More than 2,200 people died or went missing trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea last year, according to the The United Nations says. As more and more European countries defend the success of far-right policies aimed at excluding migrantsexperts warn that more lives could be lost in 2025 without real change.
As revelers celebrated the new year around the world, grim news emerged from the Mediterranean: A small boat from Libya had sunk near the Italian island of Lampedusa, leaving only seven survivors, including an eight-year-old child whose mother was among the twenty people missing.
It’s an all-too-common story in the region, where countless ships carrying migrants attempt to cross the waters to Europe. Many never complete their journey. Nearly 1,700 people were killed or missing in 2024 along the Central Mediterranean route, which stretches from North Africa to Italy and Malta.
The deaths come after a year of growing crackdowns on civilian rescue boats in the Mediterranean, as well as an attempt by Italy’s far-right government. to transport asylum seekers to Albania.
Michael Gordon, a researcher at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Ont., said non-governmental organizations carrying out search and rescue operations have become “an easy scapegoat” for authorities frustrated by the influx of migrants. .
“The result of this criminalization [is] …there are fewer resources at sea to help migrants in distress. And as a result, people will continue to die,” he said in an interview with CBC News.
More than 31,000 migrants are dead or missing in the Mediterranean since 2014, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a United Nations agency.
The death toll in 2024 includes “hundreds of children, accounting for one in five people migrating across the Mediterranean”, said Regina De Dominicis, UNICEF regional director for Europe and Central Asia and coordinator for the response to refugees and migrants in 2024. Europe, said in a declaration last week. “The majority are fleeing violent conflict and poverty.”
“Widespread criminalization” of civilian rescue boats
Growing anti-immigration sentiment is making these crossings more dangerous, experts and human rights groups say.
In 2023, Italy banned search and rescue NGOs from carrying out more than one rescue per voyage, meaning ships would have to ignore any further distress calls they receive, or face massive fines and see their ships immobilized.
In November, the German non-governmental organization Sea-Watch filed a criminal complaint against Italian authorities following a September shipwreck that claimed the lives of 21 people, alleging that she had alerted the Italian coast guard of a boat in distress but that no rescue vessel had been sent for two days.
Italian authorities also regularly allocate remote ports to NGO rescue ships. Last month, SOS Méditerranée, an international relief organization, shared on social media that it was forced to travel more than 1,000 miles over several days to bring 162 survivors to safety after Italian authorities ignored calls for a closer port of entry.
“We were sanctioned for simply fulfilling our legal duty to save lives,” said Juan Matias Gil, representative of Médecins Sans Frontières. a declaration after his rescue ship received a 60-day detention order in August.
This “rampant criminalization” of civilian rescue operations unnecessarily puts lives at risk, said researcher Gordon, who also works at Wilfrid Laurier University’s Center for International Migration Research.
“I think this is also closely linked to the rise of far-right governments in Europe.”
Migrant arrivals fall sharply in Italy
The policies of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, elected in 2022 on an anti-immigration program, bore fruit for her government in 2024. Just over 66,000 migrants arrived in Italy by boat last year, i.e. a down about 60 percent from 157,000 people. arrived in 2023, the country Interior Ministry reports.
The number of deaths and disappearances recorded in the Mediterranean – already a minimum estimate, as many boats disappear without a trace during the crossing – fell by around 28 percent in 2024 compared to the previous year, according to the IOM data.
“The fact that we have fewer arrivals does not mean we have less risk,” Nicola Dell’Arciprete, UNICEF national coordinator for migration and refugee response in Italy, told CBC News.
Dell’Arciprete has worked with children who have fled war, extreme poverty or political upheaval. Many arrive without parents or guardians.
“They’re really running from nightmares,” he said. “The factors that push people to Europe don’t really change.”
Reducing migrant deaths requires more investment in reception centers, contingency plans for periods of high arrivals, safer and more legal immigration pathways and strengthened search and rescue operations , Dell’Arciprete said, adding that the question is whether there is “political will to move forward in this direction.” »
This year, European countries will evaluate their regulations to plan the implementation of the new European Union Pact on Asylum and Migration. The deal, the first update to EU asylum laws in two decades, was concluded in 2024 but will not be fully implemented until 2026.
EU pays countries for migrant control
Italy and the EU have largely focused on countries of origin for controlling migrants. The EU has provided ten million euros in aid to Tunisia in 2023 to strengthen border control and prevent migrant boats from leaving its shores, and he drafted a 7.4 billion euro deal (11 billion Canadian dollars) to strengthen “stability” in Egypt, with an emphasis on controlling migration.
Meloni played a key role in securing the Tunisia deal, which is now widely attributed to the drop in migrant arrivals in 2024, as well as a similar deal Italy struck with Libya in 2017.
Human rights groups have said returning migrants found at sea to Libya exposes them to torture and abuse in arbitrary detention.
Nevertheless, Italy’s immigration policy has received praise from other European leaders, such as British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who in september felicitated Italy’s “remarkable progress”.
Italy’s latest tactic to reduce migrant numbers failed last fall, when Meloni struck a deal with Albania that would see up to 36,000 asylum seekers sent directly to the non-EU country every year while awaiting deportation, but Italian courts have refused to do so. validate the transfer of migrants.
The project is now stalled due to disagreements over what constitutes a safe country, even though Meloni pledged in December to continue the project.
Experts say that without significant change, tragedies in the Mediterranean will continue.
“Until we strengthen search and rescue operations, until we create safe and legal pathways for children to travel to Europe, we will see more people die,” Dell’Arciprete said. “And that’s a simple fact.”
At least 59 migrants have died after a boat sank off the Italian coast with up to 200 people on board. Most of the dead were children. The accident brought the issue of irregular and dangerous migrant crossings back to the forefront.
