No need of international conventions, nor the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Just arithmetic. Just an abacus. The numbers say that the main argument of the campaign that led to the closing of the “Mare Nostrum” was simply not true. It was not true, that is, that the crossings of the Mediterranean were encouraged by the existence of the rescue operation of the Italian Navy. As they have always supported charities – as well as simple common sense – those who leave in most cases makes this choice to avoid a more serious danger of the trip. And it does so soon is possible.
The data say that the beginning of the year – ie without “Mare Nostrum” – have landed on the Italian coast 3815 people. In 2014, in the same span of time, it had reached 60 percent less. If we limit the analysis to January alone we have this data: 2,171 arrivals (and 12 deaths) in 2014, 3528 arrivals (and 21 deaths) this year. So in this first part of February, there were less than 300 other arrivals. And no less than 230 dead: 29 killed by cold and the other 200 who were on the two rafts of which are untraceable. But, according to the Agency for Refugees (UNHCR), there may be another boat dispersed (and therefore another hundred victims). In that case you would be reached a record: the number of victims, in this end of February, would be even higher than that of arrivals. It had never happened. Even in October 2013 when 386 people died all together in front of Lampedusa.
What with the end of the rescue operation Italian and his apparent replacement with the operation ” Triton “(curated by Frontex, the European agency for border control) the number of dead would grow was taken for granted. Only supporters of the theory that “Mare Nostrum” gave incentives departures had a different opinion. They believed, in fact, that no longer having the reasonable hope of being rescued, the migrants would remain in Africa. Evidently it was not true.
But no one had imagined it would come so quickly to these numbers. In the absence of a radical and immediate in European policies, promises for 2015 scenario chilling. Last year, of the 218 thousand people who have crossed the Mediterranean to reach the Italian coast, 3,500 have lost their lives, despite the operation “Mare Nostrum”. All the indications are that this year the number of departures will grow again. The question is that figure may reach the number of victims?
You can hazard any guesses . According to Fortress Europe, from 1988 to 2014 have died trying to reach Europe (land and sea), just under 21,500 people. Of these, about 10,000 were killed in the Mediterranean. This is real data. The figure given by Fortress Europe derives from the sum of all deaths in which the media have reported about. But it is assumed that many shipwrecks do not know anything. The barges of migrants do not have the passenger list, nor port registers that take account of departures and arrivals. There have been catastrophic wrecks (like the Christmas of 1996: just under 300 deaths) that government authorities have denied for years. There are periodic discoveries of rafts overturned, empty barges. From these clues, it has come to assume that the relationship between arrivals and both victims of one to one hundred. Essentially the dead in the Mediterranean would be more than double the figure determined by Fortress Europe.
If you apply this proportion 2014, you get the result that – if it were not “Mare Nostrum” – the death toll would not be 3500 but the two or three times. This, if you do not restore “Mare Nostrum” or something similar (for example, a radical change in the nature of the “Triton” and therefore of the Frontex Regulation), is the amount that can be expected for 2015. Of course, as also yesterday said Laurens Jolles, UNHCR Executive Officer for Southern Europe, “The operation Triton does not have as its primary mandate of saving lives and therefore can not be the answer that there is an urgent need.”
February 11, 2015
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