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Migrants are helped aboard an Italian rescue boat
African migrants are helped aboard an Italian financial police boat off the Libyan coast, 22 April 2015. Photograph: Alessandro Di Meo/AP
African migrants are helped aboard an Italian financial police boat off the Libyan coast, 22 April 2015. Photograph: Alessandro Di Meo/AP

Responsibility for African boat migrants lies at all our doors

This article is more than 8 years old

The International Organisation for Migration has predicted that migrant deaths in the Mediterranean might be as high as 30,000 this year (EU emergency summit will offer safe haven to only 5,000 refugees, 23 April). That prospect might appeal to the likes of Katie Hopkins, who has described these desperate people as “cockroaches” and has called for gunships to be used against them, or Ukip’s Nigel Farage, who opposes EU action to end the deaths. Australian PM Tony Abbott has advised the EU to adopt his ruthless policy toward asylum seekers and turn their boats back.

There is another way. There is a humanitarian solution. We can let these desperate people into Europe and welcome them as citizens. This is a rich continent. It’s an ageing continent. There is work enough to be done here. The combined wealth of the richest 1,000 residents of the UK alone comes to £519bn. Time to build a society that looks after all its people, not just the rich. And we can start by saying “welcome” to the desperate refugees who risk their lives on the Mediterranean.
Sasha Simic
London

Italy’s PM, Matteo Renzi, has compared the smuggling of migrants across the Mediterranean to the trade in African captives, which officially ended in 1807. He said: “When we say we are in the presence of slavery we are not using the word just for effect. The point is that we can’t accept this kind of trade in human lives.”

In 1783, following the Zong massacre in the Atlantic, which saw the murder of 132 Africans at sea, there was a major debate about whether or not Africans were goods/chattels and therefore whether the ship’s owners were liable for compensation for their loss. The arguments may have changed but Renzi has made the point that African people dying horrifically as captives at sea (for hundreds were locked in the hold) shames us all and makes a mockery of the “progress” of the intervening 200-odd years, as well as shining a glaring spotlight on shortsighted and inadequate western foreign policy decisions.
Deryck Browne
Acting CEO, African Health Policy Network

A humanitarian response to reinstate Mare Nostrum should not be conflated with an entitlement to automatic refugee status (Report, 21 April). The UN convention defines a refugee as “a person who, owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion is outside the country of his nationality…”. The travellers in this instance are of mixed African nationalities, and predominantly non-Libyan from conflict- and poverty-affected countries. However, there is no ex-ante verification process to decide if they are legitimate asylum seekers, economic migrants or even religious extremists in disguise. Such a determination could affect their claim to asylum and ECHR eligibility; otherwise the legal definition of refugee will entirely lose its meaning and legitimacy for all time.

A proposal to address this dilemma could include a rigorous verification/triage carried out offshore, say in a transit camp, under joint EC/UNHCR auspices (at a pre-agreed proximate location, for example, Tunisia), where fairly distributed acceptance quotas would be committed in advance by EU member countries and an incentive return package provided to those not meeting pre-agreed refugee criteria based on international covenants.
Dr Joseph Mullen
Expert refugee witness, Ferring, West Sussex

Africans need not be fleeing the continent. The UK and other rich western countries have given Africa £500bn in development aid for 50 years, but the continent has become poorer, hungrier and angrier. This is because of four main reasons.

First, the UK’s current aid budget of 0.7% of GDP is no match for population explosion, currently standing at 1 billion and rising by more than 3% every year. Second, corrupt politicians are siphoning much of the aid money and spending what is left on weapons to harass their people and stay in power indefinitely. Third, and most important, just as the UK’s unemployment benefit is not meant to make anyone rich but to keep them just alive; foreign aid too is not designed to make African countries rich, just to fill the gap. Finally, foreign aid has created unhealthy dependency cultures across Africa, where governments expect the west to give them budget support while western NGOs provide basic services – education, health, provision of clean water and food.

