The Central Mediterranean migratory route, focus of the webdoc The Lybian Crossroad, a critical look at the migratory movements that cross Libya
- Novact, publishes “The Libyan Crossroad”, a webdoc that documents the reality that thousands of people experience when they cross the Central Mediterranean migration route.
- The photoperiodic project is a compilation of images taken over almost ten years in countries such as Libya, Tunisia, Niger, Egypt, Sudan and Palestine.
- Ricard Garcia Vilanova and Javier Martín, have captured in The Libyan Crossroad the different realities that coexist in Libya, a country of transit of the trans-Mediterranean route. A route that crosses the central Mediterranean and has already claimed more than 15,000 lives since 2014, making it the world’s deadliest migration route.
Barcelona, march 2019
The photographic project The Libyan Crossroad, carried out in collaboration with Novact, within the framework of the DevReporter grant and with funding from Lafede.cat and the European Union, is a visual exploration through protagonists from different countries on both shores of the Mediterranean, with a special focus on Libya.
Providing a critical look at the result of a migration policy that systematically violates Human Rights, Ricard G, Vilanova, nominated for the general news category of World Press Photo 2020, together with journalist Javier Martín, capture the most human face of the different realities that coexist in Libya in a webdoc that also includes the causes that exist in the countries of origin of the people who cross the sea towards Europe.
The visual work, carried out over almost ten years, can be seen on Novact’s website and documents with images and contrasting data the reality experienced by thousands of people crossing the Central Mediterranean migration route. This route has already claimed more than 15,000 lives since 2014, making it one of the migration routes with the highest death rate in the world.
The photographs taken by photojournalist Ricardo G. Vilanova weave an uncomfortable but faithful account of the situations of restriction of fundamental rights experienced by civil society in Libya, Tunisia, Niger, Egypt, Sudan and Palestine, and help to understand the causes of the migratory phenomenon on the trans-Mediterranean route.
“The numbers don’t lie, but they don’t explain the human stories behind the migratory journey. The images and stories of this project are an effort to make their voices heard and their testimonies visible,” Ricard Garcia Vilanova, photojournalist of Novact’s project “The Libyan Crossroad” and nominated in the general news category of World Press Photo 2020.
The photographs and data collected by the webdoc provide a critical view and capture the complexity of life in Libya, a country that has been through a decade of war, as well as the resistance and resilience of its people.
With the webdoc The Libyan Crossroad, Ricard Garcia Vilanova and Javier Martín manage to trace again a story that makes visible the human rights violations of thousands of people and links the most corporeal and cruel realities, such as reclusion, war, fear and pain, with those that are not so visible, such as impunity, causality and co-responsibility.
On both sides of the Mediterranean, mass civil society mobilisations have been taking place in recent years, in which women are taking a leading role, in favour of a profound social and political transformation. But the exercise of the right to protest is coming up against strong and violent repression by authoritarian governments, which drastically violate fundamental human rights.
That is why, as shown in his World Press Photo 2020 nominated photo, taken during the civil society protests in Iraq, the photojournalist and author of The Libyan Crossroad, highlights the importance of focusing on the countries of origin in order to observe and understand the causes of the migration phenomenon in the Central Mediterranean.
