100 Feared Dead in Migrant Shipwreck
More than 100 people are feared dead in a migrant shipwreck off the Libyan coast, while several others drowned off Spanish territory.
E.U. and Italian ships rescued four survivors and recovered eight bodies on January 14. Survivors told the International Organization for Migration that 107 people had been onboard.
Record numbers of refugees and migrants have died attempting to navigate the passage between North Africa and Italy last year. The number of crossings usually drops during winter months due to bad weather at sea, but last week saw over 1,500 people rescued from the waters in just three days.
Several bodies also washed up on the shores of southern Spain over the weekend, believed to be migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, while a woman was found dead on a boat drifting off the coast of Spanish enclave Ceuta.
Number of Lone Children Arriving in Italy Doubled in 2015
More than 25,800 lone children arrived in Italy on migrant boats last year, more than double the number of the previous year, the U.N. children’s fund said. In 2015, 12,360 lone children arrived in Italy.
Children traveling alone made up the vast majority – 91 percent – of the total number of children arriving by sea, UNICEF said. Most came from four countries – Eritrea, Egypt, the Gambia and Nigeria – and were predominantly boys between 15 and 17 years of age.
“These figures indicate an alarming trend of an increasing number of highly vulnerable children risking their lives to get to Europe,” UNICEF’s senior emergency manager Lucio Melandri said.
UNICEF said that many of the boys are forced into manual labor in Libya, while girls reported being forced into prostitution to pay smugglers for a place on migrant boats. The agency called for a coordinated European response to protect unaccompanied children once they arrive in the continent, including ending the detention of children and keeping families together.
MSF Warns Serbia Risks Becoming ‘New Calais’
Refugees and migrants are still traveling through the Balkans, but are getting stuck in the non-E.U. country of Serbia where they face the deadly cold outside of government shelters, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) warned.
The medical charity set up a clinic in the Serbian capital Belgrade, where they have treated frostbite and burns from toxic smoke as people burn garbage to keep themselves warm in an abandoned train depot, the Guardian reported. Nearly half of the clinic’s patients are under 18 years old.
Many migrants and refugees are afraid to enter government shelters for fear of being deported to the countries they last traveled from.
“Serbia risks becoming a dumping zone, a new Calais where people are stranded and stuck,” Andrea Contenta, MSF humanitarian affairs officer in Serbia, told the Guardian. “We cannot continue avoiding talking about reality, which is that the Balkan route is still open but people are getting stuck because there is no safe way to travel.”
Recommended Reads
- The Guardian: The World Needs a New Strategy to Tackle the Migration Crisis
- World Economic Forum: For Refugees Last Year Was The Deadliest Yet. In 2017 We Have The Chance to Act
- The Economist: The Cruel Sea
- The Huffington Post: Cubans Stranded on Mexican Border After Obama’s 11th-Hour Change
- International Labor Organization: World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2017