#10 "Lifeboat" Rescue at Sea

02/12/19 • 11 min

A Way Home Together: Stories of the Human Journey

What happens when the world fails to live up to the goal of safe, orderly and regular migration? In the latest episode of "A Way Home Together, Stories of the Human Journey", we look at an urgent search-and-rescue operation to save the lives of desperate migrants and refugees, who were crowded onto rafts and small boats in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Libya.

"Lifeboat" is a half-hour film that was recently nominated for this year's best short-subject documentary Oscar. The Academy Awards will be announced in Hollywood on February 24.

"I consider it part of my work to make the unwatchable watchable," says "Lifeboat" Director Skye Fitzgerald. "If we can build empathy towards those who are making a conscious bid to flee torture, detention, rape and trafficking, I think it gets us one step closer to systematically solving the problem."

His film follows dramatic rescues by volunteer crew members on a re-fitted research vessel, "Sea Watch", as they save the lives of people in imminent danger of drowning.

"It's a shock to the system," said Sea Captain John Castle, who led the rescue attempts. "We've got a lot of people in terrible trouble in the small boats, and the boats aren't going to last very long out there."

"Lifeboat" is a half-hour film that was recently nominated for this year's best short-subject documentary Oscar. The Academy Awards will be announced in Hollywood on February 24.

His film follows dramatic rescues by volunteer crew members on a re-fitted research vessel, "Sea Watch", as they save the lives of people in imminent danger of drowning.

Previous Episode

#9 Migrant Rights and Your Rights

Migration is one of the great challenges of our time. The worldwide numbers have increased by almost 50% since 2000.

In late December, the U.N. General Assembly took a major step forward, voting to endorse the Global Compact for Safe Orderly and Regular Migration.

This vital agreement sets up nearly two dozen objectives, and is aimed at reducing human suffering and boosting cooperation among nations on how to manage legal migration.

"Because migration is such a complex issue, you can't just regulate it with one set of rules at an international level. There are different types of migrants." " Kristina Touzenis, tells us. "Kristina is head of the International Migration Law Unit at IOM, where she is responsible for the activities related to international and regional law issues, both from an advocacy as well as an implementation point. She has worked in the field of international law and migration for more than 12 years, focusing both on legal and policy development.

The debate over rights for migrants is part of a much broader conversation about the strength of democracy. "Most people don't realize how dangerous it is to allow a certain section of the population to be denied their rights, because with this sooner or later it will be legitimate to deny all our rights," she says.

In this episode, our podcast host Tolu Olubunmi shares some of her personal story as a Dreamer and a migrant. Born in Nigeria, Tolu came to The United States when she was a young teenager. "Along the way I had lost my immigration status and had become undocumented: shrouded in fear and hidden in the shadows."

We hear Tolu's brave story of how she came out of the shadows to advocate for the rights of migrants.

Next Episode

Climate Migration & New Technology

From the flood plain in Bangladesh to droughts of Central America and rural Africa, climate change is becoming a driver of migration. Farmers leave their land when the weather makes it too difficult to harvest crops.

In this episode of “A Way Home Together, Stories of the Human Journey”, we look at the impact of environmental degradation and change.

“It’s a very very complex topic,” says Dina Ionesco, Head of Environmental Migration and Climate Change Division at the UN migration agency, IOM. “Floods, desertification, sea level rise, and loss of ecosystems are drivers of migration, and increasingly so. But very often they are connected to other issues.”

Host, Tolu Olubunmi, has an in-depth interview in this podcast with entrepreneur and environmentalist, Ibrahim AlHusseini, founder and CEO of FullCycle, an investment company accelerating the deployment of climate-restoring technologies.

Ibrahim explains why he is “extremely hopeful” that new technology can create significant amounts of clean energy. This “isn’t just an exercise in doing the right thing. These technologies are also faster, cheaper and more profitable.”

This episode is produced with funding from IOM and FullCycle.