Geneva - Broadcast: The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, today, Thursday, expressed its deep concern about the loss of dozens of asylum-seekers and migrants after their boat sank in the Mediterranean waters, calling on the European Union to actively participate in rescuing migrants and ending illegal intercepts and returns.

The Geneva-based European Rights Observatory said that 41 migrants and asylum seekers lost their traces after a rubber boat they were traveling in sank in the Mediterranean waters between Italy and Libya, while a merchant ship managed to rescue 77 others who were on board the same boat, and the International Organization for Migration crews later transported them to The port of Porto Empedocle, Sicily, Italy.

The International Rights Monitor has renewed its call on the European Union to launch permanent official rescue missions to reduce the number of shipwrecked in the Mediterranean, and to end the returns of migrants and asylum seekers to insecure countries where they are subjected to serious violations that often amount to murder, enforced disappearance, rape and other brutal violations.

According to certificates; The boat set off from the Libyan coast on February 18, with about 120 people on board, including 4 children and 6 women, one of whom is pregnant. After about 15 hours of sailing towards the Italian coast, water began to seep into the boat and the passengers tried to call for help in various ways, but these attempts did not succeed in bringing immediate help. About 3 hours after the boat sank, a merchant ship arrived at the scene of the accident and managed to rescue 77 migrants.

The Euro-Med Monitor confirmed that strict European immigration policies, and illegal push-back and return operations made the Mediterranean one of the most dangerous migration routes around the world, and increased smugglers' extortion of migrants and asylum seekers and stacking them in dilapidated ships, and pushed them to take dangerous sea routes and routes that caused the sinking of more than 160 He has migrated only since the beginning of this year, according to data from the International Organization for Migration.

He highlighted that migrants and asylum seekers enjoy a variety of protections under international human rights law and refugee law, including the principle of non-refoulement, which protects all migrants from expulsion or return to dangerous environments, regardless of their immigration or asylum status.

According to the International Organization for Migration, since the beginning of this year, more than 3,800 migrants and asylum seekers have arrived in Italy by sea, of whom 2527 came from Libya. In the same period, about 3,850 migrants and asylum seekers were intercepted and returned to Libya (although it is an insecure country), where they were subjected to arbitrary detention, and they face the risk of falling victim to abuse and violence.

The Euro-Med Monitor stressed that the European Union bears part of the responsibility for the drowning of migrants and asylum seekers in the Mediterranean, as it documented in a report published in January 2021 the involvement of the European Agency for Border and Coast Guard (Frontex) in participating or turning a blind eye to illegal returns of migrants. In the Mediterranean during the past year.

The Euro-Med Monitor indicated that the European Union has invested - since the escalation of the migration crisis in 2015 - its capabilities and capabilities in restricting the access of asylum seekers to European shores, and it concludes deals and agreements with source countries in order to limit the movement of migration, so that some member states of the Union have finally introduced laws to criminalize People trying to help shipwrecked migrants at sea.

Finally, a report of the United Nations Human Rights Committee held Italy responsible for the failure to protect the right to life of more than 200 asylum seekers, including 60 children who drowned when their boat crashed off the Italian coast in October 2013.

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor urged the European Union to adopt a new policy that takes into account the human dimension in dealing with the issue of asylum and migration, stressing that security concerns do not justify leaving thousands of migrants and refugees subject to continuous drowning.