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Proactiva Open Arms (POA) is a Spanish NGO devoted to search and rescue (SAR) at sea. Set up in October 2015, it carried out its first rescue action that same month from its base on the Greek island of Lesbos.[1] As well as maintaining a permanent base on Lesbos, the NGO carries out its rescue operations from three ships, a sailing yacht Astral,[2] the Golfo Azzurro[3] and Open Arms.[4][5][6]
Volunteer lifeguards (with yellow-red clothes) from Proactiva Open Arms helping Syrian and Iraqi refugees (Lesbos, October 2015). | |
| Named after | Proactiva Serveis Aquàtics |
|---|---|
| Founder | Òscar Camps |
| Founded at | Badalona (Catalonia, Spain) |
| Type | Private non profit foundation |
| Purpose | Search and rescue (SAR) |
| Location |
|
Region | Mediterranean |
| Services | Sea rescue lifeguards |
| Website | www |
In 2016, Proactiva won the H.E.R.O. Award for Outstanding Team Contribution to a Maritime SAR Operation at the first edition of the UK-based International Maritime Rescue Federation's (IMRF) H.E.R.O. (Honouring Excellence in Rescue Operations) Awards for their participation in saving the lives of over 200 people who had capsized their overloaded vessel off the north shore of Lesbos.[7]
The NGO has received several other awards, including the European Citizen's Prize awarded by the European Parliament in 2016.[8] Its founder, Òscar Camps, was named Catalan of the Year by El Periódico de Catalunya in 2015.[9] In October 2021, film director Marcel Barrena released a film, Mediterraneo: The Law of the Sea, devoted to the story of Òscar Camps and his colleagues which is very close to be a documentary.
As an NGO, Proactiva developed from Pro-Activa Serveis Aquàtics, a company providing lifeguard and water rescue services, located in Badalona, Spain. Due to the refugee crisis and the several high-profile deaths at sea, Oscar Camps travelled to Lesbos in September 2015, along with three other volunteers.
In September the first volunteers arrived on the Greek island to collaborate in rescue operations. In the beginning, the only materials available to them was basic diving equipment. Their main activities were to guide and assist the migrants to arrive safely on the shore.[10]
In July 2017, Proactiva Open Arms was one of the three migrant rescue NGOs operating in the area that signed the Italian government’s code of conduct for rescue operations. Five other NGOs refused.[12] Apart from the organisations refusing to sign the code, Amnesty International commented that the code of conduct "is the result of a wrong belief that having rescuers attracts migration";[13] that it "is specifically designed to hinder the work of humanitarian ships" and "has no legal value whatsoever", as it conflicts with international law regarding rescue operations (Gianfranco Schiavone, Italian Association for Legal Studies on Immigration, ASGI);[13] and that application of the code could carry "serious consequences" for rescuers because it could expose them to accusations of aiding illegal immigration and that it was "a trick to make NGOs more vulnerable to future legal actions" (Fulvio Vassallo Paleologo, University of Palermo).[13]
Previously, experts on migration policy had commented that EU politicians and policy makers have repeatedly declared they are ‘at war’ with the smugglers and that they intend to ‘break the smugglers business model’. "The evidence from our research suggests that smuggling is driven, rather than broken, by EU policy" (Dr Franck Duvell, Centre on Migration Policy and Society at the University of Oxford),[14] and that "The problem is there’s a huge political agenda around migration, so the more pragmatic of effective alternatives are being overridden by political aspirations of leaders across the European Union. They’ve backed themselves into a political corner where it’s very difficult to do anything else" (Professor Heaven Crawley, Coventry University's Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations).[14] At the end of 2016 Human Rights Watch stated that "A lack of leadership, vision, and solidarity based on human rights principles are at the core of the EU’s dismal response to refugee and migration challenges".[15]
Likewise, a December 2016 report by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) analysing the EU's accusations, based on an internal report from the European border agency, Frontex, that the humanitarian organisations running search and rescue operations in the Central Mediterranean were doing so in collusion with smugglers or were helping them to carry out their deadly trade, concluded that "... the alternative implied by Frontex’s concerns about our rescue operations is to let people drown as a strategy to deter the smugglers".[16]
Also responding to Frontex's allegations that aid groups were indirectly supporting criminal traffickers, Mario Giro, Italy's deputy foreign minister, said it showed a fundamental misunderstanding of so-called "push" and "pull" factors, adding that it was "a misleading controversy being used for internal purposes".[17]
The view that the rescue NGOs' boats in the Mediterranean acted as a "pull factor" for migrants and traffickers was also challenged in March 2017 by two academics from Oxford and UC Berkeley who looked at data on rescues and deaths at sea and concluded that there was no correlation between the number of rescue vessels near Libya and the number of migrants arriving in Italy,[18] stating that "SAR (search and rescue) operations reduce mortality risks (or conversely, the absence of SAR operations leads to more deaths), and has little or no effect on the number of arrivals".[19]
On the other hand, researchers also cite testimonies of smugglers bribing police in Greece, Turkey and other countries of transit and that state officials, the military, law enforcement, and border guards are also involved in smuggling.[14]
4 October: members of the POA aboard the sailing yacht Astral participated in the rescue of hundreds of people on overloaded wooden vessels and rafts and recovered dozens of corpses –with over two dozen people found dead in one boat alone–.[20]
Following the impoundment of the rescue ship on arrival at Pozzallo, major international humanitarian NGOs issued statements criticising the action of the Italian authorities.
On 8 and 9 September 2020 the crew of Open Arms picked up three groups of 77, 116 and 83 migrants.[47] The ship anchored a few hundred meters off Palermo harbor with some 278 migrants on board and waited for permission to dock. After a week of waiting, on 17 September 2020, 75 migrants jumped overboard and tried to swim to the shore. The 75 were finally picked up by the Italian coast guard, while 188 remained on the Open Arms.[48] The scene repeated the next day, now with 48 migrants trying to make it ashore. They were also picked up to be later transferred to the MS GNV Allegra for COVID-19 quarantine.[49]
In February 2021, the POA rescued over 100 migrants off the coast of Libya.[50]
In July 2016, the NGO received the sailing yacht Astral, donated by Livio Lo Monaco.[51] Designed by Philip Rhodes and built in 1970,[52] the yacht featured in the documentary recorded on board that same month by Jordi Évole for Salvados, directed by Évoli for Atresmedia Televisión.[53] The box office takings from the documentary, shown at cinemas throughout Catalunya before being broadcast on TV, were earmarked in their entirety for the NGO.[54]
At the end of 2016, Astral was substituted by Golfo Azzurro, a fishing trawler 43 metres in length and 8 metres beam.[55] Based in Malta, this vessel covered the NGO's rescue operations in the central Mediterranean region and in international waters off the northern coast of Libya.[55]
In mid-2017, the POA commissioned Open Arms, an emergency tow vessel (37 metres in length) which had previously seen service with Spain's maritime safety agency Salvamento Marítimo and was donated to the NGO by the Spanish shipping agency Grupo Ibaizabal.[56]
In August 2017 POA vessels were barred by Italy and Malta from disembarking migrants.[25] The POA also came in close contact with the Libyan coastguard who fired warning shots over one of its boats.[25]
In June 2020 Astral returned to POA activity in the Mediterranean.[6]
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