Refugee law, migrants law, maritime law: legal constraints and legal framework for the rescue of persons at risk in the Mediterranean sea”

“SOS Méditerranée was launched in the course of 2015, an initiative to mobilize European citizens to face the dramatic situation prevailing in the Mediterranean Sea. Originally developed by a German merchant marine captain and a French humanitarian staff, this initiative was based right from the start on international issues and dimension on three continents, bordering this sea “in the middle of the earth”: Europe, Asia and Africa. It rapidly broadened its scope in several European Union (EU) countries and was structured around a number of shared principles and objectives of action. With its size, its ambition and the political, legal and ethical stakes it intends to meet, it was immediately confronted with legal constraints and specific legal frameworks. These raised many questions about the substance and the form that this initiative takes today. The analysis of these questions from the law point of view in the framework of this study brings together these three dimensions, political, legal and ethical, and their articulation. […] ”

Read the study online (in French)

This study was produced in the framework of the Think Tank