The UK and its partners urgently need to assist Africa to trade itself out of poverty. As a priority, efforts should include the removal of some of the crippling trade barriers that stifle African agricultural exports. At the same time, the UK should lead the rest of the world in helping Africa to reduce population to a sustainable level. Without these measures, African immigrants will keep fleeing from the vicious cycle of poverty, wars, famine and diseases.
Sam Akaki
Democratic Institutions for Poverty Reduction in Africa

There are calls for the EU to act to save migrants from drowning in the Mediterranean, but where are the calls for the UN to tackle the strife and oppression in South Sudan, Eritrea, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan … which are the root cause of this problem?
Michael Shaw
Huddersfield

Will someone please explain the moral difference between the politicians who closed Britain’s door to Jews fleeing persecution in Nazi Germany and those who now want to shut out people trying to escape from the disaster that has engulfed them in North Africa and the Middle East? As long as we try to evade our fundamental human duty to them (never mind our share of the responsibility for their plight), we can contribute nothing to resolving this tragedy.
Ian Jewesbury
London

Both the Misrata militias who enrich themselves through the death boats leaving Libya (EU attacks smugglers who send migrants to their deaths, 21 April) and the other Islamist groups that became the Isis branch that ritually slaughters African Christians (Isis video purports to show massacre of two groups of Ethiopian Christians, 20 April) were supported and enabled to do what they now do by UK fighter jets in 2011. The UK flew thousands of sorties, dropping hundreds of the bombs that broke Libya. Operation Ellamy cost the British taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds; what it cost the Libyan people is uncountable.

We seem to have forgotten that we bombed Libya. Isn’t it high time that the nation stopped and reflected on what it has done to that country?
Peter McKenna
Liverpool

I have followed with absolute horror the tragedy being played out in the Mediterranean. The devastating loss of life is in part due to the appalling withdrawal of the search and rescue capacity from the European Union. In that regard we are culpable and must reflect on our government’s actions. Its decision reflected an increasingly inward-looking approach under growing pressure from those who would fear-monger about immigration.

I have long been concerned about the increasingly negative discourse on migration in the UK. Our higher education system enjoys a global reputation, based in no small part on the contributions of international students and staff. Further education colleges cater for increasing numbers of overseas students. Our economy overall benefits hugely from migrants’ contribution. Our society is all the richer.

Whatever the political makeup of the next government, one of its main priorities must be to recalibrate our national attitude towards migrants. It is about more than economics; we must recognise that we have a basic moral duty to care about the plight of those trying to escape from violence, persecution and war. Those who have died upon the sea are owed that.
Sally Hunt
General secretary, University and College Union

Our Oxford-based charity works with more than 20 Eritrean teenagers who have crossed the Mediterranean on their own. Currently there are seven Eritrean teenagers who have arrived in Oxford in the last few weeks, and over a dozen more who arrived longer ago. We expect more to arrive daily, and the awful events of the past few days confirm our worst fears about the dangers of their journey.

We are referred every unaccompanied asylum-seeking child who arrives in Oxfordshire – many of whom are from Eritrea. We employ a qualified social worker who helps with the initial programme of support for all newly arrived children in our area; we also run a youth club, and provide specialist casework support until the young people are in their early 20s. We offer a place to feel safe, welcome and understood, and to make friends with other children from a similar background. In a remarkably short time, with our help, they are behaving like children again. Asylum Welcome adds its voice to the many that find the death toll in the Mediterranean abhorrent. More must be done to rescue these children and provide them with a place of safety.
Kate Smart
Director, Asylum Welcome

The deaths of so many migrants in the Mediterranean shows the moral vacuity of EU governments’ belief that we can inoculate ourselves from our moral and legal duty to those in need. Since 2011, our government sought to convince the British people that it can fulfil its responsibilities to Syrian civilians merely by generous aid to refugee camps. Recent events show how shortsighted this has been for regional stability, and how tragic for the civilians involved. Similarly, the EU has cut its capabilities for maritime rescue just as the need increases, leaving the Italians virtually alone to deal with a collective responsibility.

EU governments, especially maritime nations such as ours, should offer all possible assistance to our Italian friends. If the EU is to mean anything in this dangerous world, it must show itself capable of much more than standing by as thousands drown at its maritime border. Our enemies must conclude that not only are we unwilling to fight for our beliefs and to uphold human rights, we are also willing to let innocents drown for their belief that we are compassionate, moral nations.
John Slinger
Rugby, Warwickshire

Perhaps a mass drop of leaflets in relevant languages over all the countries concerned, explaining the perils that await them, with graphic photos, might act as a deterrent. These, together with public service broadcasts, might stop a significant number of people, particularly women with children, from embarking upon this deadly journey.
Jeanne Caesar
Welwyn Garden City

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