21/04/2015
OXFORD, 20 April 2015 (IRIN)* – Every time a migrant boat capsizes on its way to Europe, a death toll is estimated by aid agencies and reproduced in media reports. But what about that other number? What about all those who die before ever setting foot on a boat? That number may be far higher.
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Photo: Alfredo D’Amato/UNHCR | A boat carrying refugees off the coast of Italy in summer 2014.
Some 1,600 migrants have died or are missing after trying to cross the Mediterranean this year, including almost 700 who perished in last weekend’s tragedy off Libya, the worst on record.
The risks these migrants took when boarding smugglers’ boats in the hope of reaching Europe are well known, but this is only one of the many perilous steps in a journey that for many never reaches the shores of North Africa.
“Crossing the sea is just the last tiny bit,” noted Meron Estafanos, an Eritrean journalist and human rights activist who regularly listens to harrowing accounts from Eritrean asylum-seekers at different stages of their odysseys.
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Posted in Africa, Asia, Market Lords, Middle East, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples, War Lords |
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21/04/2015
20 April 2015 (RT)* – To solve the refugee problem the EU countries, many of which are NATO-members, should criminalize the arms trade and abolish war in Syria and Libya, Jan Oberg from the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research told RT.
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© UNHCR/F.Malavolta | Medics carry a young man on a stretcher off the Italian Coastguard vessel Gregoretti when it reached Palermo in Sicily earlier this week after rescuing people from the Mediterranean.
RT: The EU has called for an emergency summit over the deaths of illegal immigrants trying to get into Europe. What do you think might come out of that?
Jan Oberg: I really don’t know but it has to lead to some serious self-reflection. EU countries, many of which are NATO countries, always can find money for warfare and they can’t find the money to rescue the people running away from the war zones where the European countries are involved.
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Posted in Africa, Asia, Market Lords, Middle East, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples, War Lords |
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21/04/2015
Following the loss of some 700 lives after a boat carrying migrants capsized and sank over the weekend, the UN human rights chief has urged European Union (EU) governments to take a “more sophisticated, more courageous and less callous approach” to coping with the flows of migrants towards Europe.
Maltese emergency workers in Senglea collect bodies from the Mediterranean disaster which happened overnight Saturday-Sunday 18-19 April 2015. Photo: UNHCR/F. Ellul
“As we learn of yet more men, women and children who have lost their lives in their search for better and safer lives abroad, I am horrified but not surprised by this latest tragedy. These deaths and the hundreds of others that preceded them in recent months were sadly predictable,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein on 20 April 2015 said in a statement.
“The [deaths] are the result of a continuing failure of governance accompanied by a monumental failure of compassion,” he added.
Posted in Africa, Asia, Market Lords, Middle East, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples, War Lords |
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 