Medea

Then I heard for the first time the word refugees. To the Argonauts we were refugees, it was a blow. Of certain susceptibility then I got out of the habit.”
Medea, Voices by Christa Wolf

Why Medea? Christa Wolf’s Medea is the refugee par excellence, the one who, upon discovering the secrets of power, is accused of terrible deeds, expelled and condemned to lose everything she has. With the Medea Project, we want to pay tribute to all people who cross borders, bringing with them stories of suffering and resistance, aware of the multiple narratives of their experiences and journeys.
The Project. The Medea Project, launched in 2016 with the support of the Open Society Foundation, works to protect the freedom of movement and fundamental rights of foreign persons along the internal borders of Italy, Europe and along the Balkan route. Created to address the growing violations of rights at the borders, the project combines strategic litigation monitoring and advocacy actions with the goal of documenting, analyzing and countering illegitimate practices of border authorities.

Project activities thus focus on three key areas:

• Monitoring: we collect and analyze information from local associations and networks active along the borders, documenting violations and abusive practices against migrants.
• Strategic Litigation: we promote legal actions before national and European courts to challenge interventions that seriously undermine the fundamental rights of migrants.
• Advocacy: we work to influence the actions of policy makers by denouncing violations, working in terms of moral suasion, and developing tools to support legal actions.

Medea strongly believes in networking, collaborating with Italian and foreign experts to develop legal strategies to protect the rights of foreign nationals.
Our engagement extends to Italy’s land borders, the Balkan route, with a special focus on Albania, and the sea route connecting Lebanon to the Italian coast. The in-depth study and analysis of contexts has also gradually involved the project in the analysis of issues transversal to the Association’s interests, which, precisely because of this transversality, are becoming autonomous actions: the right to the identity of migrants who have disappeared during migration journeys and, by extension, the right of family members to know the truth about the fate of missing persons, and the issue of ethnic profiling carried out by police authorities, especially in territorial and border control actions.