Tag: NGOs ⁄ Open Migration

The 10 Best Articles on Refugees and Migration 45/2017

November 14, 2017 - Open Migration

The death toll in the Mediterranean is still rising, and an incident that cost 50 lives highlighted the recklessness of the Libyan Coast Guard, backed by Italy and the EU. Also: the Italian asylum system is still inadequate, and asylum seekers are facing a lottery. Refugee camps in Europe are still unequipped for the winter, while solidarity crimes are rampant. Last: still not enough is being done for the Rohingya, who are victims of a genocide that no one wants to call by its true name.

Rome: the only European capital with no official plan for migrants

September 6, 2017 - Eleonora Camilli

Rome is still the only European capital without an official plan for migrants. From the open space where Baobab Experience acts as the reference point for the city’s operations room (while being periodically subject to evacuations), to the Intersos centre for unaccompanied minors; from the Red Cross centre whose lease from the City is up every six months, to the discovery that hundreds of people were left to fend for themselves on Via Vannina; from the false alarms to the actual figures regarding arrivals, to the failed attempts at establishing an official hub, to the answers from the National Railways and the silence from City Hall, Eleonora Camilli mapped out the situation in the capital.

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”).

The 10 Best Articles on Refugees and Migration 20/2017

May 23, 2017 - Open Migration

A large demonstration in Milan calling for fewer walls and more integration. Elsewhere in Italy, the reception system fell in the hands of criminal organisations (see the case of the hosting centre in Isola Capo Rizzuto); in Greece, it is on the verge of collapse following changes in the management of EU funding; in Turkey, we are witnessing a true humanitarian disaster (which Ankara would like to keep a secret) and Poland does not want asylum seekers at all. Finally: how the focus on refugees risks neglecting the internally displaced.

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.