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A SCOTS charity boss is preparing for the worst as up to one million migrants try to cross the Mediterranean for a new life in Europe this summer.

Rob MacGillivray, 58, from Ardrossan, previously served as director of operations for Save the Children in Sierra Leone during the Ebola outbreak in 2014.

This summer he will direct the charitys lifesaving efforts aboard a ship out of Sicily.

He is wary of Europes level of preparedness to deal with what he fully expects to be an increase in the ongoing crisis as a result of government leaders being focused on the ongoing political discussions surrounding Brexit.

He said: This crisis in the Mediterranean has never gone away or waned, only peoples concentration on it.

Brexit and other political issues are significant in detracting attention and we fully expect an increase in the crisis this summer. However there is still no joined up response from within the EU and it seems that the concentration of the media and people in general has shifted.

In the first instance the EU needs to step up to the plate and fund and support increased search and rescue operations for 2017.

Ebola very quickly became a global concern once people realised that those outside the country could be infected and as a result it was contained and dealt with. Meanwhile the Mediterranean migrant crisis has been ongoing since 2015 and there is still no real international team in place to tackle it.

Mr MacGillivray is joined in fearing the worst for the summer by the former head of the British embassy in Libya, Joe Walker-Cousins, who has warned that famine and war in Africa had led to more than one million migrants to make their way to Libya with a view to crossing.

He said: My informants in the area tell me there are potentially one million migrants, if not more, already coming up through the pipeline from central Africa and the Horn of Africa.

Nearly 600 migrants drowned on the central Mediterranean route in the first three months of this year and The International Organisation for Migration estimates 21,900 refugees reached Italy over the same period, up from 14,500 last year. After working at Italian ports supporting refugee and migrant children for the past eight years, Save the Children launched its search and rescue operation in the Mediterranean last September and its ship remained in the water until the end of November.

During this period, 2,700 migrants were rescued, including more than 400 children, 80 per cent of which were unaccompanied.

Mr MacGillivray said: The issue of unaccompanied children is very distressing as they are open to many dangers not just the crossing itself but trafficking and exploitation. People need to ask themselves just what it would take for them to put their children in a raft or dinghy on their own. Just how desperate a situation could it be for a parent to choose this option.

A four day-old baby was one of over 480 migrants rescued by humanitarian ships on Saturday during search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean.

The baby was traveling on one of two rubber boats carrying over 200 migrants from North and Central Africa, Sri Lanka and Yemen and seen drifting some 22 nautical miles north of the Libyan town of Sabratha, the most frequently used departure point used by people smugglers in Libya.

Of the 5,096 refugees and migrants reported dead or missing at sea last year, 90 per cent travelled along the Mediterranean sea route to Italy, according to the UNs refugee agency.

Meanwhile, 97 migrants are today missing and believed drowned after their Europe-bound boat sank on a crossing of the Mediterranean, the Libyan coastguard has said. Fifteen women and five children are among those missing.

Coastguard spokesman Ayoub Gassim said 23 migrants were rescued around six miles off the coast after authorities received a distress call on yesterday morning.

He said the boat, which was loaded with African nationals, completely collapsed.

Continue reading here:
Migration crisis 'left ignored as EU focuses on Brexit' - Herald Scotland

MashReads Podcast: 'Exit West' is a stirring novel about the migrant crisis, with a fairytale twist Mashable Author Mohsin Hamid has an observation about how people migrate today: "Human existence is an existence of transience. We don't stick around, sadly, and we change from moment to moment." It is this observation that inspired Mohsin's latest novel Exit ...

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MashReads Podcast: 'Exit West' is a stirring novel about the migrant crisis, with a fairytale twist - Mashable

The German interior ministry announced they will no longer be sending people to Hungary until Budapest ensures those transferred are dealt with according to European procedures.

A spokesman for the ministry added: Without such assurance, there would no referrals until further notice.

Under the European Unions so-called Dublin rules, migrants and refugees should be sent back to the first European country they arrive in.

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Hungary has seen an influx of migrants across its border with Serbia, which has been the scene of violent clashes in the past.

But there have been damning claims the country, lead by Eurosceptic stalwart Viktor Orban, has been flouting international and EU law.

The Hungarian parliament approved plans on March 7 to detain migrants in camps on the countrys border with Serbia.

