"It is not in the best interest" of the country to have people "living in desperation", FCEI's President Daniele Garrone said at a press conference on Wednesday (August 23).

Addressing the Synod of the Waldensian Church, Garrone slammed anti-migrant political rhetoric, stressing the importance of understanding why migrants are leaving their home countries.

"It would be in the nation's interest to focus on integration with a win-win strategy to deal with what would otherwise present itself as an emergency," Garrone said.

'Understanding the reasons forcing migrants to leave' is key

The president of FCEI said it is necessary to understand all the "reasons forcing people to flee today".

Marta Bernardini, coordinator of Mediterranean Hope, FCEI's project on migration, said it is important to highlight that migrants and refugees are "people and not numbers" and that "we are also responsible for the causes driving these people to move".

She added that interpreting the phenomenon of migration as "one block with a unique response" has never worked.

'People continue dying in the Mediterranean'

Recalling the 10-year anniversary of the deadly shipwreck off Lampedusa in 2013, the coordinator of the program for migrants and refugees of the Federation of Evangelical Churches in Italy added that it is "quite concerning to see how political responses have grown harsher" years after the tragedy, becoming "increasingly muscular and military and aimed at controlling the desires of those who arrive".

"People continue dying in the Mediterranean", she noted. "As protestant churches, it is important to be there to keep the memory alive."

She added that Italy should take responsibility for lives lost at sea.

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