In September of 2019, I was selected by my professor, Dr. Gemma Marolda, to conduct research on the current refugee crisis in the Central Mediterranean. We worked in partnership with the Ford Institute to deliver a report to the European Journal of Migration and Law. We entitled our work, “Conflict at Sea”.
From 2012 to 2018, images of boats in distress, overflowing with migrants in the Central Mediterranean flooded the front pages of Italian and European news media. The public quickly called on the Italian government to carry out search and rescue operations in order to save and provide refuge to those that were stranded at sea. But as time went on and Italy ushered in new leadership, popular support died out – and non-governmental actors had no other choice but to step up and fill the void. Today, great debate surrounding the role of NGOs in humanitarian intervention lingers. For this project, we set out to answer three central questions:
- What is the migration challenge Europe is facing in the Mediterranean? How have state and non-state actors responded to the challenge?
- How has the EU’s and Italy’s migration policies and practices changed since October 3, 2013 when 386 migrants tragically lost their lives at sea off the coast of Lampedusa?
- Why have NGOs rescuing migrants at sea been recently forbidden to dock at Italian ports? What has driven the EU and its member states to restrict NGO operations at sea?
To answer these questions, me and a team of students from the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA), sifted through official documents from the UNHCR, the European Union, Italy’s Ministry of Interior, and NGOs, as well as author’s interviews with Italian government officials, EU officials, and NGO representatives. We also collected data on the number of migrants that made it to Italian shores with the help of NGOs, but were ultimately turned away by the government.
Our research supports the belief that the delegitimization and prevention of NGO search-and-rescue operations complemented the current EU/Italian border security strategy. In other words, government officials across the EU intentionally framed the refugee crisis as a “security threat” in order to criminalize NGOs and keep foreigners out.
From this, we devised a policy solution that argued for an addendum to the Council Directive 2002/90/EC which explicitly decriminalizes humanitarian action.
