ONE YEAR AGO today, over 300 African migrants lost their lives attempting to cross the Mediterranean to enter Italy.
The victims drowned when a boat carrying up to 500 African asylum seekers caught fire and sank off Italian shores in one of the worst such incidents in the Mediterranean.
But, as last month’s tragedy in Malta, which claimed as many as 500 lives showed, Lampedusa has not served as a warning to those leaving Africa.
New data on irregular crossings of the Mediterranean, covering the third quarter of 2014, show what the UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, calls “an alarming increase in the numbers of people perishing while attempting to make the journey to Europe”.
In both absolute and percentage terms, the numbers are up substantially.
In all, 90,000 people crossed to Europe between 1 July and 30 September and at least 2,200 lost their lives, compared to 75,000 people and 800 deaths for the period between 1 January and 30 June.
In other words, a person making the journey in the first half of the year faced a 1.06% chance of losing their life, while the odds for someone crossing in the third quarter more than doubled to 2.4%.
UNHCR is calling on Europe to commit more resources for rescues at sea.
”We are failing to heed the lessons from the terrible events of last October, and more and more refugees are drowning trying to reach safety.
“EU countries must work together to continue and bolster the vital task – which has been mostly carried out by Italy’s Mare Nostrum operation, but also by commercial vessels – of rescuing people at sea,” said UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres.
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