A fishing boat with about 500 migrants enters the port of Crotone, southern Italy on March 11, 2023.
The Italian government has declared a six-month national emergency to help the country cope with a surge of migrants arriving on the country's southern coast.
In a statement after a cabinet meeting on April 11, the Italian government said the declaration of a state of emergency was deemed necessary “to take urgent exceptional measures to reduce congestion” at a shelter where migrants have been staying for days on a small Italian island, where the number of migrants has skyrocketed.
The government statement added that “new, appropriate pathways are also needed for both the reception and the processing and repatriation of migrants who do not have the conditions to stay.” An initial €5 million (nearly $5.5 million) in funding was also approved as part of the measures proposed by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and the Cabinet.
Previously, during the Covid-19 pandemic, Italian authorities also imposed a state of emergency, allowing the Cabinet to enforce many countermeasures by decree, temporarily bypassing the parliamentary process.
“Let us be clear, this does not solve the problem, the solution of which is linked to the conscious and responsible intervention of the European Union,” Italian news agency ANSA quoted Minister of Maritime Policy and Civil Protection Nello Musumeci as saying.
Since the beginning of this year, about 31,000 migrants have been rescued by Italian military or charity ships or have arrived in Italy on their own, according to Interior Ministry figures. That is nearly four times the roughly 8,000 in the same period two years ago.
On a recent day, 26 migrant boats arrived on the small Italian island of Lampedusa. Lampedusa’s shelters can hold 350-400 people, but in recent days it has swelled to 3,000. Italy has chartered commercial ferries to ferry hundreds of them to Sicily or the mainland.
“There are many women with children, and unaccompanied minors,” the center’s director, Lorena Tortorici, told Italian television station Sky TG24. “We are in a state of emergency. The staff are doing the best they can.”
The largest number of migrants came from Ivory Coast, followed by Guinea, Pakistan, Egypt, Tunisia and Bangladesh, according to Interior Ministry figures. For years, most smugglers’ boats plying the dangerous central Mediterranean route set out from western Libya. But in recent months there have been more trips starting from eastern Libya or Tunisia. Another route starts in Türkiye, heading for Calabria or Puglia at the southern end of Italy.
SERIOUS (According to AP)
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