On Wednesday night (August 7), 73 people who had been rescued by the ship Geo Barents, operated by the medical charity Doctors without Borders (MSF), disembarked in the north-eastern Italian port of Ravenna.

The NGO protested against being asked to sail all the way to Ravenna from the rescue spot in the central Mediterranean, calling it a "forced four-day navigation" on X. The 73 migrants on board were rescued in two separate operations in international waters on August 3.

Under a 2023 Italian decree, NGO rescue ships operating in the central Mediterranean are only allowed to carry out one rescue before asking the authorities for an assigned safe port for disembarkation.

The ports assigned to the ships are often several days' sail away from the point of rescue. The Italian government says this is to make sure that its southern reception centers on Sicily and the tiny satellite island Lampedusa are not overwhelmed. There is also less infrastructure in the south of Italy. However, NGOs argue that the policy hampers their rescue efforts, leading to more migrant deaths.

Also read: Moroccan navy intercepts migrant boat bound for Canary Islands

45 rescued by sailboat

Also on Wednesday the sailing yacht Nadir, operated by the organization Resqship, said it had found a boat containing 45 migrants who had been "drifting aimlessly" for many hours after two days at sea. They said they found the boat thanks to an alert by the organization Alarm Phone, which monitors migrant journeys across the Mediterranean.

The Nadir towed the migrant boat northwards, before transferring those on board to an Italian police (Guardia di Finanza) vessel.

Arrivals in Italy

Since the beginning of the year, 34,762 undocumented migrants have reached Italy by sea. Over 1,000 people have arrived since the beginning of August. The largest groups to arrive, by nationality, are Bangladeshis, followed by Syrians, Tunisians and Egyptians.

The numbers of migrants arriving in Italy overall this year is significantly down on last year's figures. The total number of arrivals each month has been at least half or fewer than the total number of arrivals in the same month in 2023.

The sea crossing remains extremely dangerous. According to the UN Migration Agency IOM’s Missing Migrants project, more than 1,000 people (1,020) have died on the Central Mediterranean route since the beginning of the year. And more than 42,000 are recorded as having attempted the crossing on that route in the same time frame.

In June this year, the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR underlined that almost 90 people – equivalent to around three people per day – were recorded as having died or gone missing in the central Mediterranean. A shipwreck off the Calabrian coast in February 2023 is thought to have claimed at least 94 lives.

Just over half of those attempting the crossing are intercepted at sea, states the IOM. At least 63 people have already died since the beginning of August, 2024. The IOM’s figures include only those people who died or went missing and can be confirmed. The actual figure may be much higher, since many of the crossings are unregistered and may have been under the radar of all data collection authorities.

Also read: Stories of hope from migrants in the Lampedusa hotspot

Note from the editors: Humanitarian rescue ships, when on mission, are only active in a limited area of the Mediterranean Sea, and only at arbitrary times. The presence of these NGO ships is no guarantee that individuals crossing the Mediterranean Sea on unseaworthy boats will be spotted and rescued. Distress cases are very common for boats unequipped to make a journey on the open sea, and shipwrecks and disappearances, including unrecorded ones, happen regularly. The Central Mediterranean remains one of the deadliest migration routes worldwide.