Even as Europe and the US groan under their coronavirus debacles, 900 asylum seekers have lost their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean this year for safe haven in Europe.
The UN-related International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported nearly 100 deaths, including a toddler, in shipwrecks on Thursday off the coast of Libya.
New measures are “needed to prevent further senseless loss of life”, including “predictable safe disembarkation”, IOM said.
This Mediterranean maritime route from Libya, known as the most dangerous on earth, is used by thousands to reach Italy, Malta, Greece or Spain.
Since 1 October, IOM has recorded a series of tragedies involving at least eight other shipwrecks in the Central Mediterranean.
At least 140 people were aboard the two vessels that sank on Thursday, among them many women and children. 47 survivors were brought to shore by fishermen and the coast guard. Thirty-one bodies have been recovered and more continue to wash ashore.
No European Union country favors opening doors to the refugees and migrants, who come mainly from sub-Saharan African countries that are devastated by armed violence by extremists affiliated to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
So it gives money to Libyan authorities to detain migrants before they embark and accept their return if they are caught at sea. Traffickers exploit them by packing them into flimsy dinghies or rusty tubs and their return to Libyan detention centers is like living cheek to jowl in awful prisons.
Libya is torn by a prolonged civil war of attrition and has no functioning government. Migrants held in its neglected detention centers are often reduced to slavery and women and children are regularly abused.
IOM strongly opposes these policies but is at wit’s end. “IOM maintains that Libya is not a safe port for return and reiterates its call on the international community and the European Union to take urgent and concrete action to end the cycle of return and exploitation,” it pleaded.
“The worsening humanitarian conditions of migrants detained in overcrowded centers, widespread arbitrary arrests and imprisonment, and extortion and abuse are alarming.”
Humanitarian rescue groups say drownings occur repeatedly each year partly because European governments sometimes send naval frigates to force the flimsy vessels used by refugees to return to their embarkation points in Libya.
More importantly, they prevent and penalize rescue vessels sent by humanitarian groups and non-governmental organizations (NGO’s), leaving the asylum-seekers stranded at sea and increasing the risk that their vessels will capsize.
Sometimes desperate migrants simply jump into the sea hoping to swim to Europe or be picked up before they drown. Even when they are picked up, the NGO vessels cannot take them ashore because coastguard vessels chase them away.
IOM recognizes this. “Continuous restrictions on the work of NGOs conducting crucial rescue operations must be lifted immediately and their crucial interventions recognized in line with the humanitarian imperative of saving lives,” it insisted.
In the absence of any safeguards for migrants returned to Libya, it is particularly inhumane that rescuers are not allowed to conduct life-saving operations in a specially designated search and rescue zone along the country’s coastline. The EU must rescind or greatly soften these prohibitions.
More than 11,000 migrants have been returned to Libya this year, putting them at risk of facing human rights violations. Thousands of helpless people continue to pay the price for European government inaction both on land and at sea.