Ten years ago, on October 11, 2013, 268 people, including 60 children, drowned in the central Mediterranean after Maltese and Italian authorities refused to assist people in distress at sea.

The boat that sank carried more than 400 Syrian and Palestinian refugees, fleeing war and violence, from Zuwara, Libya. A Libyan speedboat had already chased and shot at them before water began to enter their vessel and they started to send distress signals over a five-hour period.

Recordings of Dr Mohanad Jammo pleading with Italian authorities for help confirms the deadly practices of non-assistance that have become commonplace in the central Mediterranean in subsequent years. After many calls, his last words to the Italian authorities echoed across the airwaves: “Please come, we are dying.” The Italian navy ship, the Libra, idled only 19 miles away and did not intervene until after the fishing boat capsized and hundreds had drowned.

This shipwreck was allowed to happen only days after politicians shed crocodile tears over the largest shipwreck that had occurred to date in the central Mediterranean: on October 3, 359 people died half a kilometre from the Italian island of Lampedusa. In response, Malta’s then prime minister,  Joseph Muscat said: “I don’t know how many more people need to die at sea before something gets done.”

His words belie Malta’s critical and often overlooked role in contributing to deaths at sea, evident in the October 11 shipwreck, as with countless others that would follow. In 2013, the boat carrying more than 400 people was in distress for many hours within Malta’s search and rescue region: it was Malta’s responsibility to coordinate a timely rescue. Malta had, in fact, assumed coordination of the rescue two and half hours before the boat capsized.

The passengers had also called Malta’s maritime centre multiple times pleading for rescue. It was Maltese officials who waited hours before ordering the Italian Libra to rescue those in distress. Throughout, attempts to shift responsibility for rescue between Italy and Malta shaped the actions and non-actions of both states, with deadly and predictable results.

Despite lamenting such shipwrecks as tragedies, Maltese authorities continue to adopt practices of non-assistance, involving both a failure to conduct search operations and the active obstruction of rescue of those in distress.

Maltese authorities regularly ignore distress calls, refuse to engage with other search and rescue actors and cooperate with the Libyan coast guard to facilitate the pushback of thousands of people to Libya. Recently, this cooperation has extended to Libyan forces entering Malta’s search and rescue (SAR) zone and forcibly returning people to Libya, contrary to international law.

These pushbacks add to the 108,000 people intercepted at sea and forcibly returned to Libya since 2017. Although Home Affairs Minister Byron Camilleri has stressed that this cooperation with Libya keeps the number of migrant arrivals down, he fails to mention that this ‘cooperation’ subjects people to well-documented human rights violations, rape, torture and enslavement, while also violating the international right to refuge.

As well as containing people in Libya, Malta’s non-assistance at sea has helped to turn the Mediterranean into the deadliest region in the world for people on the move and contributed to the death of over 28,000 people since 2014. Last year, there were more than 20,000 people in distress in Malta’s SAR zone who were not aided by Malta: out of at least 413 migrant boats in distress, the AFM only rescued three.

Please come, we are dying- Ċetta Mainwaring

One of the boats that the Maltese authorities failed to assist carried four-year-old Loujin who died from dehydration after Maltese and Greek authorities ignored distress signals from the boat she travelled on for multiple days.

Only four months ago, over 600 people died after their boat sank near Pylos, Greece. Once again, many politicians, responsible for the very policies that caused their deaths, lamented their deaths. Their overcrowded fishing vessel passed through Malta’s search and rescue zone without help from Malta’s maritime centre.

According to family members, at least four people who lost their lives had attempted to cross the Mediterranean only weeks before on a boat intercepted by the Tariq Bin Ziyad militia and forcibly returned to Libya from within Malta’s search and rescue zone.

Despite theatrical lamentations by political elites, in the 10 years after the October 2013 shipwrecks, the death toll in the Mediterranean has soared. Malta’s non-assistance at sea has only intensified.

Last December, the Court of Rome made a historic ruling in a case brought by two survivors of the October 11 shipwreck, survivors whose four daughters died due to Maltese and Italian non-assistance.

The court found two individuals within the Italian coast guard and navy guilty of manslaughter and negligence due to their failure to rescue. The court did not convict Captain Manna and Frigate Captain Licciardi only because the case was time-barred.

Ċetta Mainwaring

Faced with the avoidable deaths of thousands of people near our shores, our moral responsibility to rescue is already clear. As the slow wheels of justice turn and begin to reflect what we already know to be morally true, the court’s ruling affirms the legal responsibility of states and individuals everywhere to uphold the laws of the sea and to rescue those in distress.

Ċetta Mainwaring is a senior lecturer in International Relations at the University of Edinburgh.