May Day - EASTER WEEKEND 2017

The investigation by Forensic Oceanography describes the events of that weekend as follows:

The beginning of 2017 shows no sign of migrants’ crossings abating, or of the danger of crossing diminishing. Despite having been under constant attacks for several months, SAR NGOs have continued to play a central role in SAR efforts in the central Mediterranean, as exemplified by the events of the Easter weekend.

Two years after the April 2015 shipwrecks that cost the lives of 1,200 people, April 2017 has once again seen record crossings. Between 14 and 16 April 2017, 9,262 people travelling on 55 different boats were rescued, constituting one of the largest events of concentrated SAR operations in the Mediterranean Sea in the past few years. These SAR events have highlighted the continuing absence of state-led SAR assets. “According to MRCC data”, The Guardian reported, “of the 25 ships involved in rescue operations over the Easter weekend one was operated by Frontex and one by EUNAVFOR MED. Ten belonged to NGOs, six to the Italian coastguard, six were merchant vessels, and one was an Italian navy ship.”

While Frontex has subsequently clarified to us that some of the Italian Coast Guard assets mentioned by the Guardian article were co-financed by them and thus technically are part of its Triton operation, it also admitted that only 6 vessels of its 16 assets were deployed in an area close to where the SAR events were taking place and could thus participate in some capacity to the rescue efforts. EUNAvFOR MED also confirmed to us that only one of its ships took part in the operations, as the operation’s 4 other ships were either in port or busy with other tasks.It is in this context that NGOs have once again played a leading role in the SAR operations. As the Watch The Med-Alarm Phone network – which was in direct contact with two boats in distress and several of the NGOs operating in the area – summarized, “the NGOs ships present in the area worked at the limit of their capabilities. [...]The crew of the Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS) alone rescued more than 1,500 people from 9 precarious boats, and took hundreds on board of their vessel Phoenix. The rescue vessel Iuventa of the NGO Jugend Rettet similarly took hundreds of people on board. Unable to navigate, they were even forced to send off a MAyDAy call on Sunday. Fortunately, they could successfully complete their SAR operation and safely return to Malta.”In addition to SAR NGO vessels, the newly launched NGO SAR plane Moonbird was also crucial in determining the position of several migrants’ boats in distress, that might otherwise have drifted unnoticed towards a tragic fate. The Moonbird’s presence is a fundamental response to the decreasing provision of satellite phones recorded over 2016, demonstrating civil society’s extraordinary capacity to respond to evolving practices at sea in the aim of enabling safer passage.The events of the Easter weekend highlight the continuing absence of an adequate number of state-led SAR assets, and the crucial role of SAR NGOs in filling this gap. While the number of people crossing over Easter 2017 was comparable to that re- corded in April 2015, thanks to the remarkable work of all these SAR actors, “only” 115 casualties were recorded during the 2017 Easter weekend, instead of the 1,200 recorded in the 12 and 18 April 2015 shipwrecks.Without SAR NGOs interventions, the death toll would have been much higher. Underlining SAR NGOs’ life-saving role is the strongest antidote to the toxic narrative that has been spread against them. It does however make the prospect of them having to suspend or reduce their activities all the more worrying. The work of SAR NGOs must be able to continue without being blackmailed and criminalised. In the face of the horrendous death toll that is the product of the EU’s policies of closure, the right to solidarity must be asserted.As long as migrants are forced to resort to smugglers for lack of legal pathways, proactive Search and Rescue at sea will be a humanitarian necessity – whether it is operated by states or NGOs. Only a fundamental re-orientation of the EU’s migration policies to grant legal and safe passage may bring the smuggling business, the daily reality of thousands of migrants’ in distress and the need to rescue them to an end.