Euroviews. View: Why Save the Children can't support sending refugees back to Libya

View: Why Save the Children can't support sending refugees back to Libya
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"Would we rather stop our search and rescue operations completely, and risk people drowning, than return migrants and refugees back to Libya?"

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By Gemma Parkin – Save the Children’s Media Manager on board the Vos Hestia, currently docked in Malta

It’s a strange question to kick off the working day on board “Save the Children’s“https://www.savethechildren.net/ rescue ship: Would we rather stop our search and rescue operations completely, and risk people drowning, than return migrants and refugees back to Libya? But that’s the question we were forced to ask ourselves – and the answer is clear. This is not an action we can stand behind.

My Syrian colleague speaks from experience. He says he’d rather have died than be returned to the brutal conflict he fled, and thinks most refugees would agree. The escape to Europe is a do or die journey for most, and therein lies the quandary. As a humanitarian organisation, we’ve made a principled decision to never return anyone we rescued to Libya. Amid conflicting reports, the Libyan Coastguard have announced that they will patrol anywhere between 50 and 70 nautical miles from their coast, taking anyone they find floating in stricken vessels back to Libya.

This affects a huge chunk of the Mediterranean, which many argue is international waters and where 2,200 people have drowned already this year. It’s also where Save the Children has rescued 8,000 people since we launched our rescue ship last September, in response to a 30 percent increase in migrants dying en route to sanctuary, compared to 2015.

Now Save the Children, as well as other charities that operate rescue ships in the Mediterranean, is increasingly concerned that we could be forced to handover anyone we’ve rescued to the Libyan Coastguard, only for these wretched souls to be returned to relive the horrors they’ve just escaped. This is not the plan. It is one of the reasons that has forced several charities like us to face the prospect of suspending operations.

Libya, by all accounts I’ve taken personally, is hell on earth. A tightrope of kidnapping, extortion, torture, detention, rape and slave labour. Libya is simply not a safe place to return anyone to, which is why Italy has borne the brunt of the Mediterranean migration crisis so far, with Europe’s southernmost point – the Italian island of Lampedusa – generally the closest safe port from any Mediterranean sea catastrophe. This is pertinent because, despite the depiction of chaos by politicians, the high seas are in fact governed by an abundance of very clear international maritime laws.

When we pluck terrified non-swimmers, from sinking rubber boats, Save the Children is acting in line with the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the 1974 International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea to “proceed with all possible speed to the rescue of persons in distress”.

When it’s suggested we are providing a ‘ferry service’ to Europe, actually Save the Children is abiding by the Refugee Convention within which, post World War Two, states around the world agreed not to “return [refugees]… to territories where life or freedom would be threatened”. Sadly, shifts on the Vos Hesta are no cruise, with staff working 20 hour days, packing and distributing hundreds of emergency kits containing what could be the first taste of food and water in days for those rescued. We’re a team of doctors, nurses, lawyers and child protection specialists that are dedicated to saving lives, not providing tourist transports.

The 1951 Refugee Convention was a global response to the Holocaust and the subsequent fallout of millions of desperate, persecuted people being forced from their homes. But people have short memories, so let me give a more recent case which, remarkably, is being ignored in the current debate between the EU and Libya about how to stem migration.

Back in 2009, Berlusconi, then the Italian Prime Minister and Gaddafi, then the Libyan leader, made a verbal agreement that migrant boats found in the Mediterranean would be returned to Libya and brought to makeshift camps in Libya, to languish for years without asylum claims being heard.

Nearly a decade on and we’ve come full circle. Almost 15,000 drowned souls have been lost to the Mediterranean’s watery graveyard in the last four years alone, a death toll that’s getting worse, and it’s Groundhog Day.

We know from experience that slamming shut borders and abandoning humanitarian principles does not solve the problem. Humanity’s in-built will to survive pushes families to take even more dangerous routes to escape conflict, persecution and extreme poverty. The people we rescue will be classified as refugees or migrants on reaching dry land. They’ll either claim international protection, be sent home or if they’re a lone child, they’ll enter the care system. Whilst on board the Vos Hestia we see their astounding innocence: from the Nigerian children who didn’t realise the sea was salty, to Guinean children who want to be professional footballers when they grow up. Most children we pull on board only have a lone plastic bag containing their worldly possessions, and are willing to risk it all for a better future.

Save the Children isn’t a pro-migration charity, we don’t want to encourage false hope. The success of the EU’s strategy thus far, which prioritises border control over saving lives, is questionable. What our rescue ship offers is a stopgap to reduce the gruesome and deadly nature of this sea crossing.

The dilemma of the day is to decide whether to assist in a rescue and prioritise saving lives, even within the newly proposed Libyan-run search and rescue zone, where we’re decidedly unwelcome. We’re juggling that with the need to keep our team on board safe from potential harm and to make sure we can get close enough to actually save lives.

The overriding priority of any humanitarian organisation is to do no harm. How can we save people and yet condemn them to be sent back to a living hell? That’s the principle at stake, one which weighs heavily on the team on board the Vos Hestia, but sadly one which we can’t contemplate.

Click here to keep up to date with Gemma Parkin’s video blogs.

The views expressed in opinion articles published on euronews do not represent our editorial position

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