Updated 10.15am, 21st April, 2015
The UN human rights chief has urged European leaders to take a "less callous" approach to addressing the issue of would-be migrants flowing into Europe following the deaths of more than 700 people when a boat sank in the Mediterranean Sea on the weekend.
Zeid Ra”ad Al Hussein, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said he was "horrified but not surprised" by the tragedy, noting that latest deaths and the hundreds of others that preceded them in recent months were "sadly predictable".
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“(The deaths) are the result of a continuing failure of governance accompanied by a monumental failure of compassion." – Zeid Ra”ad Al Hussein, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights |
“They are the result of a continuing failure of governance accompanied by a monumental failure of compassion," he said.
Mr Zeid applauded taly”s Mare Nostrum program to rescue asylum seekers – which ended last October – as "a valiant, and in many ways successful, effort to save lives" but saide the scaled-down Operation Triton "is simply not fit for purpose", describing it as "totally inadequate" and "more geared to border control and policing the seas than to saving lives."
“Stopping the rescue of migrants in distress has not led to less migration, nor indeed to less smuggling, but merely to more deaths at sea, as this recent tragedy shows,” he said. “Triton should immediately be replaced by a robust, European-wide, state-led and well-resourced search and rescue capability in the Mediterranean.”
Earlier, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the deaths a “shock to the global conscience".
“(T)his truly titanic humanitarian tragedy highlights yet again the need to address the plight of migrants, to crack down on the criminals who exploit the most vulnerable, and to strengthen rescue capacity in the Mediterranean and elsewhere."
European Council president Donald Tusk has called for an emergency summit of EU leaders on Thursday to address the issues of human trafficking and rescue operations. He has reportedly said that the situation "cannot continue like this".
One survivor has reportedly said there were as many as 950 people aboard the boat which overturned in Libyan waters about 126 kilometres off the coast of Libya on Saturday night although other reports put the figure at around 700. Only 27 people have been rescued and two men, suspected of being crew members, were later arrested.
This latest incident follows one earlier last week in which 400 people drowned and another in which a group of African Christians were allegedly thrown overboard by Muslim fellow passengers.
Numerous other rescue efforts relating to boatloads of asylum seekers have taken place in the Mediterranean over the past week with some still underway.
Earlier this week, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Ant‚àö‚â•nio Guterres, said the disaster "confirms how urgent it is to restore a robust rescue-at-sea operation and establish credible legal avenues to reach Europe".
"Otherwise people seeking safety will continue to perish at sea. But it also points to the need for a comprehensive European approach to address the root causes that drive so many people to this tragic end. I hope the EU will rise to the occasion, fully assuming a decisive role to prevent future such tragedies."
UNHCR data shows more than 35,000 asylum seekers and migrants have arrived by boat in southern Europe and – if the toll from the weekend is confirmed – some 1600 have died. About 219,000 people crossed the Mediterranean in 2014 with 3,500 lives lost.
Pope Francis, in a Sunday morning address in St Peter’s Square, appealed to the international community to take "swift and decisive" action to avoid more tragedies like that of Saturday night.
“They are men and women like us, our brothers seeking a better life, starving, persecuted, wounded, exploited, victims of war. They were looking for a better life…" he said.
"I make a heartfelt appeal to the international community to react decisively and quickly to see to it that such tragedies are not repeated."
