La desnaturalización de la zona sar en el mediterráneo central: de pieza clave para salvar vidas a instrumento contra los derechos humanos

In December 2017, Libya registered a search and rescue zone (SAR zone) with the International Maritime Organization conceived, designed and financed by the European Union and its member states. Since then, the Libyan coastguard has almost exclusively coordinated all rescue operations on the Central Mediterranean migratory route, today one of the deadliest in the world. The present article questions the validity of this zone due to the material inability of the Libyan coastguard to carry out the rescue function in its SAR zone as well as the impossibility of being able to consider that state as a «safe port». Its cre-ation and workings are in fact one more reflection of the EUs border externalization policy which, in this case, has as an added consequence the distortion of a principle as essential as that of providing help at sea and whose sole purpose should be to «save lives»