Oscar Camps’ trajectory has been recognised with the Encomienda de Número of the Order of Civil Merit, awarded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
It is one of the highest official honours, intended to acknowledge significant service in civil activities.
The Open Arms team is proud of this well-deserved recognition, and we feel a part of it.
Oscar’s words:
“I receive this Encomienda de Número of the Order of Civil Merit with gratitude and respect, but also with the real discomfort of not knowing what to do with recognitions when you come from the sea.
From having seen people drown. From having recovered bodies. From having arrived too late, far too many times.”
This honour is not something I receive personally.
It belongs to all the people who sustain Open Arms, knowing that there are human beings drowning while the decisions that could save them are delayed, diluted, or avoided.
People who have acted when saving lives began to be scrutinised, monitored and, in some cases, persecuted.
Open Arms was born in 2015 for one fundamental reason: there were people dying at sea.
Not to manage borders.
Not to replace States.
Not to do politics.
But to do what needed to be done: go into the water and bring someone out alive.
10 years later, that mission has not changed. What has changed is the context.
Where there was once cooperation, today there is obstruction.
Where there was solidarity, today there is suspicion — and sometimes hatred.
And where international law should offer certainty, far too often we find the silence of States.
That is why this recognition matters. It comes at a time when humanitarian aid has been criminalised and used as a pretext for migration policies rooted in fear and exclusion.
For the State to affirm today that saving lives is a civic value and not a crime is no small gesture. It has consequences. It matters a great deal.
But it would be insufficient if it remained only a symbol.
The Mediterranean is still the deadliest border in the world.
And it is so as the result of specific political decisions
Europe —and Spain as well— needs policies consistent with the human rights they proclaim. No more patches. No more looking the other way. No more shifting onto civil society what is an institutional responsibility.
History does not judge intentions. It judges decisions.
And it judges what each of us did when we knew what was happening.
Saving lives is a principle. And principles are not negotiable.”
Oscar Camps
