► What is the record of migrant crossings to Europe by sea?
On the road to maritime migration, 2021 was no exception to the rule of good and, most often, bad news. On Christmas Eve, 28 migrants perished in the sinking of their boat on the Libyan coast. A tragedy that occurred just days after the death of 160 migrants in a single week off Libya. A total of 1,506 people have lost their lives in the central Mediterranean since the start of the year, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
→ ANALYSIS. Channel migrants crystallize tensions between Paris and London
Others were more fortunate: last year, 67,480 people, including 9,699 minors, arrived in the peninsula through the central Mediterranean, according to data from the Italian interior ministry.
For the year 2021, all routes combined, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that more than 114,500 migrants have managed to reach Europe, mainly via Italy, Greece, Spain, Cyprus and Malta. More arrivals by sea than in 2020 – 95,031 arrivals had been recorded – but far from the peak of more than one million people in 2015.
► What are the new migration routes?
The year 2021 is characterized by increasing crossings in the Channel (28,395), which neither the risks due to the density of maritime traffic, nor the water temperature seem to dissuade. The closure of other routes, such as the port of Calais (northern France) and Eurotunnel, pushes migrants to take to sea. “To escape the Dublin regulation which obliges migrants to seek asylum in the first country of arrival, they go to Great Britain which, no longer in the European Union since Brexit, cannot send them back to their country of arrival “, explains Sara Prestianni, Migration and Asylum Program Manager at EuroMed Rights.
The road to the Canaries also saw an explosion of arrivals with 40,982 migrants, according to the HCR with a majority of people from sub-Saharan Africa, Moroccans and Algerians. An extremely dangerous road, according to the Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras, which recorded 4,404 dead or missing in 2021, the deadliest year since the NGO carried out this count (2015). This figure is higher than that of the IOM which lists “At least 955 dead or missing” in this perilous crossing to the Canary Islands archipelago and 324 to mainland Spain and the Balearic archipelago from Morocco and Algeria.
→ MAINTENANCE. Immigration to the Canaries: “Europe is not up to the challenge”
“This route has been used more in recent years due to the strengthening of controls in the Mediterranean”, according to Maria Gonzalez Rollan, co-author of the NGO’s annual report. “These are the pain figures”, she said, pointing out the “Feminization” migratory routes to Spain: 628 women and 205 children died or disappeared in 2021, according to this NGO.
► Why these increases in both crossings and deaths?
In 2021, to force Spain to recognize the “Moroccanness” of Western Sahara, Rabat did not hesitate to use the weapon of migrants by literally pushing them to leave for Spain. More recently, Belarus has done the same with the intention of forcing Europe to lift the sanctions against it.
→ READ. When migrants serve as a diplomatic “weapon”
But each time a country tries to block a passage, migrants determined to flee poverty or violence in their country of origin, find other routes, often more dangerous. ” In Europe, deplores Sara Prestianni, the situation of migrants is hardened by the stretching of reception conditions, the normalization of the violation of non-refoulement and the reduction of legal avenues of access to European territory. If there is no change in 2022, she concludes, the death toll will be even heavier. “
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The instrumentalization of migrants
May 17, 2021. Relations between Morocco and Spain have become strained over the question of Western Sahara. In the space of 48 hours, Moroccan customs officers having deserted their border post, some 8,000 Moroccan migrants crossed into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. In the days that followed, Spain succeeded in expelling almost all of the Moroccans.
November 19, 2021. Belarus organizes the arrival of migrants on its soil and pushes them to the Polish border. Minsk intends to put pressure on Warsaw and Brussels so that the European Union’s sanctions against it are lifted.
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