UN URGES EUROPEAN LEADERS TO TAKE ACTION ON MIGRANT CRISIS

A woman waits to disembark from an Italian Navy vessel in southern Italy after being rescued in the Mediterranean, as workers in protective jumpsuits process incoming migrants. (Photo: AP)

New York, 2 Rajab 1436/21 April 2015 (MINA) – EU leaders should take a “more sophisticated, more courageous and less callous approach” to dealing with the current migrant crisis, a statement by the United Nations said.

The statement came on Monday, a day after a boat carrying more than 700 migrants capsized in the Mediterranean Sea. Officials believe most of the people on board have drowned, Anadolu Agency quoted by Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA) as reporting.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein said in the statement that he is not surprised by the latest tragedy.

“These deaths and the hundreds of others that preceded them in recent months were sadly predictable,” Al-Hussein said.

Al-Hussein also called on European governments to take action and reinstate the Mare Nostrum program, emphasizing that the current search and rescue program is totally inadequate and is geared more toward “border control and policing the seas than to saving lives.”

“Stopping the rescue of migrants in distress has not led to less migration, nor indeed to less smuggling, but merely to more deaths at sea,” Al Hussein said. “Triton should immediately be replaced by a European-wide, state-led and well-resourced search and rescue capability in the Mediterranean.”

According to the UN Refugee Agency, more than 35,000 migrants have arrived to southern Europe by boat so far in 2015.

More than 1,600 others have drowned in the Mediterranean this year. (T/P001/R04)

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)