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Libya's peace process key to address migrant crisis: Italian Red Cross head

Xinhua, April 22, 2015 Adjust font size:

Libya's peace process is a fundamental objective to be reached in order to stop the frequent disasters of which the latest saw hundreds of migrants die at sea, President of the Italian Red Cross Francesco Rocca told a new conference on Tuesday.

Rocca said an armed intervention in Libya would absolutely be useless. "But a diplomatic intervention is necessary," he stressed.

In his view, fighting the smugglers who organize the deadly journeys to Italy without pursuing "a peace process of Libya," which is the theater of an incredibly violent conflict, would make no sense. "On the contrary, it could trigger tragic consequences," he added.

"We believe we need to make humanitarian action central and get out of the logic that only focuses on the issue of security, which is also an important one," Rocca, who is also Vice-President of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), went on saying.

Counteracting the migrant boats without "an important humanitarian action" in Libya in fact means "looking the other way" and "pretending that there are no people who are fleeing from wars and conflicts and will try another route," he said.

Rocca elaborated "millions of migrants are ready to leave and would try to do so in one way or another" if the Libyan instability is not addressed. "We can close a route ... but there are other open routes that these desperate people will seek," he added.

More than 1,000 volunteers of the Italian Red Cross are involved in aid activities for the countless flows of migrants who arrive in Sicily. The Italian southern island, Rocca recalled, is only "a few miles from Libya."

More than 800 migrants are believed by Italian prosecutors to have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea after their packed boat capsized on Saturday night. According to first reconstructions, the boat collided with a Portuguese merchant ship diverted there to rescue the migrants.

Another factor which contributed to the disaster was the sudden movement of the migrants towards the same side of the boat, according to witness accounts. Rescuers have so far recovered 24 corpses and saved 28 migrants at sea.

The Refugee Agency of the United Nations (UNHCR) said in a report that some 3,500 migrants have lost their lives in the attempt to cross the Mediterranean Sea last year to enter Europe from its southern borders. The death toll has continued to increase in the first months of 2015.

An Italian prosecutor who is carrying out an international investigation on the illegal journeys from Libya to Italy has estimated there are as many as one million migrants ready to leave from the Libyan coast, and departures are expected to increase during the summer. Endit