Tuesday’s image showing a group of black migrants huddled together wearing life jackets as they arrived on board a rescue vessel to Malta barely made the news headlines.
The 70 are the ones who actually made it and hope for a better future. They are the ones who will likely spend months in limbo as EU states engage in the annual pass-the-buck wrangle. We’ve been there before.
Whether it is the impact of the pandemic, media fatigue or a sense of hopelessness creeping in, we appear to be no longer analysing what is really happening outside our shores. Which would be a good thing were it not for the fact that the tragedy persists.
More than 620 people are believed to have died as they attempted to cross from north Africa to Europe this year alone, according to the International Organisation for Migration. That works out to almost three times more deaths when compared to the same period last year.
COVID-19 will go away some day, refugees will not. History teaches us that
How much longer can we keep counting bodies washing ashore or slipping away beneath the waves?
This tragic loss of life underscores once again the need to re-establish a system for search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean coordinated by states.
The strategy of pushing back asylum seekers to Libya is clearly not effective on a number of counts.
Governments should never force refugees to go back to a country where they are at risk of human rights violations. And, yet, European states persist in this strategy despite evidence showing that Libya remains an unstable country with no facilities to host asylum seekers. Humanitarian organisations have warned that vulnerable people attempting to flee Libya are facing detention, extortion and abuse.
The EU continues to throw money at the problem by financing an ill-equipped and ill-trained Libyan coastguard and, when that fails, frontline countries like Malta, Italy and Spain are left to deal with the problem alone or seek ad-hoc ‘solutions’.
EU states need to engage with their African counterparts and humanitarian organisations to draw up a strategy to strengthen the protection of persons travelling along the Mediterranean route and provide safe alternatives to dangerous and desperate journeys. Unless we do so, we are simply going to be repeating the same epitaphs and reporting the same tragic stories, year in, year out. We risk becoming immune to a tragic story.
There are many reasons people continue taking the riskiest decisions of their lives to leave their countries. According to the UNHCR, many are fleeing from conflicts, like in the Sahel where indiscriminate attacks constantly lead to death and forced displacement. Many are fleeing persecution and being trafficked and sold like commodities.
Still, in the last year and a half, their stories have become almost an inconvenient footnote. The pandemic has given border states the perfect excuse to step out of line of their international obligations, providing a hand only when the situation is critical. COVID-19 will go away some day, refugees will not. History teaches us that.
Of course, for several years now, the Maltese authorities have been stuck between a rock and a hard place, amid little solidarity shown by other EU states. With summer coming, we can expect more boats and more dog-whistle anti-migration statements from our politicians. And with an election looming, expect to keep hearing that “Malta is full up” or that we need to “secure” our borders.
There is no clear-cut solution. But we do need to heed the UNHCR’s calls for the expansion of legal pathways such as humanitarian corridors, resettlement and family reunification. For those who are not in need of international protection, solutions must also be found to reinstate them to their countries, while respecting their dignity and human rights.
Seeking safety is a human right. Human rights don’t change based on whether you seek safety by land, air or sea.