Berlin, 17 December 2025. In its 2025 annual review published today, SOS Humanity looks back on a year of escalating violence in the Mediterranean by EU-funded Libyan actors. Those affected included refugees in distress at sea as well as crews of rescue ships. Human rights violations at the EU’s external borders have increased, also in the largely unmonitored sea area off Tunisia. SOS Humanity has presented the most important events and developments for search and rescue in its annual review chronologically, concisely and with sources: from the detention of rescue ships to successful lawsuits in Italian courts to the NGOs’ assessment of ten years of difficult search and rescue work.

Even though it hardly attracts any attention anymore – the dramatic situation in the Central Mediterranean has not improved in 2025: at least 1,190 refugees drowned, 12 non-governmental rescue ships detained in Italy, 219 days lost for rescue operations as a result; a further hundreds of days lost by the civil fleet due to unnecessary trips to the designated ports in northern Italy, 25,764 people seeking protection intercepted by the so-called Libyan Coast Guard and forcibly returned to Libya. At the same time, search and rescue organisations rescued 12,192 people from distress at sea by the beginning of September alone, more than in the previous year. Of these, SOS Humanity saved 1,155 children, women and men from drowning.

Ten years after their founding, SOS Humanity, Sea-Watch and Sea-Eye presented their own figures at a joint press conference with the United4Rescue alliance in June: the civil fleet in the Central Mediterranean has rescued 175,000 people from distress at sea in a decade, despite all attempts by the authorities to obstruct them.

Although the number of deaths and missing persons has fallen slightly compared to the previous year, the death rate on the Central Mediterranean migration route has risen this year. In 2025, the so-called Libyan Coast Guard forcibly returned more refugees than in the previous year. The new escape route from Tunisia to Italy continues to establish itself, with a high number of unreported boat accidents and human rights violations. 2025 sees a new escalation of violence against people on the move and rescue ships by Libyan and Tunisian actors. Thirteen organisations founded the ‘Justice Fleet’ alliance in autumn and jointly suspended operational communication with the maritime authorities in Libya, as they cannot be considered legitimate actors in search and rescue. This resulted in more ships being detained.

SOS Humanity takes a stand against all opposition with a new rescue ship: the sailing ship Humanity 2 enters the shipyard in December and will be deployed as a rescue and monitoring ship from summer 2026 onwards on the increasingly frequented and largely ignored migration route from Tunisia to Lampedusa.

You can download the annual review as a detailed chronology with links to further online articles here.