During the electoral campaign at the end of the summer, Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the far-right Italian party Fratelli d’Italia had revived the idea of a naval blockade to stop boats intervening at sea to save migrants. A solution that is inapplicable in practice, but pays off in terms of political communication. Now installed at the head of the country, the government of Mme Meloni nevertheless carried out his promise to regulate migratory flows with a measure that resembles a declaration of war on NGOs engaged in the rescue of migrants. On January 3, a new “code of conduct” for humanitarian ships came into effect in the form of a decree.
Among the new features of this text is the end of “simultaneous” relief operations. Once a port of disembarkation has been allocated by the Italian authorities to a vessel, it must be reached without delay so that the rescue operation can be completed. No more question now, unless there is a special request from the Italian authorities, that a boat which has just picked up refugees diverts its route towards another boat in distress until it has touched land. In short, the new regulations of the Ministry of the Interior ratify a shift which constitutes a clear threat to the law of the sea and the international conventions to which Italy is a signatory.
This security tightening has provoked indignation and concern among NGOs “Rather than assigning us a clear role to save lives at sea, this decree attempts to limit our scope of action without offering any alternative solution”, says Juan Matias Gil, head of rescue operations at sea for Doctors Without Borders (MSF). “We can expect a decline in our rescue operation capabilities, and more deaths to come. »
NGOs disturb
Another novelty, the government now requires NGOs to collect asylum applications on board rescue ships, so that the administrative procedure is taken care of by the country whose flag the ships are flying. A procedure that promises many legal headaches. If we follow the new standards, who will prevent Somali migrants from seeking asylum in Rome if they are picked up by an Italian merchant ship off the coast of Mogadishu?
The fear of “the call of air”, usual rhetoric from members of the executive and the majority to justify the restrictions, has again been put forward by politicians convinced that humanitarian ships are “sea taxi”. However, statistics show the opposite: of the nearly 100,000 migrants who landed on the Italian coasts in 2022, barely more than 10% were picked up by NGOs.
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