A Duty to Rescue - A Criminal Law Perspective on the Failure to Assist Migrants in Distress At Sea

Abstract

Reports of migrants drowning in the Mediterranean have, unfortunately, become more and more frequent in recent years. A recently published MSF report has highlighted the role ‘pushbacks and systematic non-assistance to those at risk of drowning proliferate’ play in this regard. The report refers specifically to two events that happened in 2023 in which national authorities failed to launch rescue operations despite receiving the information on migrants in distress at sea hours before the tragedy. In this blogpost, we assess whether a coast guard’s failure to act in situations of migrants in distress might violate an incumbent criminal law duty to rescue. We map the core elements of the duty to rescue under criminal law and how they might apply to such a chain of events, using the abovementioned event of 14 June as an example.

Keywords

• Criminal Law
• duty to rescue
• migrant deaths
• pushbacks
• Sea Rescue