by Allan J. Tac-an

United Nation’s maritime agency warned that the number of migrants crossing the Mediterranean could surge to 500,000 this year with thousands of deaths at sea if no action is taken against the people who traffic them.

These people from Africa and the Middle East are boarding on deadly journeys by weeks from the coasts of Libya and Tunisia hoping to reach the European continent in search of a safer and better future. Thousands of tragic drowningis happening in the Mediterranean partly because Europe is resisting migration.

These desperate people – men, women and children has risen drastically over the past 10 years, fleeing from war-torn countries such as Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Central African Republic, South Sudan and Eritrea. Similarly, it is happening in Mexico and Central America because of poverty and violence.

Francois Crepeau, UN migration expert, claims that the opening legal passages for migrants could save lives, stop or decrease human smuggling and lower the cost of asylum claims. That instead of resisting migration, the west should adopt a global humanitarian plan to resettle refugees and regulate migrant mobility, a much better system for everyone.

These is a call for rich countries such as Europe, Canada, the US, Australia and New Zealand and probably other countries, to take in 1 million refugees to stop deaths.

Another group of migrants are called economic migrants, who may not be in need of protection but are also desperate for a future because there’s no job for them in their country. And all countries are eager to get high-skilled migrants but also admit that they also need people at a low wage level for all sorts of activities.

In these global age mobility is increasing, people migrates, people come, and the moral obligation is to save lives.

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Tidbits:

Secretary-general of the International Maritime Organization, Koji Sekimizu, at Sea Asia called for a multinational effort to ensure the safety of the migrants and target the smugglers.

The global effort that successfully reduced the number of pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia was an example of how the international community could come together on the Mediterranean migrant crisis.