More than 2,200 people died or disappeared while trying to cross the Mediterranean last year The United Nations says. With more European countries supporting the success Far-right policies aimed at excluding immigrantsExperts warn that more lives could be lost in 2025 without real change.
As revelers ring in the New Year around the world, grim news has emerged from the Mediterranean: A small boat coming from Libya sank near the Italian island of Lampedusa, leaving only seven survivors, including an eight-year-old whose mother was among more than 20 people reported missing.
It’s an all-too-common story in the region, with countless ships carrying migrants trying to cross the waters to Europe. Many never complete their journey. Nearly 1,700 people will be killed or missing in 2024 along the Central Mediterranean Route, which runs from North Africa to Italy and Malta.
These deaths come after a year of increasing crackdowns on civilian rescue boats in the Mediterranean, as well as an attempt by the far-right Italian government. To pass asylum seekers to Albania.
Michael Gordon, a research fellow at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Ontario, said NGOs conducting search and rescue operations have become “easy scapegoats” for authorities frustrated by the influx of migrants.
“As a result of this criminalization … there are fewer assets at sea to help migrants in distress. As a result, people will continue to die,” he said in an interview with CBC News.
more than 31,000 immigrants died or went missing In the Mediterranean since 2014, according to the International Organization for Migration, a United Nations agency.
The death toll in 2024 includes “hundreds of children, who make up one in five of all people migrating across the Mediterranean,” said Regina de Dominicis, UNICEF Regional Director for Europe and Central Asia and Special Coordinator for the 2024 Refugee and Migrant Response. Europe, he said in statement Last week. “The majority are fleeing violent conflict and poverty.”
“Widespread criminalization” of civilian rescue boats
Growing anti-immigration sentiment makes these crossings more dangerous, according to experts and human rights groups.
In 2023, Italy made it illegal for search and rescue NGOs to conduct more than one rescue per voyage, meaning ships will have to ignore any further distress calls they receive, or risk huge fines and having their ships detained.
In November, German NGO Sea-Watch submitted its application Criminal complaint v. Italian authorities over a shipwreck in September that killed 21 people, claiming that they alerted the Italian Coast Guard to a boat in distress, but a rescue ship was not sent for two days.
Italian authorities also routinely allocate remote ports for NGO rescue ships. Last month, the international rescue organization SOS Méditerranée shared on social media He had to travel More than 1,600 kilometers for several days to transport 162 survivors to safety after Italian authorities ignored pleas for a closer port of entry.
“We are being punished simply for doing our legal duty to save lives,” said Juan Matías Gil, MSF representative. statement After a 60-day detention order was issued for its rescue ship in August.
Researcher Gordon, who also works with Wilfrid Laurier University’s Center for International Migration Research, said this “widespread criminalization” of civilian rescue operations unnecessarily puts civilian lives at risk.
“I think this is also very much linked to the rise of far-right governments in Europe.”
The number of immigrants arriving in Italy decreases significantly
The policies of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, elected in 2022 on an anti-immigration platform, are yielding results for her government in 2024. Just over 66,000 migrants arrived in Italy by boat last year, down about 60 percent from 157,000 people. Who arrived in 2023, the country Ministry of Interior reports.
The recorded number of deaths and disappearances in the Mediterranean Sea – already the lower end of estimates, as many boats disappear without a trace in transit – fell by about 28 percent in 2024 compared to the previous year, according to data from the International Organization for Migration.
“The fact that we have fewer arrivals does not mean that we have fewer risks,” Nicola Delarcipreti, country coordinator for UNICEF’s migration and refugee response in Italy, told CBC News.
Dell’Arciprete worked with children who had fled war, extreme poverty, or political unrest. Many arrive without parents or guardians.
“They’re really running away from nightmares,” he said. “The factors that push people towards Europe are not really changing.”
Reducing migrant deaths requires more investment in reception centres, contingency plans for high arrival periods, safer and legal migration routes and strengthening search and rescue operations, Dell’Arceprete said, adding that the question is whether there is “political will to deal with this problem”. Move like this.”
This year, European countries will evaluate their regulations to plan implementation of the new ones European Union Charter on Asylum and Migration. This agreement, the first update to European asylum laws in two decades, was agreed in 2024 but will not see full implementation until 2026.
The European Union pays countries to control migrants
Italy and the European Union have largely focused on countries of origin to control migrants. The European Union provided ten million euros in aid to Tunisia in 2023 To strengthen border control and prevent migrant boats from leaving its shores, it drafted a resolution A deal worth 7.4 billion euros ($11 billion CAD) to promote “stability” in Egypt, with a focus on controlling immigration.
Meloni played a key role in securing the Tunisia deal, which is now largely credited with a drop in migrant arrivals in 2024, along with a similar deal Italy struck with Libya in 2017.
Human rights groups have reported that returning migrants found at sea to Libya exposes them to torture, ill-treatment and arbitrary detention.
However, Italy’s immigration policies have received praise from other European leaders, such as British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has welcomed the welcome of migrants. In September he praised Italy “remarkable progress.”
Italy’s latest tactic to curb migrants fell on its face last fall, when Meloni struck a deal with Albania to send up to 36,000 asylum seekers directly to the non-EU country each year to await deportation, but Italian courts rejected that. Validation of migrant transport.
The plan has now stalled over disagreements over what constitutes a safe country, despite Meloni’s pledge in December to continue the project.
Experts say that without real change, the tragedies in the Mediterranean will continue.
“Until we strengthen search and rescue operations, and until we create safe and legal pathways for children to travel to Europe, we will see more people dying,” Delarceprete said. “And that’s a simple fact.”
At least 59 migrants have died after a boat crashed off the coast of Italy with up to 200 people on board. Many of the dead were children. The incident has brought the issue of irregular and dangerous crossings of migrants back into the spotlight.
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