The Right to Life as articulated in the Charter of Palermo (2015), is grounded in the principle that human rights attach to the person, not to citizenship status.

The Charter affirms that the right to life is a supreme and inviolable right and insists that it must be protected without discrimination based on nationality or immigration status. In the context of migration across the Mediterranean, it emphasizes the duty to safeguard human life at sea and rejects policies that subordinate life to border control.

While the Charter’s central focus is the recognition of international mobility as a fundamental human right, its treatment of the right to life reinforces that no legal or administrative framework may justify exposing individuals to death, abandonment, or denial of basic protection. The document argues that the protection of life must take precedence over restrictive migration policies and calls on institutions—particularly at the municipal level—to uphold human dignity irrespective of legal status.