At Sea: Voices of Exiled Persons Rescued off Libya

#1 - Voices of Survivors

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"We were ready to jump. We were so afraid the Libyans would arrive!"

I read these words from a young Syrian man recorded in the data table. They are part of the study I coordinated from summer 2023 to summer 2024 onboard the Ocean Viking, the civilian search-and-rescue (SAR) vessel operated by SOS MEDITERRANEE.

These words do not reflect an isolated incident. Among the 110 rescued people who took part in the onboard survey, nearly one-third described a similar fear at the sight of a ship on the horizon—not fear of imminent shipwreck or drowning, but fear of being intercepted by Libyan forces and returned to Libya.

These words echo those of Shakir, a Bangladeshi man I met on the OV (as the Ocean Viking is nicknamed):

"You refreshed our minds with the workshops. Since Libya and the sea, we felt lost. Now, we understand the journey that we’ve undertaken."

On the OV’s deck and in the containers serving as shelters until disembarkation in Italy, I offered participatory mapping workshops. Around sixty people took part, retracing the steps, places, and timelines of their journeys through hand-drawn maps.

I developed this creative and collaborative research method to encourage the expression of knowledge formed through migration, but I had not anticipated that these gestures and drawings could also help “refresh the minds”, reclaim points of reference, or create value for “the journey undertaken.”

These words also resonate with those I collected after a disembarkation in Ancona. There, I met Koné, an Ivorian man who had been rescued by another NGO vessel a week earlier:

"The worst is not the sea, believe me, it’s the desert! When you go out on the water, it’s at night and you don’t see what’s around you—it’s only when daylight comes that you see the waves. In the desert, they put fifty people on a pickup truck made for ten: if you fall, you’re left behind. At sea, you die instantly, while in the desert, you die a slow death."

All these words have led me to rethink my assumptions about borders and their dangers.

Why take the risk of crossing the sea, with such uncertain outcomes? How is rescue perceived from a boat in distress? What is life like during the days spent onboard an NGO vessel? What hopes are projected onto arrival in Europe, and beyond?

While rescues and shipwrecks often make headlines, the perceptions of the rescued people themselves are rarely studied; they usually reach us filtered through authorities, journalists, or NGOs.

Collecting these lived experiences and allowing exiled individuals to tell their own stories: this was the core purpose of my onboard research mission.

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An Onboard Research Mission

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Onboard the OV, I occupied the “25th seat,” usually reserved for special guests. My presence was somewhat unprecedented: this was the first SAR mission to host an external researcher.

For SOS MEDITERRANEE’s Operations Department, this was an opportunity to open their work up to objective observation by a social scientist and to refine the operational response, drawing on the priorities expressed by rescued individuals through the methods I introduced on board.

Among the crew, several members expressed interest in this work, which could enhance their practices and deepen their understanding of the migration journeys they had been witnessing for years. This was the case for Charlie, one of the NGO’s veterans who have spent about a decade refining approaches and rescue techniques for boats in distress. As SAR Team Leader, he coordinates the RHIBs (Rigid-Hulled Inflatable Boats) launched from the OV to carry out rescues:

"This work is really useful because we are constantly looking to improve. But what I’m really curious about is what happens before. I talk with them sometimes, but I want to know more about them."

As for me, although I have worked for fifteen years with exiled people, this was the first time I was writing about borders while being physically inside the border zone—a feeling of immersion heightened by the horizon of the sea and the confined daily life onboard the OV.

The study unfolded over the course of five rotations, each consisting of a six-week mission in the search-and-rescue zone. It was implemented with the support of the entire crew—rescue, medical, protection, logistics, and communications teams—all of whom were trained in the survey methodology.

Emerging from a dialogue between scientific and operational objectives, the research protocol combined quantitative and qualitative methods.

First, a questionnaire was designed around three themes: (1) the sea rescue itself, (2) care onboard the mothership (post-rescue), and (3) migration projects and pathways, from the country of origin to the imagined destinations in Europe. My presence on board allowed me to refine the initial questionnaire, reaching a stabilized version based on feedback from rescued people and crew members.

This statistical data was complemented by more qualitative methods that I usually deploy on land—at the French-Italian and French-Spanish borders or in the Balkans—with the project La CartoMobile. These itinerant workshops aim to co-construct experiential knowledge about borders by offering people who cross them participatory and emotional mapping tools to narrate their journeys.

