The connection between Search and Rescue (SAR) operations and migratory movements has been heavily debated for the last few years. Some have argued that the existence of SAR operations allows smugglers to reassure people on the move about the safety of sea crossings, thus contributing to increased migration as a so-called “pull factor”. Although it is important to consider the impact of NGO SAR efforts, this argument is largely based on misinformation and a politically motivated desire to criminalise humanitarian work. In the ninth instalment of our Info Series, we will unpack the role that SAR operations play in the overall migration picture, explain why humanitarian efforts are not encouraging people to make dangerous crossings, and show why NGOs are being targeted, rather than applauded, for their life-saving rescue work.
Search and Rescue (SAR) operations locate people who are in distress, usually at sea, and render assistance to them. According to the European Commission, SAR obligations apply “regardless of the nationality or status of such a person or the circumstances in which that person is found”. The rescue aspect of SAR involves retrieving persons from boats in distress, providing them with medical and other assistance, and delivering them to safety. It is important to note that state authorities do not conduct SAR operations as an act of goodwill. Both the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue affirm that it is the duty of states to engage in SAR, and oblige captains of all boats at sea to assist people in distress.
Most NGO-run SAR operations have been present in the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas from 2015 onwards. This followed the end of the Italian state-run SAR operation “Mare Nostrum”, which saved more than 155,000 people in its year of active operation. Mare Nostrum was replaced by the Frontex operation “Triton'' in 2014, which shifted the focus from SAR to border management and security, and operated at almost a third of the budget. This significant reduction in capacity for state-run SAR operations also coincided with an increase in people on the move attempting dangerous sea crossings, due to intensifying conflicts and economic instability affecting regions of the African continent and Southwest Asia*. Many SAR NGOs were established in response to the colossal human suffering occurring on these dangerous routes, and today they continue to fill a vast gap in support from the EU and its member states. Rather than acknowledge the humanitarian work these organisations are doing in their stead, politicians and state-actors have blamed them for acting as a “pull factor” for irregular migration, for “encouraging” people to make dangerous crossings, and “colluding” with smugglers and criminal gangs.
Two coinciding trends, an increase in rescue capacities and an increase in arrival numbers, largely sparked the debate about whether SAR operations act as a “pull factor”. The increase in rescue capacities largely centres around the Mare Nostrum operation, a project established by Italy in response to a huge and devastating shipwreck off the coast of Lampedusa in 2013, in which over 350 people lost their lives. Italy also held a state funeral and announced a national day of mourning for the victims. Political leaders across the EU were shocked by the event, calling it a “human tragedy”.
However, as rescue capacities expanded, arrival numbers also increased, and some argued that there was a correlation between the two. According to a blog by the Oxford University Faculty of Law, “the juxtaposition of increased rescue efforts and increased migrant arrivals quickly led to conclusions that the first led to the second”. As governmental agencies shifted their focus from saving lives to border management, NGOs began to fill the gap with their own SAR operations. In 2017, the EU’s newly transformed ‘European Border and Coast Guard Agency’, Frontex, began accusing NGOs and their SAR operations of encouraging dangerous crossing and “colluding” with smugglers; thereby using the “pull factor argument” against SAR.
The language of this argument remains present in the everyday way we talk and read about the situation today. For instance, the Wikipedia page for the Mare Nostrum operation describes the mission as having “brought” migrants to Europe, despite it being a rescue mission responding to a humanitarian emergency in the Mediterranean.
In-depth research and data analysis has proven that there is no causal link: SAR operations do not create a pull factor for crossings.
“Blaming the Rescuers”, a 2017 report by the Forensic Oceanography department at Goldsmiths, University of London, found:
“...the increased crossings recorded in 2016 were not the product of the supposed “pull-factor” constituted by SAR NGOs, but were a continuation of a trend that had already begun independently of the presence of SAR NGOs.”
