By now, we’ve all heard of the boats leaving Libya and Tunisia bound for Malta and Italy’s Lampedusa. It’s not a particularly new phenomenon, though the increased numbers resulting from the Arab Spring upheavals are.  This week, though, more than one actor chose to ignore a failing boat of refugees adrift in the Mediterranean, resulting in the deaths of 63 of 72 passengers.

Multiple helicopters and military vessels came into contact with the doomed boat as it signaled for help. One chopper even dropped off some water and cookies.  At one point in its two-week death drift, the boat neared a large naval ship, possibly the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle. Someone on the ship took photos of the boat but no rescue attempt was made even though the people on the boat were indicating their distress by holding up the two infants on board. The babies later died.

This isn’t the only recent report of ships passing by as boats of refugees signal for help. It’s just the most tragic and demonstrates the repeated and blatant flaunting of maritime law.

A friend of mine was climbing Mount Everest a few years ago. The same week he was set to peak, a bearded British man about his age and appearance died on the mountain. I freaked out. I thought my friend was gone. When I finally heard from him I learned that he was fine but that he didn’t actually make it to the top despite one morning of perfect weather. His failure wasn’t due to injury. He didn’t reach the top of Everest because he and his team stopped to assist an Australian man who would have died without their assistance. What struck me most in his recounting were the people who passed by. Teams he’d shared a laugh with only the night before walked by on the skinny path pretending not to see, not to understand.  Stopping to help would have gotten in the way of their dreams, so they brushed past feigning to be blind, deaf and dumb.

Now I don’t know that the captains of the ships passing floundering boats full of African migrants are out there chasing their dreams. But I do know they are ignoring international law, and I know that very little is being done to encourage or coerce a different response.

It’s pretty easy to commit to honoring human rights when things are going well. Much more difficult is respecting them when doing so is politically inconvenient, economically costly, or otherwise undesirable.  The thing is, human rights and international law weren’t established for the easy times. They were developed to guide us when chaos threatens to lead us off course. And to reassure us that if we were out there dying at sea within view of those with the power to rescue us, someone would stop what they were doing to pull us to safety.