To adapt these methods to the sea, I brought onboard the OV maps previously drawn with other exiled people, along with creative materials, and arranged a dedicated space.

In this improvised, floating laboratory, I sought to create a space-time conducive to reflection, allowing silenced knowledge to emerge and to be shared with the wider public—for those who wished to do so.

The invitation to participate was designed to be reassuring and encouraging: the workshop was guided and required no specific language or graphic skills; the aesthetic result mattered less than the interaction experienced during the mapping process.

These scientific and ethical concerns closely aligned with operational priorities: during the days of navigation before disembarking at an Italian port, there is a need to fill the waiting time and lift spirits.

On the OV’s deck, mapping gradually found its place among post-rescue activities, some of which have a psychosocial dimension aimed at restoring the dignity of rescued people and preparing them for the next stage of their journey in Europe.

The collective mappings—where texts and drawings appeared—became a shared language and gesture, linking crew members and rescued people who joined the workshop.

#2 - Fragments of Journeys to the Mediterranean

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Twenty-one individual sketches were created on the OV. They tell fragments of journeys—routes that were sometimes smooth but often fraught, starting from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt.

Some journeys were very costly but quick and organized, like those of certain Bangladeshi individuals who travelled from Dhaka to Zuwara via Dubai in just a few days.

Others stretched and intertwined over several years, adapting to encounters, resources, dangers, and the multiple wars and violence in the countries crossed.

Among 69 people who responded to the questionnaire, 37.6% had left their country of origin the same year, but 21.7% had been traveling for more than five years—and 11.5% for over 10 years. The longest journeys began in countries as diverse as Nigeria, Sudan, Eritrea, and Ethiopia, and in 60% of the cases studied, Syria.

2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015… The steady spread of departure dates collected through the survey highlights the persistence of conflicts driving migration:

"I fled the Syrian army. I spent three years in prison and torture, saw terrible scenes. I was 18, I was not old enough to live or see such things."

Motivations to continue these long journeys are often personal ambitions for a better life such as being able to study or helping family left behind, as explained by a young Egyptian man:

"I am the only son in my family. My parents are old, and they are worried I won’t make it."

The data collected also made it possible to outline the types of support received and the dangers encountered along the way.

Alongside financial resources from personal savings or family loans, nearly 60% of respondents mentioned the importance of immaterial resources, such as “advice from friends,” “psychological support from my husband,” or “information and emotional support from my niece.”

The information received from loved ones seemed crucial at certain stages of the journey: as one respondent explained, it provided a form of moral support to “survive in Libya.” Conversely, another participant confided that it had been essential to hide the realities of their daily life in Libya from their family in order “to hold on.”

Indeed, it is in Libya that most difficulties were encountered: among the 136 situations of danger described in the study, 50% were located in Libya—compared to 35.3% at sea, 8.8% in the country of origin, and 5.9% at other borders along migration routes.

These responses are not an exhaustive picture of all migration dangers; they reflect the perceptions of a limited sample of people rescued off the coast of Libya and must be contextualized within data collection conducted in the middle of the sea.

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Narrating Libya

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The atrocities targeting people on the move in Libya are now well-documented. They appear in numerous sources—NGO reports (SOS Humanity 2024), documentary films (Creta 2021), and direct testimonies from those affected (Kaba 2019).

The findings of an independent UN Human Rights Council fact-finding mission published in 2021 qualified these realities as crimes against humanity:

"The foregoing provides reasonable grounds to believe that acts of murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, persecution and other inhumane acts committed against migrants form part of a systematic and widespread attack directed at this population, in furtherance of a State policy. As such, these acts may amount to crimes against humanity."

Through the study onboard the OV, participants were able to define, in their own words, the nature of the dangers they experienced there. Their responses were then coded and grouped into categories to create a spatialized typology drawn from these narratives.

The quotes associated with the data convey subjective, embodied experiences—reshaped by emotions—yet they are numerous and convergent enough to reconstruct what happens in Libya.

The mechanisms of the reported violence are systemic: punitive detention combined with torture, inhumane and degrading treatment, racial and sexual violence endured or witnessed.

