Death By Rescue
<p>In April 2015, two shipwrecks in the central Mediterranean resulted in over a thousand deaths. The first, on 12 April, occurred when an overcrowded boat was approached by a large commercial vessel. Less than a week later, on 18 April 2015, a similar incident led to over eight hundred deaths after an overcrowded vessel collided with a cargo ship that had approached to rescue its passengers. It was the worst single loss of life recorded by the United Nations’ High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the Mediterranean.</p> <p>Both incidents are in part the result of changing EU policies toward at-sea rescue, particularly the retreat of state rescue operations and a resulting onus on commercial vessels to fill the ‘rescue gap’. The Death By Rescue report, available at the link above, explores the question of how those policies contributed to the death toll.</p>
Authors: Forensic Architecture, Forensic Oceanography, Charles Heller, Lorenzo Pezzania
Developer: Rossana Padeletti, Richard Limeburner
Researcher: Nancy Porsia, Sabine Llewellyn
Editors: Shela Sheikh
Video Editor: Laure Vermeersch, Samaneh Moafi
Designer: Matteo Menapace, Aimee Matthew-John, Nick Axel
Contributors: Christina Varvia, Eyal Weizman
Forensic Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London, Forensic Oceanography