Tanja Aalberts, a Professor of Law and Politics at VU Amsterdam, dives into the complexities of transnational legal encounters in the Mediterranean. She discusses the maritime duty of rescue and the principle of non-refoulement for migrants on rubber boats, highlighting the stark realities they face. Aalberts uses case studies, including the tragic Left to Die boat incident, to explore how legal frameworks clash with humanitarian needs. Her insights shed light on how objects like rubber boats shape the politics of protection in international law.
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question_answer ANECDOTE
Contrasting Rescue Stories at Sea
Kay Longstaff fell off a Norwegian cruise ship and was rescued by a Croatian coast guard in 2017.
Five days prior, 1,900 migrants were rescued but faced political obstacles disembarking in Italy.
insights INSIGHT
Unequal Protection at Sea
Maritime duty to rescue applies universally without discrimination by nationality or circumstances.
Yet in practice, rescue and protection differ greatly between migrants and others at sea.
question_answer ANECDOTE
The Left to Die Boat Tragedy
The Left to Die boat drifted 14 days in 2011, with 63 deaths, including two newborns and mothers.
The area was heavily surveilled by NATO, yet rescue was ignored despite the obligation.
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In the mare liberum, seafarers are protected by the age-old maritime duty to rescue anyone in distress at sea. This principle has also been codified in various treaties, including the 1974 Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) Convention. This convention was adopted in response to the Titanic disaster and mainly focuses on safety on board of commercial ships. But the most vulnerable people at sea nowadays clearly are irregular migrants, sailing by rubber boats rather than cruise ships. Formally, these migrants are also protected by the non-refoulement principle under refugee and human rights law. Yet in practice, they are subject to a politics of protection which operates through an intermeshing of different legal regimes. Moreover, the rubber boats play a crucial role in this politics of protection, and ultimately preclude the irregular migrants from the protection of the non-refoulement principle. Through the case of the rubber boat, as a transnational legal encounter of people, rules and objects, I investigate the uneven geographies and temporalities of international law as an everyday practice. Moreover, by paying critical attention to how objects participate in actualising certain sets of relations and potentials over others, the concept of transnational legal encounters enables us to critically re-think the production of meanings, legalities and politics, layering complexities to law’s work in and to the world.
Tanja Aalberts is Professor of Law and Politics at the department of Transnational Legal Studies, VU Amsterdam. She is the author of 'Constructing Sovereignty between Politics and Law' (Routledge, 2012), co-author of 'The Changing Practices of International Law' (CUP, 2018) and co-edited 'The Power of Legality. Practices of International Law and their Politics' (CUP, 2016). Her work on the interplay between politics and law within global governance, misrecognition, colonial treaties and interdisciplinarity has been published in various journals and handbooks in International Law and International Relations. She was a founding board member of the European International Studies Association, and editor of the Leiden Journal of International Law. She currently is series editor for Voices in IR with Oxford University Press and member of the Advisory Council International Affairs for the Dutch government. Her current research focuses on transnational legal encounters and the aesthetics of international law. She is also doing archival research and writing a book on the Peace Palace as the first building of the international community.
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