Ten years of maritime resistance in the Mediterranean Sea

European states may resent civilian rescuers helping migrant boats in distress in the Mediterranean, but they are here to stay.

Earlier this month, when Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her interior minister, Matteo Piantedosi, travelled to Libya to participate in the Trans-Mediterranean Migration Forum in Tripoli, the search and rescue NGO Sea-Watch wished them “all the worst”. In a post on X, the organisation said the “dystopian” Libyan-Italian collaboration on border control would further increase deaths of people on the move across the Mediterranean.

In response, Meloni denounced Sea-Watch for not speaking out against smugglers whom she blamed for the deaths of thousands of people in the Mediterranean and declared that she travelled to Libya “to stop human trafficking, illegal immigration and deaths at sea”.

This exchange between Meloni and Sea-Watch highlights the continuously hostile attitude of European officials towards civilian sea rescuers. Clearly, their presence in the Mediterranean Sea remains a conflictual political issue despite a whole decade of successful rescues.

Next month will mark 10 years since the first nongovernmental rescue organisation entered the central Mediterranean in search of migrant boats in distress. In this decade, a large network of solidarity actors has evolved in the central Mediterranean, made up of about two dozen organisations and groups.

Besides the many rescue NGOs, there is Alarm Phone, an activist emergency hotline launched in 2014 that has assisted more than 7,000 boats in distress so far. In 2017, civil aircraft joined the “civil fleet” to monitor the sea from above and guide rescue ships to boats in distress.

In 2019, a coalition of civil society actors known as the Civil Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre emerged to respond to the failure of state-run Maritime Rescue Coordination Centres to coordinate rescues of migrant boats effectively and in accordance with maritime laws.

When NGO rescuers first came onto the scene, there were some concerns that their rescue activities would offer European Union member states a welcome excuse to reduce their own rescue efforts and “outsource” them to nongovernmental organisations. “We don’t want to do the job of states” was a sentiment frequently expressed by civilian rescuers in the early years of engagement.

Now, a decade later, it seems safe to say that EU member states, and in particular the Italian government, are anything but happy that NGOs remain present in the Mediterranean Sea. Over the years, especially from 2017 on, they have done what they can to criminalise civilian rescuers, block them at harbours or delay their rescue activities. Through smear campaigns and culture wars, NGO rescuers have been vilified, accused of being “taxi services”, “smugglers” or “pull factors” for people on the move, and even cynically been blamed for migrant deaths.

NGOs have fought back against criminalisation, resisted cooptation and, until today, remain a political problem for many EU member states. Of course, this is due to their relentless rescue efforts, which lead to the disembarkation of migrants in Europe – people whom EU policymakers and politicians like Meloni would much rather see intercepted and returned to their places of departure, even at the cost of their incarceration in torture camps.

Rescue NGOs also remain a problem for EU member states because they are critical in exposing grave human rights violations that involve EU actors and their North African allies. It is only due to this unwanted presence that innumerable cases of nonassistance of migrant boats as well as violent or even deadly pushbacks and interception practices have become publicly known. Nongovernmental rescuers thus remain a thorn in the side of EU governments and institutions because they reveal what is sought to be hidden away: Europe’s systematic border crimes.

While we should celebrate the resilience of the rescuers in the face of continuous harassment by state authorities, the 10th anniversary of their civil engagement in the Mediterranean should give us pause. That we still desperately need nonstate actors to do the heavy and often traumatic task of sea rescue is an indictment of Europe’s failure. Instead of opening safe alternatives to sea migration, the European Union has insisted on deterrence, which has resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of lives over the past 10 years.

At the same time, we can also safely conclude that a decade of intensified EU border militarisation in the Mediterranean has failed to stop sea crossings. More than 2.5 million people have crossed maritime borders and entered the EU over the past 10 years. That NGO rescuers remain in demand thus also demonstrates the resilience of migration itself.

Meloni herself has failed to accomplish her own pledges on migration. When she came to office two years ago, she promised to impose a “naval blockade” in the Mediterranean to prevent migrant crossings. In 2023, levels of crossings reached those of the mid-2010s with 157,651 people arriving in Italy. Meanwhile, despite all threats and attempts to block them, more than 20 rescue assets are still sailing the sea in search of boats in distress.

If the evidence of the past decade of EU migration policy failure is anything to go by, Meloni’s trip to Tripoli won’t change much either. Migration across the sea will continue, and NGO rescuers will remain a desperately needed presence along Europe’s deadly borders.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.