The obstruction of search and rescue vessels causes hundreds of deaths at sea

The obstruction of search and rescue vessels causes hundreds of deaths at sea

32 organisations demand the immediate ending of the systematic obstruction of non-governmental search and rescue (SAR) efforts by the Italian state. In the past month alone, NGO vessels have been detained three times due to legal restrictions based on allegations under the “Piantedosi decree” – one of them, the monitoring vessel Nadir operated by RESQSHIP, got detained twice in a row. Deliberately keeping non-governmental search and rescue organisations away from the Central Mediterranean causes countless more deaths at sea on one of the deadliest flight routes worldwide.

Despite numerous alerts raised by SAR organisations, NGO vessels continue to be arbitrarily detained since the adoption of the “Piantedosi decree” in January 2023, aggravated by the conversion into law of the “Flussi decree” in December 2024. In the last month, Nadir and Sea-Eye 5, two of the smaller vessels operated by RESQSHIP and Sea-Eye, were detained on accusations of not complying with authorities’ instructions. Both crews were assigned very distant ports and asked for partial transshipments of people based on vulnerability criteria, despite the fact that a proper vulnerability assessment needs a safe environment and can not be conducted aboard a ship and directly after a rescue.

Implementing legal and administrative obstructions serves an obvious goal: to keep SAR vessels away from their operational areas, drastically restricting their active presence at sea. Without the presence of NGO assets and aircrafts, more people will drown while fleeing across the Central Mediterranean, and human rights violations as well as shipwrecks will occur unnoticed. Smaller vessels play a crucial role: they monitor the route, provide first aid to people on boats in distress and, when necessary, embark the people until the arrival of better-equipped vessels.

Since February 2023, NGO ships have been subjected to 29 detentions, amounting to a total of 700 days in harbours instead of rescuing lives at sea. They spent an additional 822 days at sea navigating to reach assigned ports at unjustifiable distances, amounting to 330,000 kilometres of navigation. What initially only affected non-governmental SAR vessels has now been extended also to smaller monitoring ships.

In addition, NGOs spend a huge amount of time and financial resources appealing Italy’s restrictive legislation and the administrative detentions arbitrarily imposed on them.

In previous months, national courts – in Catanzaro, Reggio Calabria, Crotone, Vibo Valentia, and Ancona – issued decisions recognising the detention of NGO rescue ships at port to be unlawful and, as a consequence, they annulled the related fines. In October 2024, the Brindisi Tribunal asked the Italian Constitutional Court to assess the compatibility of the “Piantedosi decree”, converted into law in February 2023, with the Italian Constitution. On the 8th of July 2025, the Constitutional court re-established that the Law of the Sea cannot be circumvented by punitive and discriminatory norms and any order contrary to it is to be considered illegal and illegitimate.

Non-assistance is a crime!

Under international maritime law, every shipmaster has the obligation to assist persons in distress at sea. Likewise, any state operating a Rescue Coordination Centre is legally bound to facilitate and ensure timely rescue operations. Yet today, what we are witnessing is not a state failure, but a pattern of deliberate violations: withholding information about distress cases, coordinating with the so-called Libyan coast guards for illegal pullbacks – even within Maltese waters – and allowing Frontex aircraft to observe shipwrecks and violent interception without intervening.

These practices are a blatant violation of the SOLAS Convention, the SAR Convention, UNCLOS, and the principle of non-refoulement. When states obstruct rescue activities instead of enabling them, they are not enforcing the law, they are breaking it.

Background

In December 2024, the “Flussi decree” (converted by Law 145/2024) concerning migration and asylum legislation passed by the Italian government came into force. It tightens the already restrictive provisions of the “Piantedosi decree”, ranging from fines to the detention and permanent confiscation of search and rescue vessels . The new provisions facilitate the confiscation of vessels by holding shipowners liable for repeated violations regardless of the captain, and hence represents a further escalation in the targeted obstruction of the work of SAR NGOs in the Central Mediterranean.

Ten years ago, search and rescue NGOs started filling the lethal gap left by the EU and its Member States in the Central Mediterranean. While the EU increasingly focuses on border control and border externalisation to prevent any arrivals of people on the move to European coasts, more than 175.500 people have been rescued by NGO ships since then. Nevertheless, since 2017, SAR actors have been increasingly exposed to criminalisation and systematic obstruction due to restrictive laws and policies, which contradict international maritime law and human rights.

