Tag: Mediterranean ⁄ Page 2 ⁄ Open Migration

The 10 Best Articles on Refugees and Migration 25/2017

June 27, 2017 - Open Migration

A journey in 10 reads: The Mediterranean Sea, where migrants are still dying while the EU is busy trying to close that route at all costs. The absence of a reception system in Rome and Athens, and how volunteers are stepping in. The human costs of the Dublin Regulation in Britain and the experiment in pushback policies in Greece. A Ramadan denied for refugees in Lebanon, and how Japan is closing its doors on asylum seekers.

The 10 Best Articles on Refugees and Migration 24/2017

June 20, 2017 - Open Migration

Essential reads for World Refugee Day, events to celebrate solidarity, record numbers of people displaced worldwide. Also: reflections on rescue operations at sea, the importance of reforming citizenship laws in Italy, an atlas of foreign unaccompanied minors and the consequences of the failed EU relocation plan.

Training the Libyans is not enough to stop migrants

June 7, 2017 - Francesco Floris

On the night of May 23, 2017, the captain of the Iuventa, a ship from the German NGO Jugend Rettet, reported a new attack at sea by a Libyan motorboat: the crew had shot at some boats overloaded with refugees, then brought two of them back towards Libya. Was it the Libyan Coast Guard? How is Italy training them, and to what end? And how many Coast Guards actually exist in Libya? Francesco Floris takes us into the details of training in Libya and its historical precedents.

The 10 Best Articles on Refugees and Migration 22/2017

June 6, 2017 - Open Migration

Death rates in the Mediterranean have almost doubled even as migrant crossings fall, since EU countries will do anything to push them back, disregarding international law and human rights while pointing the finger against humanitarian NGOs (who have gone from “angels of the sea” to “taxi cabs for migrants”).

Accusations against Ngos at sea: what is false or misleading in that smear campaign

May 19, 2017 - Francesco Floris and Lorenzo Bagnoli

“Too smart for their own good” (Matteo Renzi). “Taxi cabs for migrants” (Luigi Di Maio). Northern League secretary Matteo Salvini said there was a “secret service dossier” on them. Their chief accuser is Catania’s prosecutor Carmelo Zuccaro, according to whom their intervention “renders investigations into facilitators of criminal organisations useless.” After weeks of hearings, though, the defense commission in the Italian Parliament has cleared them of all suspicions. But who are they? Humanitarian Ngos, carrying out search and rescue operations in the waters between Sicily and Libya, are the target of a relentless smear campaign. The European border control agency Frontex has designated them the main “pull factor” for the rising number of migrant boats (and deaths) in the Mediterranean. How much truth, and how much untruth, is there in such accusations?

The 10 Best Articles on Refugees and Migration 19/2017

May 16, 2017 - Open Migration

Migrants at sea: humanitarian NGOs are under attack, while the states are not taking accountability for tragedies (Italy stood and watched while 268 people drowned in the Mediterranean; Libya’s coastguard is becoming increasingly aggressive). Also, a voyage in the hotspots of the humanitarian emergency: the disastrous situation in Greece, the consequences of reinforcing borders in Melilla and the crisis of the reception system in Milan.

The eight thousand migrants saved at Easter: logbook of a rescue mission

May 11, 2017 - Giulia Bertoluzzi

During the four days of the Easter weekend, 8,300 people were rescued in the Mediterranean: 1,300 by Frontex (the European Border and Coast Guard Agency) and the others by several NGOs in coordination with the Italian Coast Guard. The small Iuventa ship alone assisted 2,147 people, both taking them on board and with its life jackets and rafts. The Iuventa is a small fishing boat that has been adapted for rescue missions by the German NGO Jugend Rettet, one of the smallest organisations involved in humanitarian operations in the search areas of the Mediterranean. While much of the media and some politicians echoed the generic accusations of Catania’s prosecutor according to whom NGOs "attract" and sometimes even collaborate with smugglers controlling the flow of migrants, thousands of lives were saved from certain death by drowning, hypothermia, hunger, and thirst on the open sea. Our reporter Giulia Bertoluzzi was on board the Iuventa and kept a logbook for Open Migration.

The 10 Best Articles on Refugees and Migration 16/2017

April 25, 2017 - Open Migration

The controversy rages on over the NGOs saving lives at sea (while no one discusses the responsibility of Europe looking on), part of a larger trend of criminalising solidarity. The order in Ventimiglia prohibiting the distribution of food to migrants has been revoked following protests by civil society groups. Also: the continuing humanitarian emergency in Calais, Denmark’s reckless deportations to Afghanistan and the costs of EU policies for unaccompanied minors kept apart from their families.

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