The quest for a better future in a continent starved of opportunities has left many African youths with a dilemma. The journey to Europe and the USA, which has for a long time been sold as the best solution for the realization of dreams, is proving to be a mirage. On this week's 77 Percent, we hear from young African migrants in Sicily, Italy.
The Open Arms rescue ship, run by the Spanish organization of the same name, said on Sunday that it was leaving Trapani on the Italian island of Sicily to head back to Barcelona. There it will change its crew and head back out for its 79th rescue mission in the Mediterranean Sea.
In Bangladesh, the route to Europe is known as "the game". With the help of a dalaal -- a travel agent -- many Bangladeshis hope to make it to a country where jobs are plentiful and they can earn money to send home. But now the international crime agency Interpol is seeking to crack down on the kingpin Bangladeshi smugglers in Libya and a warrant is out for their arrest.
The prosecutor's office in Agrigento, Sicily, has opened an investigative file against unknown individuals for a shipwreck last Wednesday in Libyan waters about 30 miles north of the coast.Six migrants lost their lives in the shipwreck including a six-month-old infant from Guinea.
Rescue workers are still looking for survivors after a vessel carrying more than 120 migrants shipwrecked in the Mediterranean. The United Nations has recorded a recent uptick in departures from Libya since October.
More than 100 migrants were rescued by the Open Arms from a sinking boat in the central Mediterranean on Wednesday. Help came too late for at least six people, including a baby.
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.
Tomatoes were known as Ghana’s "red gold." Today however, most of Ghana's markets sell imported products from the EU and China and the tomato processing plants stand empty and abandoned. This is just one of the factors pushing more and more Ghanaians to migrate. Deutsche Welle's documentary "Displaced: Tomatoes and Greed" takes up the story.
Within three days, Libya's coast guard intercepted 935 migrants in the Mediterranean and returned them to Libya. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) once again denounced the longstanding practice in light of the documented abuse and exploitation that await returnees in Libyan detention camps.
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.
The IOM reported that at least 11 migrants, including a pregnant woman, have drowned on Sunday when their boat capsized off the coast of Libya trying to reach Europe. The incident was the third of its kind in the Mediterranean in a week.
The Italian coast guard confirmed that on Sunday night it had saved six people from a boat that is thought to have set off from Algeria 10 days earlier. At least five of the migrants' companions died en route.