UN agency applauds european agenda on migration

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) welcomes on Wednesday the European Commission's proposal, A European Agenda on Migration, which was presented earlier on the same day, and applauds its focus on saving lives in the Mediterranean and ensuring the protection of those in need.

The EU proposal includes strengthened measures to save lives at sea, and improved mechanisms for allowing legal entry into the EU for people fleeing war, and providing for a fair redistribution of refugees.

The proposal also contains measures to address some of the factors that are driving people into the hands of smugglers, including the desperate conditions many refugees face in countries of first-asylum and transit.

"The EU's proposal represents a great breakthrough in terms of managing refugee flows and migration," said Volker Turk, UNHCR's Assistant High Commissioner for Protection. "It is now enormously important, and vital for the urgent purpose of saving lives, that these proposals be embraced quickly and fully implemented."

According to UNHCR, record levels of global displacement from wars and conflict in Syria, Iraq, the Horn of Africa and other regions of sub-Saharan Africa, coupled with insecurity in Libya and blocked land routes for mixed migration flows in other regions, have in recent years combined to fuel a sharp increase in refugees seeking to enter Europe by one of the few remaining means possible - travel by sea.

A record 219,000 people crossed the Mediterranean in 2014 in smugglers' boats and 3,500 died, according to UNHCR, around half of these people were refugees fleeing war and persecution.

So far in 2015, UNHCR estimated that some 62,500 people have made the crossing, and at least 1,800 have died. Endit