We demand:

• The immediate repeal of the Piantedosi and Flussi decrees, putting an end to inhumane requests for rescue ships to perform partial disembarkation and stopping the assignment of distant ports. As requested by international maritime law, those who have just been rescued should be disembarked without delay at the closest place of safety; they should not be made to endure long journeys due to political calculations.
• The immediate release of the monitoring sailing vessel Nadir and the end to the obstruction and criminalization of non-governemental SAR activities.

• That EU member states fulfil their duty to rescue people at sea and comply with international law. The authorities should provide all NGO ships with the necessary support in the coordination of rescues in order to take their responsibility to assist people in distress.

• The establishment of a EU-financed and coordinated search and rescue programme.
• Safe and legal pathways to Europe to prevent people from being forced onto unseaworthy boats and embarking on difficult and sometimes deadly journeys.

Signatories:

1. Association for Juridical Studies on Immigration (ASGI)
2. borderline-europe, Human rights without borders e.V.
3. Captain Support Network
4. Cilip | Bürgerrechte & Polizei
5. CompassCollective
6. CONVENZIONE DEI DIRITTI NEL MEDITERRANEO
7. EMERGENCY
8. European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR)
9. Gruppo Melitea
10. iuventa-crew
11. LasciateCIEntrare
12. Maldusa project
13. Médecins Sans Frontières
14. MEDITERRANEA Saving Humans
15. MEM.MED Memoria Mediterranea
16. migration-control.info project
17. MV Louise Michel project
18. Open Arms
19. RESQSHIP
20. r42 Sail And Rescue
21. Refugees in Libya
22. Salvamento Marítimo Humanitario (SMH)
23. SARAH-Seenotrettung
24. Sea-Eye
25. Sea Punks e.V
26. Sea-Watch
27. SOS Humanity
28. SOS MEDITERRANEE
29. Statewatch
30. Tunisian Forum for Social and Economic Rights FTDES
31. United4Rescue
32. Watch the Med Alarm Phone

The obstruction of search and rescue vessels causes hundreds of deaths at sea

32 organisations demand the immediate ending of the systematic obstruction of non-governmental search and rescue (SAR) efforts by the Italian state. In the past month alone, NGO vessels have been detained three times due to legal restrictions based on allegations under the “Piantedosi decree” – one of them, the monitoring vessel Nadir operated by RESQSHIP, got detained twice in a row. Deliberately keeping non-governmental search and rescue organisations away from the Central Mediterranean causes countless more deaths at sea on one of the deadliest flight routes worldwide.

Despite numerous alerts raised by SAR organisations, NGO vessels continue to be arbitrarily detained since the adoption of the “Piantedosi decree” in January 2023, aggravated by the conversion into law of the “Flussi decree” in December 2024. In the last month, Nadir and Sea-Eye 5, two of the smaller vessels operated by RESQSHIP and Sea-Eye, were detained on accusations of not complying with authorities’ instructions. Both crews were assigned very distant ports and asked for partial transshipments of people based on vulnerability criteria, despite the fact that a proper vulnerability assessment needs a safe environment and can not be conducted aboard a ship and directly after a rescue.

Implementing legal and administrative obstructions serves an obvious goal: to keep SAR vessels away from their operational areas, drastically restricting their active presence at sea. Without the presence of NGO assets and aircrafts, more people will drown while fleeing across the Central Mediterranean, and human rights violations as well as shipwrecks will occur unnoticed. Smaller vessels play a crucial role: they monitor the route, provide first aid to people on boats in distress and, when necessary, embark the people until the arrival of better-equipped vessels.

Since February 2023, NGO ships have been subjected to 29 detentions, amounting to a total of 700 days in harbours instead of rescuing lives at sea. They spent an additional 822 days at sea navigating to reach assigned ports at unjustifiable distances, amounting to 330,000 kilometres of navigation. What initially only affected non-governmental SAR vessels has now been extended also to smaller monitoring ships.

In addition, NGOs spend a huge amount of time and financial resources appealing Italy’s restrictive legislation and the administrative detentions arbitrarily imposed on them.

