European Central: The Migrant Crisis Crossing the Mediterranean
Lynsey Addario i Getty
March 15, 2024. A rubber raft capsizes off the coast of Turkey, killing all aboard. June 14, 2023. A decrepit trawler carrying anywhere from 400 to 750 people capsizes off the coast of Greece. Less than a hundred survivors are plucked from the water. February 26, 2023. A boat carrying over 200 migrants sinks in a severe storm off the Italian coast with only 81 survivors. In 2022, the missing migrants project estimated that almost 2,262 migrants drowned crossing the Mediterranean, a 214-person increase in estimated fatalities over their 2021 estimate of 2,048. In a crisis that has been ongoing since 2014, the Mediterranean Sea has become one of the deadliest borders in the world, as desperate hordes are crowded by human smugglers onto overloaded and unseaworthy boats, sometimes little more than inflatable rubber rafts powered by an outboard motor. According to real-time data estimates from the missing migrants project, approximately 29,250 men, women, and children have lost their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean since 2014. By the time you read this article, that number may be higher. The Mediterranean Migrant Crisis is a slow-moving humanitarian catastrophe, but it also possesses a political dimension that makes any attempt to solve or lessen it substantially more difficult.
Despite its reputation as a relatively warm and calm sea, at least compared with the ferocious Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the Mediterranean is no less deadly. Storms, such as 2023’s storm Danial or 2017’s storm Nuna can reach a 10 on the Beaufort Sea Scale, with wind speeds above 50 knots and waves as tall as 9 meters. Water temperatures can drop below 50 degrees Fahrenheit in some months, which, according to the National Oceanographic and Aeronautic Administration, is enough for lethal hypothermia. At the wrong time, or in the wrong boat, the Aegean and Ionian seas can be just as deadly as the Bering Sea. But wars, terrorism, civil strife, oppression, and grinding poverty compel more and more people to flee across the maritime border the Mediterranean represents, seeking to make their way into the Schengen zone nations on the northern side of this perilous crossing.
Their attempts to cross, however, are exploited by human smugglers, often affiliated with organized crime, who charge migrants what to them is a veritable fortune ($1,000-8,000 USD, approximately), for a seat on a flimsy raft or an overcrowded fishing boat, often without even a life jacket. Some commentators, especially in the Southern European Countries that have borne the brunt of this crisis, have argued that these smugglers have developed an essentially symbiotic relationship with Coast Guards and, more divisively, the Humanitarian NGOs that fund privately run rescue ships. In fact, since 2016, Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, has identified these humanitarian efforts and organizations as a significant pull factor for human traffickers, bringing both traffickers and their victims to these dangerous sea routes.
To combat this, the EU has enacted a series of policies to ensure that rescue at sea is not seen as a route into Europe. For example, through close cooperation with the Libyan coast guard, many rescued migrants are returned to the ports from which they departed, or, if that is not possible, taken to secure ports to be detained. Here, however, is where the Humanitarian NGOs start to come into conflict with national governments and Frontex. They argue that any limitations infringe on their obligations under Article 98(1) of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. (UNCLOS)
“Every State shall require the master of a ship flying its flag, in so far as he can do so without serious danger to the ship, the crew or the passengers: a) to render assistance to any person found at sea in danger of being lost; b) to proceed with all possible speed to the rescue of persons in distress, if informed of their need of assistance, in so far as such action may reasonably be expected of him…”
They argue that any restriction, such as the Italian government’s code of conduct for rescue in the Mediterranean, limits their ability to render assistance “so far as they can do without serious danger to the ship”. This interpretation, however, is limited by the fact that the obligation is imposed on the flag state, as opposed to the master of the ship. Functionally, however, a larger part of this debate is how rescued migrants are treated post-rescue, and to which port they are put off in. This is a part of the issue, what happens in the gray area between the UNCLOS and the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention, where these humanitarian NGOs operate, and which human traffickers seek to exploit.
However, attempts to shrink this gray area by nations such as Italy have been met with a storm of controversy and accusations of “criminalizing search and rescue”. Actions such as the Italian government’s 2017 seizure of the rescue ship Luventa and the litigation toward her captain Pia Kemp and 9 of her crew for cooperation with human traffickers. These charges were all eventually dropped, but not before Kemp and the Luventa’s crew racked up thousands of euros in legal fees, in what was widely seen as an entirely political case.
While it is clear that operating parameters are needed for both governments and NGOs to prevent them from inadvertently serving the interests of human traffickers, it's also quite clear that any antagonism between the two serves to further this maritime gray area and encourage traffickers. Similarly, to not act is to consign desperate migrants to a watery grave, especially women and children, who are rarely among the survivors of these boat disasters. For example, in the 2023 Messina boat disaster, over 100 children were among the 500-750 people aboard the doomed trawler, according to survivor accounts. None survived. Considering the scale and political delicacy of this migrant crisis, finding workable policy will be extraordinarily difficult. But that same scale and delicateness make it more necessary than ever, especially as new crises send more and more people fleeing across the unforgiving sea.