These acts are often cumulative:

"During my first period in Libya, I was imprisoned six times, tortured, beaten. I can’t even remember the exact details."

They involve actors that are more or less institutionalized: coast guards, prison guards, mafias, militias, and employers—whose roles tend to overlap.

They occur across the entire territory (Benghazi, Misrata, Sabratha, Sirte, Tripoli, Zawiya, Zuwara were the most frequently cited cities in the survey), but also in the desert and in detention sites of unknown locations.

Omnipresent, the prospect of violent and arbitrary detention generates a presumption of widespread racism against foreigners:

"The racism I experienced as an Egyptian is just unimaginable: kidnapping, theft, imprisonment."

Black people feel particularly targeted by such attacks. Among those who testified, an Ethiopian man trapped for four years in Libya described a constant sense of terror linked to the repeated racist arrests he endured:

"People get kidnapped in Libya. They catch us and put us in prison because we don’t have papers. Then we have to pay more than $1,000 to be released. It happened to me four times: two weeks, then a month, then two months, and finally a year. All because of my skin color—because I am Black. It lasted so long that my mind is too stressed, from fear."

Racial discrimination is also confirmed by the UN Human Rights Council report (p.16):

"There is also evidence that most of the migrants detained are sub-Saharan Africans and that they are treated in a harsher manner than other nationalities, which suggests discriminatory treatment."

However, the risks of kidnapping and ransom seem to spare no one on Libyan soil. Koné, for example, described them as a generalized and systemic practice:

"There’s a business that many Libyans run: they put you in a taxi, which sells you to those who put you in prison. Then they demand a ransom from your family to get you out. If the ransom isn’t paid, you’re made to work for free. In the end, in Libya you’re like merchandise: they let you enter the country only to make you work."

Several study participants were caught in these networks, and their analyses afterwards converged on one point: the Libyan experience amounts to a vast system of exploitation through forced labour.

The facts reported match the International Labour Organization’s definitions of “human trafficking” or “modern slavery” and are again confirmed by the UN report:

"Although the detention of migrants is founded in Libyan domestic law, migrants are detained for indefinite periods without an opportunity to have the legality of their detention reviewed, and the only practicable means of escape is by paying large sums of money to the guards or engaging in forced labour or sexual favours inside or outside the detention centre for the benefit of private individuals."

Ultimately, regarding detention in Libya, what Koné remembers most painfully is the feeling of shame:

"I pity myself, my story, but I pity the people who went to prison even more. If your family can’t pay the ransom, they must take on debts, so it’s a problem you put on your family. Some people went crazy because of it."

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The Gesture and the Language of Mapping as Testimony

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While the accounts of time spent in Libya are always bitter, often horrifying, and sometimes beyond words, the study revealed a strong desire to bear witness to what happens there—not only for the general public, but also for those who might attempt the same journey:

"“I want to say that in Libya, there are many women like me who are in a very difficult situation."

"I don’t have much to say, except that so many people are suffering even more than I did in Libya."

"I don’t advise anyone to come by this route."

To accompany these stories, the mapping workshops aboard the OV served as an invitation—an opportunity to share experiences without having to put traumatic events into words.

Designed as a mode of expression, the mapping process relied on spatialization exercises in several stages.

At first, the collective mappings organized on the OV’s deck allowed participants themselves to bring out the main themes they wanted to address, according to three sequences: “our past,” “our present,” and “the future we imagine.”

My role here was to create an appropriate framework for expression, guide participants toward accessible graphic techniques, and enable the sharing of creations through their gradual display on the deck.

Workshops were then offered to small groups or individuals inside containers, spaces more conducive to the confidentiality of intimate stories.

One of the tasks suggested by participants was to represent the zones of danger felt throughout the migration journey—where Libya inevitably stood out.

From these personal pathways, a second exercise was introduced for those who wished to participate: describing the experience of danger at the Libyan scale, building on the places already mentioned.

Participants were then encouraged to enrich their sketched maps with personal illustrations and narrative legends in their native languages, later translated into English.

On his map, Ahmed, a Syrian-born participant, depicted “insecurity” in Tripoli, “bad treatment and extortion of money” in Benghazi, and “violation of rights” in Zuwara.

