According to the UN refugee agency UNHCR, around 186,000 people have already arrived in Europe via the Mediterranean this year. Most of them, 130,000, were registered in Italy; This corresponds to an increase of 83 percent compared to the same period last year. The director of the UNHCR office in New York, Ruven Menikdiwela, said this in the UN Security Council on Thursday (local time).
The number of missing and dead people in the period from the beginning of January to September 24th was over 2,500 people, it was said. The international migration organization IOM recently spoke of over 2,700 dead and missing people. According to IOM, in addition to migration to Italy, migration to Greece also increased sharply – but the current figures cannot be compared with the very high ones from 2015. Arrivals in Spain, on the other hand, would be at roughly the same level year-on-year.
According to the United Nations, most migrants set off from Tunisia with more than 100,000, followed by Libya with more than 45,000. In addition to Italy, Greece and Spain, the boats also headed for Cyprus and Malta. The sharp increase in crossings has recently led to tensions within the EU over measures to limit them. According to Menikdiwela, the high migration numbers from Tunisia are also due to “insecurity among refugees following incidents of racially motivated attacks and hate speech” as well as collective deportations from Libya and Algeria. “This comes against the backdrop of a deteriorating security situation in several neighboring countries of North African states.”