Et kraftigt stigende antal mennesker fra Afrika og Mellemøsten søger mod Italiens kyster i håb om at finde et bedre liv her. Langt de fleste kommer i både fra Libyen, hvor menneskesmuglere har kronede dage efter Gaddafis fald.
JOHANNESBURG/TRIPOLI, 29 May 2014 (IRIN) – Italian newspapers have recently been full of reports of countless rickety boats conveying thousands of desperate migrants to its shores.
Since the beginning of the year, over 38,000 irregular migrants have arrived in Italy, most of them coming ashore on the tiny island of Lampedusa south of Sicily.
This is a significant jump from the 4,290 who made the crossing during the same period in 2013, but Italian officials have suggested that it represents only the tip of the iceberg.
Last month, the head of Italy’s Immigration and Border Police agency was widely quoted in the media telling a parliamentary committee that 800,000 more migrants were poised to depart the North African coast for Europe, a figure which he later admitted was “not a concrete projection”.
While worries in Italy and throughout the European Union are focused on how many more migrants will come during the usually busier summer months and where they will go, a small number of researchers are trying to understand what has prompted the surge in migrants using this route and where they have come from.
All roads lead to Libya
According to Italy’s Interior Ministry, 31 percent of the sea arrivals so far this year were Eritrean, a significant increase from previous years.
Another 14 percent were Syrian while other nationalities include Somalis, Ethiopians, Sudanese and West Africans from countries including Mali, Nigeria and Senegal.
The vast majority of the boats are departing from Libya where smugglers have taken advantage of a security vacuum created by the fall of Muammar Qaddafi’s regime in 2011 to establish routes for smuggling migrants and illicit goods from the country’s southern frontiers to its northern coastal towns.
A recently launched report by the Nairobi-based Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat (RMMS) and the Danish Refugee Council examines evidence that migrants and asylum seekers from the Horn of Africa are increasingly willing to undertake the risky journey to Libya and then Europe as previously popular routes to Saudi Arabia via Yemen and to Israel via Egypt have become largely closed to them.
The authors suggest that the flow of asylum seekers from Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan who are “Going West” to Libya and Europe is increasing rapidly, despite the enormous risks associated with this route.
“We can’t say for sure how many [migrants] are in Libya. We can say for sure the numbers are increasing,” said Melissa Phillips, a researcher with RMMS who until recently was a senior programme officer with the Danish Refugee Council in Libya.
Phillips noted the absence of monitoring at Libya’s southern land borders where the majority of migrants and their smugglers enter the country after perilous journeys through the deserts of Sudan, Chad and Niger.
“There’s a complete black hole of information on Libya’s southern borders,” she told IRIN. “At the moment, the only reliable figures we have are for people leaving…
“There’s an unknown number of people who don’t make it to their intended dream [destination] whether it be to parts of Libya to work or to Europe,” she added.
According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), more than 170 migrants have died since the beginning of 2014 trying to reach Europe by sea. How many died of thirst or hunger while crossing the Sahara is unknown, but the RMMS report describes the Sahara crossing as “even more dangerous” than the Mediterranean one.
In just one incident in April, Sudanese Armed Forces discovered 600 mostly Eritrean and Ethiopian migrants who had been abandoned by their smuggler near the Libyan border. Ten had died of hunger and thirst before the group was rescued.
Many of the migrants interviewed for the RMMS report recounted how members of the groups they were travelling with had died from lack of food or water during desert crossings.
“Misery and insecurity” in Libya
Læs hele artiklen her: http://www.irinnews.org/report/100149/understanding-the-surge-in-migrant-boat-crossings-to-europe