His illustration shows a scene of ordinary, widespread crime: “the Libyan” shooting at “foreigners” evokes the collective violence that Ahmed spatializes as occurring all across Libya.

This emotional and participatory cartographic method served as a language for sharing stories that are difficult to verbalize, and for mediating them. Beyond what these drawings can facilitate for those who share their story, they also allow those who observe these violent images to receive them and contextualize them within a complex web of spatiotemporal markers.

#3 - Dying a Slow Death or Taking to the Sea

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The dangers of Libya are generally discovered only when people on the move enter the country with hopes of finding decent work and a better life:

"On my very first day in Tripoli, I realized I had made the worst decision of my life."

However, few manage to transit through Libya in less than a month. As Koné explained when we met in Ancona:

"In Libya, it’s not easy to get in, but it’s even harder to get out!"

Most of those we met on the OV (57.9%) had spent in total between one and six months there. Some were trapped for over two years—up to seven cumulative years, for one Sudanese participant.

In the statistical picture provided by the survey, different migration routes and configurations emerge, with the longest forced stays in Libya mainly affecting people from the poorest and most war-torn countries.

Another significant finding is that women experience longer periods of detention in Libya. Those we met had spent an average of 15.5 months there, compared to 8.5 months for men. This reflects the mechanisms of coercion and violence that specifically affect women migrating through the Mediterranean, as perfectly described by Camille Schmoll in The Wretched of the Sea (2024).

Under the survival conditions reported in Libya, the decision to take to the sea despite the risks of the crossing can be summed up like this: better the risk of dying now than the certainty of a slow death.

On his map, Mohamad illustrated this shift well. He shows the cumulative violences he encountered along the Libyan coast, from east to west: captivity in Tobruk by a “human trafficker,” imprisonment and theft in Benghazi, racism and xenophobia in Ajdabiya, mistreatment in Zuwara—where he finally managed to flee by sea.

His illustration shows, from right to left, the chain of events that led him from imprisonment to the boat.

To take to the sea, however, one must gather a considerable sum of money. Participants mentioned borrowing from their families—$2,000, $6,000, even $10,000—to buy a place on a boat. This place is sometimes obtained after forced labour in more or less official prisons, or in exchange for the promise to be the one steering the boat.

When attempts to cross the sea are thwarted by interceptions followed by forced returns to Libya, the original sum must be paid again:

"They scammed me first for $2,000, then $3,000, and the third time I paid $5,000."

Study participants also described their living conditions in the so-called game houses—collective buildings where people who had paid for their crossing wait for the signal to depart. These stays last from several days to several weeks, with varying amounts of supplies and conditions depending on the network and the amount individuals paid to get there.

But everyone shared the same realization upon their first attempt to cross: the boats are unfit for navigation and dangerously overcrowded.

As Koné explained, at that stage it’s generally too late to turn back:

"We started from a beach near Tripoli at 4 a.m. They made us run into the water: ‘Go, go!’ It was too late to change our minds."

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In the Night at Sea

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Departures from Libyan beaches often happen at night, and it’s only in the morning that the vastness of the sea becomes visible.

The onboard survey helped reveal how people on boats in distress perceive the rescue scenes.

The first striking finding is the sense of disorientation at the moment of rescue. One participant mentioned “the simple joy of having found something in the water” when recalling his first impression of the Ocean Viking appearing on the horizon.

Other participants described how their perceptions were distorted by the navigation conditions or by the nature of the distressed boats themselves, as one Bangladeshi man who had boarded in the hold of a wooden boat remembered:

"I was inside the wooden boat, I couldn’t see or hear anything. I didn’t believe it was a rescue until I came out and saw it with my own eyes."

Charlie, the SAR Team Leader who coordinated that rescue, remembers his own shock upon discovering 68 people aboard a vessel built for 20:

"As we transferred them onto our RHIBs [rigid-hulled inflatable boats], more people kept coming out from under the deck, hidden."

Drawing on the questionnaire, cartographic workshops, and targeted interviews, I attempted to reconstruct the spatiotemporal dynamics of this rescue with both the rescued individuals and members of the crew.

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“They were heading straight back to Tripoli!”

