Pope says migrant deaths ‘almost always avoidable’
ROME: Migrant deaths in the Mediterranean are “unacceptable and almost always avoidable,” Pope Francis said on Friday, renewing a call for policymakers across the region to address the issue in a manner “beneficial to all.”
The 85-year-old pontiff, son of Italian immigrants to Argentina, often speaks up for the rights of migrants, and has repeatedly denounced how the Mediterranean has turned into a “vast cemetery.”
“The inability to find common solutions [on migration] continues to lead to an unacceptable and almost always avoidable loss of lives, especially in the Mediterranean,” Francis said in a message to Rome Med 2022, a foreign policy conference.
Insisting that migration towards Europe “cannot be stopped,” he urged all parties involved to find a solution that can be “beneficial to all, guaranteeing both human dignity and shared prosperity.”
Migration has for years been a political hot potato in Europe, with governments resorting to increasingly hardline policies to try to stem the inflow of migrants and asylum-seekers from North Africa and the Middle East.
In Italy, one of the first acts of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government was the refusal to take in a charity migrant rescue boat, forcing it to go to all the way France and causing a furious spat with Paris.
According to data from the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR, around 136,500 migrants have reached Europe via Mediterranean sea crossings this year, and more than 1,800 have died or gone missing. (Reporting by Alvise Armellini Editing by Keith Weir)
Meanwhile, it was reported that Spanish authorities are looking for a person who paraglided over a border fence from Morocco to the Spanish enclave of Melilla in what appeared to be a new and creative way to migrate irregularly to European territory.
Two citizens reported seeing the paraglider on Thursday afternoon, according to Eder
Barandiaran, a press officer for Spain’s government delegation in Melilla, one of two Spanish territories in North Africa.
The flyer ran off after landing, leading authorities to suspect the individual was a migrant trying to reach Europe. The person’s identity and nationality remain unknown, but images of the paraglider circulated on social media on Thursday.
The Melilla border has been at the centre of a scandal after 23 people died there in June during an attempt by hundreds of migrants and refugees to force their way in, resulting in a stampede.