The report also found that the shipwrecks of April 12 and 18, 2015, in which over 1,500 people lost their lives, were even a “result” of the decreased SAR operations in the Mediterranean, particularly the end of the Italian Mare Nostrum operation in 2014. The President of the European Commission conceded in April 2015 that ending the Mare Nostrum operation had been a “serious mistake”, which “cost human lives”.
In conclusion, the Goldsmiths report stated that “deeper regional economic and political dynamics were leading to increased migration to and from Libya prior to SAR NGOs’ deployment.” In other words, there was no pull factor, and SAR operations were not encouraging people to cross the Mediterranean - they were saving people’s lives.
Non-governmental SAR workers have not only been falsely criticised - many have been criminally charged for their work. In 2019, the captain of a rescue ship, Carola Rackete, was arrested by Italian authorities for docking in the port of Lampedusa after rescuing 42 people in distress at sea. Pia Klemp, captain of the rescue ship Iuventa, faces 20 years in prison after being accused by Italy of aiding and abetting illegal migration. Sarah Mardini and Sean Binder, two volunteers engaged with rescue work on Lesvos island, spent over 100 days in prison in Greece in 2018 under trumped up charges, and face up to 25 years behind bars. These criminalisation campaigns have been found to be largely baseless and politically motivated. While many of those charged still wait to hear their fate, Carola Rackete won her case in Italy’s highest court in February 2020: the judge stated that she acted in a “justified” manner and upheld her rescue duty, and therefore rejected the plea for her criminal charge.
As well as criminal charges, the majority of NGO SAR ships across Europe have seen themselves tied up in excessive administrative proceedings, “mandatory maintenance work” and vessel seizures. These measures have seen EU governments wielding their power in order to intentionally block SAR boats from doing their life saving work for a variety of politically motivated reasons. See this map for an overview of the operations which have been stalled during the period from 2015 to 2020. Created by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, the map illustrates how, out of 15 assets (including both SAR ships and aircraft used for monitoring purposes), only two were operational in 2020.
Covid-19 has also been used as an “excuse” for governments to exercise greater powers in order to prevent NGO SAR operations, with states such as Germany calling for NGOs to cease SAR activities last year due to the pandemic. The Maltese and Italian authorities both cited the pandemic as a justification for not responding to distress calls with their coastguards last year. While border controls have been an essential part of the global pandemic response, they are not an excuse for dodging basic human rights commitments and abandoning boats in distress.
Humanitarian workers operating both at sea and on land are facing an increasingly hostile environment, with criminalisation campaigns ramping up in recent years alongside far-right agendas and anti-immigrant sentiments. From Greece to the US to Sudan, aid workers are finding themselves more and more restricted by authorities. This is not due to changes in the law, but rather, changes in political attitudes.
Aid work has become politically controversial, partly because it directly opposes the increasingly hostile policies that are being practiced by many governments globally. It has also become politically convenient to blame aid workers, a strategy which takes the focus away from the inaction and neglect of authorities and instead alleges that non-governmental actors and criminal groups are at fault for deaths and suffering occurring at borders.
In 2014, the EU and member states decreased their SAR capacities; this led to an increase in deaths at sea. Although Frontex states that SAR is an obligatory part of its operations, there is substantial evidence alleging their collaboration and involvement with the Hellenic Coast Guard in illegal pushbacks and human rights violations of people in distress at sea. Many of these operations have even ironically seen rescue equipment used for their exact opposite purposes, with the Hellenic Coast Guard illegally expelling vulnerable people by forcing them onto non-navigable life-rafts and leaving them adrift at sea.
In reality, the numbers of asylum seekers arriving in the EU have not been at “crisis” level since 2015/ 2016. In spite of this, refugee camps are still overcrowded, squalid and rife with violence. Homelessness among refugees in Greece is so endemic that in April, a German court ruled against the deportation of two Syrian sisters to Greece because of the potential risk to them. More than 2,000 deaths of people on the move have been linked to illegal pushbacks carried out by member states. All this, despite around €3bn in EU funds having been allocated to Greece in order to help manage the situation between 2015 and 2020. The reality is a bleak picture of neglect, deliberate inaction and violent repression on the part of the EU and its member states, occurring on a systemic scale.
