2023-11-27 05:01:00
From Rome
The multinational humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which travels the Mediterranean to rescue migrants in difficulty trying to reach Europe, in its 2023 Report denounced European countries for their immobility in the face of the hundreds of deaths that occur. every year. So far in 2023, according to Doctors Without Borders, at least 2,200 people have died in the central Mediterranean. And many are still missing.
Titled “No One Came to Rescue Us,” the report places emphasis on denouncing the “violent border practices and deliberate inactivity” of European states, according to an MSF press release. In particular, it alludes to the fact that Mediterranean European states “knowingly endanger people’s lives by delaying or not effectively coordinating rescues” and/or by facilitating “the deportations of those rescued to unsafe places.” As an unsafe country, it refers mainly to Libya, the most dangerous country because in a series of clandestine prisons, migrants are exploited and abused while waiting to leave for Europe – mainly towards Italy, the closest country – on barges organized by human traffickers. humans associated with corrupt members of the Coast Guard.
In this sense, we must remember the agreement signed by Italy and Libya in 2017 (by the center-left government of Paolo Gentiloni) and renewed in 2022 (by the government of the right-wing Giorgia Meloni). The objective of the pact was to contain the arrival of migrants to Europe. If the Libyan Coast Guard detected migrants in Libyan international or territorial waters, they had to take them back to the country, and they ended up in these clandestine centers. And for that, Libya received between 2017 and 2020 some 784 million euros from Italy in addition to patrol equipment. Since 2017, 120,000 people have been intercepted at sea and returned to Libya.
Other agreements were recently signed with Tunisia and Albania. The European Union agreement with Tunisia was signed in July of this year for an initial value of 105 million euros and the objective is, among other points, to strengthen border management and accelerate the return of asylum seekers whose applications be rejected. The agreement with Albania, signed by Meloni and Albanian President Bajram Begaj in November, provides for migrants rescued at sea by Italian authorities to disembark in Shëngjin, a town on the Albanian coast where two centers will be built at the expense of Rome. The entry into force date has been set for spring 2024, but there are still many legal doubts because the agreement is accused of violating European laws.
In early 2023, the Italian government adopted new regulations that hinder the rescue activities of humanitarian organizations at sea. In the first nine months of 2023, Italian authorities detained six humanitarian rescue vessels, including MSF’s Geo Barents. The ships were paralyzed for 160 days, during which time they were unable to carry out rescues or save lives.
“On board the Geo Barents MSF witnessed flagrant rights violations because both Italy and the island of Malta failed to coordinate rescues or guarantee assistance to people at risk” at sea, the statement said. Between January and September 2023, MSF carried out 33 rescues within the Maltese search and rescue region. None of those were coordinated by the responsible authorities, the statement added.
The coordinator and head of MSF in the Mediterranean
The MSF Report is based on medical and operational data collected by members of the organization aboard the Geo Barents ship. The coordinator and person in charge of the search and rescue operations for migrants in the Mediterranean is the Argentine Juan Matías Gil, born and raised in El Tigre, province of Buenos Aires and who studied economics at the University of Buenos Aires. He then did a Master in Human Rights and Conflict Management in Italy. Since 2009 he has worked for Doctors Without Borders.
In an interview with PáginaI12, Gil analyzed the current situation of migratory flows and what should be done to avoid thousands of deaths annually.
-The issue of migrants has lost space in the international press, replaced by the wars in Ukraine and between Israel and Palestine. But the phenomenon of migratory flows by sea continues to exist. Will it increase due to wars, according to you?
-The war in Ukraine has not produced a significant increase in maritime migratory flows and neither has what is happening in Palestine so far. It is true that since 2015 we have rescued many people from Palestine but they were not the majority of those saved. There has been a permanent flow of Palestinians, especially young people who wanted to leave the country to help their families. People will continue to choose the sea route as they do not have other legal channels to do so from their countries. Libya continues to be a state that facilitates this type of business, human trafficking. European countries are trying to make agreements with other countries to stop the departures. But we already saw what happened with Libya, which was given a huge amount of millions to block migrants but ships continue to leave its ports because those who participate in human trafficking there are also part of the Coast Guard. Therefore, Libya has a double profit: from the migrants who pay to leave and from European countries, such as Italy, which paid it several millions. But this year Tunisia has taken on greater importance, doubling departures from its lands compared to those from Libya. Even if the press is not concerned, people continue to leave.
-What effects could the recent Italy-Albania agreement have on the rescue of migrants?
-We still have to wait because there are many legal doubts about this agreement at the level of human rights and European asylum policy. Let’s hope that the implementation of the agreement never takes place because it is an aberration to people’s rights.
– The MSF Report talks about the injuries that have been confirmed in those rescued. But in Tunisia, is the same thing happening (or happening) in the prisons of Libya?
-In Libya, migrants who leave or return are locked up in detention centers, some by officials of the Directorate of Illegal Immigration and others who go to illegal detention centers controlled by militias. To leave these centers, the migrant has two ways: escape or pay for their freedom. He who has money pays. Those who do not have it, pay in another way, such as for the extortion that their families receive, saying that if they do not pay they will kill them, for abuse, torture, rape. In Tunisia this is not the case, sub-Saharan migrants even participated in its economy, in the social and work life of the country. But starting in February, with a racist statement by President Kais Saied, aggressive violence against all migrants was unleashed. People who lived in Tunisia, who had worked there for years, were attacked, in their homes, in their workplaces, they were detained, their belongings were stolen. And they are deported to the borders with Algeria and Libya. And to escape from this, they try to take a smuggling boat to Europe. The violence is different from that in Libya but it is clear that sub-Saharan migrants in Tunisia do not have any security. That is why we say that Tunisia is not a safe country where asylum seekers can disembark.
-What has been the most difficult experience that MSF has had to live through in the Mediterranean?
-There have been different critical rescues. At the end of 2021 we arrived on a ship. We managed to rescue around 90 people and they told us that there were people on the lower deck and so we found 10 dead. Last year we had another tough experience. It was an alert that we received late and when we arrived, the rubber had already disintegrated. We managed to rescue about 70 people but they said that another 30 had been on the boat but had disappeared. We were able to resuscitate a minor but a woman was already dead, we could not resuscitate her. The new Italian laws indicate that you must go to a port after a rescue even when there are unresolved alerts at sea. We are presented with a human dilemma between obeying and continuing to have our ship operational to save more people, or disobeying and assisting those who need it right now, but our ship will be detained once in port. Going to the assigned distant ports also means unnecessarily extending the suffering of the survivors and minimizing our presence at sea.
-In your opinion, what should Italy and the EU do and not do in this field?
-Surely create humanitarian corridors to help migrants, create legal and safe channels so that people can apply for visas and international protection in their places of origin or transit, thus all these tragedies at sea would be avoided. It is not civil society that must provide resources to prevent deaths at sea, but rather states must do so. We advocate a search and rescue mechanism with state resources. We cannot allow landings or financial or logistical support to organizations such as the Libyan Coast Guard. These are European policies, that is, removing the migrant problem as much as possible without respecting people’s rights. And for this obviously organizations like the UN should express themselves clearly because no one should be landed in Libya or Tunisia and the treaties that are being attempted, such as the one in Albania, should not be considered a solution because people’s rights are not respected. .
In the Mediterranean there are about 10 ships from non-governmental solidarity organizations but MSF’s Geo Barents has rescued just over a third of the total number of those saved this year. Since the launch of the Geo Barents, in May 2021, and until November 2023, MSF has rescued 9,762 people (4,011 of them in 2023). “We can say that this year we have been the main actor at sea,” concluded Juan Matías Gil.
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