Migrations, Mediterranean: arrivals increase, the European Union remains complicit in abuses in Libya and NGOs continue to rescue at sea

ROME – Second Frontex Irregular border crossings to the European Union through the central Mediterranean quadrupled in the first four months of 2023 compared to the same period in 2022, reaching the highest level since the agency began collecting information in 2009. The published data on May 5, the Italian Ministry of the Interior reported 42,449 arrivals in Italy since the beginning of the year. In early May, almost two thousand people landed on Lampedusa in less than three days. A total of 1053 people are reported dead or missing in the Mediterranean since the beginning of this year.

Accusing the EU of funding abuses in Libya. May 12th Doctors Without Borders issued a statement reiterating European complicity in the abuses in Libya. According to the organization in 2022 about 23,600 people were intercepted by the Libyan coastguard, funded by the European Union, and forcibly returned to Libya. But in Libya, according to the latest United Nations dossier, migrants run the constant risk of being arbitrarily detained and subjected to torture and inhumane treatment that amount to crimes against humanity.

The story of those who were detained in Libya. Asha is seventeen years old and was rescued from the Ocean Viking ship operated by the organization SOS Mediterranean on April 1st. Abandoned at the age of nine during the Somali civil war, then rescued by an abusive uncle, Asha managed to escape Mogadishu on her own to escape a forced marriage to an 83-year-old relative. During the escape she was detained for three years in Libya, where she was subjected to torture of which she still bears the marks on her body. According to theInternational Organization for Migration (OIM) in the period between 7 and 13 May 2023, 89 migrants were intercepted and returned to Libya. The total number of people sent back to the southern shores of the Mediterranean has exceeded five thousand.

NGO relief work. Meanwhile, despite constant attempts to criminalize sea rescue operations, non-governmental organizations continue to rescue shipwrecked people in the central Mediterranean. The Geo Barents, the ship operated by Médecins Sans Frontières, rescued twenty-six people in distress in international waters off Libya on May 16. Among the refugees were a pregnant woman and eight children. On 17 May Bansky’s vessel, the Louis Michel, rescued seventy-one people in an unseaworthy and overcrowded dinghy.

Pushbacks on the border between Italy and France. French authorities have deployed a number of drones to monitor the border because it is materially impossible to prevent people from crossing the border irregularly without the help of drones, they said. Paris claims that some 12,607 people have been stopped on the Italian-French border since the beginning of this year, marking a 40 percent increase compared to 2022. The French government’s official numbers are however denied by the associations that assist refugees at the border . For NGOs, on the other hand, there has been no significant increase in people in transit in recent months. Doctors Without Borders denounces the rejections at Ventimiglia. According to Sergio Di Dato, head of the mobile clinic that assists migrants on the border between France and Italy, on average 20/25 people are rejected from France to Italy every day and it is feared that this number could increase after the deployment of another 150 policemen at the border. Di Dato added that the situation is very complicated in Ventimiglia, where some rejected people are looked after by associations operating in the area, but others instead end up in makeshift camps without water or latrines, in the midst of rats.