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Aid workers help migrants up the shore after making the crossing from Turkey to the Greek island of Lesbos on November 16, 2015 in Sikaminias, Greece

But some migrants confined in the camps have complained of beatings from border authorities.

After being set upon by dogs, one refugee even claimed guards took selfies with him.

GETTY

Without such assurance, there would no referrals until further notice

German interior ministry spokesman

Filippo Grandi, the United Nations refugee agency chief, this week called for a suspension of transfers of asylum seekers until the Hungarian authorities bring their practices and policies in line with European and international law.

Germany waived Dublin rules for refugees at the height of the migrant crisis in 2015.

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But after the number of people arriving in the country passed one million last year, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was forced to take measures to limit arrivals.

Germany sent 294 asylum seekers back to Hungary in 2016, according to official figures.

Asylum applications in Hungary fell from 177,000 in 2015 to just 29,000 last year.

In the first two months of 2017, there were just 912 applications.

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Germany to STOP migrant deportations to Hungary over fears of 'poor treatment' at camps - Express.co.uk

Media coverage of the European migrant crisis often focuses on the migrants themselvescapturing their stories as millions escape violent conflicts and crushing poverty.

In Migrant, Refugee, Smuggler, Savior, Peter Tinti and Tuesday Reitano consider the smugglers involved in transporting migrants throughout Europe. Although many smugglers are viewed as saviors, others give little regard to the human rights issues. The excerpt below addresses how European policies limit asylum-seekers and lead them to depend on dangerous underground smuggling networks.

Europe is currently experiencing the biggest mass migration since the Second World War in what has come to be known as the migrant crisis. There is a natural impulseamong scholars, journalists, politicians, activists, and concerned citizensto frame their stories within a broader human rights narrative. They remind us of the unfairness of the world and the injustice of global inequality. What we want to focus on are the smugglers, traffickers, and networks of criminals that make their narratives possible.

These networks, tens of thousands of people strong, are facilitating an unprecedented surge of migration from Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia into Europe. Although the drivers of the current crisis are manyincluding but not limited to the concentric phenomena of conflict, climate change, global inequality, political persecution, and globalizationthe actualization of the crisis is enabled and actively encouraged by an increasingly professional set of criminal groups and opportunistic individuals that is generating profits in the billions.

Some smugglers are revered by the people they transport, hailed as saviors due to their willingness to deliver men, women, and children to safety and opportunity when no legal alternatives will offer them either. In a neoliberal world where the fates of individuals are couched in anodyne policy-speak, it is often the criminals who help the most desperate among us escape the inadequacy, hypocrisy, and immorality that run through our current international system. It is certainly true that smugglers profit from the desperation of others, but it is also true that in many cases smugglers save lives, create possibilities, and redress global inequalities.

Other smugglers carry out their activities without any regard for human rights, treating the lives of those they smuggle as disposable commodities in a broader quest to maximize profits. For all too many migrants and refugees, smugglers prove unable to deliver, exposing their clients to serious injury or even death. Even worse, some smugglers turn out to be traffickers, who, after luring unsuspecting clients with false promises of a better life, subject them to exploitation and abuse.

Meanwhile, efforts by European policymakers and their allies to stem the flow of migrants into Europe are pushing smuggling networks deeper underground and putting migrants more at risk, while at the same time doing little to address the root causes of mass migration. In lieu of safe, legal paths to seeking refuge and opportunity, new barriers are forcing migrants to pursue more dangerous journeys and seek the services of more established mafias and criminal organizations. These groups have developed expertise in trafficking drugs, weapons, stolen goods, and people, and were uniquely qualified to add migrant smuggling to their business portfolios.

The result has been a manifold increase in human insecurity, not only in the Mediterranean and Aegean Sea crossings, which have received considerable attention in the international media, but also along the overland smuggling routes that cross the Sahara and the Central Asian Silk Road, penetrate deep into the Balkans, and continue into the grimiest corners of Europes trendiest capitals.

What was once a loose network of freelancers and ad hoc facilitators has blossomed into professional, transnational organized criminal networks devoted to migrant smuggling. The size and scope of their operations is unprecedented. Shadowy new figures have emerged, existing crime syndicates have moved in, and a range of enterprising opportunists have come forward, together forming a dynamic, multi-level criminal industry that has shown an extraordinary ability to innovate and adapt.

