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Maritime operations
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Introduction
The sea is inherently dangerous for human beings. Maritime incidents are still common, causing the loss of many lives despite the reduction in the number of ship losses.1What is more, deaths and injuries concern all people at sea, be they seafarers, passengers, migrants or others. Not even modern seagoing vessels are immune from accidents, as the death of thirty-two people in the incident involving the cruise ship Costa Concordia has shown.2Even more dangerous are substandard vessels, often registered under flags of convenience and used by reckless owners to maximize commercial gain.3These vessels become particularly dangerous if they are used to smuggle migrants, as numerous incidents that have happened in the Mediterranean Sea have demonstrated. Migrants have died on a daily basis in the Mediterranean Sea.4In an instance that became famous, a small inflatable rubber dinghy, with seventy-two persons on board, was stranded for fifteen days in the Mediterranean before being washed ashore in Libya. During those days, the dinghy was approached by a military helicopter, a large military vessel and various other craft, none of which proceeded to rescue those on board.5As a result of this lack of assistance, only ten people survived out of the six dozen initially on the dinghy.
In this context, the duty to rescue those in danger of being lost at sea is paramount. Part of the threat to human life is being addressed by measures aimed at ensuring the safety of vessels. However, their implementation is far from complete, and in any case, there will always be risks due to the elements or the human factor. People in distress at sea can only be saved by efforts undertaken by other people, be they State officials on board rescue vessels or masters and crews of private vessels. Solidarity towards fellow seafarers has therefore been transposed into legal norms and has constituted the basis of the duty to rescue.
There is no doubt that the duty to rescue is one of the best-established principles of the international law of the sea, maritime law and international humanitarian law (IHL). There are, however, still a number of open issues that need to be addressed, including the...