In December 2025, we published new data on our interactive map: 242 distress cases that occurred between January and June 2025 in Malta’s search and rescue (SAR) zone. The data reveals a continued practice of non-assistance by the Maltese authorities, as well as a surge in forced pushbacks to Libya from within Malta’s SAR zone. The 242 cases involved more than 10,000 people – men, women and children – in distress in Maltese waters over a six-month period. Despite Malta’s legal and moral obligations, the authorities responded to only two of these distress cases, less than one percent. This is a wanton abdication of Malta’s duty to respond to people in distress in its SAR zone.
For the authorities in Malta, avoiding and delaying rescue has become normal practice. They have also refused to coordinate rescues with NGO and merchant vessels. These refusals are deadly: more people suffer and die at sea because of the Malta Government’s actions and inactions. In the first half of 2025, more than 580 people died in the Central Mediterranean, according to the OIM.
In parallel, our data reveals an unprecedented increase in pushbacks carried out by the so-called Libyan coast guard from within Malta’s SAR zone. Malta allowed the so-called Libyan coast guard into its SAR zone at least 16 times, comprising 6.6% of cases in the first half of 2025. This surge reflects more than double the number of pushbacks that occurred in the first half of 2024 and eight times the number in 2023. Pushbacks to Libya are illegal under international law. Malta’s responsibility to assist people in distress in their SAR zone and ensure they are disembarked in a place of safety is incontrovertible.
These 16 pushbacks from within Malta’s search and rescue zone involved 800 people forcibly returned to ‘unimaginable horrors’ in Libya, where migrants and refugees face systematic violence including unlawful killings, torture, arbitrary detention, rape and other forms of sexual and gender-based violence, slavery and forced labour, extortion, and exploitation. In June 2025, the discovery of mass graves in Libya brought to light new gross human rights violations.
The Malta Migration Archive provides more extensive studies of eight cases (DC92–DC99) over the first half of 2025 to illustrate the realities of distress and pushbacks at sea. For example, on 4 February 2025, the civilian hotline Watch the Med – Alarm Phone received a call about 43 people in distress only 32 nautical miles south of Malta. Alarm Phone then lost contact with the boat and attempted to obtain information from Malta’s Rescue Coordination Centre for two days but got no response from the authorities. On 6 February, Alarm Phone received confirmation that the 43 people had been intercepted by the so-called Libyan Coast Guard within the Maltese SAR zone and forcibly returned to a prison in Zuwara, Libya. Forced pushbacks to Libya from so far within Malta’s SAR zone are unprecedented and an alarming escalation of Malta’s unconscionable practices at sea.
We are indebted to the CMRCC SARchive and the wider Civil Fleet for their tireless work in bringing to light the border violence and migration struggles in the Central Mediterranean and elsewhere. Without them, much of this border violence would remain invisible.
For more information on select cases in the second half of 2025 that do not yet appear on our map, please see our news section.
Ċetta Mainwaring, Malta migration Archive, 6 February 2026
