Financing MOAS’s life-saving mission

The Migrant Offshore Aid Station, a private foundation launched by millionaires Chris and Regina Catrambone to save asylum seekers and refugees adrift in the Mediterranean Sea, could be the incubator for the privatization of search and rescue efforts to save lives at sea – for both governments and private shipping.

Between August and October of 2014, MOAS’s Phoenix took part in 10 rescues that involved 3,000 people, taking on board 1,462 of these people before being transported to Italian navy vessels.

But it also takes €250,000 a month to keep the Phoenix operating, and MOAS has already drained $8 million from Catrambone’s business, the Tangiers Group, which specialises in insurance for high-risk and conflict zones and country intelligence.

So the idea of sustaining their life-saving mission by working on behalf of commercial shipping lines, could be a win-win solution for this “platform for mass rescue” as a MOAS spokesperson put it: “Our core belief is that nobody deserves to die at sea in this way... the more financing it gets, the more people it can save.”

The financing approach was mooted recently by American filmmaker Robert Young Pelton, hired by Catrambone to help MOAS become a sustainable NGO. He suggested in a Bloomberg Businessweek interview that MOAS could work on behalf of commercial shipping lines, shadowing merchant vessels and respond to boats in need so the freighters don’t have to.

MOAS’s own director, former AFM commander Martin Xuereb, also suggested that tankers carrying crude oil could proceed on their voyage while MOAS would think about the “stopping” when called upon to assist the thousands attempting the treacherous crossing at sea.

In comments to MaltaToday, MOAS said that it did “not have any specific plans to finance its missions through private clients… however, it is clear that our mission to save lives ties in with the need for shipping companies to have professional search and rescue available in their shipping liens,” the spokesperson said.

“We therefore welcome donations from such entities. However, this does not absolve them from search and rescue and cannot be considered to be outsourcing their SAR obligations.”

So far MOAS is financed by donations, partners and sponsors: apart from Tangiers’s funds, donors include the $1.4 million collaboration with Médèçins Sans Frontieres, €180,000 from Jurgen Wagentrotz, chairman of Germany’s Oil & Gas Invest, donations from the Avaaz community, and drone manufacturers Scheibel.

There is a definitely clear demand for better search and rescue responses in the Mediterranean. In 2014 alone, merchant ships rescued around 40,000 people risking their lives making the crossing.

But while the shipping industry says it fully accepts its legal responsibility to rescue anyone in distress at sea, it has argued that it is “unacceptable” that the international community relies on merchant ships and their crews to undertake large-scale rescues.

With ships having to rescue groups of 500 people at a time, and large vessels making approaches difficult to manage, shipowners say that the rescues create serious risks to the seafarers’ welfare – apart from commercial losses from the interrupted journeys.

That is why in April 2015, in a joint letter to leaders of all 28 EU member states, the European Community Shipowners’ Associations and the International Chamber of Shipping demanded more immediate priority to increasing resources for search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean, saying the dangerous rescues being conducted by merchant ships had made the situation “untenable”.

Lacking medical staff or food, a large ship is not best equipped to deal with large-scale operations involving hundreds of people: the M/V Salamis was an example in which a cargo ship was barred entry to either Malta and Italy after it saved a group of migrants at sea, preventing it from delivering its cargo or delivering the migrants to a safe port of call.

In comments to MaltaToday, John Murray – director of the International Chamber of Shipping – said that the shipping industry “accepts without question” the deep-rooted moral obligation to save lives at sea.

But he also points out that the UN’s Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) or the IMO’s Safety of Life at Sea convention (SOLAS), and the Search and Rescue convention were also never intended for the purpose of rescuing large numbers of migrants and refugees.

However he sounds a warning over whether shipping companies should ‘outsource’ their SAR obligations.

“The underlying legal principle is that nation states and ships have an obligations to assist persona in distress at sea, regardless of their nationality, status or the circumstances in which they are found… it is our view that the contractual use of a third party is unlikely to be accepted as meeting the letter or intent of the regulations.”

Murray says that if an EU state would consider contracting out private SAR operators, that would be a matter for governments. “Once commercially chartered ships become ‘declared SAR assets’ they become resources at the disposal of the SAR authority.”

But he says that shipowners attempting to do the same would “potentially risk the established position that shipping is not part of the solution [to the Mediterranean crisis].”

Murray adds that such contracts would not change the legal requirement to save lives at sea. “The unintended consequences of such action could have significant adverse effects on the industry.”

But MOAS has also told MaltaToday that large commercial ships are simply not built or staffed for mass rescues, which why the Phoenix offers a specialised SAR technique that includes drones, RHIBs, other specialised equipment as well as medical staff.

“Search and rescue is very costly for the shipping industry, particularly when there is a surge in crossings or when there are no state-funded search and rescue operations ongoing. MOAS will continue to be an efficient and robust platform that can be used for search and rescue if it has the necessary funding.”