Migrant aid groups: we aren’t the problem

Privately run aid organisations rescuing migrants off Libya have strongly criticised the idea of a code of conduct for them to follow, saying European ministers tackling the crisis are bungling their response.

Italy, France and Germany met on Sunday to prepare a six-point plan to address the biggest migration since the Second World War, to be submitted to the bloc at a meeting today in Tallinn, Estonia.

Top of the list was a code to regulate operations in the sea off Libya where the Italian coastguard, European border patrol forces and non-government organisations save migrants attempting the perilous crossing.

Up to a dozen private aid boats, patrolling off Libya since 2015, performed 26 per cent of the rescues carried out last year, rising to 35 per cent this year, the Italian coastguard says.

They have been accused of acting as a magnet by sailing close to the Libyan coast but they insist that lives would be at risk if they stopped, with smugglers putting migrants out to sea in increasingly unseaworthy vessels and little fuel or water.

The Maltese organisation Moas said it was “very perplexed” by the idea of a code of conduct, all rescues in the Mediterranean were already co-ordinated by a command centre in Rome.

Ruben Neugebauer, spokesman for Sea-Watch of Germany, was equally baffled: “There is already a code of conduct in place. It is called international maritime law.”

SOS Mediterranee, which was recently awarded a Unesco peace prize for its efforts, said it was “surprised that the first response by European leaders to a major humanitarian crisis is for a code of conduct for the NGOs”.

Vincenzo Melone, commander general of the Italian coastguard, gave the aid groups his backing in May during a session with a parliamentary committee in Rome looking into whether NGOs were encouraging people trafficking from Libya.

“We are facing a tragedy of incredible dimensions but the solution is not at sea,” Mr Melone said.

Since 2014, the coastguard has coordinated the rescue of more than 590,000 migrants. More than 14,000 have died or are feared to have drowned.

It holds co-ordination meetings in Rome with NGOs, with the next scheduled for July 13.

“There’s no anarchy among the aid groups. The anarchy is in Libya, a country without any state structures worthy of the name, where large-scale human trafficking is proliferating,” said Sophie Beau, vice president of SOS Mediterranee.

It is the “EU that really needs a code of conduct”, said Oscar Camps, head of Spain’s Proactiva Open Arms.

Mr Camps said that there was a campaign against the NGOs shifting attention from crisis-hit Libya or the reasons behind the mass migration – people fleeing from war or hunger – by slinging mud at rescuers.

“‘You’re a pull factor, you are in cahoots with the traffickers, you are financed by the mafias, you are the taxis of the sea, we are going to close the port’,” he said, quoting the critics.

“Are we really the problem?”

There is already a code of conduct in place. It is called international maritime law