2015-04-23 20:01:00

Centro Astalli: The EU must create legal pathways for forced migrants


(Vatican Radio) As interfaith funerals were being celebrated in Malta on Thursday for 24 people who died in the worst-ever recorded capsizing of a migrant boat in the Mediterranean, Jesuit Refugee Service’s Italian branch – Centro Astalli – that accompanies and serves forced migrants in Italy, presented its annual report.

A minute of silence was observed at the packed press conference for the 800 people who died in Sunday’s disaster off the coast of Libya.

The event also provided an occasion to come together to express solidarity and grief, as well as to turn our thoughts to the over 10,000 people who have been plucked from the sea in just one week, as tens of  hundreds flee conflict and persecution in Africa, the middle East and Asia.

Meanwhile Centro Astalli’s report highlights the predicament of the 34,000 forced migrants who have been received and aided by the Association’s network in Italy in the past year.

As European leaders meet in Brussels to discuss ways to save migrants crossing the Mediterranean, it shines the spotlight on the need for new migration policies as well as a beefed-up  European ‘search and rescue’ mission with the urgent mandate to save lives.

Linda Bordoni spoke to Centro Astalli’s International Relations director, Chiara Peri, who expressed her belief that the establishment of legal pathways for asylum-seekers is the only way to defeat human trafficking rings and save lives.

Listen to the interview:

Regarding her hopes for the outcome of the summit, Chiara Peri says the foremost focus of the European initiative should be saving lives and protecting refugees.

However she expresses a widespread concern.

“We are worried that in the points that have been presented for a possible plan of action, all the focus seems to be on protecting borders rather than on protecting refugees” she says.

Peri says that it should be underlined that the main concern should be saving refugees and not “saving ourselves from them” because the way things have been conducted up to now “it looks like we have to defend ourselves from them who are really the most vulnerable”.

“The only way of fighting illegal immigration and smugglers would be creating legal pathways to access asylum in Europe” she says.

Without this action – she says – any other action will result in preventing people from saving their lives.

Peri says that Centro Astalli would like to see a common effort of all European member states to make asylum rights accessible and to give effective contribution to the protection of all refugees and people who are running away from extreme situations.

The figures that provide the backbone to the Centro Astalli’s annual report speak for themselves as to the instability and violence that make up the world scenario today.

The Association received some 21,000 forced migrants in its Rome headquarters where aid operators and volunteers provide basic needs services, legal advice, healthcare, education and projects for integration. 

34,000 people were welcomed by the Centro Astalli network across the Italian peninsula.

Peri says that that figure represents a lot of people, but – she points out: “ it’s not just a number: it talks of stories and of needs, and we would like to underline the most urgent needs and say that  most of the people we meet are victims of torture and that families, refugee families, are the most vulnerable of all”.

“Each refugee has his or her own story and together they sum up a complexity of traumas: the traumas that bring them to leave, which is never an easy choice; and all the multiple traumas they suffer during their travels which are awful and horrible, through the desert and through the sea, with a high danger of dying and of suffering all sorts of abuses” she says.

So, Peri concludes, the question is certainly not only one of stopping the boats from leaving, but one has to look at the whole experience of these persons to be able to give a real answer.

              








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