Italy's Counter-Migration Laws Force MSF to End Rescue Vessel Ops

 

Italy's counter-migration policies have forced the migrant rescue vessel Geo Barents to leave the Central Mediterranean route, operator Doctors Without Borders (MSF) confirmed Friday. 

MSF and its peer NGOs have operated a small fleet of rescue vessels in the central Mediterranean for years, finding unseaworthy migrant craft and saving the occupants before or during a sinking. Their stated mission is to reduce the route's fatality rate and to save the migrants from further abuse in Libya's notorious detention centers. In Italy, however, these rescue NGOs are often viewed as facilitators of migration, as the rescue vessels deliver hundreds of foreign nationals to Italian shores every time they dock. 

In January 2023, the Italian Parliament passed a controversial counter-migration law sponsored by the government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. The law requires Good Samaritan rescue vessels to head to port immediately after each rescue, foregoing additional rescues even if they are in the immediate vicinity of people in distress. The law also allows authorities to designate faraway ports for disembarkation, effectively taking each rescue vessel off-station for days by making it transit from the Libyan EEZ to northern Italy after each rescue. The captains and NGOs are liable for fines of up to $50,000 and vessel impoundment for violations. Italy has vigorously enforced these requirements, repeatedly detaining rescue vessels for weeks at a time. 

For the past year, rescue NGOs have complained that Italy's counter-migration measures - along with port state detentions for alleged deficiencies - have impeded their work. The NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which operates the rescue vessel Geo Barents, reported Friday that it will have to withdraw from its at-sea rescue mission because of the impact of repeated detentions. 

"Italian laws and policies have made it impossible to continue with the current operational model," MSF confirmed. 

In the past two years, Geo Barents has been detained four times and has spent a total of 160 days held in port, MSF reported. When not in port, the ship has spent about half of its operating hours transiting to and from officially-designated ports in northern Italy, more than 800 nautical miles away from the rescue zone.

MSF says that it has rescued about 94,000 people in the Mediterranean since 2015, including about 12,700 people in 190 operations aboard Geo Barents. The NGO's leaders say that they will look for ways to return to this mission in the future, but for now they are suspending rescue operations. 

"After careful consideration, we have come to the conclusion that it is untenable to operate the Geo Barents under such absurd and senseless Italian laws and policies," says Juan Matias Gil, MSF search and rescue representative. "The rescue capacity of humanitarian vessels is significantly under-utilized and actively undermined by the Italian authorities."