Humanitarian operations to rescue migrants attempting the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean Sea do not encourage further crossings, a modelling study said on Thursday (3 August). More than 20,000 migrants have died trying to cross the central Mediterranean route from North Africa to Italy since 2014, according to the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM). A range of charity-run ships have been working to rescue migrants, who are often on rickety boats, from drowning in the Mediterranean. They then used predictive modelling to simulate the flow of migrants on the central Mediterranean route between 2011 and 2020, searching for factors that impacted the number of crossings. In the first half of this year, there were 1,727 deaths or disappearances in the central Mediterranean route, mostly from drowning, the IOM’s Missing Migrants Project said last week.

Source: The North Africa Journal August 04, 2023 09:51 UTC