What we are witnessing is not just the story of traditional migrant smuggling on a larger scale. Rather, we are witnessing a paradigm shift in which the unprecedented profits associated with migrant smuggling are altering long-standing political arrangements, transforming economies and challenging security structures in ways that could potentially have a profound impact on global order.

Furthermore, the consolidation and codification of these networks also means that smuggling networks now seek to create contexts in which demand for their services will thrive. They have become a vector for global migration, quick to identify loopholes, exploit new areas of insecurity, and target vulnerable populations whom they see as prospective clients. They no longer simply respond to demand for smuggler services: they actively generate it.

In order for governments, aid groups, and organizations to better understand how to help refugees, we must get beyond the facile and counterproductive narratives of villains and victims, and we must start by examining smugglers dispassionately for what they are: service providers in an era of unprecedented demand.

Featured image credit: Refugees on a boat crossing the Mediterranean sea by Mstyslav Chernov. CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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The role of smugglers in the European Migrant Crisis - OUPblog (blog)

Europes refugee crisis is moving from newsprint to the pages of childrens books, as writers try to help parents help their kids understand an often disturbing drama shaping their world.

Distressing images of African migrants being plucked from heaving seas or the coffin-strewn aftermath of major sinkings have become a regular feature of television news bulletins since the crisis began spiralling out of control four years ago.

It is an unavoidable part of a new generations digital landscape and parents and teachers across Europe are having to find ways to enable youngsters to make sense of it.

Thats what writers and illustrators are for and the treatment of the issue was a prominent theme at this weeks Bologna Childrens Book Fair, the biggest of its kind in Europe.

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Author Antonio Ferrara was promoting his new book, Casa Lampedusa, a tale set on the Italian island on the frontline of the crisis.

There is a word of eastern origin, abracadabra, that we think was invented for children playing at magic. In reality, it means, by speaking, I create, Ferrara told AFPTV.

For me as an author, that means that something that does not exist, like trust in others or the desire to welcome foreigners, can be created, if a story is well-told.

Ferraras book is told through the eyes of a 13-year-old boy who sees the islanders lives transformed by the waves of humanity being washed up, sometimes literally, on their shores.

Historical context

The book begins with something that Bono, the U2 singer, said he had heard a migrant say: Im not dangerous, I am in danger the author said.

The challenge is to touch childrens hearts before speaking to their minds and to get there you have to get away from what they see on the news and engage them in a fictional story that is founded in fact.

French publisher Actes Sud addresses the same subject with a new non-fiction book, Planete Migrants, by writer Sophie Lamoureux and illustrator Amelie Fontaine.

The book, which won an award in Bologna, seeks to place in a historical context the contemporary arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants in Europe from Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.

We show that it (mass migration) is not a new thing, and that people leaving their homes are doing so for political reasons, because of climate change or wars, said publisher Thierry Magnier.

What would I do?

Also being promoted in Bologna was the Italian translation of The Optician of Lampedusa, a haunting tale for all ages written by BBC journalist Emma-Jane Kirby.

The book, which she describes as a blur of fact and fiction, emerged from her award-winning reporting on how ordinary Italians were experiencing the migrant crisis.

It recounts the traumatic experience of Carmine Menna, an optician on the island who saved some of the survivors and witnessed many more perish in one of the deadliest sinkings, in October 2013, while out on a boat trip with his wife and friends.

Alerted by screams they first thought were seagulls, the couple and their crew hauled 47 people to safety. But 368 others perished, including a new mother with her baby still attached to her by its umbilical cord.

The book tells the story of the disaster through the eyes of the optician, describing how he is compelled to make life-or-death decisions about which desperately outstretched arm to clutch, then watch as others are engulfed by the waves.

It is definitely not a childrens book, but I have had many under-16s tell me it was so important to them, Kirby told AFP.

And the French edition seems to be being used by a lot of teachers in their classes, which is great.

The reporter was moved to write the book after finding herself, like her principal character, completely haunted by the story. I just could not get it out of my head.

Menna himself is not named: Kirby says the last thing he wanted was to be depicted as a hero.

And she thought the story worked best with a central character the reader knows little about beyond what he experienced as the optician who does not want to see and has his eyes forced open.

Kirby said: I really wanted people to identify with him so much, to put themselves on that boat and ask: what would I have done?

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Migrant crisis finds its way into children's books - Hindustan Times