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Jérôme, the deputy SARCo (Search and Rescue Coordinator) onboard the OV, confirmed the case of an “extremely overcrowded” boat, as indicated in the final rescue report:

"They were really overcrowded! The alert had reported 55 people on board, but we actually found 68, because some were hidden under the deck!"

In the OV’s bridge, using the monitoring screen as support, we reconstructed the positions of the boat in distress throughout its search.

That morning, the alert had been given by Alarm Phone, a citizen hotline operating continuously from both shores of the Mediterranean to relay and monitor cases of boats in distress.

"We got a position at 6:19 a.m. We tried calling Tripoli several times, no answer. We said: ‘We’re going anyway, we’re very worried.’ We sent the official email saying we were going."

Once these formalities with the maritime rescue coordination centers were done, the OV headed toward the reported position, in international waters off the Libyan city of Zuwara.

Shortly after, our radios set to the watch channel crackled:

"We generally wake everyone up when we’re within 10 miles, because that’s the distance at which we can spot them with binoculars. And at 6 a.m., the first light of dawn appears."

The search for the boat in distress, however, became complicated:

"With the first data—the departure point and the second position—we had an idea of their speed: we thought they were going 5 knots. So we thought we’d find them at this position. But once we arrived, we started tearing our eyes out: they weren’t there!"

The calculations made during this search phase must integrate multiple factors: the different positions received (when there are any), the presence or absence of a functioning engine, and, finally, the weather and sea conditions, as Jérôme explained:

"What I think is that they must have gotten lost and gone off course: with the sea and the wind in their faces, I think they couldn’t see anything they were doing. They were just fighting against all that."

Confirming Jérôme’s hypothesis, many of the people rescued that day arrived on the OV’s deck suffering from dehydration and seasickness:

"As we saw in the photos, they had really big swells and wind hitting them in the face. The further you go offshore, the more you’re battered by the sea."

Watching the zoom-ins and zoom-outs Jérôme made on the screen, I visually understood what a distress case off the Libyan coast entails:

"Plus, here, the wind was enough to make them drift: they were heading straight back to Tripoli!"

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“These Boats Shouldn’t Even Exist”

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Despite the difficulties described during that rescue, it was considered a “low-risk” operation. Far more critical events are regularly reported by both crews and rescued people.

Over time, rescue teams have seen the quality of boats deteriorate, as Jérôme explained:

"First there were wooden boats, then rubber boats. Now the worst are the iron boats."

In 2023, hastily welded metal boats began appearing off the Tunisian coast. For seasoned sailors like Charlie who make up the rescue teams, the very existence of such boats on the open sea is scarcely conceivable:

"These boats shouldn’t even exist. They have extremely weak structures. They’re handmade, badly and quickly put together; they’re just metal plates welded together. They have no stability. They’re like floating coffins."

For these maritime professionals, the concern is real: “We need to be prepared for this.” First, the sharp edges of metal boats can damage the NGO’s RHIBs, risking the entire rescue operation—as happened in September 2023, after a patrol on the Tunisian route.

The RHIBs were then protected with the resources available on board, using the carpets found on the vessel while it was operating at sea.

Moreover, each new type of boat requires the implementation of very specific techniques.

The approach and positioning of RHIBs around distressed boats (the so-called “dance of the RHIBs”), the communication methods needed to keep people calm, the emergency care during transfer to the mothership—all of this is meticulously studied to anticipate as many scenarios as possible.

In the crew’s daily meeting room, using a model built by SOS veterans to train for simulations, Charlie explained in detail the techniques developed to approach each type of distressed boat, whether they’re made of fiberglass, wood, rubber, or metal.

In the last case, that of a metal boat, Charlie emphasized the critical implications of a rescue gone wrong:

"Iron boats can capsize at any moment and sink quite rapidly, straight down. In that case, the scene would look like this: a massive MOB!" — that is, a large-scale Man Overboard, involving a significant number of people going overboard.

This was illustrated by small blue objects scattered across his model.

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Drowning Rather Than Being Captured by the “Libyan Coast Guards”

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Another factor that has made rescue operations increasingly unmanageable over time is the activity of Libyan actors within the Libyan SRR (Search and Rescue Region), created in 2018 with European Union support.

Two authorities are tasked with coastal surveillance in the Libyan SRR: the Libyan Coast Guard (LCG) under the Ministry of Defence, and the General Administration for Coastal Security (GACS), under the Ministry of the Interior.