Tragically, thousands of deaths in the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas could have been avoided if both governmental and non-governmental SAR operations were present. An investigation by the Associated Press in April this year found that Italy, Malta and Libya were too slow to react to a shipwreck earlier that same month, in which up to 130 people are believed to have perished. Despite people on board the sinking boat making several distress calls to authorities, NGOs in touch with them say they “never received a response” from Maltese authorities, that Italy only responded four hours later with the suggestion that they contact the “competent authorities''. Libya finally responded to the call, sending one vessel after five hours of silence. According to SOS Méditerranée, whose ship, Ocean Viking, was present at the scene the next day, “states abandon their responsibility to coordinate search and rescue operations'', culminating in “deliberate inaction”.
Labelling SAR operations as a pull factor is ultimately factually inaccurate and based on unsubstantial evidence. The “pull factor” argument also fails to frame the debate appropriately. It completely ignores the reality of migration today, in which most people on the move are motivated to move because of push factors, rather than supposed pull factors. The term “push factors” entails all the potential reasons and contexts in the country of origin which may cause a person to leave their home. Push factors can include persecution, armed conflict, natural disasters or extreme poverty. Migratory movements are a natural phenomenon, but they increase when extreme circumstances occur, making a person’s life unliveable. And while pull factors can potentially change the direction of migratory movements, there is no evidence for them being a reason for migration in the first place.
Talking about pull factors also shifts the focus away from the humanitarian crises that cause migratory movements and towards an imagined “migration crisis”. In our 8th Info Series blog, we addressed how the “migration crisis” is a misleading label, which conveniently detracts from the real humanitarian crisis and crisis of policy occurring at EU borders. The label “migration crisis” has helped to inaccurately frame the situation as an “invasion” of illegal immigrants set on overwhelming Western Europe - aided and abetted by far-left aid and rescue organisations and their apparent connections to smuggling rings.
Since the beginning of this year, 685 people on the move have been reported dead in the Mediterranean. Almost five people are dying every day because European governments are not fulfilling their Search and Rescue duties. The numbers are also likely to be even higher than this, since many more deaths are going unrecorded. Calling SAR a pull factor has led to it becoming associated with pro-immigrant, socially liberal activism and leftist agendas, rather than being considered as the necessary humanitarian work that it is, with governments obliged by law to carry it out. While civil society actors should be applauded for stepping up to fill the gap of neglect and inaction by state actors, NGOs have neither the capacity nor the long-term stability to carry out SAR operations permanently. Nor are they able to carry out their life saving work when they continue to be criminalised for their work or deliberately tied up in bureaucratic processes.
Regardless of our political convictions, we should all agree that those in need - people fleeing from war, persecution, climate disasters and extreme poverty - must be protected and rescued when they are in distress at sea. That regardless of who they are, all human beings should be rescued from life threatening conditions at sea. This is a basic principle, and any discussion of SAR as a supposed “pull factor” must be secondary to that. We have seen, through past efforts to promote SAR, that the loss of life is not - and should not be - inevitable. The Mediterranean has been termed the “sea of blood” by the United Nations, and the “Mediterranean graveyard” by organisation Hope not Hate. Yet the death toll is avoidable. As the UN Refugee Agency and International Organization for Migration recently wrote in a press release:
“UNHCR and IOM reiterate their call on the international community to take urgent steps to end avoidable loss of lives at sea. This includes the reactivation of search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean, enhanced coordination with all rescue actors, ending returns to unsafe ports, and establishing a safe and predictable disembarkation mechanism.”
*We use the geographical term “Southwest Asia” rather than “Middle East”, which has colonial, Eurocentric and Orientalist origins. Read more about the efforts to decolonise this terminology here.
