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| Sea-Watch |
Sea-Watch is a civilian search and rescue organisation helping migrants survive arguably the deadliest migration route in the world — the short stretch of the Mediterranean Sea leading from Northern Africa to South Europe. Since 2014 over 600,000 migrants have made the passage, yet over 16,000 have perished in shipwrecks.
The Sea-Watch grew out of an initiative of volunteers who could not stand by idly as people were drowning. In late 2014 they acquired a 20m sea cutter and in May 2015 the Sea-Watch I was in Lampedusa on its first mission — assisting the European-Union-coordinated sea rescue operations by conducting search for boats in distress and navigating larger ships to take people on board and bring them to a safety in European ports.
In 2016 the EU started to roll back its commitment to search and rescue, so in May the new vessel Sea-Watch II was for the first time instructed to take on board rescuees. With the full reversal of the EU border regime to violent pushbacks, only the civilian organisations such as SOS Mediterranée, Doctors without Borders, Jugend Rettet and Sea-Watch were left to actively save people at sea. The about-turn also lead to the denial of entry into Italian and Maltese ports, where civilian sea and rescue ships were bringing refugees to safety, culminating in the seizing of Jugend Rettet's Iuventa under captain Pia Klemp in August 2017 and the arrest of captain Carola Rackete in July 2019.
The civilian sea and rescue organisations are estimated to have saved 100,000 lives since 2014. Currently, Sea-Watch operates the 55m Sea-Watch 3, the 60m Sea-Watch 4 in cooperation with Doctors without Borders and two reconnaissance planes Moonbird and Seabird.
Sea-Watch considers its mission only a patch applied against a symptom, whereas the real solution is political — securing a safe passage for all migrants.