Never has it been more dangerous for people in search of protection to make the crossing to Europe. The estimated death rate on boat migration journeys across the Mediterranean has risen from 4 per 1000 in 2015 to 24 per 1000 in the first four months of 2018, according to available data. While the death… Read more »
Search Results for: boat migrants
How Far Should We Go to Stop Migration to Europe?
The police, the military and militia groups in Libya are keeping refugees away from Europe. Reports link this situation to funding from the EU and Italy. The money passes through intermediaries, but Europe must bear responsibility nevertheless for making the funds available. To restrict the numbers of refugees arriving from Africa, the EU and several… Read more »
Europe’s Quiet Offensive Against People Helping Refugees
A look back on three years since the end of Operation Mare Nostrum. Three years ago today, pressure by the European Union on Italy forced the end of one of the EU’s most successful humanitarian missions, Mare Nostrum, a search-and-rescue operation that in just one year brought 130,000 refugees safely to Europe’s shores. As the… Read more »
Migrant Smugglers Are Winning. Here’s Why
Migrant smuggling: moving people across borders for profit, is reported to be one of the fastest-growing and most lucrative forms of organized criminal activity. Smugglers crowd their human cargo into shipping containers and onto boats and trucks. Many migrants arrive safely and consider the investment well spent. But migrant smuggling is a dirty business: excessive… Read more »
Totalitarianism Closing in on China
The only drama in the “two sessions” jamboree in Beijing this spring is that there was no drama at all. Each year the Chinese political élite, 5000 men and a few women strong, congregate in the capital for a week of meetings of the legislature, the National People’s Congress, and its advisory body, the Chinese… Read more »
The Syrian Refugee Crisis & The Two Europes
In the early September days of 2015, for the second time in a quarter century, Hungary became the site of a European refugee drama. In 1989, during the months preceding the fall of the Berlin Wall, hundreds of East Germans trying to flee their “Workers and Peasants State” had besieged the West German embassy in… Read more »
Unlikely Partners: The EU-Horn of Africa Migration Route Initiative
Should the EU cooperate with regional states to manage and control migration from the Horn of Africa? Proponents of greater migration control within the EU increasingly favor the use of political and economic incentives as an approach to prevent migration from the Horn of Africa and elsewhere, effectively through increasingly externalizing border control. While the… Read more »
A Burden no one Wants to Share: Why do Refugees from the Horn of Africa try to Cross into Europe?
The humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean, with staggering high numbers of deaths of asylum seekers and migrants attempting to cross by sea, shows the urgency of an alternative approach to Europe’s current border policies. Across the EU, mounting internal political pressures have intensified debates about migration and asylum, encouraging policies devised to restrict and control… Read more »