Giorgia Linardi

Giorgia Linardi studied International Relations and International Law in Milan and Geneva. Since 2011, following the Libyan crisis, she has been following the events related to migration and related humanitarian emergency in the Central Mediterranean. After completing her Master's degree in Switzerland, where she also worked with United Nations agencies, including UNHCR, she left as a volunteer for Lampedusa, where she began to work as a legal consultant for the then newborn German NGO Sea-Watch, which was about to carry out rescue activities at sea. From November 2015 to April 2016 she coordinated a similar project in Lesbos, Greece, for the same NGO, then she engaged back in rescue missions in the Central Mediterranean where she then collaborated for 9 months with Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on the rescue ship Aquarius, as "Humanitarian Affairs Officer", with the main role of collecting testimonies of survivors on board. Following the mission with MSF, since 2018 she has returned to work with Sea-Watch in a more representative role, as spokesperson for the NGO in Italy, in light of the hostile context where humanitarian organizations engaged in rescue operations in the Mediterranean Sea are at the center of a smear criminalization campaign at media, political and judicial level.