Stemming people-trafficking in the Mediterranean

The smugglers prey on desperate migrants, extorting money from and set them adrift in mostly dilapidated fishing boats heading towards the Italian and Maltese coasts.  Such boats regularly sink in the rough waters, claiming many lives. Counting the latest shipwreck, the death toll for migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean into Europe has exceeded 18,000. […]

The smugglers prey on desperate migrants, extorting money from and set them adrift in mostly dilapidated fishing boats heading towards the Italian and Maltese coasts.  Such boats regularly sink in the rough waters, claiming many lives. Counting the latest shipwreck, the death toll for migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean into Europe has exceeded 18,000. Many migrants pay thousands of dollars to the traffickers. The largest migrant group consists of Syrians fleeing the civil war. These are followed by migrants from Somalia, Eritrea, and Afghanistan fleeing poverty and human rights abuses.
 Although the economic climate in Europe is anything but rosy, with increasing unemployment, the better social benefits and willingness to do low paid work is why, despite all the hazards, increasing numbers try the crossing daily. Arrival of migrants usually peaks at this time of year in the summer months when the weather is good and the seas are calmer. The flow of desperate people hoping to reach Europe is already much higher than the same period last year.
Italian authorities reported that in a 48-hour period, some 6,000 people were rescued from certain death. The situation has developed into a huge humanitarian crisis, with European Union officials approaching the United Nations for help.  What began as people escaping wars and harsh economic conditions in the Middle East has snowballed to waves of migrants that now include nationals of sub-Saharan Africa, including Nigeria. Many of them had migrated to Libya to work but have fled because of the post-Muammar Gaddafi violence and instability in the country.
 Nigeria may have security issues with an insurgency that is being wound down; it is certainly not a war zone. The claims by some migrants to Europe that were fleeing Boko Haram need to be taken with scepticism. There are millions of internally displaced Nigerians who fled to safe havens in the country and are being catered for by relief agencies.
Although European leaders have responded to the crisis by tripling their budget for search and rescue operations and promising to crack down on those profiting from the misery, this is far from sufficient.  Most of the major crises that in the Middle East and Africa flow directly from Western military interventionist policies in these regions; therefore Western governments bear some responsibility for the current problem.  Governments must highlight and warn against such perilous journeys rather than publicize the rescue of migrants because migrants enter the boats with the intention of being rescued rather than with any concrete plan to arrive in any particular country. Most migrant deaths occur at the point of rescue when people move around on sighting rescue ships. Australia’s tough stance on asylum seekers has been touted as a model to addressing the migrant problem.  There, migrant boats are either towed back or turned back at sea, a policy that has attracted widespread criticism as being racist. Critics note that that it doesn’t take into account the need to protect people attempting hazardous crossings.
Halting such migrant ships could be tricky, perhaps unsustainable in the long run. The proposal by the EU to seek out and destroy such ship before they can take in their human cargo would be difficult to enforce without international backing.  Russia has already expressed misgivings about the legality and efficacy of that strategy.  
One way to address the problem is for the EU and countries most vulnerable to such trafficking, to meet and design a framework to discourage nationals from leaving their native countries in search of better economic opportunities that may end up claiming their lives even before they reach their intended destinations.