Seafarers are being severely compromised in their efforts to continue the honourable and vital tradition of rescue at sea

In September 2005, 11 people were found dead off the south coast of Sicily. They were would-be migrants, reportedly having set sail from Libya en route for Italy.

It was a terrible, but far from exceptional tragedy. More than 2,000 would-be migrants are believed by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) to have drowned on their way from Libya to Italy in 2004.

They represent an unlucky fraction of the thousands of people every year who find themselves in trouble in seas all over the world, after attempting an illegal crossing.

The narrow stretch of the Mediterranean between northern Africa and Southern Europe has become a particular focal point for those attempting migration to or seeking asylum in countries like Spain, Italy and Greece, often before moving on to other parts of Europe.

However tighter security controls, particularly in the West, in response to the perceived threat of international terrorism, have made it more difficult for would-be migrants to secure a passage. Many end up in the hands of smugglers, who take money to arrange a crossing, often to leave passengers stranded on unsafe vessels, without a skilled seafarer, and with insufficient fuel, and inadequate communication or navigation equipment to enable them to reach their destination.

Thousands of other desperate people are believed to risk their lives hiding in containers as stowaways on board merchant ships.

Safe haven denied

National governments are showing increased reluctance to allow migrants and asylum seekers to set foot on their territories. The growing number of police or coast guard interceptions and tragedies at sea has created a “humanitarian crisis” according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. And ships’ masters, in the front line of dealing with the crisis, are finding themselves severely compromised.

The situation reached the forefront of public attention in 2001, when the Australian government attracted international condemnation for denying even a temporary landing to 430 Afghan refugees, who had been rescued at sea by the Norwegian flagged vessel Tampa. Following this scandal, the UN’s maritime agency, the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), announced it would begin a process of revising maritime law – including the Convention on Search and Rescue (SAR) and the Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS), in order to facilitate sea rescues by merchant vessels.

Legal changes, expected to come into force in July 2006, will oblige contracting states to cooperate with ships’ masters, so that survivors are disembarked in a place of safety. But how many states will sign, and at what stage in the rescue operation, will the place of safety be determined?

Representatives of the IMO, UNHCR and other parties including the ITF debated these and other questions at an expert meeting on interception and rescue in the Mediterranean Sea held in Athens in September 2005.

The group agreed that any legal changes would need to be underpinned by a practical system, ensuring prompt disembarkation at the vessel’s scheduled port of call, with no penalties against masters or owners who bring stowaways or rescued persons into port. They agreed the coastal state should swiftly relieve the master and ship’s crew of responsibility for any persons rescued.

However the ITF was disappointed by the lack of concrete progress made in determining a clear policy to be applied ashore, or any co-ordinated action to enable the guidelines to function.

“The IMO has put in place guidelines for the disembarkation of persons rescued at sea,” said John Bainbridge of the ITF who attended the meeting. “But these would be better as a mandatory code. It is somewhat disappointing that in spite of the UNHCR’s efforts, port states and the EU have not progressed the bi-lateral or multi-lateral agreements needed to ensure a harmonised and prompt disembarking to a place of safety, which ensures fair treatment of refugees and asylum seekers.”

Hazards of rescue

Rescuing persons at sea constitutes a dangerous and traumatic ad hoc duty for commercial seafarers. Where large vessels are brought alongside small boats to facilitate a rescue, a crewed lifeboat will usually need to be put down, often in rough conditions. The process is made more difficult and dangerous with high sided rescue vessels using modern covered lifeboats.

These personal dangers are undertaken for the sake of an unknown person, or many unknown people. Up to now seafarers have accepted them as a hazard of the job, alongside the risk of lost earnings when rescue attempts delay crossings and cargo deliveries. With today’s ever increasing emphasis on swift deliveries and fast turnarounds, seafarers’ humanitarian instincts are placed under serious economic pressures.

These established risks are now being compounded as masters can find themselves and their charges turned away from port after port, falling foul of restrictive national and European immigration policies. They may even face charges of people smuggling, having risked their own lives in a potentially dangerous rescue operation. In such circumstances it is hard to see how long the tradition of rescue can survive.

Various incidents since the Tampa debacle of 2001 have exposed the failure of states to provide a safe landing to refugees and would-be migrants, or to allow them access to due asylum processes.

In October 2004, the German-owned container ship Lydia Oldendorff was held for a week off the coast of Malta after two stowaways were found hiding in one of its containers. The ship was permitted to dock in Valetta, its next scheduled port of call, in order to unload cargo, but the asylum seekers were not allowed ashore.

During the impasse, the ship’s owner incurred losses for delayed cargo delivery, while onboard conditions became increasingly tense for the asylum seekers and crew alike. The ship was finally allowed to dock in Italy.

Also in 2004, the captain of the German vessel Cap Anamur, owned by an aid agency of the same name, was briefly jailed by Italian authorities after he ordered the rescue of 37 Sudanese refugees found floundering on a raft in the Mediterranean.

New security plans in the US forbid commercial vessels from allowing any migrants on board unless the situation is deemed to be one of “life or death”. Rather they are encouraged to report sightings of migrants to the US Coast Guard, which then acts to intercept them. Each year thousands of Dominican, Cuban and Haitian migrants are intercepted and repatriated by the Coast Guard in this way.

Taking responsibility

In June 2005, UNHCR praised the efforts of the crew of a Danish container ship Clementine Maersk, which diverted from its course to rescue a group of 27 mostly Somali asylum seekers who had been adrift in the Mediterranean for up to a week.

A UNHCR spokesperson observed: “In an age when ships’ captains are constantly asked to boost efficiency and cut costs, it remains vital that they continue to take the time and trouble to rescue people in peril – whether they are refugees or any other people in distress.”

The agency also praised the UK authorities at the ship’s next port of call, Felixstowe, for their swift action in boarding the vessel to conduct initial asylum interviews and then allowing the asylum seekers to disembark. Unfortunately such positive accounts are not frequent. The Somali asylum seekers in this case could be said to be lucky. However they reported that during their week adrift on the Mediterranean they were passed by several other boats, which either ignored them altogether or promised to summon help which never materialised.

In aspiring to a humane and civilised society, all parties must take responsibility for creating a climate that values human life over economic concerns or political expediency. Much greater pressure must be exerted to ease any doubt in a ships’ captain’s mind that he may face onerous consequences as a result of a humanitarian act.

It is extremely disappointing that several years after acknowledging the problem, whilst the maritime industry has made some progress through SAR and SOLAS, national governments persist in policies of evasion. By failing to institute co-ordinated, well-organised systems for receiving and processing asylum seekers and migrants, they are failing absolutely in their responsibilities and putting seafarers in an intolerable position: damned if they do, and damned if they don’t.

Towards a fair system On a bilateral and/or multilateral basis, governments must: - put in place agreements to allow the prompt disembarkation of people rescued at sea - provide search and rescue co-ordinators with agreed procedures and access to adequate communication and support networks - address the issue of regional burden-sharing in a manner consistent with international human rights obligations - effect the adoption of the SOLAS search and rescue amendment to ensure the integrity of the principle of search and rescue.