Lampedusa

Lampedusa is an island and a world at the same time. A land between the sea and the sky, between Europe and Africa, it has always been at the center of human, cultural, linguistic and commercial movements.

Its position is a destiny, that of being a landing place, a stop, a station on a journey for many, a place that is home for others. And the encounter between the former and the latter is the history and soul of this land.

Lampedusa has no borders, accustomed to being like one of the boats of its fishermen, in the middle of the sea. “The border is the horizon,” says its mayor, Salvatore Martello. And the horizon, since always, moves with the movement, it is never still, it comes closer to get further away.

On October 3, 2013, off the coast of Isola dei Conigli, one of the most picturesque beaches of the island, a terrible shipwreck marked forever the memory of many who look at people, before borders and documents. The shipwreck caused 368 ascertained deaths and about 20 missing, numbers that place it as one of the most serious maritime disasters in the Mediterranean since the beginning of the 21st century. The survivors rescued are 155, including 41 minors (one accompanied by his family).

Today Lampedusa remembers, every year, that tragedy; to the victims is dedicated a monument that bears engraved all the names of the ascertained victims, but remembrance is not enough. October 3, in 2016, has become the day of remembrance for Italy, but only by changing things can we change the future so that these tragedies never happen again.

That’s why Lampedusa has become the leader of a large European project, Snapshots From the Borders, started in 2018, which asks the whole of Europe to make October 3 the Day of Remembrance and Welcome. Around this project, Lampedusa has united 35 European realities, including municipalities and civil society associations, across Europe, giving birth to the Border Towns and Island Network that unites those who live the border, every day, far from rhetoric and politics.

“We gave voice to the periphery of this Europe that decides without listening to the communities that live the borders every day, who are in the front row in front of migration, which continue to be treated as an ’emergency’, when for some time now it is a matter of giving rules for a humane and legal management of migration, as indicated by the UN Global Compact, without burdening the border territories with decisions in which they are not involved,” explains Mayor Martello.

“Lampedusa is a community that from the law of the sea, that of the fishermen, a millenary law, has always taught the world that human lives come first, but that without rules we are all in danger, but no rules will serve if we do not get out of the logic of emergency to get to a legal and controlled management of migration flows,” says the first citizen of Lampedusa.

“Snapshots has given birth to a network, between cities and border islands. In recent years we have been able to compare, we have collaborated, we have exchanged information and best practices, between administrators and civil society, because this is the time to change things and to bring in the decision-making centers our voice, the point of view of communities that have always lived on the borders and know like no other the reception and solidarity, communities that have the experience and the need to propose solutions finally long-term, overcoming the emergency, for an international and shared framework of management of migration flows.”

During the three years of the project, which on October 3 of each year has experienced special events of the project on the island and in the partner cities, it has been possible to compare the point of view of the Snapshots partners with eminent personalities, such as the Holy Father Pope Francis I, or the President of the European Parliament David Sassoli, bringing delegations of project members to participate in international forums on migration in Quito, Ecuador, and Marrakesh, Morocco, going into the field – in Greece, in Lesbos, and in Bosnia – Herzegovina – to assess the conditions of the middle lands.

“All this work, today, is done for the future, of everyone,” says Mayor Martello, “not just Lampedusa, or the other cities in the network, or Europe. Never before has everything been so connected as it is today: wars, climate change, economic inequality: migratory flows are and will always be the natural evolution of these phenomena and must be managed with a solid and shared framework of rules and humanity. Because we are fishermen, all of us, and everyone at sea learns to take care of others”.