Forensic Oceanography

Please find below (and at the following link) the latest news release from Goldsmiths, University of London announcing a report from the Forensic Oceanography team which has shed light on the fate of the ‘left-to-die’ boat which saw 63 migrants die while trying to flee the war in Libya last year:

http://www.gold.ac.uk/news/pressrelease/?releaseID=936

Goldsmiths research sheds light on ‘left-to-die’ boat tragedy

Research carried out by the Forensic Oceanography team at Goldsmiths, University of London has shed light on the fate of the ‘left-to-die’ boat which saw 63 migrants die while trying to flee the war in Libya last year.

The report was carried out by Charles Heller, Lorenzo Pezzani and Situ Studio, and is part of the European Research Council (ERC) project ‘Forensic Architecture’ carried out at Goldsmiths’ Centre for Research Architecture.

The report, which employs a wide range of emerging mapping and visualisation technologies, has been provided to a coalition of NGOs that have been demanding accountability for these deaths.

Today, with the support of these NGOs, several survivors of the ‘left-to-die’ boat have convened in Paris to file a legal case, supplemented by this report, against the French Army for non-assistance to people in distress at sea.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), more than 1,500 people died in the Mediterranean while trying to leave Libya in 2011, and among these incidents the ‘left-to-die’ boat case, reported by the international press, provoked widespread public outrage.

A boat of 72 migrants fleeing Tripoli by boat in the early morning of 27 March 2011 ran out of fuel and was left to drift for 14 days until it landed back on the Libyan coast. A distress call was sent out via satellite telephone but the migrants were not rescued, and with no water or food on-board only nine of them survived.

Over the past four months, the Forensic Oceanography team provided technical expertise in the form of maps and visual material to Senator Tineke Strik, Rapporteur for the Committee on Migration, Refugees and Population of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) who has released an in-depth report on the issue.

The Forensic Oceanography report that is being made public today supplements the written documents produced by these organisations by bringing a wide range of emergent technologies together. It focuses specifically on the spatial analysis of the ‘left-to-die’ case, combining the testimonies of the survivors with several different kinds of data including Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery, geospatial mapping, and drift modelling.

Lorenzo Pezzani, PhD candidate and Research Fellow at Goldsmiths, said: “The research included a series of visualisations and maps that reconstruct, as accurately as possible, what happened to the vessel, and assess the involvement of a number of parties the vessel encountered during the time it was at sea. Using digital tools that have seen limited applications in the field of international law and human rights advocacy suggests new possibilities for documenting violations of human rights at sea, and increases the likelihood for greater accountability in the future.”

Notes to editors:
•       The report can be downloaded here: http://www.forensic-architecture.org/docs/final_draft_public_optimized_0.pdf

•       The link to the Forensic Oceanography page can be found here: http://www.forensic-architecture.org/homepage/fields/investigations/sea

•       The link to the Forensic Architecture website can be found here: http://forensic-architecture.org/

•       Images available on request (images to be credited to Forensic Oceanography: Charles Heller, Lorenzo Pezzani, and Situ Studio. Part of the European Research Council Project ‘Forensic Architecture’, Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London).

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