European Governments Brace for Post-Lockdown Migrant Surge
Voice of America
European governments are seeing migrant numbers swell once again and they still have not settled on a coherent policy to cope with another influx.
Their dilemma was underlined Monday when the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported that more than 50 migrants had drowned after their boat sank off the coast of Libya, 120 kilometers east of the capital Tripoli. Federico Soda, the IOM's Libya mission chief, tweeted: “At least 57 people drowned today in the latest tragedy... Silence and inaction are inexcusable.” Survivors told the IOM 20 women and two children were among those who drowned. The IOM repeated its call for EU governments to boost their own search and rescue missions and to halt their coordination with Libyan security forces for migrants to be intercepted and returned to Libya, one of the main gateways to Europe for war refugees and economic migrants from sub-Saharan Africa and the Mideast.Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a camp for internally displaced people in Rafah on May 27, 2024. Fire rages following an Israeli strike on an area designated for displaced Palestinians, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, in this still picture taken from a video, May 26, 2024. Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a camp for internally displaced people in Rafah on May 27, 2024. A member of the bomb squad of the Israeli police collects debris after a rocket fired by Palestinian militants struck in the Israeli city of Herzliya on May 26, 2024.
Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, right, and Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, left, leave a podium after marking Independence Day in Tbilisi, Georgia, May 26, 2024. Demonstrators with Georgian national and EU flags rally during an opposition protest against a foreign influence bill as they mark their country's Independence Day, in the center of in Tbilisi, Georgia, May 26, 2024.