EMERGENCY Speaks at OHCHR Panel: “Human Rights of Migrants”
On 15 May 2024, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights hosted an intersessional panel to discuss ongoing human rights violations experienced by migrants in transit. Every year, thousands of migrants flee violence and economic and humanitarian crises only to be subjected to abuse, exploitation, torture and gender-based violence while in transit, at borders, at destinations.
Since 2014, over 29,000 people have died or disappeared while crossing the Mediterranean. In 2023, nearly 2,500 people died along the central Mediterranean route alone: the deadliest migration route in the world.
“Over this route, the right to life and human rights are not ensured, while humanitarian organisations are criminalised,” commented Francesca Bocchini, EMERGENCY Advocacy Manager for Humanitarian Affairs and Migration and panellist during the event. “Despite over 29,000 victims, Europe […] treats it as a matter of defence and border security. There is no humanitarian space.”
The panel event, attended by more than 150 representatives from civil society organisations, UN Member States, UN agencies and academia, also sought to understand best practices for protecting migrants in transit and defending their human rights.
Among EMERGENCY’s key recommendations were to defend humanitarian space in the Mediterranean, revoking laws that criminalise the work of NGOs; to launch an EU-led search and rescue mission; and to cease all measures and agreements that support interceptions, pushbacks and collective expulsions, which put migrants at risk of becoming victims of human trafficking and make Europe complicit in serious human rights violations.
We must “place the protection of lives at sea at the centre of every decision concerning the Mediterranean route,” concluded Francesca Bocchini.
EMERGENCY provides migrants with care and advocates for human rights-based migration policies, operating free outpatient clinics with socio-medical support for vulnerable people in Italy since 2006, providing life-saving assistance on board humanitarian search and rescue ships in the Mediterranean from 2016 to 2022, and conducting its own search and rescue operations since 2022.
For more information about EMERGENCY’s activities in the central Mediterranean, including testimonies from migrants in transit and key recommendations for promoting a human rights-based approach to migration, read our latest report, “Saving Lives in the Abandoned Sea: One Year of Life Support.”
The panel “Human rights of migrants: avenues to prevent and address human rights violations and abuses against migrants in transit and to ensure access to justice for victims and their family members” was organised by OHCHR and sponsored by the Permanent Mission of Mexico in Geneva.