Over 10,000 migrants arrived in Europe on Mediterranean routes thus far in 2018, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) reports. The UN agency added that 414 people had died trying to reach Europe via the Mediterranean Sea this year.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) reports that 10,114 migrants and refugees have arrived in Europe via sea in the first eight weeks of 2018. Half of them arrived in Italy and the rest in Greece and Spain. The number is a drop on the 16,806 seen in the same period last year and is an even sharper decrease on 2016 when there had been 116,005 from the beginning of the year.
On migrant deaths in the Mediterranean, IOM's Missing Migrants project found that 414 had died in 2018 trying to reach Europe, compared with 483 in 2017.
Arrivals in Spain and Greece
On February 26, the Athens IOM office said that over that in the six days between February 15 and 20, the Greek Coast Guard reported at least three incidents that required search and rescue operations off the island of Samos. The authorities rescued 152 migrants and transferred them to the island. The migrants rescued in this operation and 96 others that arrived on the island of Lesbos contributed to the total of 2,536 migrants arriving on Greek coasts from the beginning of the year until February 24, with an average of 46 people per day.
The local IOM office in Spain reports that some 2,306 people had arrived via sea in the country from the beginning of the year until February 26. The IOM office in Rome noted that Italian interior ministry figures show that 5,247 migrants have arrived on Italia coasts this year, a 61 percent drop on the year.
New EU programs in Libya to protect migrants
On February 26, the EU adopted new programs through the Emergency Trust Fund for Africa that aim to protect migrants and offer them options for sustainable resettlement in Libya along the central Mediterranean route and in Ethiopia. The initiatives follow previous commitments made by the African Union, EU and UN Joint Task Force. The Commissioner for International Cooperation and Development, Neven Mimica, said that the ''EU stands by the many African migrants and refugees in need. With these new measures worth over €150 million we continue to save and protect lives and tackle the root causes of migration.''
Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations, Johannes Hahn, meanwhile, affirmed that ''with today's new programmes we are delivering on the commitments made in the framework of the joint EU-AU-UN Task Force and increase our already significant on-going support to those in need in Libya.
We are actively working to save lives, protect people, as well as offering humane alternatives for people to leave the country and return back home. Equally important, we are working on new measures to support Libyan municipalities enhance the delivery of basic social services and improve local governance for both local and migrant population".
You can find more information on the IOM homepage.