important events

We Are Free To Say “NO!” To The Orlando-Minniti Decree, 18th July 2017
On June 20th Amnesty International organised a flash mob in the piazza in front of the Pantheon in Rome on the International Day of the Refugee. During the action, the lawyer Gianluca Dicandia – expert in immigration rights and activist with the group Resistenze Meticce – was charged with contempt for state bodies for having criticised the Minniti-Orlando decree, which recently passed into law.

Borderline Sicilia is signing and circulating an appeal made by Libertà di Movimento – Europe For All supporting activists receiving criminal charges. Read more...

Oxfam, Borderline Sicilia, Doctors For Human Rights: “Abuse, Torture and Illegal Detention in the Libyan Hell”, 6th July 2017
A new report reveals the daily brutality suffered by migrants in Libya at the hands of local militia, human traffickers and criminal gangs. It represents an urgent call to revoke the deal between Italy and Libya and for a change in direction of the EU's policies on controlling the flow of migrants. Read more...

Landing in Sicily. Photo: Alessandro Rota, Oxfam




“They are trouble, that is the true reason behind the slander”, 28th April 2017
Currently, the Italian media is mounting a large-scale smear campaign targeting organizations for civil marine salvage in the Mediterranean. Not only Frontex but also prosecutors and politicians try to discredit NGOs. A status report from Italy by Judith Gleitze, borderline-europe Sicily.

“It is an unbearable hypocrisy, especially if these attacks come from someone who holds office [...] The existence of ‘smugglers’ and of the criminal system that organizes the voyage to Europe for migrants in the most cases are a direct consequence of European and domestic immigration policies (and this is the case since the Schengen Agreement in 1985),” says Antonio Cinieri on his blog “Migr-azioni” (5). Read more...



Migrants. A Clear Way Ahead For The Minniti-Orlando Decree: The Central Points, 29th March 2017
From Redattoresociale.it
The government has put its faith in the Senate. The Ministry of the Interior's end goal is to speed up the whole process and to ensure the regulation of the migrant reception system. But the polemics have already begun: from the Community of Sant'Egidio all the way to ARCI, everyone opposes the decree. Gianfranco Schiavone (ASGI): “A manifesto made up of laws, without reasons for their necessity or urgency.” Read more...

From Trafficking to Prison: The “Forced” Boat Drivers, 19th February 2017
The third event in the international project “Controversies in European Migration Politics – The Granting of Protection Versus Border Security (KideM)”.
Monday 27th February 2017, 4.30pm. – Palazzo della Cultura, Via Vittorio Emanuele 121, Catania.

How can one ask for protection in Europe when the historical moment is witnessing fundamental freedoms and human rights enter into conflict with European security policies and legislation? February 27th will see the third event, held in Catania, by Borderline Sicily and borderline-europe in the remit of the transnational European project “The Granting of Protection Versus Border Security (KideM)”. Read more...



#Overthefortress: A Two-Month Journey from Sicily to Rome Within and Beyond the Central Mediterranean Route, 31st October 2016
From Meltingpot.org
Forty stops, 3,400km, one camper: join the journey and support the crowdfunder.
The #overthefortress camper departing at the Port of Igoumenitsa will land in Southern Italy for a project of investigation and independent communication side by side with migrants and groups in the area, to examine common sites and dominant narratives, and to provide space to a politics of welcoming, solidarity and civil engagement. 



Read more..


Libyan Coastguard causes multiple dead - 2016/10/21 Incident Report, 26th of October 2016
During the night to friday (21.10.2016) an aggressive attack of a self proclaimed Libyan Coast Guard vessel took place during one of our rescue operations in consequence, up to 30 refugees have drowned. A Speedboat of the Libyan naval forces had initially prevented a Sea-Watch rescue operation on duty of the MRCC in Rome in international waters, furthermore a situation of panic was caused by the interference in which nearly all approx. 150 people on the migrant boat fell into the water, many have drowned. read more...
Photo: Redattore Sociale

Names for the “Mediterranean Missing”, 30th September 2016By Redattoresociale.it
It is called “Mediterranean Missing”: a project organised by the University of York, City University London and by the IOM, analysing best practice and importance of the process of identifying the bodies. Since the beginning of the year, 3,600 people have already died at sea. “An invisible humanitarian catastrophe which deserves dignity.” Weiterlesen »

A PARTISAN TOLD ME, the crowdfunding for the new book by Gabriele Del Grande, 21st September 2016
The war in Syria and the birth of ISIS narrated through the epic stories of common people weaving together geopolitics and storytellingread more...

