Europeâs leaders have missed a crucial opportunity to make a real difference to the lives of the migrants and refugees suffering daily in the Mediterranean, international aid agency Oxfam has said
urope's leaders have missed a crucial opportunity to make a real difference to the lives of the migrants and refugees suffering daily in the Mediterranean, international aid agency Oxfam has said.
The organization said the EU had chosen to focus on border control operations instead of heeding calls to restore immediately a search-and-rescue operation in the Mediterranean in the mold of Mare Nostrum, the successful operation it dismantled last year.
'There is a moral imperative to save the lives of people in peril ' regardless of who they are or where they come from,' Alessandro Bechini, the director of Oxfam's programs in Italy, said in a statement on Friday.
He said a truly effective European operation needed to be not only properly funded and equipped, but must also have a clear mandate to save lives as the first priority. This should not be shackled, he added, by the geographical restrictions that were currently keeping the patrols of the EU's border control mission, Operation Triton, near the Italian and Maltese coasts.
"Comparing the impact of Operation Triton, as conducted by Frontex, with the previous Mare Nostrum operation is startling. By mid-April there have been 900 confirmed deaths under Triton. There were only 17 in the same period last year under Mare Nostrum,' Bechini said.
He said EU member states also had to abide by the Refugee Convention both in letter and in spirit. Refugees fleeing persecution needed safe and legal avenues to claim asylum.
'These are principles to be upheld, not empty statements to be ignored in favour of building a more fortified Europe,' Bechini said.
According to Oxfam, poor countries around the world are shouldering an unfair burden of millions of refugees fleeing from war, insecurity, poverty and inequality.
'Today's decisions from Brussels are totally insufficient to resolve the deadly consequences of the mass movement of desperate people from country-to-country. We are missing the visionary effort and leadership that is needed to tackle the root causes that drive people away from their homes and push them to face such risks,' Bechini said. (ebf)
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