We are anticipating, with interest, the filing of Italy’s formal complaint against Malta to the European Union and the International Court of Justice over Malta’s alleged ‘failure’ to conduct a rescue at sea, and not only from a journalistic point of view.

Indeed, what we are more eagerly anticipating is the reasoning behind the complaint because, as far as anyone else can see, Malta has placed neither life nor limb in peril and it has acted in strict accordance with the international law of the sea.

The Italian media this week dragged Malta through the dirt, yet again, over the fact that it did not intercept and bring to shore a migrant vessel carrying over 900 passengers, a vessel that was not in distress and whose occupants did not request rescue assistance.

Here, the Italian media is on the wrong foot altogether and what it appears to be objecting to is the fact that the migrants preferred making Italy their end destination, and not Malta. The Italian media appears to be objecting to the fact that Malta did not forcibly disembark the migrants in Malta, and instead accorded the vessel in question its legal right of free passage in international waters.

The fact of the matter is that no military has any right, let alone a duty, to deny a vessel free passage in international waters. Such an intervention can only be made when the vessel has requested it. If such a vessel refuses assistance, there is not a lot anyone, according to the law of the sea, can do about it.

If that vessel was not in trouble, if its passengers had no intention of disembarking in Malta and were bent on reaching Italian shores, again, there is not a lot anyone can really do about it, at least until the vessel enters a country’s territorial waters.

A country’s search and rescue area and its territorial waters are not one and the same and they are, in fact, two very distinct areas. Perhaps someone should point this out to the Italian media.

At any rate, the heavily-laden migrant vessel made it to Sicily in the end, which is, perhaps, why the Italian media took such exception to the incident.

When Malta was informed by an Egyptian fishing vessel of the vessel, and that it appeared to be in difficulty, it dispatched air and sea assets, which ascertained the vessel was in no distress and that it was heading northward at six knots. It had kept the Italians in the loop, since the vessel was heading their way. Italian assets intercepted the vessel just one mile outside its territorial waters and escorted it to land.

Yes, the Armed Forces of Malta could very well have provided lifejackets to the passengers and, who knows, it could have even pointed the vessel in its intended direction – to Italy. That is what Malta was able to do from a humanitarian aspect if those people did not want to be rescued or otherwise assisted. From a legal aspect, there was little else it could have done.

At the time of writing yesterday, the Armed Forces of Malta was engaged in an actual rescue of 76 migrants who were in actual distress, and we have little doubt that those migrants will be brought by the AFM, as per the international law of the sea, to the nearest safe port, irrespective of whether that port is a Maltese or an Italian one.

This latest spat between the two countries is concerning since it is they that are tasked, by quirk of geography, with dealing with the bulk of the Africa-Europe migratory phenomenon, and the track record here has not been one to write home about.

It is even more concerning given developments in Libya and the still real prospect of an overwhelming exodus from Libyan shores once the sea conditions in the central Mediterranean settle for the summer.

Malta and Italy have joined forces on so many occasions to face off against the apparent apathy of much of Europe toward the countries’ role in this human drama.

We all agree that humanitarian considerations come first and foremost. It is now high time that Italy and Malta act in better concert in the interest of humanitarianism, and that they leave such discord on subjects that we do not agree upon.