In the Central Mediterranean, humanitarian rescue crews working to save lives do so under policies that make rescue a costly and potentially criminal act.

The Central Mediterranean crossing zone between Libya, Tunisia, Malta and Italy is one of the world’s deadliest passages. In the ten years to the end of 2024, more than 930,000 people have attempted this voyage, most of them hoping to reach the EU via Italy and obtain asylum or humanitarian protection.[1] Since 2023, when Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi issued the country’s most restrictive rescue-related decree, more than 4,400 people have disappeared along this route.[2] These risky journeys and deaths are well documented by the International Organization for Migration and by activist collectives like Alarm Phone that respond to SOS calls at sea, as well as in journalism and scholarship.

Although Italian and EU authorities are well aware of the risks and frequency of these crossings, their approaches to border management have shifted from prioritising Search and Rescue (SAR) to criminalising both migration and rescue. The 2023 Piantedosi Decree (Decree Law No. 1/2023), which specifically targets humanitarian vessels, has created significant challenges for rescue crews, including these new stipulations:

• Crews can only perform one rescue operation before immediately disembarking migrants at a safe port.
• Carrying out these tasks must not create dangerous situations on board.
• Crews must initiate the collection of information for survivors’ asylum claims.
• Violations can result in fines of up to €50,000 and seizure of the ship.

Since the passing of this law, Italian authorities have regularly directed humanitarian vessels not to the nearest port but to ports anywhere along the Italian coastline. For example, even if the port closest to a rescue event is in Sicily, the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC) in Rome may instead assign a port in northern Italy for disembarkation.

What NGOs refer to as the ‘distant ports’ practice renders the completion of these now one-off rescue missions much longer than necessary in mileage and time. Humanitarian crews maintain that these consequences are not incidental but strategic: in a political environment hostile both to migrants (whether refugees, asylum seekers or other migrant categories) and to rescue practices, assigning distant ports stretches the resources of crews and puts migrants at further risk, testing the feasibility of humanitarian-run SAR.

In discussing these challenges and how humanitarian groups are confronting them, I draw on data shared with me by the NGO SOS Humanity, which has operated the Humanity 1 rescue ship since 2022, and on an interview with SOS Humanity General Director Till Rummenhohl in June 2024, when the Humanity 1 was docked in Siracusa, Sicily.

Changing approaches

The Piantedosi Decree follows a decade-long shift in the Italian government’s approach to SAR. Legal changes and related practice have repeatedly called into question long-established international principles. The Convention on the Law of the Sea requires seafarers to rescue a nearby boat in distress and to deliver rescued passengers to the nearest port of safety for disembarkation.

In 2014, Italy prioritised SAR. The country’s Mare Nostrum military–humanitarian operation rescued more than 150,000 people over 12 months but was then terminated, with Italy citing unsustainable costs. Subsequent missions run by EU border agency Frontex were smaller in scope, effectively de-emphasising SAR, despite people continuing to cross in high numbers and despite research that has debunked the notion that rescue ships act as a pull factor.

Humanitarian organisations were already active at sea but in 2015-16 they grew in number, stepping in to fill this gap in SAR capacity. Initially, humanitarian crews were recognised as a crucial part of the network of seafarers assisting people in distress and cooperating with Italy’s MRCC. Since 2016–17, however, multiple EU nations have criminalised migration and rescue; in Italy, leaders have targeted NGO-operated vessels through ship seizure, fines and restrictive laws. Italy has also enlisted third countries in detaining or processing migrants. Especially significant for rescuers is the 2017 Memorandum of Understanding with Libya, which tasks the Libyan coastguard with apprehending migrants at sea and returning them to inhumane Libyan detention facilities.

Related rhetoric reflects the politicisation of rescue. Dominant political discourses reframe what were once collaborations as criminal activities, upholding narratives that suggest that rescue crews and anyone steering a migrant vessel are smugglers facilitating ‘illegal’ migration, rather than people acting to prevent death at sea. Ship sequesters carried out under the Piantedosi Decree feed these narratives; under this law, NGO-operated ships fulfilling international rescue obligations were detained more than a dozen times in 2023 alone.

