Almost 80,000 people a year try to cross the Mediterranean in rudimentary boats from North Africa to reach Europe, according to the Spanish NGO
The Spanish NGO Open Arms has requested this Thursday that the Italian Parliament open a commission to investigate “what happened in the central Mediterranean in recent years”since since 2013 they estimate that more than 25,000 could have died migrants “a few miles from the Italian coast”.
The NGO has formulated this request after the Council of Europe asked the Italian government chaired by the far-right Giorgia Meloni to withdraw or review its new immigration decree, since it can “hinder search and rescue operations” and, therefore, enter “in contradiction with their human rights obligations”.
According to Open Arms, almost 80,000 people a year try to cross the Mediterranean. in rudimentary boats from North Africa to reach Europe.
In addition, the NGO denounces that many of these boats are intercepted by Libyan “militias”, who then detain the migrants in detention centers where “violence, torture and rape have been verified by the main international organizations”.
In this regard, in 2022 the UN Human Rights Council stated that its investigators had documented “abuses” Y “rights violations” in the centers of Libya.
“The time has come to shed light on the scope of this immense tragedy and to restore dignity to the victims of this tragic chapter of our history,” said Open Arms, which also denounced that at the European level “there is no mission search and rescue in international waters.
The new rules introduced by the Italian Executive on humanitarian ships they oblige to receive an authorization to help and to request the disembarkation immediately after the first rescue. In addition, lately Italy assigns distant ports, so that ships have to navigate several days to dock.
In its response to the Council of Europe, the Italian government assured that the “NGO that operate in the Central Mediterranean do so outside of international agreements on maritime rescue”.
“The systematic activity of recovering migrants in waters off the Libyan and Tunisian coasts to take them exclusively to Italy, without any coordination“, which is “extended among NGOs, falls outside the provisions of international conventions on maritime rescue,” said the response to the organization’s human rights commissioner, Dunja Mijatovic.