SOS Humanity invites civil society and journalists to the panel discussion ‘Humanitarian aid at sea – how to secure human rights on the central Mediterranean’ with Sandro Gallinelli, retired Admiral of the Italian Coast Guard; Chiara Denaro, researcher and legal expert on migration; and Mirka Schäfer, political expert of SOS Humanity and recently onboard the rescue ship Humanity 1 as Human Rights Observer.

The search and rescue organisation has been able to rescue 3,394 people in distress at sea with the rescue ship Humanity 1 since August 2022. However, despite the indispensable humanitarian aid SOS Humanity continues to provide, there is great concern about the increasingly shrinking humanitarian space with which rescuers are confronted. The participants of the panel will discuss the challenges for search and rescue from different perspectives and identify pathways on how to ensure adherence to international law and humanitarian principles in the central Mediterranean.

On the topic of the panel discussion

Over the past years, the European Union and its member states have intensified their efforts to outsource migration management to third countries, leading to an erosion of human rights at sea. As a civil search and rescue organisation operating on the escape route central Mediterranean, SOS Humanity has been witnessing this trend since 2017 – through the ongoing cooperation of the EU and Italy with the so-called Libyan Coast Guard, the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the EU and Tunisia in 2023 and most recently the Italy-Albania protocol that is expected to be implemented this November. At the same time, systematic obstruction and criminalisation of civil search and rescue has also intensified. The Piantedosi law, adopted last year in the Italian parliament and the practice of Italian authorities of assigning distant ports make it more difficult for civil rescue vessels to provide humanitarian aid desperately needed on one of the deadliest migration routes in the world.

More on the participants of the panel

Sandro Gallinelli, retired Admiral of the Italian Coast Guard (ITCG) with a degree in law, also provided legal advice to the Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (ITMRCC) during his time at the ITCG Headquarters. As an ITCG officer, he participated in numerous international and national meetings on migration issues and represented his coast guard at Frontex European Patrol Network meetings. He retired from active service in the coast guard in 2019 but has continued speaking as an expert on migration in the Mediterranean.

Chiara Denaro, postdoctoral researcher at Bologna University on the ERC Project HEMIG – ‘Hostile environments and the political ecology of border violence’, member of ASGI (Associazione Studi Giuridici sull’Immigrazione) and WatchTheMed Alarm Phone network. She is a social worker and sociologist (PhD) by training, and, over the years, her socio-legal research has concerned asylum and migration policies in the Mediterranean space, border management, and externalization policies, human rights and the right to asylum.

Mirka Schäfer, head of the Advocacy & Mobilisation department and political spokesperson for the non-governmental search and rescue organisation SOS Humanity. In August/September 2022 and July/August 2024, Mirka Schäfer was on board the rescue ship Humanity 1 as Human Rights Observer. She holds a master’s degree in Social Sciences from Humboldt University in Berlin.