The numerous illegal and violent acts attributed to these Libyan actors at sea have justified the growing use of the term “so-called Libyan Coast Guard”, and quotation marks when referring to them.

Yet, these groups receive abundant support from the European Union and several of its member states.

On board the OV, testimonies abound regarding the perilous manoeuvres of the “Libyan coast guards” explicitly aimed at thwarting the rescue operations, as Charlie pointed out:

"I’ve seen them make crazy manoeuvres, trying to make the rescue as hard as possible, to make it impossible for us to rescue people, shouting, screaming."

Several micro-scenes of this kind have been reconstructed:

"They drive as close and as fast as possible to create waves. They get in the middle of our way, or interfere, near the mothership."

When Libyan actors are on scene, the surge of emotions linked to the arrival of rescuers can turn into panic and jeopardize the success of the rescue.

31.4% of study participants expressed a negative perception at the sight of a ship on the horizon, associated with the fear of being intercepted and pushed back by Libyan actors at sea:

"In the distance, we didn’t know if it was a rescue boat or the Libyans. It was huge stress on board; people were screaming, children were crying. We were ready to jump."

Indeed, the presence of Libyan authorities is often perceived as a greater danger than the risk of drowning, as one participant summarized:

"For me, the danger is not the sea, it’s the Libyan authorities."

This stance is easily explained for people who have already experienced one or more interceptions. Some participants mentioned violence during their forced return to Libya, such as beatings, armed threats, theft of money, deprivation of water and food, or even deadly acts:

"My first time sea crossing, the Libyans shot the engine, the fuel burned and exploded, the people next to me died."

Moreover, the close ties between the “Libyan coast guards” and militias or mafia networks are notorious. One respondent described the GACS (General Administration for Coastal Security) as follows:

"There’s always a risk that the GACS, an armed group with masks, will take you to prison."

Interceptions are generally followed by arbitrary detention in Libya, under the inhumane conditions detailed earlier:

"I tried to cross four times but I was caught and put in prison with my child; I suffered a lot."

These facts reported by crews and rescued people are widely supported by international organizations, humanitarian groups, and activist collectives monitoring the situation in the Central Mediterranean.

In its 2021 fact-finding mission report, the UN Human Rights Council left little doubt about the chain of causality linking interceptions at sea to human trafficking in Libya:

"The Libyan Coast Guard would (…) proceed with an interception that was violent or reckless, resulting at times in deaths. (…) There are reports that, on board, the Libyan Coast Guard confiscates belongings from migrants. Once disembarked, migrants are either transferred to detention centres or go missing, with reports that people are sold to traffickers. (…) Since the inception of boat pullbacks in the Mediterranean Sea, Libyan authorities have been on notice regarding the widespread and systematic nature of the reckless interceptions at sea and the abuses within the centres. Rather than investigating incidents and reforming practices, the Libyan authorities have continued with interception and detention of migrants."

By linking these maritime rescue scenes with the vast exploitation system organized from detention sites in Libya, it becomes clear that interceptions at sea by the “Libyan coast guards” is essentially a strategy of capture, and that the Central Mediterranean has become a battleground for the protection of life and human dignity.

#4 - Solidarity at Sea and Autonomy

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While the study onboard the Ocean Viking highlights civil rescue operations by one of the many NGOs now present in the Central Mediterranean, it is also important to emphasize the significance of autonomous crossings, as well as rescues and acts of solidarity at sea between the exiled people themselves.

Ellie, a member of the SOS MEDITERRANEE SAR team, recounted a rescue during which two vessels in distress assisted each other:

"There are people I remember very well. They had left through the Tunisian corridor in a fiberglass boat and came across another boat, wooden, which was adrift. When we arrived, we had this fiberglass boat in distress, towing a wooden boat in distress, with 30 or 40 people on board. It was like a rescue of a rescue. It was quite incredible, this solidarity among the people at sea."

NGO crews thus seek a balance between, on the one hand, maintaining the autonomy of exiled people, and, on the other hand, the constraints linked to the daily management of large numbers of people onboard in sometimes extreme conditions (often referred to as “crowd control”).

