Trans-Mediterranean flow of migrants from North Africa has slowed, but show recent signs of resurgence this year
 It’s nowhere near the 2015-16 migration spike, but the trans-Mediterranean flow of migrants has risen again this year, putting shipping at increased risk of having to rescue migrants at sea.
After a three-year lull, the numbers of migrants crossing the Mediterranean has found new highs not seen since two years ago, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
The International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) has expressed concern about risks crews must face. Ships may be enormous these days, but crews are smaller and may number no more than 20. Obliging them to rescue scores of desperate, mostly military-aged men from unseasorthy craft puts seafarers in serious peril.
The rescuing ship cannot land migrants easily as southern Europe becomes increasingly unwelcoming, to say nothing of having to disrupt just-in-time shipping schedules, upon which supply chain contracts are based. Far from being a rare occasion, these incidents can arise with any ship traversing the Mediterranean from Greece to Spain as migrants move from many points along the length of the North African coast. This is an intolerable situation that the ICS wants the United Nations' International Maritime Organisation and/or its member states to rectify.
Another problem is that national governments of poor countries where the flow starts are reluctant to enforce measures against human smuggling because the remittances of migrants abroad often contribute to local livelihoods and development. In Nigeria, for instance, remittances of the diaspora are estimated to exceed US$20 billion per year, and in Senegal they represent the major source of foreign currency in the country.
“If a ship is directed to disembark rescued people in Libya, it creates a potential for conflict between the crew and desperate and frustrated people that might object to being returned,” said ICS secretary general Guy Platten. Civilian merchant seafarers “can be severely affected by the traumatic situations they face, having complied with their legal and humanitarian obligations to come to the rescue of anyone found in distress at sea.”
The other big shipping lobby, the Baltic and International Maritime Council (BIMCO), said it appreciated efforts by EU leaders to reduce increasing reliance on merchant shipping to rescue growing numbers of distressed migrants in the Mediterranean.
Said BIMCO deputy secretary general Lars Robert Pedersen: “The shipping industry has highlighted the risks to the health, safety and security of seafarers who assist distressed migrants in increasingly large numbers. Merchant ships are ill-equipped to deal with large-scale rescue operations involving many hundreds of migrants and it may compromise the safety of those onboard as well as those who they attempt to rescue. This is why BIMCO will continue to give practical advice to shipmasters on how to effectively deal with calls for search and rescue assistance.”
In one case the captain lost control of his ship after the migrants he rescued objected to his plan to take them back to Libya whence they came. In the end, Malta’s armed forces seized control of the tanker, after which they escorted it to the Maltese capital of Valletta, where the migrants had ordered the captain to take them.
The Rome-based EU naval force, Operation Sophia, a maritime anti-people-smuggling effort, which had unintentionally become something of a migrant ferry service, has since been limited to aerial surveillance after a national election took a populist turn. Italy then refused to back continued sea patrols, which in the end took the distressed migrants at sea on to Italy. The new government, which now included Matteo Salvini, the hard-line interior minister, was unwilling to take in any more migrants without a deal to redistribute them to other EU countries.
Shipowners are worried the decision would create big problems. Jakob Larsen, head of maritime security at BIMCO, the world’s largest international shipping association, said: “Shipowners and seafarers are in what seems to be a chess game between European migration politics and international maritime conventions. What we would like to see is authorities coming together for a solution that is sustainable.”
Martin Dorsman, secretary-general of the European Community Shipowners’ Associations, said member companies were “highly worried” by the move to take Operation Sophia’s vessels off the water. “We will rescue people when they are in distress at sea - that’s a legal obligation and a moral obligation and we will not shy away from it,” he said. “But it’s important to realise that merchant vessels and their crews are not trained to do that. We say there must be a properly funded international rescue organisation in the Mediterranean.”
Operation Sophia, which was set up during the 2015-16 migrant influx to Europe, has been credited with saving thousands of lives and has become even more crucial as non-governmental group rescue operations have been curtailed by the restrictive policies of Italian government.
Mr Salvini has made some headway with his share-alike policy requiring other EU member states to absorb some of the flow after Italian authorities refused to allow NGO rescue ships to dock.
Now, following a Franco-German initiative and a mini-summit in Malta, also involving Italy, an attempt is being made to sign up to a common position on one specific element of the EU’s approach.
Member states were asked to commit automatically to taking a share of the refugees landed, with the French and Germans indicating that they alone will take roughly half the total.
Credited for slowing the flow last year and the year before are the restrictive measures at national, European and international levels to limit the volume, including the EU-Turkey deal, and the implementation of limited entry-quota in Hungary.
While the legal status of these provisions remains controversial, they succeeded in reducing migration figures across the eastern Mediterranean and the Balkan routes. As compared to 2015, flows shrank by about 80 per cent in Greece, where 177,000 undocumented migrants arrived in 2016, 87 per cent of whom came from three countries: Syria (about 80,000), Afghanistan (about 40,000) and Iraq (about 25,000). Figures are even more striking in the subsequent legs of the journey: flows have reportedly reduced by more than 95 per cent in Hungary and Croatia.
The good news is that the migrant flow has slowed from its high point, but in 2019, it now shows signs of resurgence. Most agree that Europe has a big job on its hands assimilating people with little connection to their new European host cultures. Given that, the popular mood has produced a vociferous outcry for greater border controls, and given that those countries - principally Italy - have imposed restrictions that have succeeded in stemming the flow, this has become the course that many, if not most, now recommend. |
