Credits: Ania Gruca / SOS MEDITERRANEE
On 17 May, 2026, the body of Teosil*, a man from Bangladesh, was disembarked in Ravenna, Italy. Four months later, on 19 September, he finally returned home, where his family and loved ones were able to lay him to rest.
For four long months, civil society once again stepped in to fill the gap left by European states, which continue to fail not only in rescuing people at sea but also to ensure the recovery, identification, and dignified return of those who lose their lives in the Central Mediterranean.
Teosil’s return home was made possible through the determination of his family, the Bangladeshi community in Ravenna, Mem.Med, an association supporting families of people missing or deceased in the Mediterranean, and SOS MEDITERRANEE.
On 13 May 2026, the crew of the Ocean Viking rescued 56 men from an overcrowded boat in the Libyan Search and Rescue Region, one day after they had departed from Al-Khoms. Among the shipwrecked people was Teosil, a Bangladeshi man in his mid-forties, found unresponsive on board. Despite extensive resuscitation efforts by the medical team on board the Ocean Viking, he could not be revived. According to the medical team, physical findings on his body indicated possible exposure to violence before his death. This was later found to be consistent with accounts provided by the rescued people he was travelling with.
After Teosil’s body was disembarked, Mem.Med, working closely with the Bangladeshi community in Ravenna, mobilised diaspora networks to trace and contact his family in Bangladesh. Once they were located, Mem.Med coordinated with local authorities in Ravenna to advance the identification process. Through a remote visual identification, Teosil’s family was able to confirm his identity, allowing his body to be repatriated and buried in Bangladesh on 19 September.
Yet. Teosil’s death was not an unavoidable tragedy. It was the consequence of policies that do not provide safe routes, systematically obstruct rescue efforts as a means to deter crossings and, consequently, force people onto deadly routes across the Mediterranean.
The families struggle to recover and identify bodies of their loved ones also expose another, less visible failure.
In the rare instances where bodies are recovered, and in the even rarer cases where the identity of the deceased person is traced, families are given no clear institutional channel through which to obtain information or navigate identification and repatriation procedures. As families live abroad, often with limited resources and means of communication remotely, European states routinely disclaim responsibility, leaving families to navigate complex bureaucratic processes alone. In Teosil’s case, as in many others, it was civil society organisations and community networks that stepped in where institutions did not. No family should have to rely on informal networks, fundraising or, the discretionary support of NGOs, to find and identify a loved one, secure their repatriation and ensure a dignified burial.
The search for the missing, the identification of the deceased, and the right of families to know what happened to their loved ones and provide a proper burial are not acts of charity. They are human rights.
Every person who dies or disappears at sea must be accounted for. Identification, information for families and dignified repatriation are responsibilities that states must fulfil.
Since 2014, at least 26,855 people have died or gone missing while attempting the crossing between North Africa and Europe, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). These figures represent only documented cases, meaning the true human toll is likely far higher.
Earlier this year, Storm Harry, was linked to reports of several hundred – potentially close to 1,000 – people who may have died or gone missing after multiple boats encountered severe weather conditions in the Central Mediterranean.
And in the summer of 2026, SOS MEDITERRANEE and other organisations spotted and reported at least 17 bodies found at sea or washed ashore, often with no information on who they were, what boat they had travelled on, or the circumstances that led to their deaths.
In many of these cases, there is no confirmed shipwreck, no complete accounting of the missing, and no reliable reconstruction of events.
These largely undocumented tragedies, sometimes referred to as “hidden” or “invisible” shipwrecks, remain among the least visible consequences of the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Central Mediterranean.
Civil society organisations are increasingly filling gaps left by states in responding to deaths at Europe’s maritime borders.
Beyond conducting rescue operations, NGOs, community networks, lawyers and families are often the ones documenting disappearances, counting the dead, gathering information on shipwrecks, supporting the retrieval and identification of bodies, and preserving the memory of those who never reached shore. In many cases, these efforts compensate for the absence of systematic state-led mechanisms to account for people who die during migration crossings.
Today, Teosil’s family has at least one certainty: a place to mourn, remember, and grieve. Thousands of other families are still denied even that. Their loved ones remain missing, unidentified, or abandoned by systems that have failed to uphold their dignity in death as in life.
