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Monday, March 18, 2019

BREAKING: Italian ship rescues migrants as Rome vows to 'stop' them landing

Date created : 19H03/2019 - 02:59 GMT/ZULU

An Italian ship picked up some 50 migrants off the Libyan coast on Monday but it is unclear if it can land them in Italy. An Italian ship picked up some 50 migrants off the Libyan coast on Monday but it is unclear if it can land them in Italy. AFP

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Rome

by Elodie Bagnol and Biodun Iginla, France24

An Italian charity ship rescued some 50 migrants at sea off Libya Monday, prompting Rome to warn it was ready to "stop once and for all" such private vessels from bringing those saved to Italy.

Italy's hardline Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has repeatedly declared Italian waters closed to NGO rescue vessels and has left several of them stranded at sea in the past in a bid to force Europe to take its share of asylum seekers.

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"Mare Jonio has just rescued a rubber boat in distress that was sinking with around 50 people on board," the Mediterranea collective of aid groups and associations that runs the ship said on Twitter.

Volunteers aboard the Mare Jonio pulled the migrants -- reportedly including 12 minors -- off a dinghy some 40 nautical miles off the coast of the north African country.

A Libyan coast guard vessel had approached the dinghy while the rescue was underway but left the migrants to the Mare Jonio, which was expected to request permission to bring them to safety in Italy.

It was not immediately clear whether the Mare Jonio had defied an order from the command centre in Rome telling it to leave the rescue to the Libyans.

Italy, with the support of the EU, has since 2017 been training the Libyan coast guard to intercept boats as part of a controversial deal that has seen migrant arrivals to Italy drop off sharply.

NGO ships have drawn fire from Rome by attempting on occasion to stop migrants being taken back to the crisis-hit country, which human rights organisations insist cannot be considered safe for repatriations.

- 'Facilitating human trafficking' -

The interior ministry said it was "working on a directive to reiterate the procedures that must be followed" after sea rescues.

"Saving lives remains a priority, but immediately afterwards the orders of the national authorities of the competent territory must be obeyed, according to the international rules of search and assistance at sea.

"Any deviance from those rules can be read as a premeditated action to bring illegal immigrants to Italy and facilitate human trafficking," it warned, adding that Salvini was "about to sign a directive" on the issue.

Should the Mare Jonio request permission to dock, and be refused, it would be the first such stand-off between the Italian government and an Italian-flagged ship.

"Good luck & thank you. We hope the disembarkation outside of Libya will be faster than what we witnessed before," tweeted Vincent Cochetel, the UNHCR's special envoy for the central Mediterranean.

The Mare Jonio is the only privately-run rescue ship currently operating in the central Mediterranean.

The others are either undergoing repairs, docked for a crew change or blocked by administrative or judicial hurdles.

Some 348 migrants have been brought to safety in Italy so far this year, compared to 6,161 in the same period last year.

"Despite a dangerously low SAR (search and rescue) capacity in the Mediterranean due to Italy & EU policy, people continue to risk their lives to seek safety," tweeted Doctors Without Borders.

Some 234 people have died in the Mediterranean in 2019, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Saturday, July 1, 2017

Europe migrant crisis: UN calls for more support for Italy

Some of the 650 migrants who were rescued by the Swedish ship Frontex in Mediterranean Sea off the Libyan coast, wait to disembark in Catania, Italy, 01 July 2017 — Image captionAbout 650 migrants were rescued and brought to the Italian port of Catania on Saturday

by Elodie Bagnol and Biodun Iginla, BBC News, Geneva

Italy needs more support as it deals with large numbers of migrants crossing the Mediterranean from Africa, the UN's refugee agency has said.

"What is happening in front of our eyes in Italy is an unfolding tragedy," Filippo Grandi said.

"This cannot be an Italian problem alone," he added.

Italy has threatened to stop vessels of other countries from bringing migrants to its ports, as it warned the EU the situation was unsustainable.

On Thursday, the European Union's migration commissioner, Dimitris Avramopoulos, promised more financial support for Italy, and urged member states to demonstrate greater solidarity.

The interior ministers of France, Germany and Italy are due to discuss the issue at a meeting in Paris on Sunday.

Rescue workers prepare to transport nine migrants found dead during a rescue operation for another 650 migrants in the Mediterranean Sea off the Libyan coast, in Catania, Italy, 01 July 2017 — Image captionNine migrants were found dead during the rescue operation off the Libyan coast

Mr Grandi, who is the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said 12,600 migrants and refugees had arrived in Italy last weekend alone.