In previous months, national courts – in Catanzaro, Reggio Calabria, Crotone, Vibo Valentia, and Ancona – issued decisions recognising the detention of NGO rescue ships at port to be unlawful and, as a consequence, they annulled the related fines. In October 2024, the Brindisi Tribunal asked the Italian Constitutional Court to assess the compatibility of the “Piantedosi decree”, converted into law in February 2023, with the Italian Constitution. On the 8th of July 2025, the Constitutional court re-established that the Law of the Sea cannot be circumvented by punitive and discriminatory norms and any order contrary to it is to be considered illegal and illegitimate.

Non-assistance is a crime!

Under international maritime law, every shipmaster has the obligation to assist persons in distress at sea. Likewise, any state operating a Rescue Coordination Centre is legally bound to facilitate and ensure timely rescue operations. Yet today, what we are witnessing is not a state failure, but a pattern of deliberate violations: withholding information about distress cases, coordinating with the so-called Libyan coast guards for illegal pullbacks – even within Maltese waters – and allowing Frontex aircraft to observe shipwrecks and violent interception without intervening.

These practices are a blatant violation of the SOLAS Convention, the SAR Convention, UNCLOS, and the principle of non-refoulement. When states obstruct rescue activities instead of enabling them, they are not enforcing the law, they are breaking it.

Background

In December 2024, the “Flussi decree” (converted by Law 145/2024) concerning migration and asylum legislation passed by the Italian government came into force. It tightens the already restrictive provisions of the “Piantedosi decree”, ranging from fines to the detention and permanent confiscation of search and rescue vessels . The new provisions facilitate the confiscation of vessels by holding shipowners liable for repeated violations regardless of the captain, and hence represents a further escalation in the targeted obstruction of the work of SAR NGOs in the Central Mediterranean.

Ten years ago, search and rescue NGOs started filling the lethal gap left by the EU and its Member States in the Central Mediterranean. While the EU increasingly focuses on border control and border externalisation to prevent any arrivals of people on the move to European coasts, more than 175.500 people have been rescued by NGO ships since then. Nevertheless, since 2017, SAR actors have been increasingly exposed to criminalisation and systematic obstruction due to restrictive laws and policies, which contradict international maritime law and human rights.

We demand:

• The immediate repeal of the Piantedosi and Flussi decrees, putting an end to inhumane requests for rescue ships to perform partial disembarkation and stopping the assignment of distant ports. As requested by international maritime law, those who have just been rescued should be disembarked without delay at the closest place of safety; they should not be made to endure long journeys due to political calculations.
• The immediate release of the monitoring sailing vessel Nadir and the end to the obstruction and criminalization of non-governemental SAR activities.

• That EU member states fulfil their duty to rescue people at sea and comply with international law. The authorities should provide all NGO ships with the necessary support in the coordination of rescues in order to take their responsibility to assist people in distress.

• The establishment of a EU-financed and coordinated search and rescue programme.
• Safe and legal pathways to Europe to prevent people from being forced onto unseaworthy boats and embarking on difficult and sometimes deadly journeys.

Signatories:

1. Association for Juridical Studies on Immigration (ASGI)
2. borderline-europe, Human rights without borders e.V.
3. Captain Support Network
4. Cilip | Bürgerrechte & Polizei
5. CompassCollective
6. CONVENZIONE DEI DIRITTI NEL MEDITERRANEO
7. EMERGENCY
8. European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR)
9. Gruppo Melitea
10. iuventa-crew
11. LasciateCIEntrare
12. Maldusa project
13. Médecins Sans Frontières
14. MEDITERRANEA Saving Humans
15. MEM.MED Memoria Mediterranea
16. migration-control.info project
17. MV Louise Michel project
18. Open Arms
19. RESQSHIP
20. r42 Sail And Rescue
21. Refugees in Libya
22. Salvamento Marítimo Humanitario (SMH)
23. SARAH-Seenotrettung
24. Sea-Eye
25. Sea Punks e.V
26. Sea-Watch
27. SOS Humanity
28. SOS MEDITERRANEE
29. Statewatch
30. Tunisian Forum for Social and Economic Rights FTDES
31. United4Rescue
32. Watch the Med Alarm Phone