New Italian law makes it more difficult for humanitarian organizations to rescue migrants by boat

• Helene D’Haens

  Italy correspondent

In the dark, under a heavy downpour, the silhouette of the Geo Barents looms. The rescue ship from aid organization Doctors Without Borders has been sailing for five days since picking up a group of migrants who had left Libya in a smuggler’s boat in a choppy Mediterranean Sea.

It is an impressive machine, equipped to save more than 300 people per mission. “In the summer, we were in the most extreme case with more than 600 people on board,” explains Caroline Willemen of Doctors Without Borders.

Today, there are only 73 left.

This is the result of a new law introduced by the Italian government earlier this month. Long missions, during which humanitarian organizations successively rescue several groups of people, are now prohibited. NGOs must now return to a safe haven with each group of people individually. If they don’t, they risk a fine of 10,000 to 50,000 euros. “Very frustrating,” says Willemen. “Because we know more people are leaving.”

The right-wing government of Prime Minister Meloni, which took office last October, had already announced that it wanted to take tougher measures against aid organisations. According to the cabinet, they form one pull factor: an attractive force for migration.

“This applies not only to migrants themselves, who feel safer due to their presence at sea, but also to criminal organizations involved in illegal immigration, who adapt their working methods due to the presence of NGOs in their region”, explained Minister Piantedosi of Migration in the Senate.

The Italian government sees humanitarian organizations as taxis that pick up migrants near Libya and drop them off in Italy. But this reasoning is wrong. research. The Migration Policy Center of the European University Institute analyzed migration figures from 2014 to 2018 and found no significant relationship between the number of people crossing the Mediterranean and the presence of humanitarian ships. The weather conditions at sea seem much more important.

And yet, the Italian government complicates the work of humanitarian organizations. Not only are they allowed to carry out only one rescue at a time, but they must also drop off rescued migrants at increasingly northern ports. For example, this time the Geo Barents was assigned the port of Ancona in central Italy.

“If we had gone to a port in southern Italy after the rescue, it would have taken us a day and a half to get there,” says Willemen of Doctors Without Borders. “There are four days left in Ancona. Knowing that people have suffered extra days in difficult conditions on board, of course, makes us very angry.”

The EU has reached agreements on a fair distribution of asylum seekers. But the riot around the Ocean Viking rescue vessel late last year showed that solidarity between EU member states is hard to come by:

This new legislation will not change the numbers. Humanitarian organizations are responsible for 10-15% of the total number of migrants arriving in Italy by sea. Many more people do it on their own or are rescued by the Coast Guard.

What is the government’s motivation? By concentrating one of its first laws on migration, it wants above all to send a signal. To the Italians, for whom migration has been an important topic during the recent elections. But also to the European Union.

Last year, some 104,000 migrants reached Italy by sea: far more than the approximately 67,000 in 2021 and the 34,000 in 2020. Everything indicates that this number will increase this year. “Alone we cannot cope with an influx of such unmanageable magnitude,” Prime Minister Meloni said at a meeting on migration last month.

Italy hopes for a new European mechanism for the redistribution of asylum seekers as soon as possible and therefore wishes to keep migration at the top of the political agenda. This is now at the expense of humanitarian organizations and their rescue operations. “The role of NGOs in the number of people arriving is completely exaggerated for political reasons”, thinks Willemen.

Médecins Sans Frontières is considering legal action against the new law. In any case, it is clear that in the end, the organization will not comply. “Since the decree came into force, we have not had to leave boats. But if we know people in need, the captain must help. And that is what we will continue to do, even at the risk of fines and prosecution.