Berlin 5 May 2025: The search and rescue organisation SOS Humanity has been rescuing people on the move from distress at sea in the Mediterranean for 10 years. On its anniversary, it takes stock and criticises the fact that the EU and its member states have not yet set up a European search and rescue programme. Since it was founded at the beginning of May 2025, SOS Humanity has observed a politically motivated regression for human rights, international law and European values in the Mediterranean. A report published and presented today, ‘Borders of (In)humanity’, focusses on the increasing outsourcing of Europe’s border management to Libya and Tunisia. SOS Humanity has recorded the dramatic consequences for those fleeing across the Mediterranean in numerous testimonies from survivors. The experiences of those seeking protection stand in contrast to the new German government’s announced sealing-off measures, which the organisation criticises. 
Friedrich Merz, who will be sworn in as Federal Chancellor tomorrow, said in July 2020 in view of the tens of thousands of deaths in the Mediterranean: “Search and rescue is a state task, and it cannot be left to non-governmental organisations alone.” According to media reports, Merz stated that politicians must not shirk their humanitarian responsibility and must seek long-term and sustainable solutions.*

SOS Humanity has been calling for the EU and its member states to assume responsibility for rescue operations in the Central Mediterranean since the organisation was founded in 2015. “There is not a single word in the coalition agreement on search and rescue – not on state responsibility, not on a European rescue programme, not on support for civil society initiatives,” criticises Till Rummenhohl, Managing Director of SOS Humanity. “The politically induced, ongoing humanitarian crisis on Europe’s doorstep is being deliberately ignored – with deadly consequences. Germany is not just a bystander, but an active co-creator of a European policy of isolation and externalisation. Rescues are being hindered and people seeking protection are being systematically pushed back into life-threatening situations.”

The founder of SOS Humanity, Klaus Vogel, on the beginnings of non-governmental search and rescue in the Mediterranean in 2015: “Our hope back then was that we could shake up European governments with a large rescue ship and persuade them to humanise migration policy and resume search and rescue. Since then, we have rescued thousands of exhausted, injured and desperate people,” says the captain and historian. Our expectation of getting European governments to see refugees as fellow human beings and to recognise their rescue in the Mediterranean as Europe’s natural duty has not been fulfilled.” 
The organisation was founded on 4 May 2015 as SOS Mediterranee Germany by Klaus Vogel, changed its name to SOS Humanity in January 2022 and has rescued a total of over 38,500 people in the Mediterranean in one decade.

In these ten years, the EU has spent 242 million euros on outsourcing border management on the EU’s southern external border. This is documented in a report published today by SOS Humanity entitled ‘Borders of (In)humanity’. Author of the report and SOS Humanity employee Sasha Ockenden: “The 64 eyewitness accounts we recorded on board our rescue ship and published in the new report document the consequences of this policy: thousands of human rights violations, exploitation, violence and death. Even of children. Not only is this deeply inhumane, an EU search and rescue programme would also be more cost-effective.”
The crew of Humanity 1 rescued 68 people from distress at sea on the night of 1 May. They will be brought ashore in assigned port of La Spezia in northern Italy later today – almost five days’ journey from the site of the rescue. 

*Talk show on German public television ZDF with Dunja Hayali on 7 July 2020, quotes from PRO media magazine, 31 July 2020