A Civil fleet workshop
On October 10 and 11, 2024, the SABIR festival[1] in Rome hosted a workshop organized by the Civil Fleet and attended by many of the NGOs involved in Search and Rescue in the Central Mediterranean. The workshop was held in response to a request from several organizations operating at sea to save lives. The civil fleet has indeed found itself in circumstance of recovering bodies at sea and to deal with the suffering of survivors who bear witness to the disappearance of their fellow travelers. During rescue operations, NGOs are constantly confronted with the possibility of having to recover bodies at sea: victims connected to the event for which they are intervening, or sometimes “isolated” bodies testifying to an invisible shipwreck. Occasionally, deaths occur on board, due to the critical state of health of those rescued.
Each organization has had to confront this situation at least once, deciding whether to recover victims or to take them on board, managing the suffering of loved ones, survivors, and its crew. They had to arrange the space on the boat in the long hours before disembarkation. The onboard doctor has had to examine the victim to confirm death, often under extremely difficult conditions, both materially and emotionally. The captain is responsible for handling the legal procedures and informing the authorities at the port of disembarkation ensuring that they are prepared to receive the body(ies).
Pending disembarkation, after medical examinations, the victims are placed in body bags (which every boat now has on board), and deposited, if the boat has one, in cold rooms, to help preserve the body and facilitate identification activities for the authorities ashore. If the boat does not have a cold room, the bodies are deposited in a suitable space on the boat, out of the way to protect them and to limit the perception of their presence for the survivors, or placed outboard in smaller boats that are towed along.
Each experience is different, depending on the size and equipment of the boat, the conditions of intervention, the duration of the voyage to the port of disembarkation, the number of survivors rescued, and the number of bodies recovered. Yet, these situations occur quite frequently, forcing all organization to confront this possibility and anticipate the responsibility of caring of one or more bodies. Over the years, they have developed, or are in the process of developing, an operational protocol to standardize practices and deal with different situations, adapted to specific capabilities and in compliance with the maritime code.
However, it has appeared both useful and necessary to address legal constraints and obligations more organically and to question what can be done to go further, particularly in terms of participation in the body identification process and possibly in the collection of information on missing persons. This has become even more crucial as NGOs have realized that the authorities handle identification processes inconsistently and often hastily, due to the lack of resources and political will. In many countries – notably in Italy – identification is not mandatory but depends on the directives of the public prosecutor who is in charge of the investigation associated with the death. In Italy, between 2014 and 2019, 73% of bodies were buried without a name, and this percentage is still more or less the same today.
Caring for the bodies and respecting the dignity of the victims go hand in hand with the commitment to restoring their identities and allowing families to learn the fate of their loved ones. At the same time, while protecting the witnesses/survivors on board, while enabling their potential contribution to the identification of the victims should not be underestimated. The survivors should be supported in this effort if they wish to participate or are in a position to do so.
The workshop, which took place over two half-days, focused in its first part on possible forensic actions on board: with the participation of a forensic expert, the discussion explored the activities that can be carried out on board starting from the body recovery operations to be able to collect functional information for identification. To this end, it is proposed to insist on a holistic forensic approach, which can be practiced by crew members (depending on the technical characteristics of the vessel) and allows all functional elements to be taken into account in an initial “recognition” operation of the victim. This should facilitate subsequent identification operations carried out by the authorities on land.
Through this approach, which includes a precise body inspection procedure, the acknowledgement of survivors’ estimony and the use of devices developed by research centers (INSA with ICRC) that can reconstitute an image of the victim’s face, it is possible to initiate a “search” process for the victim’s identity.
The second part of the workshop covered the legal obligations, constraints, and possibilities that define the boundaries of action and responsibilities of the crew, according to different scenarios. Several specialists present at the workshop offered to do a mapping of the different scenarios that will be able to guide the organization through the actions to be carried out on board.
A common element of the two workshops was to evaluate all instruments and practices that can be activated onboard to facilitate identification, and crucially, how these connect with efforts on land. By collecting and documenting more comprehensive information and making it available to competent authorities or civil society organizations, NGOs can make a significant difference in identification processes.
The workshop acknowledged that hearing the testimony of survivors who knew the victims is not merely a forensic necessity – it represents a decolonial practice that inverts the traditional forensic paradigm. Rather than relying solely on physical traces that experts must interpret, this approach embraces equality with witnesses who, through their words, reconstruct both personal and collective histories of violence inflicted by border regimes.
This approach assumes that the production of information useful for identification should prompt authorities to take these preliminary activities into account and more effectively manage subsequent identification operations. Ensuring that the voices of those present at these tragedies are heard serves not only for identification purposes but becomes a crucial element in reconstructing truth and justice.
Furthermore, the civil fleet’s connection with humanitarian and civil society actors on land enables contact with potential family members or relatives who could actively participate in formal identification operations. This transnational capacity for action—characteristic of the No Borders movement to which many rescue organizations belong—creates powerful coordination networks that can challenge institutional indifference.
This type of activation, requiring organized, trust-based networking, has already proved extremely valuable in numerous cases, particularly in anticipating operations and enabling family members to be present at disembarkation sites and involved in identification processes. The workshop concluded with a call for rescue NGOs and land-based activists to recognize and embrace the transnational coordination power they collectively hold, and to accept the responsibility of using it effectively to restore dignity to those who have lost their lives at Europe’s maritime borders.
Filippo Furri, anthropologist
[1] One year after the 3rd of October 2013 Lampedusa shipwreck, the Sabir Festival was born to give voice to the Mediterranean that does not want to surrender to border deaths and the criminalization of people on the move and solidarity. Sabir, the common language of the Mediterranean sailors until the beginning of the last century, today recalls the need to rebuild a common language, starting with civil society. After Lampedusa (2014), Pozzallo (2016), Syracuse (2017), Palermo (2018), Lecce (2019 and 2021), an online edition (2020), Matera (2022) and Trieste (2023), ine 2024, on the occasion of its tenth anniversary, the Sabir festival took place in Prato, from April 18 to 20, and then in Rome, from October 10 to 12. The Festival is promoted by ARCI together with Caritas Italiana, ACLI and CGIL, with the collaboration of ASGI and Carta di Roma.
Picture: CommémorAction in Kayar, Senegal, February 2025
