A migrant boat capsized off the Italian island of Lampedusa, leaving more than 40 people missing, according to the UN.
According to UNHCR spokesperson in Italy Chiara Cardoletti, the shipwreck occurred on Thursday, and at least one newborn baby is among those missing.
A spokesperson for the UN migration organization IOM, Flavio Di Giacomo, said on Friday that the boat left Sfax in Tunisia with 46 migrants from Cameroon, Burkina Faso, and the Ivory Coast.
“Strong winds and large waves caused the boat to capsize, he claimed. Some survivors were brought back to Tunisia, while others were evacuated to Lampedusa.
Seven women and a minor were among those reported missing. All of the survivors are grown men, he said.
Di Giacomo also emphasized how weakly constructed, poorly welded boats were, sinking at the first sign of damage.
He argued that without “patrols of European ships to monitor the Tunisian route as well as the Libyan route, we will witness a disaster this summer”
While the number of people entering the EU through the central Mediterranean “more than doubled” in 2023 compared to the previous year, migrant boat shipwrecks have surged in recent months.
A few days prior to the catastrophe, EU ministers had finally agreed to revise the bloc’s regulations in order to more fairly take up the responsibility of hosting refugees and asylum seekers.
The European Commission introduced a New Pact on Migration and Asylum in September 2020. It is a set of measures that it hopes will be enacted by spring 2024 and that, among other things, mandates that EU states assist one another in taking care of asylum seekers.
