The tide of human misery sweeping north to Europe seems never ending. Thousands of people, fleeing war, persecution or poverty in their home countries, end up being abused, tortured and raped en route to Europe. Then there is the alarming death rate in the Mediterranean. Everyone seems to be in agreement that the situation needs to be addressed.

The recent round of talks at the Paris migration summit was the latest attempt at finding a way of halting the steady stream of people from making the dangerous, and often fatal, journey in search of a better future in the EU. Yet blocking one route to Europe leads people to choosing a different route. The situation with the eastern Mediterranean and central Mediterranean routes is a prime example.

Eastern Mediterranean route

In March 2016, the agreement between the EU and Turkey was put in place, whereby Greece would send asylum seekers and migrants, arriving by the thousands, back to Turkey. As well, a scheme was agreed on, that for every Syrian citizen returned to Turkey, another Syrian would be resettled in the EU.

As well, states across the Balkans, including Macedonia, Hungary and Bulgaria, closed their borders, refusing to allow refugees to pass through on their way to northern Europe.

A year later, the European Commission hailed the agreement as a success. “The effects of the EU-Turkey Statement were immediate,” it said. The number of people traveling the infamous Western Balkan route dropped from 10,000 per day in October 2015, to 43 per day by March 2017. In other words, the route had been effectively closed.

Turkey now has around 3.4 million refugees, more than any other country. It refuses to apply the UN Refugee Convention to non-Europeans, which means that people have been left stranded, mostly in terrible conditions, and unable to properly exercise the right to apply for asylum. Under the resettlement scheme, only 3,565 Syrian refugees had been resettled in the EU as of March 2017. Understandably, the closure of the eastern Mediterranean route has meant that people have chosen other options, mainly the central Mediterranean route. Italy has seen the number of arrivals surge dramatically, as well as the number of deaths of people trying to reach Italian shores.

Central Mediterranean route

Mass drownings between Libya and Italy have been well-publicized. The UNHCR described 2016 as the deadliest year so far for refugees crossing the Mediterranean, with 3,228 people dead or missing. But according to a recent Amnesty report titled “A Perfect Storm”, 2017 is likely to see an increase, with figures on people dead or missing for this year already at 2,244. With Italy saying it can no longer carry the burden of receiving most of Europe’s refugees, it has introduced a code of conduct for NGO’s involved in rescuing drowning asylum seekers. Many charities, such as Doctors without borders (MSF) have refused to sign the controversial code. They dispute the claim that rescue missions act as a “pull factor” for people trying to reach Europe.

The recent summit in Paris discussed setting up EU-backed refugee holding camps in Libya in order to keep people in Africa, and eventually send them back to the countries they have fled. Also on the cards is a plan to pump funding into poverty-stricken sub-Saharan countries for job creation. This is an attempt to curb the human trafficking that is running rampant across northern Africa. Giuseppe Loprete, IOM Chief of Mission in Niger, has said that probably more people die in the Sahara desert than in the Mediterranean, but due to the harsh conditions in the region it is impossible to know the exact number.

New options

A sudden drop in the number of people crossing from Libya to Italy in July and August 2017 may be a reflection of the various efforts to close the central Mediterranean route. Meanwhile, a UNHCR report shows that the number of arrivals to Spain increased in the first half of 2017 to 9,500, compared with 4,936 for the same period in 2016. Spanish authorities are concerned that this may mean a revival of the western Mediterranean route.

There are also some suggestions that a new route to Europe across the Black Sea may have opened up. In August, Romanian authorities said they had intercepted 2 fishing boats carrying asylum seekers coming from Turkey, who were trying to bypass the conditions established by the EU-Turkey agreement.