Criminalisation and obstruction of civil SAR activities : The impact of Decree-Law No. 1 of January 2, 2023, and the distant port policy on civil SAR activities in the Central Mediterranean Sea

Abstract: In January 2023, the newly elected right-wing government led by Giorgio Meloni approved Decree-Law No. 1/2023 which restricts the work of civil Search and Rescue (SAR) organizations, with the aim to reduce the flow of people reaching the country's shores. Simultaneously, SAR organizations claimed that the Italian government started to deploy a policy of allocating distant ports to the NGO ships for the disembarkation of survivors. This thesis aims to analyse this new twofold approach towards civil sea rescue activities in the Central Mediterranean to answer the question of how it impacts the work of civil SAR organizations. For this purpose, a mixed-methods approach that joins quantitative and qualitative methods is deployed. The quantitative analysis of this thesis draws upon rescue data provided by SAR NGOs, as well as on press reports to understand the impact of the new approach on the disembarkation of survivors and movements of ships. To gain a deeper understanding of the impact on the rescue dynamics in the Mediterranean Sea, the qualitative analysis draws upon the results of semi-structured interviews conducted with staff of civil SAR organizations. In the course of this thesis, I argue that the new Italian approach falls into a larger trend of obstructing the work of SAR NGOs, deployed by the Italian government since the start of the de-governmentalisation of SAR activities in the Central Mediterranean in 2014. While the distant port policy leads to obstruction of SAR activities by delaying the disembarkation of survivors, Decree-Law No. 1/2023 falls into a wider strategy of criminalisation of civil SAR activities. I furthermore argue, that it is the interplay of the two newly introduced policies mentioned above that leads to severe obstruction of civil SAR activities. Finally, I engage theories about humanitarian space to describe the obstruction of civil SAR activities as the shrinking of the humanitarian space in the Mediterranean Sea.