United to rescue? Humanitarian role conceptions and NGO–NGO interactions in the Mediterranean Sea

Abstract

The large number of asylum seekers dying off the coast of Libya has turned the Southern Mediterranean Sea into a new humanitarian space, prompting 11 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to launch maritime Search and Rescue (SAR) operations between 2014 and 2017. These NGOs engaged in a complex web of interactions, ranging from rare instances of hostility, competition and mistrust to coordination, cooperation and integration. Drawing on role theory, I argue that organisational role conceptions are key to shaping NGO-NGO interactions. The humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality and independence serve as action scripts that inform NGOs' role in the humanitarian space. Sea rescue NGOs have upheld different interpretations of humanitarian principles, developing supportive, neutral, or confrontational approaches vis-àvis European governments' border control policies. By leveraging content analysis and semi-structured interviews, I show that organisations with matching role conceptions have engaged in tighter forms of cooperation; charities with divergent role conceptions, by contrast, have shown a tendency to develop mistrust and engage in more competitive interactions. These frictions inhibited NGOs from forming a united front vis-à-vis policy restrictions and criminalisation, hindering the legitimacy and viability of non-governmental sea rescue.

A bibliometric analysis of maritime security policy: Research trends and future agenda

“…This is in contrast to research published in Italy. These studies focused on migration issues in the Mediterranean sea [ 19 , 58 ], maritime safety and maritime security that lead to chemical and radiological threats as well as the illegal exchange of goods through sea borders. The threats that can be encountered at sea eventually led the authors to look at risk assessment of passenger ships and cargo ships in waters related to chemical, radiological, and explosive threats, as well as available technologies that can be used to avoid prohibited actions on board [ 59 ].…”

“…When it comes to traditional security frameworks, violations of maritime security are considered to threats to state sovereignty and identity, while non-traditional frameworks tend to expand the security landscape of the object of reference so that the security issues studied are not only more than just threats to state sovereignty and identity, but also related to technology, pandemics to shipping [ [18] , [19] , [20] ]. Suárez et al [ 21 ] even equated the definition of maritime security with maritime safety which is one of the variables in measuring a country's maritime strength with a definition as a safety condition that results in all activities carried out in the maritime sector through the actions and strategies of the nation-state implemented to eliminate, to reduce or to mitigate arising risks and threats.…”

“…Threats to maritime security can be in the form of threats to national interests [ 13 ], border and national security [ 13 ]; maritime conflicts or disputes such as the South China Sea dispute [ [3] , [4] , [5] , [22] , [23] , [24] ]; transnational organizational crime (TOC) [ 13 , 25 ]; drug trafficking [ 25 ]; smuggling [ 13 ]; terrorism [ 13 , 18 , 26 , 27 ]; piracy [ 11 , 14 , 28 ]; armed robbery [ 14 ]; human trafficking [ 28 , 29 ]; environmental crime [ 28 ]; shipping and navigation [ 18 ]; Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing [ 8 , 30 , 31 ]; and even the threats from the problems of asylum seekers [ 19 ]. In discussing maritime security, efforts to resolve and prevent threats will definitely be one of the main topics of discussion.…”

Guilt by association? The criminalisation of sea rescue NGOs in Italian media

“…Mission Lifeline, Mediterranea Saving Humans and Aita Mari joined in 2017, 2018, and 2019 respectively. In 2016 and 2017, as illustrated by Figure 1 below, these organisations became a crucial provider of maritime rescue in the Central Mediterranean (Cusumano 2021;Cuttitta 2018;Stierl 2018).…”

“…Several scholars have conceptualised these efforts as part of a broader attempt to enforce more restrictive border policies (Moreno-Lax 2018;Tazzioli 2018). Other have empirically examined the activities of sea rescue NGOs (Cusumano 2021;Cuttitta 2018;Irrera 2019;Stierl 2018) and questioned the existence of a correlation between SAR operations and irregular departures from Libya (Cusumano and Villa 2020). No study to date, however, has systematically examined the linguistic strategies used to frame sea rescue NGOs as directly committing or indirectly facilitating criminal activities, a process we refer to as discursive criminalisation.…”