On Monday, the Italian authorities imposed yet another punitive measure affecting Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) for fulfilling our legal and humanitarian duty to save lives at sea aboard the search and rescue vessel Geo Barents.
This time, the vessel received two separate detention orders, immediately after disembarking 206 survivors in Genoa, Italy, in a clear attempt by the authorities to ensure that Geo Barents will not be able to sail again to save lives in the Mediterranean.
A rescue interrupted
The first detention order for 60 days was issued under the Piantedosi Decree—an Italian policy introduced in early 2023 that stipulates that NGO rescue ships must immediately sail to the assigned port after conducting a first rescue—and was based on recurrent allegations that teams aboard Geo Barents had failed to comply with the Libyan Coast Guard’s instructions during a rescue operation on September 19. On that day, MSF teams on board had carried out their first rescue and were navigating to Genoa, the designated port, when they received a distress alert from Seabird 2—a monitoring plane belonging to the human rights organization Sea-Watch—about around 100 people in distress on an overcrowded wooden boat. Geo Barents was given the go-ahead by the Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre to assess the situation and was the only vessel on the scene when it arrived. Given the seriousness of the situation and the captain's obligation under international law to render immediate assistance, the MSF team proceeded with the rescue.
Just as the MSF team was about to finish the rescue, with no more than 20 out of 110 people left in the boat, a Libyan Coast Guard patrol boat, donated by Italy, arrived on the scene.
“The Libyan patrol boat arrived when we were almost finished with the operation, more than five hours after the first alert about these people in distress,” said Fulvia Conte, MSF search and rescue team leader. “They arrived, threatened to shoot, and carried out unsafe and intimidating maneuvers around the people in distress and the MSF rescue team.”
This is the fourth detention order for Geo Barents under the Piantedosi decree, following an order issued a month ago, also for 60 days. That ruling was suspended on September 12 by the Civil Court of Salerno, which acknowledged the lifesaving humanitarian nature of MSF’s search and rescue work aboard the Geo Barents.
Saving lives is not a crime
Read moreAdministrative obstruction of humanitarian search and rescue vessels
The second detention order, issued on September 23, followed an in-depth Port State Control inspection of the vessel, which found eight technical deficiencies.
“The Port State Control inspections are another layer of administrative and technical instrumentalization of laws and regulations that the authorities have been using for the past seven years to obstruct the work of humanitarian search and rescue vessels in the Mediterranean,” added Conte. “Our vessel had successfully passed previous inspections. This one seems to have the intention to ensure we don’t operate anytime soon. We are moving to quickly address these deficiencies and to go back to prevent deaths at sea.”
“We will appeal to the competent court against these new detentions,” said Juan Matias Gil, MSF search and rescue representative. “The more Italian courts rule in favor of humanitarian vessels, the more arbitrary detentions are imposed by this Italian government. This is unacceptable for a country under the rule of law.”
“People fleeing Libya often tell us about violent interceptions at sea carried out by the EU-backed Libyan Coast Guard,” added Gil. “It has been documented by the United Nations and independent investigative journalists that the Libyan Coast Guard is complicit in serious human rights violations amounting to crimes against humanity, and collusion with smugglers and traffickers. It is a disgrace that the Italian authorities still consider the Libyan Coast Guard to be a reliable actor and source of information.”
MSF search and rescue in the Mediterranean
MSF has been active in search and rescue activities since 2015, working on eight different rescue vessels both independently and in partnership with other NGOs. Our teams have rescued more than 91,000 people to date, including 12,540 people rescued by teams aboard Geo Barents since launching operations on the vessel in May 2021. The Geo Barents team has also recovered 24 bodies, arranged 16 medical evacuations, and assisted in the delivery of one baby.
