On April 3, Alarm Phone reported the presence of three boats in the Maltese Search and Rescue regions. The people on two of the boats were rescued and taken to Lampedusa. An estimated 110 people on the third boat appear to still be unaccounted for, what has happened?
Up to 60 migrants are feared dead after a shipwreck on Thursday, March 18. The organization Alarm Phone has tried to reconstruct what happened and has spoken with survivors. Its report was released on Monday.
Ministers from Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Malta and Spain have met in Athens to call for changes to the EU's pact on migration and asylum. They pushed for an EU-wide repatriation mechanism.
A Maltese broadsheet has published photos detailing unsanitary conditions inside migrant facilities on Malta. Following mounting reports of awful conditions at migrant detention centers, Maltese authorities now want to change their tack with managing the island nation's borders, and work more closely with Libya.
The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) has said that the conditions to which detained migrants are subjected on Malta could be considered as "inhuman and degrading treatment."
A spokesperson for the interior ministry in Malta denies that it has received reports of physical abuse of migrants in detention centers, according to a local activist. Meanwhile a row has erupted over claims that migrants have been attempting suicide in order to draw attention to themselves.
In the past year, the number of migrants arriving in Malta has dropped. While that may have eased pressure on the EU 'frontier' state, few are feeling relief. Migrants are being detained for more than a year in "miserable conditions", as a Moroccan held at Safi barracks told InfoMigrants.
Fewer people attempted to enter the EU without authorization in 2020, largely due to coronavirus restrictions, the bloc's border agency said. Syrians were again the largest group of people trying to enter the bloc.
The UN migration agency IOM has helped to relocate 270 migrants from Malta to other European countries this year. More than eight times as many arrived on the island in the past 12 months.
On Friday, the German rescue organization Sea-Eye announced that it would be working with the international NGO Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS). The two NGOs will operate Sea-Eye’s latest boat, Sea-Eye 4, in the central Mediterranean.
Greece, Italy, Malta and Spain say that the new migration pact – as proposed by the European Commission – fails to do enough to systemically redistribute new migrants arriving in the southern EU member states. The four Mediterranean countries expressed their demands in a discussion paper seen by the German news agency dpa.
For migrants crossing the Mediterranean from Libya towards Europe on Tuesday, November 10, it was literally a matter of life and death. News agencies reported that 13 people drowned off the Libyan coast, and on a different boat 88 people were rescued and transferred to the humanitarian rescue ship Open Arms.