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‘We've got to get ready for rescue again’
Doctors Without Borders' HANNAH WALLACE BOWMAN tells the Star about the medical charity's imminent return to the central Mediterranean aboard the Sea Watch 4
Despite its life saving mission, the new boat from Sea Watch and United4Rescue, a civil society coalition of over 500 European groups, is unlikely to be welcomed by the Italian and Maltese governments.
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“I AM a bit apprehensive. Everything is more uncertain than it was at the beginning of the year, what with the challenges we face around Covid-19 and so on,” Doctors Without Borders’ (MSF) communications manager Hannah Wallace Bowman tells me from the deck of a new rescue ship.
“You never really know what to expect when it comes to search and rescue in the Mediterranean. But this time it does feel — especially with the state hostility towards the work that we’re trying to do — that all bets are off.”
I last spoke with Bowman in October 2019. Back then MSF was working with the European rescue charity SOS Mediterranee aboard their ship, the Ocean Viking. This spring, however, MSF and SOS Mediterranee parted ways, citing differences over how they should respond to the coronavirus pandemic.
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