Coming Together While Apart

The #HereTogether initiative launches in an effort to underline MotM commitment to bring people together, now especially in the face of COVID-19.

ROME, ITALY 15 April 2020 – “Here Together,” the new survey initiative launches, giving migrants profiled by the organization, subscribers, donors, and readers alike a platform to share experiences of living in quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic, an effort to illustrate global unity vis-a-vis the migrant and migrant-rights community.

Migrants of the Mediterranean (MotM) is dedicated to telling the human stories of the people they follow who have endured––and who continue to endure––incredible things to survive.In response to the global pandemic outbreak, the organization expanded its Humanitarian Storytelling reach to all followers and MotM community members in this unique action to forge togetherness in a period of collective isolation.

Testimonies from migrants and from readers around the world are published on a rolling basis via the MotM email subscription, and are additionally available to read on the main site and on Instagram.

The survey is open to all and the organization encourages anyone to participate and share their unique message of compassion and solidarity with the world. Responses have already come in from Lebanon, Taiwan, Germany, Libya, Italy and the United States, and elsewhere.

The mission at Migrants of the Mediterranean has always been to give voice to some of the world’s most vulnerable. These are people who are isolated and living on the margins of society, and oftentimes need someone to connect to––to make them feel human again.

In this moment of isolation, self-quarantine, and social distancing, we are experiencing new ways of what it means to be on our own. People may have even gained new insight into the migrant experience, which so frequently is defined by being alone.

So in this moment of the coronavirus pandemic, MotM uses #HereTogether to create precedent now for a more compassionate time ahead for when the dark one before us is over.

Migrants of the Mediterranean also continues to report on the unfolding humanitarian crisis throughout the world with original pieces at The Beyond, its official blog. Veteran Turkish war correspondent Nevin Sungur’s most recent Op-Ed delivers a personal report from the Greece-Turkey border in late February 2020.

Her compelling testimony and video footage connects us to the political chaos of Turkey-EU migration policy on a human level. Through it, she sheds light on the humanity of refugees alongside the simultaneous human losses we suffer now in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic.

More pieces will be published in April, including analysis on the EU’s new Operation Irini in the Mediterranean, with more to follow.

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About Migrants of the Mediterranean
Migrants of the Mediterranean (MotM) is an online Humanitarian Storytelling publication that documents the individual journeys of people who have crossed continents, countries, desert and sea from their countries of origin to the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, where they are brought post-rescue after escaping Libya. They are also greeted in some instances across greater Italy and the EU, and now in Asia-Pacific.

The primary mission of MotM is to give dignity to the world’s most vulnerable, and to ensure a platform where they may be seen and heard. MotM creates an account for the historical record, and tracks its subjects (some since 2016), documenting all issues of the migrant experience in an effort to inform public policy, scholars and the media, and to provide a stable platform for migrants––the most marginalized of people––to find voice and, finally, home.