“We are here, and we will fight! Freedom of movement is everybody’s right!

That is necessary because much of my life has been in the street, trying to survive. I do not know how to express what really my skin feels right now and how my memories are turning around. 

Maybe I should start by introducing myself once again: My name is David Yambio. I’m originally from South Sudan. I am a community organizer, human rights defender and the current executive director of Refugees in Libya, a refugee led and self-organised movement.  
But before all these titles, I was simply a person, a human being who was searching for safety. And in the process of searching for safety I was exiled into so many African countries. From one camp to another, from one horrible condition to the other.

Until I found myself in Libya.  
When I found myself in Libya, I was subjected to abduction, kidnapping, torture, enslavement, exploitation and a total state of dehumanisation, that I have to this day not found the right words to express.
From the shores of Libya, I tried 5 times, 5 times, to escape towards safety, towards protection.
Each of those times, I was abducted at gunpoint in the Central Mediterranean and dragged back to Libya to the same violence that I was escaping from. This reality was not mine alone. It was a reality of thousands and thousands of people who have been forced to find themselves in Libya.
Eventually, I survived. I was just one of the few who made it. Many thousands did not make it.

Today I live here in Italy but through Refugees in Libya, we are in constant contact with our siblings, with our brothers, with our sisters, with our comrades, with human beings who are in the same conditions from which we fled. We receive those calls of desperation from detention camps, over the Central Mediterranean, when they cannot walk out to go to the grocery stores, because they are condemned to death in every meaning.
We receive calls from people who are rounded up in hundreds and dumped in the desert. We receive calls from mothers, fathers, siblings who are looking for their loved ones who went missing and forcibly disappeared by the government and by a policy of indifference.
That is why today is very meaningful to me. It’s also a state of hopefulness: we are hopeful and we are grateful that we are still standing where many institutions and many governments prefer to not see us.
As a result, of this common ground, and because I carry the voices of many people please allow me to look at my paper so I can conclude with their voices.
As I said, this ship represents something profoundly human. The simple belief that when another human being is in danger, we have the duty to act without hesitation. It is no longer a question of whether we reject the EU states’ exclusionary border policies, particularly in the absence of safe pathways for people seeking protection. It is a question of our refusal to be complicit in crimes against humanity in the Central Mediterranean Sea. If that means deploying 30,000 civilian sea rescue boats, we will do it unflinchingly, despite every attempt to criminalise our duty, our responsibility, our solidarity, and our humanity.

This boat is our renewed expression of that refusal.
This 24-meters sailing vessel will help rescue people in distress. People like me, who wanted it much more when I was desperate in the middle of the sea. It will help to be a witness to what continues to happen beyond the horizon. Monitoring of the central Mediterranean, documenting human rights violations and making visible what too often remains hidden.
Its crew is largely made up of volunteers representing civil society. It is in a time where enormous resources and thoughts are invested in preventing the arrivals of human beings in distress just like myself once was.
This ship reminds us that ordinary people can still choose responsibility and solidarity over indifference.
Today as its godfather I have the honor of giving it its name and I hereby name this ship Humanity 2. 
In truth, as I believe you feel inside you, it is not this vessel that needs a name, it is us. Because every generation must decide whether it wishes to be remembered for the lives it protected or the lives it abandoned. Just like one of the colleagues from the [GLS] bank was stating. Ships do not save people; it is you human beings who save people.
This sailing boat only exists because humanity still exists inside of us. And because we choose to follow that human path over political indifference and the exclusion of people for so many reasons that are not justifiable at any stage. 

May Humanity never sink, as many lives have sunk in the Central Mediterranean.
May she always find fair winds and following seas. 
May she bring safety to those in danger.
May she be a witness to truth and may she remind us that humanity is never measured by the strength of our borders, but by the courage to protect one another. And it is we who keep us safe. 
Thank you!”