SOS MEDITERRANEE, a global maritime and humanitarian group, announced on Friday that its affiliated humanitarian ship Ocean Viking rescued 135 individuals, together with a pregnant ladies and eight youngsters, from an overcrowded double-decker boat within the Maltese search and rescue area. It said that the ship was compelled to navigate to a distant port at Ancona, Italy, with a complete of 359 survivors on board. The NGO added that “such extended navigation [should] by no means be imposed on individuals rescued at sea.”
The rescue and subsequent diversion to a distant port come as Italy tightens its crackdown on migrants and the nation’s robust migration insurance policies centered on deterrence appeal to extreme worldwide condemnations.
In Might 2023, the Italian authorities launched an emergency law aimed toward limiting the rights of people that “illegally” arrive on its shores, which Human Rights Watch (HRW) criticized for its “devastating impression on migrants’ rights, together with their skill to hunt safety, entry truthful asylum procedures, and luxuriate in freedom of motion.” This regulation adopted a January 2023 decree which instructed search and rescue vessels to go to the port allotted by Italy instantly after every rescue, prohibiting them from finishing up a number of consecutive rescue operations. HRW condemned this, stating:
The rule, which doesn’t apply to other forms of vessels, breaches the responsibility on all captains to provide rapid help to individuals in misery below a number of worldwide regulation provisions, together with the UN Conference on the Regulation of the Sea, the Worldwide Conference for the Security of Life at Sea, the Palermo Protocol towards the Smuggling of Migrants, and EU regulation.
Furthermore, Italy reached a controversial agreement with Albania to ascertain migrant processing facilities below Italian jurisdiction in Albania, permitting Italy to ship migrants rescued by Italian ships at sea to Albania. The deal was criticized by worldwide organizations such because the Worldwide Rescue Committee (IRC), who warned it will “[push] individuals onto ever extra harmful routes in the hunt for security.” Amnesty Worldwide mentioned it’s “unworkable, dangerous and illegal,” urging authorities to reject the settlement.
UpRights, a basis based mostly in The Hague, launched a report with Italian NGO StraLi in February, the place it highlighted the failings of the Italian authorities in defending migrants’ human rights, specializing in the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Italy and Libya, signed in 2017 and renewed in February 2023. The report pressured that “the absence of human rights provisions within the framework of the settlement drastically impacted the fundamental human rights of susceptible individuals, with migrants intercepted at sea going through mistreatment, together with arbitrary arrest, torture, inhuman remedy, and sexual violence.”