Consequences of the distant ports practice

According to data collected by SOS Humanity, in 2023–24 under the Piantedosi Decree the 12 large and nine small NGO vessels operating in the Central Mediterranean travelled for 653 additional days and more than 261,990 additional miles in order to disembark migrants at assigned ports. In practical terms this means that had authorities assigned the vessels closer ports, migrants would have disembarked and accessed aid and asylum and reception processes more swiftly. The vessels, in turn, could have performed more rescues during the time they instead had to spend travelling past Sicily and up the Tyrrhenian coast to ports as far north as Genova.

Under Italy’s reception system, new arrivals are usually first sent to a ‘hotspot’ for identification. Hotspots are large processing centres introduced in 2015 at the external borders of the EU to cope with record numbers of migrants. If their protection claim is not immediately rejected, they are sent to a reception centre in one of Italy’s 20 regions, where they live while awaiting a protection decision.

Officials and political leaders justify assigning distant ports by saying that hotspots where the ships might otherwise disembark are full. As Rummenhohl explained, “They say it’s a logistical matter… they cannot always provide the closest port in Sicily, which is fair – there are a lot of arrivals, and the hotspots in Sicily fill up.” However, he clarified, the cities to which vessels are now sent often lack hotspot capacity, and therefore migrants might still have to be transferred to another region to be processed.

The distant ports approach is not approved across the board. When the Piantedosi Decree was introduced, the EU Commissioner for Human Rights expressed concern that it “could hinder the provision of life-saving assistance by NGOs in the Central Mediterranean and, therefore, may be at variance with Italy’s obligations under human rights and international law.”[3] Similarly, Amnesty International and other humanitarian organisations argue that the practice unlawfully holds shipwreck survivors at sea, delays the processing of claims for people known to be seeking protection and delays access to legal, medical and social aid.

The risks of extended journeys

Migrants who cross the sea have fled situations of violence or extreme precarity in their countries of origin, and in many cases they are also most immediately fleeing violence, threats and enslavement in Libya. In recent years, between 15 and 20% of these passengers have been minors, many travelling on their own. When they board overcrowded and generally unseaworthy vessels, they are already in need of medical care, legal protection and often counselling or mental health support as they navigate the trauma they have suffered.

The sea crossing itself exacerbates this trauma; travelling in small boats across rough waters with few supplies, migrants further risk their lives in hope of reaching safety in Europe. Rescued migrants often show signs of dehydration, hypothermia, and burns and rashes caused by salt and oil on their skin. In the first nine months of 2024, the Médecins Sans Frontière (MSF) crew aboard the Geo Barents rescue vessel treated 273 survivors who exhibited serious symptoms, including wounds in need of immediate care, or psychological trauma, including flashbacks.[4] Forcing rescue ships to undertake longer journeys delays migrants accessing the care they need and can exacerbate their symptoms.

Implications for rescue operations

Given the dearth of safer means to reach Europe, these crossings continue, and rescuers now have to keep track of a new set of factors while at sea. One strategy the Humanity 1 has employed, for instance, is to expand its legal resources. Rummenhohl explained to me that two external lawyers on rotation follow each of the ship’s missions from start to finish and are in daily communication with the team on board to document and process decision-making in an environment in which the ship’s every move is treated by authorities as suspect.

The Humanity 1 adopts a holistic approach to rescue and already included, for instance, a care coordinator, medical doctor, midwife and mental health specialist on board. The team also includes a human rights observer who documents events during rescue and communication or other engagement with Italian authorities or – sometimes – when Libyan ships threaten rescue vessels. SOS Humanity collaborates with other NGOs to document and analyse mileage, fuel and other aspects impacted by the Piantedosi Decree in order to understand and respond to the material consequences of increasingly restrictive policies.

Human and material costs are connected. Longer post-rescue journeys require more resources on board, including food and water, medicine and hygiene products. In addition, NGOs spend more on fuel. In 2024 the Humanity 1 spent more than 36 additional days at sea (calculating the travel difference between the nearest port and the distant port assigned). That extra travel amounted to nearly €80,000 in fuel costs alone – funds that did not support rescue but instead supported the imposed delay of disembarkation. This effect is, again, strategic. At the end of 2024, MSF withdrew the Geo Barents from the Central Mediterranean, saying that Italian laws and policies have made their work impossible.[5]