Why NGOs Have Stopped Search and Rescue Operations
Criminalising search and rescue activities can only lead to more deaths in the Mediterranean
The creeping criminalisation of humanitarian aid
How rescuing drowning migrants became a crime
The connection between Search and Rescue (SAR) operations and migratory movements has been heavily debated for the last few years. Some have argued that the existence of SAR operations allows smugglers to reassure people on the move about the safety of sea crossings, thus contributing to increased migration as a so-called “pull factor”. Although it is important to consider the impact of NGO SAR efforts, this argument is largely based on misinformation and a politically motivated desire to criminalise humanitarian work. In the ninth instalment of our Info Series, we will unpack the role that SAR operations play in the overall migration picture, explain why humanitarian efforts are not encouraging people to make dangerous crossings, and show why NGOs are being targeted, rather than applauded, for their life-saving rescue work.
Search and Rescue (SAR) operations locate people who are in distress, usually at sea, and render assistance to them. According to the European Commission, SAR obligations apply “regardless of the nationality or status of such a person or the circumstances in which that person is found”. The rescue aspect of SAR involves retrieving persons from boats in distress, providing them with medical and other assistance, and delivering them to safety. It is important to note that state authorities do not conduct SAR operations as an act of goodwill. Both the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue affirm that it is the duty of states to engage in SAR, and oblige captains of all boats at sea to assist people in distress.
Most NGO-run SAR operations have been present in the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas from 2015 onwards. This followed the end of the Italian state-run SAR operation “Mare Nostrum”, which saved more than 155,000 people in its year of active operation. Mare Nostrum was replaced by the Frontex operation “Triton'' in 2014, which shifted the focus from SAR to border management and security, and operated at almost a third of the budget. This significant reduction in capacity for state-run SAR operations also coincided with an increase in people on the move attempting dangerous sea crossings, due to intensifying conflicts and economic instability affecting regions of the African continent and Southwest Asia*. Many SAR NGOs were established in response to the colossal human suffering occurring on these dangerous routes, and today they continue to fill a vast gap in support from the EU and its member states. Rather than acknowledge the humanitarian work these organisations are doing in their stead, politicians and state-actors have blamed them for acting as a “pull factor” for irregular migration, for “encouraging” people to make dangerous crossings, and “colluding” with smugglers and criminal gangs.
Two coinciding trends, an increase in rescue capacities and an increase in arrival numbers, largely sparked the debate about whether SAR operations act as a “pull factor”. The increase in rescue capacities largely centres around the Mare Nostrum operation, a project established by Italy in response to a huge and devastating shipwreck off the coast of Lampedusa in 2013, in which over 350 people lost their lives. Italy also held a state funeral and announced a national day of mourning for the victims. Political leaders across the EU were shocked by the event, calling it a “human tragedy”.
However, as rescue capacities expanded, arrival numbers also increased, and some argued that there was a correlation between the two. According to a blog by the Oxford University Faculty of Law, “the juxtaposition of increased rescue efforts and increased migrant arrivals quickly led to conclusions that the first led to the second”. As governmental agencies shifted their focus from saving lives to border management, NGOs began to fill the gap with their own SAR operations. In 2017, the EU’s newly transformed ‘European Border and Coast Guard Agency’, Frontex, began accusing NGOs and their SAR operations of encouraging dangerous crossing and “colluding” with smugglers; thereby using the “pull factor argument” against SAR.
The language of this argument remains present in the everyday way we talk and read about the situation today. For instance, the Wikipedia page for the Mare Nostrum operation describes the mission as having “brought” migrants to Europe, despite it being a rescue mission responding to a humanitarian emergency in the Mediterranean.
In-depth research and data analysis has proven that there is no causal link: SAR operations do not create a pull factor for crossings.
“Blaming the Rescuers”, a 2017 report by the Forensic Oceanography department at Goldsmiths, University of London, found:
“...the increased crossings recorded in 2016 were not the product of the supposed “pull-factor” constituted by SAR NGOs, but were a continuation of a trend that had already begun independently of the presence of SAR NGOs.”
