The private migrant rescue boat Open Arms is headed for the Italian island of Lampedusa with 147 rescued migrants on board. The green light came after a judge in Rome suspended Italy's far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini's decree banning NGO vessels from Italy's territorial waters.
SfruttaZero produces ecological tomato sauce with the help of migrant farmworkers. The two associations that run the project in Puglia, Italy, have criticized the new security decree and said that "the ethical and moral duty to resist" drives their work.
Under a new amendment to the second security and immigration decree in Italy, NGO skippers will be arrested if they fail to obey the orders of police or navy ships. In addition, NGO-run migrant rescue ships will be fined up to one million euros for defying a ban on entering Italian waters.
The UNHCR has asked the Italian Parliament to reconsider the government's second security decree which can ''have an impact on search and rescue operations at sea."
The Terra Aperta ('Open Land') network has been set up in the Italian city of Pistoia to help migrant reception and as a response to a recent 'security decree' passed by the Italian government.
After spending 27 years as the first doctor to examine migrants reaching Europe’s shores, Pietro Bartolo is now about to take over as a member of the European Parliament in Brussels. InfoMigrants caught up with Bartolo on Lampedusa and asked him about the Italian government's policies vis-a-vis NGO migrant rescue ships and his hopes as an MEP.
How does the Salvini decree effect asylum seekers and refugees in Italy? Our latest #FactCheck video explains just that.
Domenico Lucano was the mayor of the Calabrian town of Riace for 15 consecutive years. He became world-famous for his migrant-hosting and integration policies. In October 2018, he was suspended and forbidden from returning to the town while investigations against him were underway. Now the latest trial against him has begun in the municipal court in Locri.
The Italian interior ministry has announced it will reopen the centre for repatriations in Rome at the beginning of June. It also said work is underway to open another four similar structures across Italy.
Humanitarian organization Intersos has said that the implementation of the Salvini Decree has created an "emergency" because thousands of youths over the age of 18 can now no longer stay in reception centers. The situation in Sicily is reportedly particularly bad.
Female migrants who were being hosted at an Italian government CAS reception center in Torrenova, on the eastern outskirts of Rome, will be transferred. The government has closed the center, and the nuns who were providing assistance to the women are protesting against the closure.
Four organizations in Italy - Liberi Nantes, UISP, UNHCR and ASGI - presented a proposal to the National Amateur League football association in Italy aimed at promoting integration through football and removing the bureaucratic barriers that prevent refugees from playing in the amateur championship.