The study on the OV precisely highlighted the expectations of rescued people during the phase following the rescue (known as post-rescue). The opinions expressed thus made it possible to formulate several operational recommendations focused on the needs of these people during the days of navigation until the rescue ship reaches a safe port in Europe.

One of the most striking findings concerns the need for direct communication with loved ones—particularly to inform them that the crossing had not ended fatally. Support and information from family and friends are among the main resources available to people on the move at different stages of migration (mentioned by nearly 60% of respondents). However, it is not uncommon for rescued people to lose their phone during the crossing, and even when that’s not the case, connectivity is limited in the middle of the sea.

The study also revealed the physical and psychological impacts of violence in Libya, which affect the mere ability to meet basic needs.

Participants mentioned difficulties in eating, finding rest, and respite:

"In prison we only ate once a day, we could wash only once a month."

"My back is very painful, I cannot sleep."

"My mind is too stressed and I can’t control it."

These traces are also visible in the countless graffiti drawings left on the Ocean Viking’s walls over the years.

In this chain of violent borders, the stay on the rescue ship represents a breathing space, judging by the open-ended comments offered at the end of the questionnaire:

"We are treated like your brothers here; it’s so different from Libya!"

"I don’t have much to say but I will never forget what happened here."

In the middle of the sea, when the number of people on board allows it, one sometimes witnesses moments of regained intimacy—or, conversely, collective jubilation, especially when the announcement of a port assigned by Italy is confirmed.

As for the mapping workshops and the questionnaire study I conducted, participant feedback suggests that they were able to engage in a form of empowerment—or at least, in the power to reflect and to narrate their experiences.

"It’s the first time in a very long time that someone asked me what I think and what my opinions are about things."

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The Return to the Land

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A sense of regained control over their actions emerges as the prospect of disembarkation and a new life in Europe draws near.

As we sail toward the Italian coast, the maps displayed on the collective mapping exercise illustrate increasingly concrete dreams and imaginings. They echo the settlement projects shared in the questionnaire:

"I hope to quickly get a residence permit in Germany."

"I’m thinking to give back the money I borrowed to its owners, learn the language fast, and see my family safe and healthy."

One can imagine the emotion of setting foot for the first time in a European port for those who finally make it. What is less often imagined is that this step can represent a new form of violence.

In Ancona, Koné recalled the impression left by the heavy deployment of forces:

"When I got off the boat, I saw so many sirens that I thought: ‘Are there only ambulances in Italy?"

In practice, the welcome committee for people disembarked in Italy is composed of national security authorities (police and the Carabinieri), Italian health services, the Italian Red Cross, and Frontex—the European Border and Coast Guard Agency— whose intervention is systematically oriented around a single question: “Who was driving the boat from Libya?”

In other words: “Who could be prosecuted for facilitating unauthorized entry into the territory of the European Union?”

At the level of international SAR conventions, the rescue officially ends once people are disembarked in a Place of Safety (POS). For the SOS MEDITERRANEE crews, it is customary to consider that the work stops there, even if human relationships sometimes continue afterwards.

Moreover, disembarkation is quickly followed by the many administrative procedures and interrogations that rescue NGOs must undergo to avoid the risk of vessel detention, which would prevent them from returning to the operational zone to continue rescue missions.

After several days of collective navigation, the goodbyes are tinged with both joy and anxiety, as we know that for each of these individuals a new journey of struggle is beginning.

In this fleeting moment of grace, when dreams touch the ground, I am struck by the profound power of silence, which reminds me of that depicted in the comic Le retour à la terre (The Return to the Land), masterfully conveyed through Manu Larcenet’s visuals.

The silence of the sea that swallowed so many bodies.

The focused silence of rescue teams when RHIBs race toward boats in distress.

The stunned silence aboard the same RHIBs bringing people back to the mothership, still dazed from escaping shipwreck.

The exhausted silence of those regaining their strength; the palpable silence as I listen to their stories on the deck of the OV.

The tentative silence as the Italian coast appears for the first time.

The silence of European institutions, that conceal and obstruct the efforts to save lives at sea—and on land, by supporting interceptions and forced returns to Libya.

And finally, my own silence, faced with the awareness of my own powerlessness toward the exiled people I met at sea:

"I know you’re writing, it’s good, people will see it. But the story will go on."