The report also found that the shipwrecks of April 12 and 18, 2015, in which over 1,500 people lost their lives, were even a “result” of the decreased SAR operations in the Mediterranean, particularly the end of the Italian Mare Nostrum operation in 2014. The President of the European Commission conceded in April 2015 that ending the Mare Nostrum operation had been a “serious mistake”, which “cost human lives”.
In conclusion, the Goldsmiths report stated that “deeper regional economic and political dynamics were leading to increased migration to and from Libya prior to SAR NGOs’ deployment.” In other words, there was no pull factor, and SAR operations were not encouraging people to cross the Mediterranean - they were saving people’s lives.
Non-governmental SAR workers have not only been falsely criticised - many have been criminally charged for their work. In 2019, the captain of a rescue ship, Carola Rackete, was arrested by Italian authorities for docking in the port of Lampedusa after rescuing 42 people in distress at sea. Pia Klemp, captain of the rescue ship Iuventa, faces 20 years in prison after being accused by Italy of aiding and abetting illegal migration. Sarah Mardini and Sean Binder, two volunteers engaged with rescue work on Lesvos island, spent over 100 days in prison in Greece in 2018 under trumped up charges, and face up to 25 years behind bars. These criminalisation campaigns have been found to be largely baseless and politically motivated. While many of those charged still wait to hear their fate, Carola Rackete won her case in Italy’s highest court in February 2020: the judge stated that she acted in a “justified” manner and upheld her rescue duty, and therefore rejected the plea for her criminal charge.
As well as criminal charges, the majority of NGO SAR ships across Europe have seen themselves tied up in excessive administrative proceedings, “mandatory maintenance work” and vessel seizures. These measures have seen EU governments wielding their power in order to intentionally block SAR boats from doing their life saving work for a variety of politically motivated reasons. See this map for an overview of the operations which have been stalled during the period from 2015 to 2020. Created by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, the map illustrates how, out of 15 assets (including both SAR ships and aircraft used for monitoring purposes), only two were operational in 2020.
Covid-19 has also been used as an “excuse” for governments to exercise greater powers in order to prevent NGO SAR operations, with states such as Germany calling for NGOs to cease SAR activities last year due to the pandemic. The Maltese and Italian authorities both cited the pandemic as a justification for not responding to distress calls with their coastguards last year. While border controls have been an essential part of the global pandemic response, they are not an excuse for dodging basic human rights commitments and abandoning boats in distress.
Humanitarian workers operating both at sea and on land are facing an increasingly hostile environment, with criminalisation campaigns ramping up in recent years alongside far-right agendas and anti-immigrant sentiments. From Greece to the US to Sudan, aid workers are finding themselves more and more restricted by authorities. This is not due to changes in the law, but rather, changes in political attitudes.
Aid work has become politically controversial, partly because it directly opposes the increasingly hostile policies that are being practiced by many governments globally. It has also become politically convenient to blame aid workers, a strategy which takes the focus away from the inaction and neglect of authorities and instead alleges that non-governmental actors and criminal groups are at fault for deaths and suffering occurring at borders.
In 2014, the EU and member states decreased their SAR capacities; this led to an increase in deaths at sea. Although Frontex states that SAR is an obligatory part of its operations, there is substantial evidence alleging their collaboration and involvement with the Hellenic Coast Guard in illegal pushbacks and human rights violations of people in distress at sea. Many of these operations have even ironically seen rescue equipment used for their exact opposite purposes, with the Hellenic Coast Guard illegally expelling vulnerable people by forcing them onto non-navigable life-rafts and leaving them adrift at sea.
In reality, the numbers of asylum seekers arriving in the EU have not been at “crisis” level since 2015/ 2016. In spite of this, refugee camps are still overcrowded, squalid and rife with violence. Homelessness among refugees in Greece is so endemic that in April, a German court ruled against the deportation of two Syrian sisters to Greece because of the potential risk to them. More than 2,000 deaths of people on the move have been linked to illegal pushbacks carried out by member states. All this, despite around €3bn in EU funds having been allocated to Greece in order to help manage the situation between 2015 and 2020. The reality is a bleak picture of neglect, deliberate inaction and violent repression on the part of the EU and its member states, occurring on a systemic scale.