Beyond humanitarian rescue

These accusations might suggest that EU Member States no longer recognise the Law of the Sea, or that any rescue operation might be subject to legal action. In fact, one critical data point often omitted from media coverage and political debate is that humanitarian groups perform only 10–20% of total rescues in the Central Mediterranean in any given year. Up to 80% of rescues are instead carried out by Italian authorities. In 2023, the Italian coastguard performed 2,123 coordinated rescue events and rescued 106,582 people. That same year, NGO crews collectively rescued just over 12,500 people.[6]

Yet the coastguard rescues receive much less coverage and are not subject to the same policy constraints; coastguard vessels regularly disembark migrants at southern ports with hotspots, for example. As SOS Humanity maintains, this demonstrates that the State does still recognise the obligation to rescue. The coastguard states in its 2023 annual report:

“Providing assistance to people in difficulty at sea is a legal obligation established by customary and conventional international law. Under the SAR Convention, contracting countries are obliged to develop maritime SAR services and take urgent measures to ensure that necessary assistance is provided to any person who is in danger at sea.”

Clearly, it is changes in policy, not in understandings of the obligation to rescue or the right to seek asylum, that reshape rescue dynamics.

Recommendations

Saving more lives at sea can be supported by multiple actors, in particular in three areas:

Firstly, dangerous sea crossings and the current challenges facing rescuers underline the pressing need for policymakers to create and support safe routes and modes of entry for people seeking asylum in Europe. The Humanitarian Corridors programme is one such model. Funded through the EU and coordinated by a network of religious organisations, this programme has flown more than 1,000 refugees directly to Italy and France. Additionally, reassessing quotas for work and study visas could give more people the means to reach Europe without having to undertake dangerous journeys. It is widely acknowledged that policies that limit legal and safe means of entry do not prevent people from crossing borders but instead ensure that they have to undertake more dangerous journeys to reach a place where they can find safety and seek protection.

Secondly, as these perilous crossings continue, the EU Commission should insist on a return to the collaborative SAR model. Reframing SAR as a network of cooperative partners would promote swifter rescue, uphold international law and ensure that people at risk of losing their lives while en route to seek protection have the best chance of reaching safety and exercising their right to claim asylum. Decriminalising rescue and removing restrictions against humanitarian crews would not prevent every death at sea nor keep people from needing to undertake dangerous crossings in the first place but would enable the saving of more lives.

Thirdly, media coverage of Mediterranean crossings should emphasise the realities of rescue. The focus on humanitarian crews feeds the idea that rescue and humanitarian efforts are a problem and enables the conflation of rescue and smuggling, narratives that politicians in Italy and across the EU have embraced to justify closing borders and preventing humanitarian rescue. Rather than focusing exclusively on NGO-operated vessels, journalists should emphasise the broader context in which Italian coastguard ships regularly rescue people in distress and in the process uphold the same international laws called into question by the targeting of NGO-operated missions. Shifting rescue narratives can, in turn, contribute to changing other problematic narratives that position migrants as probable criminals, smugglers or helpless trafficking victims.

The challenges of humanitarian rescue today illustrate how policies affect the material reality of crossing and rescue at sea, as well as the politicisation of rescue. Advocating for safer journeys and saved lives requires confronting both issues.

 

Eleanor Paynter
Assistant Professor of Italian, Migration, and Global Media Studies, University of Oregon
epaynter@uoregon.edu
Bluesky: @eleanorbpaynter.net

I would like to thank the SOS Humanity team for their collaboration and ongoing dialogue, which has informed this piece.

 

[1] UNHCR Operational Data Portal Europe Sea Arrivals/Italy, https://data.unhcr.org/en/situations/europe-sea-arrivals/location/24521. Count does not include apprehensions by the Libyan coast guard.

[2] IOM Missing Migrants

[3] ‘The Italian government should consider withdrawing Decree Law which could hamper NGO search and rescue operations at sea’, Letter from EU Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatović to Italian Minister of the Interior Matteo Piantedosi, 26^th January 2023

[4] ‘EU member states must reverse deadly inaction on Central Mediterranean migration‘, MSF, 22^nd November 2023

[5] ‘MSF ends operation of Geo Barents with commitment to return to Central Mediterranean Sea’, MSF, 13th December 2024

[6] These numbers do not include autonomous arrivals, via boats that reach Italy directly.

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