On Monday, January 25, 373 migrants on board the Ocean Viking were disembarked in the port of Augusta in Sicily. The migrants had been rescued from three different small boats in the space of 48 hours.
50 migrants, mostly from sub-Sahara Africa, were rescued by the Tunisian navy on Monday off the coast of Tunisia after five days at sea. One of their number, a new-born baby, was found dead as the authorities arrived.
A Tunisian boy with substantial paralysis was moved to a children's hospital in Rome this week. The seven-year-old had landed on the Italian island of Lampedusa with his father in November.
An association working on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, promoting solidarity between migrants and the local community, has denounced conditions in the migrant hotspot there. The association says that the hotspot has "inadequate hygiene and sanitary conditions," and lacks "the necessities to guarantee the basic well-being of people."
The mayor of Lampedusa has denounced that the island's port has become a "floating cemetery" of boats used by migrants to reach Italy's coast, accusing national authorities of failing to solve a problem that is damaging the environment.
The number of migrants who arrived in Italy has increased this year, according to Italian Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese. The minister believes that the coronavirus pandemic has made the situation particularly complicated.
A new building will open at the migrant hotspot on the Italian island of Lampedusa next week, following renovations. Now the center will provide room for 328 migrants instead of just 192.
A year ago, Alpha Diallo's life changed. The 41-year-old refugee from Guinea started an internship at Leroy Merlin, one of more than 120 companies included in the UNHCR project 'Welcome: Working for Refugee Integration'.
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.
Following the deadly attack by a Tunisian perpetrator in Nice last month, the mayor of Lampedusa announced tighter identification procedures for migrants landing on the island. A reported 2,430 migrants travelled to the island in the first six days of November.
The migrant hotspot of Lampedusa is on the verge of collapse after at least 460 people arrived on the Italian island in less than 24 hours. Several hundred migrants were to be tested for COVID-19 and transferred to a quarantine ship.
People across Italy have expressed their shock at the news that Brahim Aoussaoui had remained in Italy for weeks prior to committing three gruesome murders in Nice. The 21-year-old Tunisian had originally arrived on Lampedusa.