Reports

Open letter to IMRCC Rome, JRCC Malta, Frontex, and the UNHCR

Alarm Phone: Central Mediterranean Analysis, 1 January to 30 June 2024

Alarm Phone: Western Mediterranean and Atlantic Regional Analysis, 1 October - 31 March 2024

Alarm Phone: Central Mediterranean Analysis, 1 July to 31 December 2023

One year ago a dinghy shipwrecked in the Channel. Approximately 48 people were onboard travelling from France to the UK in search of protection. Four of them are confirmed to have died, while we estimate five more to still be missing at sea.

Alarm Phone: Western Mediterranean and Atlantic Regional Analysis, 1 March - 30 September 2023

Interview with activists from the Alarm Phone

Alarm Phone: Western Mediterranean and Atlantic Regional Analysis – One year after the Melilla Massacre

Alarm Phone: Central Mediterranean Analysis, 1 January to 30 June 2023

Alarm Phone: Western Mediterranean and Atlantic Regional Analysis, November 2022 - February 2023

Channel regional report

Testimonies from refugees in Tunisia about their protest sit-in at the UNHCR in Tunis and its violent eviction

Alarm Phone: Central Mediterranean Analysis, 1 July to 31 December 2022

Alarm Phone: Western Mediterranean and Atlantic Regional Analysis, July - October 2022

This article originally appeared in “Voices of Struggle – 8 Years Alarm Phone”

Testimony by a single-mother about a pushback on 19 September 2022 near Rhodes

Alarm Phone: Western Mediterranean and Atlantic Regional Analysis, 31 March 2022 - 30 June 2022

Alarm Phone Central Mediterranean Analysis, 1 January to 30 June 2022

Alarm Phone: Western Mediterranean and Atlantic Regional Analysis, 1 November 2021 - 28 February 2022

Alarm Phone - Central Mediterranean Analysis, July to December 2021

Women and LGBTQI+ Report 2021

Alarm Phone: Western Mediterranean and Atlantic Regional Analysis, 1 July - 31 October 2021

Alarm Phone Central Mediterranean Analysis, 1 January to 30 June 2021

Alarm Phone: Western Mediterranean and Atlantic Regional Analysis, 1 April - 30 June 2021

By Lorenzo D'Agostino

Alarm Phone: Western Mediterranean and Atlantic Route Regional Analysis, 1 January - 31 March 2021

Alarm Phone Report: One year of pushbacks and systematic violence in the Aegean region, Feb 2020 - March 2021

Alarm Phone: Western Mediterranean Regional Analysis, 1 October - 31 December 2020

Alarm Phone: Central Mediterranean Analysis, July - December 2020

Alarm Phone: Aegean Cases Summary, 22 - 24 December 2020

Aegean Cases Summary, 9 - 14 November 2020

Alarm Phone - Western Mediterranean Regional Analysis , 1 June - 30 September 2020

Alarm Phone, 28 Φεβρουαρίου – 30 Σεπτεμβρίου 2020

Alarm Phone, 28 February - 30 September 2020

Alarm Phone Central Mediterranean Regional Analysis, 1 January - 30 June 2020

Alarm Phone, 1 March - 31 May 2020

by Nello Scavo

Alarm Phone - Women and LGBTQI+ Report, April 2020

Alarm Phone, 1 November 2019 - 29 February 2020

Alarm Phone, 18 June 2019 - 19 January 2020

Salinia Stroux - How Greek and Turkish authorities use push and pull-backs under the eyes of Frontex and NATO to systematically hinder people on the move from reaching protection in Europe, thereby putting these lives at further risk.

Alarm Phone, 1 October 2019 - 31 December 2019

Alarm Phone 8-Week Report, 28 October - 22 December 2019

Maurice Stierl & Hagen Kopp

Nina, Lisa & Laura

Maurice Stierl & Miriam Edding

Marion Bayer

Alarm Phone - 8-Week Report, 2 September - 27 October 2019

Alarm Phone - Western Med Regional Analysis, 1 August - 31 October 2019

Alarm Phone, 1 July - 30 September 2019

Alarm Phone 8-Week Report, 8 July - 1 September 2019

1 June - 31 July 2019

Alarm Phone 8-Week Report, 13 May - 7 July 2019

18 March - 30 June 2019

18 March - 18 June 2019

Alarm Phone: Western Med Regional Analysis, 18 March - 31 May 2019

Alarm Phone 8 Week Report, 18 March - 12 May 2019

Alarm Phone 6 Week Report, 4 February - 17 March 2019

Alarm Phone 6 Week Report - 24 December 2018 - 3 February 2019 

Alarm Phone 6 Week Report, 12 November - 23 December 2018

Alarm Phone 6 Week Report, 1 October - 11 November 2018

4 Years of Alarm Phone, shaped by a myriad of personal stories of struggle and survival.

Alarm Phone 4 Week Report, 3. – 30. September 2018

Alarm Phone 6 Week Report, 23 July - 2 September 2018

By Kiri Santer

Alarm Phone 6 Week Report, 11 June – 22 July 2018

Alarm Phone 6 Week Report, 30 April - 10 June 2018

Alarm Phone 6 Week Report, 19 March – 29 April 2018

Alarm Phone 6 Week Report, 5 February - 18 March 2018

Alarm Phone 8 Week Report, 11 December 2017 - 4 February 2018

Alarm Phone Six Week Report, 30 October - 10 December 2017

Alarm Phone 2 Month Report 16th January 2017 – 19th March 2017

More than 5,000 lives lost in the Mediterranean in 2016 and several Shipwrecks already in 2017 – Stop the Mass Dying at Europe’s maritime Gates!

