United Nations Calls For Expansion Of Search And Rescue Operations

The chief of the United Nations  human rights has  called for an expansion in the  search-and-rescue operations.

He said, in a statement on Thursday, “We are seeing a steep increase in the number of desperate people putting their lives at grave risk,we cannot afford to dither, and to become embroiled in yet another debate about who is responsible.”

Turk also called for solidarity with Italy, which has traditionally received most arrivals, adding that the Italian coastguard had rescued some 2,000 people on the route since Friday. Italy’s right-wing government this week imposed a six-month state of emergency to deal with the situation.

“Human lives are at stake,” he said, while also urging Italy’s government to scrap a law passed this year that restricted civilian search-and rescue-operations.

The appeal came a day after the UN’s migration agency said more than 400 people had drowned in the Central Mediterranean during the first three months of the year.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) on Wednesday announced the reported number of people dead and missing along the central Mediterranean reached the highest level of any first quarter since 2017 in the first three months of this year.

The IOM documented 441 refugee deaths along the route during January, February and March 2023, compared with 742 in 2017 and 446 in 2015.

“The persisting humanitarian crisis in the central Mediterranean is intolerable,” said IOM head Antonio Vitorino, calling for more search-and-rescue operations by state authorities.

Later on Thursday, Tunisia’s coastguard confirmed that at least 25 people had died after their boat sank off the coast of the city of Sfax.

A wooden boat packed with about 110 migrants sank on Wednesday. Seventy-six people were rescued while the rest are still missing.

Drowning accidents off Tunisia have dramatically increased in recent weeks, leaving dozens dead and missing, amid a sharp rise in boats heading towards Italy from the Tunisian coast.

Tunisia has taken over from Libya as a main departure point for people fleeing poverty and conflict in Africa and the Middle East in the hope of a better life in Europe.

Three times as many people sought to reach the EU across the Mediterranean in the first three months of 2023 compared with a year before, the European Union border agency Frontex said on Wednesday.

Frontex reported 54,000 “irregular” crossings into the bloc via all routes in the first quarter of the year, up a fifth from 2022.

“The Central Mediterranean route accounts for more than half of all irregular border crossings into the EU,” Frontex said in a statement on Wednesday, adding that nearly 28,000 people had arrived that way from the start of the year until the end of March, three times as many as in the same period in 2022.

“Organised crime groups took advantage of better weather and political volatility in some countries of departure to try to smuggle as many [people] as possible across the Central Mediterranean from Tunisia and Libya.”

Rome has asked the EU to do more to stop sea arrivals, the latest example of how refugee crossings have returned to the top of the bloc’s political agenda as global mobility picked up last year from COVID pandemic lows.

Also Thursday, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said it was scaling up humanitarian assistance and protection services along the route — including psychological support, first aid, family reunification services and help with disembarkation in Italy.