The UN human rights office OHCHR, called on Friday for urgent action to address the “unimaginable horrors” faced by migrants attempting to cross the central Mediterranean Sea in search of safety in Europe.
Thousands of refugees and migrants in eastern and western Africa, are dying while others face harrowing abuse in their attempts to reach the continent’s Mediterranean coast in search of a better life, a joint UN/Danish Refugee Council report said on Wednesday.
A monthly average of 11,500 people traveling from the Horn of Africa to Yemen last year made the so-called Eastern Route the busiest maritime migration path on earth, the UN migration agency said on Friday.
A landmark UN migration study published on Monday shows that 93 per cent of Africans making the journey to European countries along irregular routes, would do it again, despite facing often life-threatening danger.
A move by Italian lawmakers to impose fines of up to €1 million on vessels and organizations carrying out search and rescue operations off the country’s coastline, sparked a new warning on Tuesday from the UN that the measure risks deterring future lifesaving efforts in the Mediterranean.
Around 1,600 children were reported dead or missing between 2014 and 2018 – an average of almost one every day – but many more go unrecorded, a new UN report revealed on Friday.
A rescue operation on the Mediterranean concluded on Tuesday with confirmation that seven people drowned and 57 were rescued, following a shipwreck off the Greek island of Lesvos, the UN migration agency, IOM, said.
If countries help educate incoming migrants and refugees, they will no longer be viewed as a problem, but a valuable resource, said a 20-year-old from Côte d’Ivoire, speaking on behalf of young people, ahead of the adoption of the new UN Global Compact for Migration in Marrakech, Morocco. Kader Diabate made the voyage alone to Italy on one of the world’s most dangerous routes – through Niger and Libya, and across the Mediterranean Sea. He spoke to UN News’s Mustafa Al Gamal about his extraordinary journey.