Instead of increasing rescue capacities, the EU is concentrating its efforts on deterring unwanted travellers. In late October, the EU’s naval operation EUNAVFOR MED/Sophia has started to train the so-called Libyan coast guard on their vessels, showing them how to do the dirty job of preventing travellers from leaving Libyan waters.

While thousands of tourists, mainly from the Global North, cross the Mediterranean on ferries with ease each year, others have to risk their lives when they want to cross over to the European side.

In the past two months, the period that this report covers, the WatchTheMed Alarm Phone was frequently alerted to situations of distress in all three regions of the Mediterranean Sea. We were engaged in 38 distress cases, of which 18 took place in the Central Mediterranean, 7 in the Aegean Sea and 13 in the Western Mediterranean (please find links to the individual reports of the past two months below). While in most cases the safe arrival of all travellers could be confirmed, in some cases we had to witness the loss of life and human rights violations.

Despite mass drowning and illegal push-back operations by the Greek coastguards in the presence of Europe’s border agency Frontex, we experience how EU institutions, national governments, and the mainstream media remain largely silent. Whereas past mass shipwrecks caused at least some reactions, even if often hypocritical ones, the silence that we now witness points to the normalizing of border cruelty and migrant deaths.

EU politicians and institutions will publicly express their sorrow about the many fatalities. They will call for policy-changes and the further militarisation of the sea. They will again blame the smugglers and seek to reinforce deals with authoritarian regime. However, every shipwreck and every death of the past years is a consequence of exactly these European actions and inactions.

Arrivals by boat on the Greek islands have increased again in the last two weeks

Those threatened by deportation, detention and border violence have risen up in self-organised protest. Also we are not getting tired to raise our voices against those dehumanising practices and will continue to struggle for the opening of borders and the freedom of movement for all.

We cannot find words to express our anger, grief and disbelief about these current developments in the Aegean region. More forceful than ever, the EU deploys every means available to deter migration movements and, in the process, is responsible for the unabated dying at sea, and human rights violations within and beyond European territory on a mass scale.

While the European Union, its border agency FRONTEX and NATO have launched a war against unwanted migrants in the Aegean region, people on the move remind European leaders “we are human beings”, and ask them to open borders, as in a recent protest in a camp in Lesvos.

Statist attempts have caused yet another fatal shipwreck: On Sunday the 6th of March, at least 25 travellers died off the Turkish coast, after their wooden vessel had capsized

More and more people are currently arriving in Idomeni and with difficult weather conditions the situation will further worsen if Macedonia, under the pressure of EU member states, remains unwilling to open its borders to allow people to move on.

One traveller died on the 19th of February, when the Moroccan navy rammed a boat while trying to intercept it.

"Many of the protesters voiced the demand for ‘Ferries for all!’ which is also a slogan of a campaign that the Alarm Phone has now relaunched: ‘Ferries not Frontex’."

"On a daily basis, reports about capsized boats and drowned travellers reached us and in several cases the Alarm Phone was directly alerted to shipwrecks with dozens of fatalities."

In the past week, the Alarm Phone was alerted to 37 distress cases in the Aegean Sea and to 1 case in the Western Mediterranean Sea.

Despite the desperate attempts of the European Union to re-stabilize its crumbled border regime, it seems to us that only bad weather conditions can prevent people on the move from crossing the sea border to the Greek islands – and not national border guards or Frontex’ forces.

Dozens of travellers died when seeking to overcome the Aegean Sea this week.

In the last two weeks, we were informed about or directly witnessed at least 7 maritime accidents, with more than one hundred deaths, including many children. Not least due to the EU-enforced presence of Turkish police forces at the coast, travellers are forced to take ever more lengthy and dangerous routes

The situation on the island of Farmakonisi is particularly dramatic, as the island is uninhabited except for the military stationed there. Without any reception infrastructure on the island, arriving people are neither fed, nor given water or shelter.

As the rescue vessel had arrived at the spot prior to the accident, why did it not act immediately but waited for almost an hour until the boat had capsized?

We dealt with 38 emergency situations in the Aegean Sea and 1 in the Western Mediterranean Sea. On Wednesday the 11th of November, yet again, many people died at sea. 14 refugees, including 7 children, drowned in Turkish waters when their vessel capsized.

Most importantly, both the distress situations at sea and those on land can be avoided. Once again, the Alarm Phone wants to call for a radical change in European border politics: Only the possibility to enter Europe through safe ways will end the deaths in the Mediterranean.

Last week’s dramatic events have once again demonstrated that there is no alternative to opening the borders of Europe in order to stop the numerous and unbearable deaths at sea.

In a shipwreck on Wednesday 14-15 people went missing near Samos and are feared dead and on Sunday a vessel collided with a rock near Lesvos and the bodies of 1 woman and 2 children have already been found and 10 more are still missing. There have been circulating news account of more tragedies, including six more deaths and another person gone missing. Another gruesome tragedy occurred in the Central Mediterranean Sea, presumably with more than 70 casualties. At least 43 bodies were washed up on Libyan shores and another 30 people from the shipwreck are still missing, also feared dead.

"In the past two weeks the Alarm Phone witnessed awful and inacceptable forms of violence committed against travellers at sea. In the Western Mediterranean we directly witnessed how several groups of travellers were forcefully intercepted and detained, with one group being even deported to the Moroccan border to Mauretania. In the Aegean Sea, travellers informed us about six attacks on boats in Greek territorial waters."

"When governments shut down train lines, people started to march instead, occupying highways, breaking through police lines, and thereby enacting their freedom of movement."

This long summer of migration in 2015 has clearly shown that barbed wire fences, military forces and other measures of deterrence cannot stop human mobility. The recent crossings of ten thousands of people have demonstrated the permeability of borders and have led to the (maybe only momentary) collapse of the Dublin system and other control mechanisms of the border regime of the European Union