ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Fekade Abebe

Fekade Abebe is a PhD candidate in International Law at the Geneva Graduate Institute (profile), and his PhD thesis focuses on the application of international law to the prevention, search, and identification of missing migrants. He has an LL.M in International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights from the Geneva Academy of IHL and HR and an LL.M in Public International Law from Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia.
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POSTS BY Fekade Abebe

20 December 2023

A Duty to Rescue

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. Continue reading >>