European Union foreign ministers meet on Monday as Europe races to address a growing humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean Sea that critics say their governments helped to create.
The emergency meeting follows the sinking late Saturday off the Libyan coast of a boat packed with an estimated 700 people fleeing to Europe, in what may become the most deadly such incident in the Mediterranean.
“I’ll present a set of proposals for Libya, one of the main routes of illegal trafficking of migrants,” EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said in a statement on her website ahead of a meeting of the group’s Foreign Affairs Council in Luxembourg.
EU officials have urged member nations to pool resources as refugees flood out of Libya, with few concrete results.
“We need to take bold actions to deal with the growing migration crisis,” Dimitris Avramopolous, Europe’s commissioner for migration, said in a statement on Sunday.
Growing numbers of refugees from the region are using Libya as an embarkation point to reach Europe. Already in 2015 over 35,000 asylum seekers and migrants have arrived by boat, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. If the toll of the latest tragedy is confirmed, about 1,600 people will have died in 2015, the office said in a statement. That compares with 3,500 deaths and 219,000 successful crossings in 2014, it said.
’Mass Grave’
“A mass grave is being created in the Mediterranean Sea and European policies are responsible,” Loris De Filippi, president of the Italian branch of the medical humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders said in an e-mail statement. “Faced with thousands of desperate people fleeing wars and crises, Europe has closed borders, forcing people in search of protection to risk their lives and die at sea.”
Italy and Malta, the closest European countries to the doomed vessel, deployed navy and coast guard ships Sunday to find survivors. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi told a news conference in Rome that 28 people had been rescued and 24 bodies recovered.
The UN agency quoted Maltese authorities as saying 700 people were reported to have been on board when the vessel left the Libyan port of Zuara. A Maltese military official, who asked not to be identified, said the boat capsized about 61 nautical miles (113 kilometers) north of Libya late Saturday.
’Human Trafficking’
Italian news reports said the boat capsized when the passengers hoping to be rescued rushed to one side after spotting a merchant ship.
“Acting against human trafficking must stop being an Italian-only or a Maltese-only priority,” said Renzi, who added that he discussed the latest sinking with counterparts including French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel and that he hopes an EU summit on migration can be held by Friday to follow up on Monday’s talks.
Renzi has called on Europe to help stabilize Libya and has offered to lead a UN-backed mission into the North African country should diplomatic efforts fail. Italians were among the last foreigners to evacuate Libya in February when the embassy in the capital Tripoli was forced to suspend its activities due to increased violence. Libya was among the topics discussed with U.S. President Barack Obama when Renzi visited the White House on Friday.
“No solution to the migrant crisis can be found without a stabilization in Libya,” Renzi told reporters on Sunday.
’Act Urgently’
Hollande said in a Canal Plus television interview that he had called Renzi “to see how we can act urgently.”
“The Mediterranean is a sea we share, between Africa and Europe, so we have to act. More boats, more overflights with planes and a much more intense fight against the trafficking,” Hollande said.
Italy has faced a wave of migrants and refugees from Africa and the Middle East who board unseaworthy vessels in Libya, paying traffickers to take them across the Mediterranean to seek a haven in Europe. Italian politicians have been seeking international support to cope with the influx.
“The problem is not the control of the sea, it is rather to destroy the human traffickers, the 21st century’s new slaveholders,” Renzi said in a post on Twitter after meeting earlier in the day with Mogherini in Rome.
Avoiding Deaths
Pope Francis, in his weekly Sunday address to thousands in St. Peter’s Square, issued “an urgent appeal for the international community to act with determination and swiftness to avoid a repetition of similar tragedies.”
Doctors Without Borders and other groups have repeatedly urged EU nations to undertake large-scale search and rescue activities to avoid more deaths at sea.
“If confirmed, this would be the largest tragedy ever in the Mediterranean involving migrants,” Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said in a telephone interview. “Nobody should be allowed to die this way.”
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