Trans-Med migrant flow slows 27pc, BIMCO applauds but ICS worries about refugee seizing ships
 While international shipping is freer than it was from obligations to rescue migrants leaving Libya in their thousands in unseaworthy craft, the problem is far from resolved.
And major shipowning and shipmanaging groups such at the Copenhagen-based Baltic and International Maritime Council (BIMCO), sees and appreciates the improvement, the London-based International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) on the other hand, focus instead on today's problems and the risks that lie ahead.
Nonetheless, trans-Mediterranean migration has dropped dramatically by volume. For the first four months of 2019, there were 24,200 cases of irregular migration, a 27 per cent year-on-year drop, according to Frontex, the EU's border agency.
But there is a lawsuit afoot to erase that improvement, seeking leave to appeal to the International Criminal Court (ICC), alleging that the European Union is guilty of crimes against humanity, having been knowingly "responsible for deaths of migrants at land and sea, and their widespread rape and torture at the hands of a Libyan coast guard funded and trained at the expense of European taxpayers". So far, the ICC prosecutor has yet to take up the case.
The improvement - and the source of the lawsuit - was prompted by the 2018 election of a rightist coalition government in Italy that prompted the withdrawal of the welcome mat laid out by the departing leftist regime. This was followed by the re-regulating and defunding of NGOs, which were offering a virtual ferry service disguised as rescue service to migrants moving from Libya to Italy.
For international shipping, the Mediterranean Sea is a maritime highway through which Asia-Europe cargo passes from Suez to the ports of the Northern Range, Le Havre to Hamburg. Each of these ships is obliged to keep to schedules.
Under long-ago agreed upon UN rules, ships are obliged to rescue those in distress at sea. Of course, when these rules were adopted without thought, rescue at sea was a rarity, not a regular occurrence as it has become in the Med. No one expected that non-government organisations (NGO) to be exacerbating the problem to further their own political ends.
Then there are practical problems to do with rescuing the many from frail rubber dinghies by the few on mega ships. As ships get bigger, crews get smaller. This leaves a 20-man crew rescuing 100 angry, hungry and seasick military aged men, prone to violence, and exposing the crew, to the risk of contracting a myriad of tropical diseases.
The EU replaced Mare Nostrum's "rescue" operation that took 150,810 migrants by an operation named Triton, financed by all 28 EU nations at a fraction of the cost.
But unlike Mare Nostrum, Triton ships didn't patrol directly off the Libyan coast looking for migrants to rescue, in ever-more flimsy smuggling boats. Triton rescued reluctantly and set as its main goal to dissuade migrants from risking the voyage by lengthening the odds on success.
What's more, far from colluding with human traffickers, to achieve ever higher migrant volumes, as NGOs were said to be doing, the new EU scheme did what it could to stem the flow from Libya. Human traffickers could no longer deploy the cheapest of dinghies as they would have to carry their human load just beyond the territorial waters where the NGO rescue/ferry boats waited to take on passengers.
No more. Part of the Triton scheme was for the EU to equip the Libyan coast guard with patrol boats and wherewithal to run them and the under whatever military authority controlled relevant stretches of coastline, the country being in a state of civil war.
Triton boats often crewed and mastered by British nationals, who picked up migrants afloat and returned them to shore before they became a problem for anyone else, but Libya.
Shipowning and ship managing lobby, and the Baltic and International Maritime Council (BIMCO) said it appreciated the efforts by EU to reduce increasing reliance on merchant shipping to rescue the growing numbers of distressed migrants in the Mediterranean Sea.
BIMCO also praised the increased funding for Operation Triton, Triton helicopters, the ICC lawsuit claims, report migrant dinghies to Libyan coast guard units so they can intercept and return to them to shore.
Said BIMCO deputy secretary general Lars Robert Pedersen: "The shipping industry has recently highlighted the risks to the health, safety and security of seafarers who assist distressed migrants in increasingly large numbers. Merchant ships are ill-equipped to deal with large-scale rescue operations involving many hundreds of migrants and it may compromise the safety of those onboard as well as those who they attempt to rescue.
"The long term problem of huge migratory flow in the Mediterranean has led to a humanitarian crisis at sea that merchant shipping is not equipped to handle. Migration is an issue for nations to resolve," said Mr Pedersen.
"The industry had called for an expansion of the geographical scope of Operation Triton to include areas where migrants are most likely to be found before they get into serious difficulty. This does not yet seem to have been addressed.
"We realise that the issue of migration will not be resolved by these steps alone. This is why BIMCO will continue to give practical advice to shipmasters on how to effectively deal with calls for search and rescue assistance," he said.
The other big owner-operator lobby, the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), cited the case of the 846-dwt Turkish tanker Elhiblu 1, which was hijacked by more than 100 migrants the ship stopped to rescue in the Med. The hijacking came after a group of men forced Elhiblu 1's captain and crew to divert course from Libyan Port of Tripoli (where the ship was sailing to deliver the recently shipwrecked migrants) to Malta.
As the ship was approaching Maltese waters, the captain was able to inform the Maltese government he was not in control of his vessel, and that "through coercive action" a group of men had hijacked the ship. Elhiblu 1 was later intercepted by the Maltese Navy, which regained control of the ship and detained five of the alleged hijackers before escorting Elhiblu 1 to Valletta, Malta.
Said ICS secretary general Guy Platten: "If a ship is directed to disembark rescued people in Libya, it creates a potential for conflict between the crew and desperate and frustrated people that might object to being returned.
"Given the numbers picked up in such large scale rescue operations, the crew of the rescuing ship can easily be outnumbered and overwhelmed," he said.
Masters of merchant ships should expect that coastal states' search and rescue authorities will co-ordinate and provide for disembarkation in a place of safety, both for those rescued and for the seafarers involved in the rescue."
"The merchant seafarers on board the ship involved in these incidents are civilians" said Mr Platten. "They can be severely affected by the traumatic situations they have to face, having complied with their legal and humanitarian obligation to come to the rescue of anyone found in distress at sea."
While the problem is much reduced, it has not been eliminated. It is only reasonable that ships at sea stand ready to rescue those in need. But it is less than reasonable that ships be made responsible for those who deliberately put themselves in distress with the expectation - now morphing its way into the status of an acquired right - that they be rescued. How good does a Samaritan have to be? |
