How To Report
If you have received information on a situation of distress or a violation of migrants’ rights at sea, you can “Submit a report”. Bellow are a few guiding principles that may help you in this process. Feel free to write us if you have any questions or demand assistance.
Describing the events
Try to report the events as precisely as possible from the moment of the migrants’ boat’s departure to the end of its journey, indicating as precisely as possible when and where the different moments in the chain of events occurred. The following questions may help to guide you.
- Where and when did the migrants leave from? In which direction?
- How many people are/were on board and what is/was there age, gender, nationality?
- What kind of boat are/were they using?
- Have the migrants sent out a distress signal? If so, please specify the means of communication (if relevant, the satellite phone number), the time and location (GPS coordinates) of the signal, and the person or agency who received the signal. Is/was assistance expected to be on its way?
- Did the migrants encounter other boats at sea? If so, how close did they come and what did they do? Did the migrants ask for help and was it provided? Try to describe as precisely as possible the nature of the boats (size, color, flag, identifying name or number).
- Were the migrants flown over by an aircraft? How close did it come and what did it do? Try to describe as precisely as possible the nature of the aircraft (size, color, flag, identifying name or number).
- Are/were there people who were sick or who died on board? If so, how many, at what stage in the travel and in what circumstances?
- During the migrants’ travel at sea, are there indications that they have been victim of a violation of their rights? For more information on migrants rights at sea, see the Rights at Sea section.
Security, sources and methodology
Take all necessary security measures to protect the identity the migrants involved in the report and any other vulnerable person. Reports will be reviewed by WTM editorial committee to insure compliance with this fundamental rule. However, confidential information regarding the identity of different persons involved in the case can be sent to us via email.
Further more, while a report, particularly concerning an ongoing situation, may simply consist in the testimony of a person in distress, when possible, the following sources and methodologies should be applied to achieve the utmost precision. Reports using them will be indicated as “verified” once reviewed by WTM members.
- Attempt to collect different testimonies concerning the events, news reports, official statements and technology based evidence (such as photographs, satellite imagery, georeferenced data on vessel positions, data on meteorological conditions, etc) and cross-reference them, indicating points of divergence and doubt between sources. Please write us if you wish WTM to assist you with technical issues.
- When possible, provide exact times and locations (GPS coordinates) for all moments of the chain of events.
- Provide the source of the information and data (with the security previsions above considered) and if possible include the full information in the report. This will allow WTM users to evaluate the accuracy of the reconstruction of events.
Submitting the report:
In the “Submit a report” page, indicate as precisely as possible the chain of events of the ongoing or past incident, using the different sections and tools.
- Fill in the different relevant fields concerning sources.
- Select the date and time corresponding to the time of the incident
- Upload additional media such as audio or image files if they exist
- Select one or several categories the report should belong to.
- Choose which layers are relevant to the incident and you would like WTM users to see when they will view your report.
- Use the different drawing tools on the map to draw the chain of events from the moment of the boat’s departure to the end of its journey (or its current position). Indicate with points the different key locations in the chain of events (the successive positions of the migrants’ boat as well as that of other actors involved). By editing the points, you may label them and add information as to what happened at each point. Indicate with a full line trajectories that are known (by linking up known points), with a dashed line trajectories that are estimated. You may view a few examples such as the “Left-to-die boat” case.
Your report is now ready to be submitted. If you have any questions or demand assistance, if there is an emergency or if you have additional information on an incident that should not be disclosed to the broad public but could be useful for further investigations, feel free to write us.