“Don't Call Them Economic Migrants”. MEDU Explains the Exodus to Europe, 14th September 2016
From Redattoresociale.it
An interactive map shows refugees' voyages, from desert to boat. Ninety per cert of them are victims of violence, abuse and psychological trauma. “The dichotomy of economic migrant and refugee isn't up to explaining a complex reality like this.” Read more...


Everyday, 28 Children Disappear from the Italian Reception System, 8th September 2016
By Oxfamitalia.org
The number of unaccompanied migrant and refugee children arriving in Europe this year has doubled. But this is taking place in the context of a reception system which is failing to provide them with the necessary support. Oxfam's new report released today, “Great Expectations Left to Drift”, exposes this situation.

It is enough to remember that every day, 28 unaccompanied children simply “disappear” due to an inadequate and malfunctioning system. Read more...

Project OPENEUROPE: Yesterday's Presentation in Rome, 20th of May 2016

Yesterday, on May 19th, the plan for the project OPENEUROPE was presented in Rome. The project has been created by Oxfam Italy in partnership with Borderline Sicily and the Diaconia Valdese, with a goal of providing assistance to migrants excluded from the national reception and protection system due to having received a notice of deferred rejection. Since September 2015, when the so-called 'Hotspot' approach was initiated, thousands of people have been summarily and arbitrarily identified as economic migrants and consequentially given handed this measure, finding themselves in the street without knowing what to do or where to go. Among them there are various vulnerable cases. The project is going to set up a mobile team of Oxfam workers who can move through the Eastern provinces of Sicily with the aim of providing basic material support and legal guidance to this group of people. Borderline Sicily will provide legal assistance and the Diaconia Valdese will guarantee housing and reception for the most vulnerable cases.read more...

Agrigento: Hundreds of refugees, among them people from Somalia and unaccompanied minors, rejected and left out on the street, 10th December 2015

“Seven Days,” that is how refugees call the order for “delayed deportation” according to section 10 paragraph 2 of the unified text about migration which asks them to leave Italian territory from the airport Fiumicino in Rome in the course of seven days. During the last months, this happened to hundreds of people and, how the last days showed, the numbers are increasing. The province Agrigento is home to the most severe situation, which is not a coincidence. read more...

Borderline Sicily to the European Parliament “In Memory of Alexander Langer”, 13th June 2015


Last June 3rd we were invited to the initiative in memory of Alexander Langer organized by the Green Party atthe European Parliament. With us were the friends of The Langer Foundation who awarded Borderline Sicily their prize in 2014. Our intervention was centred on the urgent measures, proposed by the European Commission to contrast the traffic of Human Beings, stressing the necessity of using suitable means.
Human trafficking is, first of all, a humanitarian matter, therefore it must be dealt with means that safeguard and protect human beings.

Comment: We are still unprepared, 18th February 2015
An exodus of men, women and children fleeing war, violence, threats and extreme poverty.The rapid worsening of the situation in Libya has literally forced thousands of people to embark towards the Italian coasts during the last days. In addition to the attacks and the brutal violence about which we hear from the media, migrants themselves tell about continuous threats and abuses inside and outside Libyan prisons, with increasingly ferocious attitudes from those who organize the journeys by sea – facilitated by our inhuman laws by and by a European Union which is increasingly short-sighted.
read more...

Lampedusa: boats4people and film festival, 13th July 2012 
We've come back to Lampedusa and returned to the same house as last year where we carried out the monitoring project. This time we're here to lend a hand to Askavusa and help prepare for boats4people and the LampedusaInFestival.

Research project "Protection Rights" published, Tuesday 14th February 2012
The research carried out on "Protection Rights" is a large study on the state of the asylum system in Italy. The project was made possible thanks to financing from European Funds for Refugees 2008-2013 (in 2009, action 2.1). The project was carried out by ASGI (Association for Judicial Studies on Immigration) in collaboration with A.I.C.C.R.E  (Associazione Italiana per il Consiglio dei Comuni e Regioni d'Europa: Italian Association for Local and Regional Councils of Europe), Caritas Italiana, Communitas Onlus, Ce.S.Pi. (Centro Studi politiche internazionali: Centre for International Political Studies).