In total, he said, 83,650 people have reached Italy by sea since the beginning of the year - a 20% increase on the same period in 2016.

An estimated 2,030 have lost their lives in the Mediterranean this year.

Media captionThis video from May shows the coastguard rescuing a migrant clinging to a ship's rudder

The vast majority of migrants making their way to Italy across the Mediterranean set off from Libya.

Libya is a gateway to Europe for migrants from across sub-Saharan Africa and also from the Arabian peninsula, Egypt, Syria and Bangladesh. Many are fleeing war, poverty or persecution.

The UNHCR said that among the arrivals in Italy there was an alarmingly high rate of unaccompanied children or victims of sexual or gender-based violence.

Map showing Central Mediterranean migrant routes

A note on terminology: The BBC uses the term migrant to refer to all people on the move who have yet to complete the legal process of claiming asylum. This group includes people fleeing war-torn countries such as Syria, who are likely to be granted refugee status, as well as people who are seeking jobs and better lives, who governments are likely to rule are economic migrants.

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From the sectionEurope

Monday, June 19, 2017

Global migrants: Record 65.6 million people displaced

19 June 2017 - 09H40 GMT/UTC/ZULU TIME

by Biodun Iginla, France24, United Nations (New York)

NEW YORK -

Devastating conflicts, violence and persecution in places like Syria and South Sudan had left a record 65.6 million people uprooted from their homes by the end of 2016, the UN said Monday.

That number marks a jump of just 300,000 from the end of 2015, but is more than six million higher than at the end of 2014, according to a fresh report published by the UN refugee agency.

This is "the highest figure since we started recording these figures," UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi told reporters ahead of the report launch.

"By any measure, this is an unacceptable number, and it speaks louder than ever to the need for solidarity and common purpose in preventing and resolving crises," he said.

The figures released ahead of World Refugee Day showed that a full 10.3 million of the world's displaced people fled their homes last year alone, including 3.4 million who crossed international borders to become refugees.

- 'Every three seconds' -

"This equates to one person becoming displaced every three seconds -- less than the time it takes to read this sentence," UNHCR pointed out in a statement.

Most people who have been forced from their homes flee within their own country, and are defined as internally displaced people, or IDPs.

At the end of 2016, there were some 40.3 million IDPs in the world, down slightly from 40.8 million a year earlier, with Syria, Iraq and Colombia accounting for the greatest numbers.

Another 22.5 million people -- half of them children -- were registered as refugees last year, the UNHCR report showed, pointing out that this is "the highest level ever recorded".

Syria's six-year conflict alone has sent more than 5.5 million people seeking safety in other countries, including 825,000 last year alone, making it the world's biggest producer of refugees.

Along with the 6.3 million Syrians displaced inside the country, these numbers show that a nearly two thirds of all Syrians have been forced from their homes, the report said.

As the Syrian civil war rages on, desperately needed funding for humanitarian aid in the country has begun to dwindle, Grandi said, lamenting that very little of the billions promised at an international donor's conference in Brussels in April had so far materialised.

- Forgotten crisis? -

The Syrian conflict, which has killed more than 320,000 people, "is becoming a forgotten crisis," he warned.

The UN refugee chief meanwhile voiced most alarm over the rapidly deteriorating situation in South Sudan, which he said was currently the world's "fastest growing refugee crisis and displacement crisis."

South Sudan's civil war, which began in December 2013, has left tens of thousands dead and forced a total of 3.7 million people from their homes -- nearly a third of the population.

Overall, the refugee population from the world's youngest country swelled 85 percent last year to reach 1.4 million by the end of 2016, the UNHCR report showed.

And that number has ballooned by a further half million people since then, the agency said, stressing the most of the refugees had left since the "disastrous breakdown of peace efforts" last July.

Syria and South Sudan were far from the only countries where people were being uprooted en masse, with Monday's report also pointing to large-scale displacement in Afghanistan, Iraq and Sudan, just to name a few.

And nearly 70 years after Palestinians first fled today's Israel, some 5.3 million Palestinians are currently living as refugees -- the highest level ever recorded, UNHCR said.

Monday's report also pointed out that, despite huge focus on Europe's migrant crisis, it is poorer countries that host most of the world's refugees.

A full 84 percent of refugees are living in low- and middle-income countries, UNHCR said, blaming this "huge imbalance" on "the continuing lack of consensus internationally when it comes to refugee hosting and the proximity of many poor countries to regions of conflict."

Biodun Iginla, BBC News