The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has reported that more than a dozen recent shipwrecks off the coast of Libya and elsewhere have pushed the death toll in the Mediterranean Sea since 2014 to over 20,000.
The president of Mediterranea Saving Humans has said that European policies have turned the Mediterranean "into a graveyard." An estimated 20,0000 migrants have died on the Mediterranean Route since 2014.
More than 800 Tunisian migrants have been detained in the Spanish enclave of Melilla for more than 5 months, Tunesian NGO Ftdes claims.
Tunisia is preparing to accommodate a possible new influx of refugees fleeing the war in Libya and has chosen the site of Fatnassia to receive migrants who arrive.
The security situation in Libya has worsened and the region is bracing itself for a possible crisis. Tunisia has already prepared an emergency medical plan to deal with the situation should the violence escalate and spill into its territory.
Four Tunisian mothers have been brought to the city of Agrigento in Sicily to identify the bodies of their children. They died when their boat sank off Lampedusa on October 7. The women were called up as part of a probe into the incident. Only two of the four mothers were able to identify the bodies of their children.
The film "Strange Fish", playing in this year's Global Migration Film Festival, tells the story of a group of fishermen in Zarzis, southern Tunisia, and how their lives have been affected by the migration which criss-crosses the waters in which they fish. InfoMigrants spoke to the film's director Giulia Bertoluzzi and one of the anonymous heroes, fisherman Chamseddine Bourassine.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has warned that the number of women and girls being trafficked from Ivory Coast has been rising. Many of them reportedly suffer abuse, slavery and prostitution — both in North Africa and Europe.
The Italian coastguard has located at least 12 bodies and the wreck of a migrant boat that sank last week off the island of Lampedusa.
A boat carrying some 50 migrants from Tunisia and West Africa has sunk off the coast of the island of Lampedusa, south of Sicily. The Italian coast guard has rescued 22 people so far, but it has also recovered at least 13 bodies.
The Italian government has presented a new asylum decree, which would see the waiting time for an asylum decision cut from two years to just four months, resulting in faster repatriations in applicable cases. Speaking at a press conference in Rome, Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio said the decree would also update the list of countries considered safe for repatriations.
More than 200 migrants have reportedly arrived on Italian shores over the weekend. The number of arrivals in Italy is on the rise once more.