thursday. "Saving lives is not a crime and solidarity is not smuggling."
\u201c#Italy: Criminalisation & repression of human rights defenders involved in search and rescue NGOs must end - UN expert: The ongoing proceedings in Sicily are a darkening stain on Italy and the EU's commitment to human rights. Saving lives is not a crime.\n\nhttps://t.co/TJ2mwU45T8\u201d— UN Special Procedures (@UN Special Procedures) 1675937710
According to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), "The proceedings have been plagued by procedural violations, including failure to provide adequate interpretation for non-Italian defendants and translation of key documents."
Last month, the office of far-right Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Italy's Ministry of the Interior asked the court to join the case as plaintiffs, requesting compensation for alleged damages.
Meloni's fascist party, Fratelli d'Italia, is staunchly xenophobic and directs racist vitriol at Africans in particular. Like other reactionary nationalist parties in Europe, Fratelli d'Italia inaccurately depicts rape and violence against women as foreign imports brought in by immigrants, especially Black and Muslim men.
"States that respect human rights promote the work of human rights defenders," Lawlor said Thursday. "The government's decision to seek to join the case goes directly against this principle—it is a very disturbing sign."
Lawlor's statement was endorsed by Felipe González Morales, U.N. special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants.
As the OHCHR noted:
The case against the Iuventa crew has proceeded [against] the backdrop of new restrictions imposed by the Italian authorities on civilian search and rescue. Since December 2022, NGO ships have consistently been instructed to disembark rescued persons in north and central Italy ports—several days of sailing away from rescue sites in the Central Mediterranean Sea. The practice has been accompanied by new regulations for civilian search and rescue introduced by legislative decree on January 2, 2023. Under the new rules, NGO captains are effectively prevented from carrying out multiple rescues in the course of a mission and must navigate towards the indicated port of disembarkation without delay, or face heavy sanction.
"The new legislation and instructions on ports of disembarkation are obstructing essential activities of civilian rescue ships," said Lawlor, who has shared her concerns directly with Italian authorities. "They are widening the search and rescue gap in the Central Mediterranean, putting lives and rights at further risk."
"The legislation is incompatible with Italy's obligations under international law," she added, "and must be repealed."
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