ICERAS

The UN says countries must review their approach to migration across the Mediterranean after 45 people recently died in a ship sinking off Libya. It said it was the largest confirmed shipwreck in the area this year.

Forty-five people, including five children, died on Monday when their boat sank off the coast of Libya, the UN’s refugee agency UNHCR said on Wednesday, calling the disaster “the largest registered shipwreck” in the area this year.

Thirty-seven people who survived the catastrophe, which reportedly occurred after the boat’s engine blew up, were rescued by local fishermen and arrested after being returned to Libya, according to the UN’s migration agency, the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

The passengers on the boat were mostly from Senegal, Mali, Chad and Ghana.

Both agencies called for a change in countries’ approach to the situation in the Mediterranean and Libya, which has become a major country of transit for migrants fleeing poverty and war and wanting to come to Europe.

Read more: Refugee crisis worsening in southern Europe amid coronavirus pandemic 

Deficits in search and rescue

“There is an urgent need to strengthen the current search and rescue capacity to respond to distress calls,” they said in a statement, adding that “there remains a continued absence of any dedicated, EU-led search and rescue program.”

They also criticized the way countries were hindering the work of NGOs that have been filling the breach left by European states, who have scaled back their efforts to save lives in the Mediterranean. read more