Flavio di Giacomo, spokesman for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), said in statements released Tuesday on the website of the newspaper Avvenire, that this year 2,271 people perished in these Mediterranean waters, which shows “that not enough is being done to save lives at sea”.
For his part, the jurist Fulvio Vassallo, professor at the University of Palermo and expert in asylum law, indicated in declarations to this news media that these shipwrecks and deaths “are not only due to bad weather, but also call into question the responsibility of those who close all legal routes of entry”.
“Agreements are stipulated with authorities that do not guarantee a real search and rescue activity, let alone safe harbors, and that drive away rescue ships, imposing more and more distant ports of disembarkation,” Vassallo stressed.
“In the last 10 years, at least 60,000 people died on the routes leading to Europe, including more than 27,000 in the Mediterranean Sea, Tareke Brhane, president of the October 3 Committee (named after the shipwreck that occurred that day in 2013 off the Italian island of Lampedusa, where 368 migrants perished), he said.
Sara Prestianni, leader of the humanitarian organization EuroMed Rights, pointed out that the official figures of deaths in the Mediterranean Sea in 2023, are far from the real number of migrants who died in that area during this year, and urged “the international community to redouble its efforts to put an end to this humanitarian tragedy.”
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