Latest Migration News
On the move
Recent highlights
In the central Mediterranean, Tunisian border guards regularly carry out roundups, handing over migrants to their Libyan counterparts, who subject them to violence ranging from forced labor to torture and murder. On 12 June, 2024, the Ocean Viking arrived in Tuscany with 64 migrants, including 12 minors. The group was rescued in the Libyan search and rescue area. A few days later, on 17 June, 2024, in a shipwreck, 64 people disappeared and 11 died in southern Italy according to UNHCR, UNICEF and IOM.
In the western Mediterranean, on 19 June, 2024, 800 kilometers south of the island of Tenerife, 68 people were rescued while 5 others died on the Atlantic route. On 14 June, 2024, the Royal Moroccan Navy rescued 86 people on board a boat that left Senegal. Before arriving in Dakhla , the crew testified to the deaths of 30 people. On 12 June, 2024, the Caminando Fronteras organization published its January-May 2024 report on the deaths in the “Western Euro-African border”. Since the beginning of 2024, 5,054 people, including 154 women and 50 children, have died on different migration routes to Spain.
In the eastern Mediterranean, since May 2023, following the outbreak of the civil war in Sudan, Cairo has introduced visa requirements for Sudanese nationals. On 19 June, 2024, in a report published by Amnesty International , the NGO denounced the arbitrary arrests and collective expulsions suffered by Sudanese refugees in Egypt. In Greece, on 24 June, 2024, 77 people were rescued by several boats between the islands of Amorgos and Astypalala. The group was able to disembark on the island of Naxos. Finally, 14 June, 2024 marked the anniversary of the Pylos shipwreck. More than 300 people were killed in this tragedy, which spared the lives of 104 survivors. Victims and relatives continue to demand truth and justice.
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Positive News
- On June 5 2024, an Italian court ruled that the administrative detention of the Sea-Eye 4, on March 7, 2024, was “illegitimate and invalid”. This is a victory for the NGO Sea-Eye, which had been accused by the Italian authorities of not having followed the orders of the Libyan coast guard in March during a rescue operation.
EU updates
- On the 1st of July 2024, Hungary took over the rotating presidency of the EU Council for 6 months. Budapest has anti-migrant positions and rhetoric that the Court of Justice of the European Union punished in a decision on June 13, 2024.
Countries
Return Mania
Mapping policies and practices in the EuroMed region
The research provides an overview of the current return policies and practices in the Euro-Mediterranean region and sheds a light on the violations of human rights entailed by this “return obsession”, which is shared across Member States, EU institutions and third countries alike. The report covers national return policies and practices in the Mashreq and Maghreb regions, focusing on returns from Turkey and Lebanon to Syria, and on readmission agreements between Italy and Tunisia, Spain and Morocco as well as France and Morocco. It also looks at returns from Germany and Italy to Egypt. Read More
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