Tragically, thousands of deaths in the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas could have been avoided if both governmental and non-governmental SAR operations were present. An investigation by the Associated Press in April this year found that Italy, Malta and Libya were too slow to react to a shipwreck earlier that same month, in which up to 130 people are believed to have perished. Despite people on board the sinking boat making several distress calls to authorities, NGOs in touch with them say they “never received a response” from Maltese authorities, that Italy only responded four hours later with the suggestion that they contact the “competent authorities''. Libya finally responded to the call, sending one vessel after five hours of silence. According to SOS Méditerranée, whose ship, Ocean Viking, was present at the scene the next day, “states abandon their responsibility to coordinate search and rescue operations'', culminating in “deliberate inaction”.
Labelling SAR operations as a pull factor is ultimately factually inaccurate and based on unsubstantial evidence. The “pull factor” argument also fails to frame the debate appropriately. It completely ignores the reality of migration today, in which most people on the move are motivated to move because of push factors, rather than supposed pull factors. The term “push factors” entails all the potential reasons and contexts in the country of origin which may cause a person to leave their home. Push factors can include persecution, armed conflict, natural disasters or extreme poverty. Migratory movements are a natural phenomenon, but they increase when extreme circumstances occur, making a person’s life unliveable. And while pull factors can potentially change the direction of migratory movements, there is no evidence for them being a reason for migration in the first place.
Talking about pull factors also shifts the focus away from the humanitarian crises that cause migratory movements and towards an imagined “migration crisis”. In our 8th Info Series blog, we addressed how the “migration crisis” is a misleading label, which conveniently detracts from the real humanitarian crisis and crisis of policy occurring at EU borders. The label “migration crisis” has helped to inaccurately frame the situation as an “invasion” of illegal immigrants set on overwhelming Western Europe - aided and abetted by far-left aid and rescue organisations and their apparent connections to smuggling rings.
Since the beginning of this year, 685 people on the move have been reported dead in the Mediterranean. Almost five people are dying every day because European governments are not fulfilling their Search and Rescue duties. The numbers are also likely to be even higher than this, since many more deaths are going unrecorded. Calling SAR a pull factor has led to it becoming associated with pro-immigrant, socially liberal activism and leftist agendas, rather than being considered as the necessary humanitarian work that it is, with governments obliged by law to carry it out. While civil society actors should be applauded for stepping up to fill the gap of neglect and inaction by state actors, NGOs have neither the capacity nor the long-term stability to carry out SAR operations permanently. Nor are they able to carry out their life saving work when they continue to be criminalised for their work or deliberately tied up in bureaucratic processes.
Regardless of our political convictions, we should all agree that those in need - people fleeing from war, persecution, climate disasters and extreme poverty - must be protected and rescued when they are in distress at sea. That regardless of who they are, all human beings should be rescued from life threatening conditions at sea. This is a basic principle, and any discussion of SAR as a supposed “pull factor” must be secondary to that. We have seen, through past efforts to promote SAR, that the loss of life is not - and should not be - inevitable. The Mediterranean has been termed the “sea of blood” by the United Nations, and the “Mediterranean graveyard” by organisation Hope not Hate. Yet the death toll is avoidable. As the UN Refugee Agency and International Organization for Migration recently wrote in a press release:
“UNHCR and IOM reiterate their call on the international community to take urgent steps to end avoidable loss of lives at sea. This includes the reactivation of search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean, enhanced coordination with all rescue actors, ending returns to unsafe ports, and establishing a safe and predictable disembarkation mechanism.”
*We use the geographical term “Southwest Asia” rather than “Middle East”, which has colonial, Eurocentric and Orientalist origins. Read more about the efforts to decolonise this terminology here.
Why NGOs Have Stopped Search and Rescue Operations
Criminalising search and rescue activities can only lead to more deaths in the Mediterranean
The creeping criminalisation of humanitarian aid
How rescuing drowning migrants became a crime
