OPINION: Shipwreck Renews Call for Europe to Alter Response to Refugees

A shipwreck claimed the lives of at least 34 migrants in the western Mediterranean Sea on October 2. According to Al Jazeera, the International Organization for Migration’s Joe Millman stated that “the boat was adrift since [September 30] with 60 people on board.” Millman reported that 26 people survived the shipwreck. According to Reuters, all of the migrants were from sub-Saharan Africa. Helena Maleno, an activist with the Spanish NGO Walking Borders, commented that the deaths were caused by the inaction of the authorities. Maleno stated that the migrants “were asking for help because their inflatable boat was damaged;” she argued that the Moroccan and Spanish response to trafficking networks and migrant issues is inadequate, Reuters reports.

By September 10, almost 35,000 people had migrated through Morocco to Spain, which has become the most popular pathway to Europe. This pathway to Europe has grown more traveled, and the European Union has responded by “outsourcing” its border security to Morocco, according to African Arguments. According to Khadija Ainani, vice president of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights, “the EU is trying, by all means, to outsource migration management to the countries of the South and, for that, it turns a blind eye to all violations of the rights of sub-Saharan migrants in Morocco.”

The Washington Post reports that, even before the shipwreck, 240 people died at sea crossing to Spain, marking a 400 percent increase in deaths from 2017. The International Organization for Migration’s Anna Fonseca argues that this increase is due to the fact that asylum-seekers “are seeing that Libya is dangerous.” Migratory outflows from sub-Saharan Africa will continuously increase; governments must alter their refugee response strategies in light of this fact.