MSF has been participating in sea search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean for the past four years.
How does a rescue operation work? Why do people still try to cross the sea at the risk of their lives?

Knowing the facts will help you to understand.

Since 2015, the number of people attempting to cross the Mediterranean has been in constant decline. More than one million in 2015, they decreased to just 110,000 in 2018. In other words, almost 10 times less.

Even so, the crossing has become increasingly dangerous for people going in search of safety...
The percentage of people who died when their boats got into trouble was four times higher in 2018 than in 2015…

It’s estimated that in 2018 over 2,200 people died this way in the Mediterranean, and 2019 is set to be equally catastrophic.

And these figures don’t include people who drown when their boats capsize that nobody knows about.

So why attempt such a potentially dangerous crossing? One reason is the treatment meted out to migrants in Libya.

Around 6,000 refugees and migrants are detained indefinitely in inhumane conditions in Libyan detention centres.
And that’s not counting all the others held captive in clandestine jails
by human traffickers who have no qualms about torturing them to extort their money.

As if all this wasn’t bad enough, they’re now caught in the crossfire of a conflict that has worsened since April.
These refugees and migrants are trapped in a vicious cycle of violence they’re ready to risk everything, including their lives, to escape.

Civil society organisations seeking to rescue people in distress in the Mediterranean face more and more of a challenge.

Responsibility for coordinating rescue operations in international waters has been handed over from the Italian Coast Guard to the Libyan authorities in Tripoli.

Libya’s Coast Guard no longer relays calls from boats in distress and openly admits it rescues only a very few of the boats in trouble at sea.
With no outside help, it’s extremely hard for sea search and rescue vessels to locate boats in distress. Binoculars and radar have a limited range, so they can only do so much in such a vast search area.

And when rescue vessels do obtain a boat’s coordinates, it still has to be located, reached and the people on board saved during what can be a tricky operation.

This need for reconnaissance has prompted civil society to take action. One example is the Colibri, a plane that transmits the precise coordinates of boats in distress.

Once the rescue operation is concluded, another one begins: providing medical assistance to people who’ve almost died. Some are in critical condition. They may have hypothermia, for example, after hours in the sea... Others have burns caused by a combination of sea-water and fuel on makeshift boats.

After months, and even years, of extreme violence and captivity in Libya, most survivors are in poor health. Many have bullet or knife wounds, multiple fractures, or signs of torture. There are small children, pregnant women and sometimes babies are delivered on board the ship.

With dozens of wounded people on board, the ship MSF provides assistance looks like an ambulance.
This is why the MSF team on the Ocean Viking, chartered in partnership with SOS MEDITERRANEE, includes two nurses, a doctor and a midwife. They have a medical unit that’s equipped with consulting rooms.

A rescue operation is considered successfully completed once the survivors are safely landed,
but this has become a very serious problem. Maritime law and international conventions stipulate that anyone rescued at sea must be delivered to the nearest safe port. But, European countries are doing everything they can to dodge this obligation.