Between mid-July and the end of August 2018, the Spanish NGO Proactiva Open Arms was the only organisation able to rescue migrants fleeing Libya on flimsy boats and sailing across the Mediterranean. All the other rescue ships operating in the zone had been retained in Italian and Maltese ports. One of the operations this summer included the rescue of Josepha, a Cameroonian woman abandoned in a half-submerged inflatable boat in the middle of the sea. When she was rescued, Josepha was on the brink of death. She was found beside the bodies of a woman and a four-year old boy. Some days later, an inflatable boat with 87 people aboard was also rescued 80 miles off the coast of Libya, and its occupants taken to the port of Algeciras.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thousands of people have perished in recent decades, forced to migrate so perilously both by laws restricting the movement of people and the lack of safe routes. Crossing the Atlantic Ocean to reach the Canary Islands has been deadly since the late 1990s. Crossing the Gibraltar Strait was also deadly, as is crossing the high fences of Ceuta and Melilla, confronting the border patrols \u2013 be they on the Moroccan and or the Spanish side – or trying to get through the Eurotunnel. The Mediterranean Sea has become a huge cemetery. There are people who have spent years living in the tremendous void on both sides of the border, in the woods around our cities, in pain-filled, legal limbo territories. There are families that will never know the whereabouts of their loved ones. There are unmarked graves and lives permanently on standby.<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Between mid-July and the end of August 2018, the Spanish NGO Proactiva Open Arms was the only organisation able to rescue migrants fleeing Libya on flimsy boats and sailing across the Mediterranean. All the other rescue ships operating in the zone had been retained in Italian and Maltese ports. One of the operations this summer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":4086,"menu_order":43,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"edicion":[200],"class_list":["post-4300","ganadores","type-ganadores","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","edicion-200"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n