SOS MEDITERRANEE is resuming its civilian aerial monitoring mission, Albatross, operating over the Central Mediterranean in partnership with the Humanitarian Pilots Initiative (HPI).
The timing of this resumption is starkly underscored by reports in recent days that up to 1,000 people have gone missing in the Central Mediterranean during Cyclone Harry.1 These reports are a reminder that lack of information is not a benign absence, and that independent documentation of events at sea is essential to uphold human rights and protect human lives.
Launched in November 2025 with flights departing from Lampedusa, the Albatross mission joined other civilian actors operating aerial monitoring in the Central Mediterranean. During this initial phase of the mission, the crew immediately witnessed distress situations, interceptions by Libyan Coastguards and empty boats whose fate remains unknown. Mayday relays transmitted from the aircraft on behalf of boats in distress have resulted in rescue operations.
Humanitarian monitoring in a responsibility vacuum
Although the skies above the Central Mediterranean are densely monitored by Frontex and national authorities, including through aircraft and drones, this surveillance overwhelmingly serves border control objectives and too often fails to translate into timely protection for people in distress. This stretch of sea has become an arena where failures of rescue, delayed or denied assistance, and violent interceptions repeatedly put people at risk of death, disappearance, and abuse, usually out of the public’s eye. State-led search and rescue (SAR) capacity has been withdrawn, and effective coordination of assistance has all but ceased. In this context, the Albatross mission and other civilian monitoring operations have stepped in to ensure that what happens when people are most vulnerable does not remain unseen or unaccounted for.
From the aerial vantage point, the crew documents the conditions in which people are left to fend for their lives, observing and recording boats in distress, the presence and behaviour of other vessels and aircraft, and how responses unfold – or fail to unfold – when lives hang in the balance. This information is not abstract data: it provides a human-rights lens on maritime realities, allowing SOS MEDITERRANEE and others to show how, when, and by whom responsibilities are met, delayed, or ignored. These are vital questions about people’s right to life, safety, and dignity.
Lucrezia Frabetti / SOS MEDITERRANEE
A mission rooted in accountability in a shrinking humanitarian space
On Albatross mission flights, a Tactical Coordinator, a dedicated Monitoring Officer and the Pilot can remain airborne for up to eight hours at a time. When the crew observes a distress situation, they are legally required as per the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation to alert the competent authorities.
Although civilian humanitarian monitoring is lawful under international and domestic law, its operating space has been progressively narrowed. While the Albatross mission is conducted in compliance with international civil aviation rules and national aviation frameworks, Italian authorities have increasingly introduced administrative and regulatory tools to deter and penalise civil aerial monitoring. In Italy, Decree 145/2024, later converted into Law 187/2024, introduced the threat of sanctions including fines, administrative detention, and confiscation, of civil monitoring aircraft.
This contraction mirrors a broader pattern in the Central Mediterranean, where humanitarian actors have increasingly faced criminalization, administrative hurdles, and policies aimed at limiting their presence at sea. In this context, the resumption of the Albatross mission in early 2026 is significant: it helps preserve an independent humanitarian presence in the air to strengthen accountability, protect human rights, and ensure that deaths, disappearances and abuses at sea are not left undocumented, unacknowledged, and unchallenged.
