Roundtable on Trafficking in Persons at Sea
This week, EMERGENCY participated in the roundtable discussion, ‘Trafficking in persons, mixed movements and protection at sea.’
Organised by Siobhán Mullally, UN Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, the event focused on the challenges of identifying and protecting victims of trafficking during search and rescue operations at sea.
Growing restrictions on safe routes of access to Europe and the shrinking of humanitarian space in the Mediterranean are increasing the risks along what is already the world’s deadliest migration route. People on the move are forced to take ever more dangerous routes to reach safety, and are more likely to become victims of exploitation, abuse and trafficking.
Recent and anticipated developments in the Mediterranean – including ongoing obstructionism, the establishment of a Tunisian Search and Rescue Region, and the implementation of the Italy-Albania Protocol – only serve to further threaten the security of people on the move.
“The situation for human rights defenders is not any better,” commented Francesca Bocchini, EMERGENCY Advocacy Manager for Humanitarian Affairs and Migration. “The so-called Piantedosi decree has resulted in 21 administrative detentions of NGO vessels and had made multiple rescues almost impossible. This has been coupled with the assignment of distant ports only to humanitarian ships: half of the days Life Support has spent sailing were dedicated to reaching a distant port.”
In recent weeks, two shipwrecks in Italian waters left more than 70 people dead or missing, including at least 26 children. One of the boats capsized four days into the journey; it took at least three more days before the survivors were rescued. Some have reported being ignored by other boats at sea and being tricked by smugglers.¹
This week, Life Support rescued 47 people in distress in the central Mediterranean. The Italian authorities assigned the ship to disembark survivors in Livorno, a Tuscan port more than three days of sailing away.
“The law of the sea states that assistance must be provided to any person in distress at sea, regardless of their nationality or status,” Ms. Bocchini continued. “What migrants face instead is a failure to rescue and to protect, through a continuous, unjustified practice of non-assistance.”
Humanity must be placed at the centre of discussions of migration. EMERGENCY’s key recommendations for a human rights-based approach are to:
- Guarantee adequate protection services for early detection of vulnerabilities, concentrating disembarkations in the nearest available ports where these services can be permanently provided and enhanced;
- Acknowledge the important role of, and collaborate with, civil society organisations in search and rescue;
- Prevent collective expulsions, and protect victims of trafficking, by ceasing all actions and measures that support interceptions and pushbacks, in disregard of international human rights and refugee law;
- Invest in long-term aid programmes in countries of origin and transit, and guarantee legal channels for reception and inclusion in Europe.
For more information, read EMERGENCY’s latest report on search and rescue in the Mediterranean: