Many more migrants to reach Europe

Some 60,000 migrants from the Eastern Mediterranean, the Eastern block and North Africa have reached Europe since the start of the year.

This figure is more than the equivalent period in 2011, the year of the Arab Spring, which saw 140,000 migrants’ crossings into Europe. In 2014 most of the migrants, originally from Niger, Eritrea, Gambia, Egypt, Bangladesh and Pakistan, crossed the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa into Italy. From January to April an estimated 42,000 used this route.

Often migrants fall pray to traffickers who persuade them to destroy their passports and other documents before embarking on dangerous journeys. They may drift on precarious boats for days, without food or water. They may pay traffickers as much as 1,600 dollars to travel in appalling conditions. Some will never make it alive. At Misrata's morgue in Libya, the refrigerators are full of bodies, on average eight per week (against three per year a decade ago).  

“The main route through Libya was closed for so long that people in sub-Saharan countries have been waiting for a couple of years," states Franck Duvell, associate professor at the Centre on Migration, Policy, and Society at the University of Oxford.

Those who are lucky enough to survive reach Europe’s shoreline - they know they are not welcome, but the prospect of jobs and money in Europe is considerably better than what they left behind.

Col. Reda Essa, who commanded migrants’ rescue operations in Libya, said “this is Europe's problem, as much as Libya's. European countries are not serious about tackling the issue and don’t give Libya any help”.

Italy complained the cost of patrolling its patch of the Mediterranean has risen to 300,000 Euros (£240,200: $408,000) per day.

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Cover photo ItaliaOggi