Following a shipwreck near Lampedusa, Mediterranean Hope’s coordinator states, “Without legal channels, more lives will be lost”
[The following article was originally posted by the Federation of Protestant Churches in Italy (FCEI)’s media (NEV). Mediterranean Hope, a Disicples and UCC partner, through Global Ministries, is the refugee and migrant ministry of the FCEI, of which the Waldensian Church is a member. It is re-posted with permission.]
Rome (NEV), 14 August 2025 – ‘Some have lost a sister, some a young child, some a husband. They are not tragedies, but deaths foretold”. With these words, Marta Bernardini, coordinator of Mediterranean Hope (MH), the migrant and refugee programme of the Federation of Protestant Churches in Italy (FCEI), commented on the shipwreck that occurred yesterday in the waters near Lampedusa, where at least twenty people are confirmed dead and dozens missing.
The boat, which left Libya two days earlier, capsized not far from the island. The survivors’ accounts speak of broken families: a mother and father who lost a one-and-a-half-year-old daughter, a young woman who lost her younger sister, others who saw their husbands, wives and children disappear into the sea.
FCEI is a constant presence all year round in Lampedusa where it has its MH Observatory. In the last few hours, the Favaloro dock, the landing and first aid point, has been a place of pain and confusion. ‘The people who arrive are the lucky ones,’ Bernardini continued, ‘of the others we will never know anything. The blame for these deaths certainly cannot be laid at the door of those who decide to leave; rather, it is the political responsibility of European governments, who try to hide what continues to happen or to shift the problem elsewhere. The result is what we see: people continue to die in the Mediterranean’.
Francesca Saccomandi, an MH staff member present at the dock, confirmed the gravity of the situation: ‘The people we met yesterday were in a state of shock and in a precarious state of health. Some people were taken to the local clinic because they had drunk a lot of salt water in an attempt to save themselves. At the moment,’ Saccomandi continued, ‘more than twenty bodies are in the Lampedusa cemetery. These are deaths foretold, the consequence of the pushback policies that Europe and Italy have been carrying out for too long. Without legal routes for all, these are tragic stories that will continue to repeat themselves’. For 11 years, Mediterranean Hope has been working on Lampedusa with an Observatory on migration in the Mediterranean, collecting data and testimonies on the landings and offering support to those shipwrecked. In addition to its work on the island, MH develops and implements projects for the protection of the dignity of refugees and migrants: Humanitarian Corridors and other legal routes providing safe access to Italy and other European countries, support along the Balkan route, initiatives countering the exploitation of farm labourers, and refugee reception initiatives.”