Amnesty urges extension of migrant rescue operations

Amnesty International has called for wider search and rescue operations amid the hazardous trend of migration to Europe under the unsafe conditions in the Mediterranean.

The rights organization’s deputy manager for Europe, Gauri van Gulik, said on Saturday that the operations must extend to areas near the shores of Libya.

Migrants often use old boats attempting to reach the European shores.

“We only see that mission patrolling right around the borders of Italy. But all these boats that we have seen go down have been going down further afield, so closer to Libya, and these boats are simply not reaching that area,” van Gulik stated.

The remarks come against the backdrop of a recent fatal shipwreck in the Mediterranean.

On April 16, a spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) confirmed that 800 people lost their lives in a ship accident in the sea.

The ship capsized about 96 kilometers (60 miles) off the Libyan coast and some 193 kilometers (120 miles) south of the Italian island of Lampedusa on its way to Europe.

The incident prompted the European Union to take swift action to prevent the future occurrence of similar incidents. However, the so-called Operation Triton, which is conducted off the Italian coast, lacks an explicit mandate to search for and rescue migrants near the Libyan coast over lack of consensus on immigration policy in the 28-nation bloc.

Pointing to the dangers of the rescue process itself, van Gulik highlighted that many of the merchant ships involved in search and rescue operations do not have the right equipment and training to carry out safe rescues.

“Even though it is heroic, of course, what they are doing, this is causing boats to capsize because, for example, there is panic on board … and it is causing a lot of the deaths that we are seeing,” she added.

About 170,000 migrants reportedly entered the EU region through Italy last year, with most of them departing from Libya.

Predictions by aid groups show that if necessary measures are not taken to tackle the migration crisis, there could be 30,000 deaths at sea this year, with Italy having to process 200,000 migrants reaching the country.