London. UK. As part of the Shoreline insurance podcast series, Human Rights at Sea along with Control Risks participated in the most recent episode covering the policy and legal issues raised by the recent Maersk Etienne case in the central Mediterranean during August 2020....
Tag: migrants
English Channel Migrant Movement and Human Rights at Sea
People move. Migration has always been a feature of the human condition and it will always be so. We cannot stop it and efforts to stem it will, in the long run, prove futile. Global population has ballooned in recent years and travel from region to region has increased. More and more people are...
Human Rights at Sea signs the Open letter to Secretary-General of IMO requesting the revocation of Libya’s SAR zone
Press Release Immediate Thursday 2 July 2020 LONDON.UK. Human Rights at Sea has today signed the Open Letter to the IMO Secretary General Mr Kitack Lim prepared by the civil liberties organisation Statewatch which was delivered on 29 June 2020 signed by hundreds of individuals and organisations. The letter openly calls on the Secretary-General to revoke the...
180 survivors on board the Ocean Viking without a designated port for disembarkation
Press Release Thursday 2 July 2020 HRAS. LONDON. The team of SOS MEDITERRANEE has rescued 180 people in four different operations in five days within the Maltese and Italian Search and Rescue Regions. The first two rescues occurred one week ago today. There are presently 180 survivors on the Ocean Viking, including 2 women,...
Haunting Testimony of Easter Weekend Deaths of Migrants & Human Rights Abuses
"Then the Medkon Lines ship passed close by but didn't stop. Three of us started screaming desperately, then jumped in the water and tried to reach the ship. They drowned in a minute." "They looked at us as if we weren't human beings." London.UK. Human Rights at Sea re-publishes a devastating translated witness-based testimony on...
Mediterranean Migrant Crisis: A Review of the Easter Weekend 10-12 April 2020
London. UK. In the days following Easter 2015, more than 1200 migrants and refugees lost their lives in the Central Mediterranean Sea across a handful of incidents spanning just one week. 800 people were reported missing from a single capsized boat, to this day one of the deadliest shipwrecks recorded in Mediterranean history....
Ocean Viking NGO ship rescues 274 people off Libya
Press Release Thursday 20 February 2020 London.UK. The Ocean Viking, a rescue ship operated by SOS MEDITERRANEE in partnership with Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) is waiting for a port to disembark 274 men, women and children, rescued over three rescue operations in the Central Mediterranean on February 18 and 19, 2020. Among them are...
Italian authorities allow the Ocean Viking to disembark 182 survivors in Italy
Central Mediterranean. On Sunday evening, the Ocean Viking, a humanitarian rescue ship chartered by SOS MEDITERRANEE and operated in partnership with Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), received instructions from the Maritime Rescue Coordination Center (MRCC) of Rome to proceed to Messina, Italy, to disembark 182 people rescued at sea....
Ocean Viking assigned a Place of Safety in Lampedusa Italy
Press Release 15th September 2019 London, UK. The Ocean Viking receives instruction to disembark the 82 rescued people in Lampedusa, Italy. First humanitarian search and rescue ship authorized to proceed to an Italian Place of Safety in 14 months. Paris, Marseille, September 14, 2019. On Saturday, September 14, the Ocean Viking was informed...
Norwegian Flag and owners step up to support new humanitarian rescue vessel in Mediterranean
Press Release 22 July 2019 London, UK. The Norwegian Flag and Norwegian owners have stepped up to provide a new civil society humanitarian rescue vessel the Viking Ocean to be operated in the central Mediterranean reflecting a renewed joint partnership between SOS MEDITERRANEE and Doctors Without Borders (MSF) for the rescue of persons in distress at...
UN experts condemn criminalisation of migrant rescues and threats to the independence of judiciary
Press Release 18th July 2019 Reproduced Article. GENEVA (18 July 2019) – UN human rights experts* have expressed grave concern over the detention and criminal proceedings in Italy against the German captain of the migrant rescue vessel Sea-Watch 3, and stated that the threats to the judge who ruled her release were unlawful. “Rescuing...
OP-ED: Sea-Watch Captain freed. A victory for humanitarian rescue at sea.
OP-ED 5 July 2019 Photo credit: Reuters Geneva, Switzerland. Captain Carola Rackete has now been freed, but the European political controversy continues. The judicial decision delivered a much needed victory for both common-sense and humanitarian acts of rescue at sea, thereby setting a precedent to be reflected on for all vessel Captains and policy makers...
HRAS deplores the arrest of Captain Carola Rackete
Press Release 29th June 2019 Photo Credit:Carola Rackete REUTERS/Guglielmo Mangiapane London. UK. The arrest in the early hours this morning in the Italian port of Lampedusa of Carola Rackete, the German captain of the Dutch-flagged humanitarian rescue vessel, Sea-Watch 3, who defied the imposed ban to disembark migrants saved from a rubber dinghy off the coast of...
Case filed against Greece in Strasbourg Court over Criminalising Search and Rescue
Press Release April 23rd 2019 London.UK. Not-for-profit organisation Team Humanity’s founder Salam Aldeen through the representation of the Global Legal Action Network, have decided to take the Greek government to the Strasbourg Court, to held them accountable for the legal ordeal they have put Salam Aldeen and his crew through since 14th January 2016,...
Migrants crossing The English Channel & Port Strategies
COMMENT 28 December 2018 London.UK. The recent increase in migrant crossings from France to England across one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, has prompted calls within the UK to increase sea patrols and prevent crossings. Nonetheless, the issue should not be unexpected for UK Border Force as the inevitability of exploitation of those fleeing war-torn...