International Organization For Migration News

More than 80 migrants were saved, but two died and three were missing following two sea rescue operations in the Mediterranean off the coast of Libya, the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) charity said on Sunday.MSF's vessel Geo Barents picked up over 60 people late on Saturday from a rubber dinghy in distress in international waters off Libya. It also recovered one body, and one of the migrants taken on board died shortly after the rescue.Another 19 people were picked up from a nearby abandoned Tunisian offshore oil platform, MSF said.

Rescuers scoured seas off Greece on Thursday in a massive search operation, as hopes dwindled of finding survivors of a shipwreck that killed at least 78 migrants in one of Europe's deadliest such disasters in recent years.Reports suggested hundreds of people had packed the fishing boat that capsized and sank early on Wednesday in deep waters about 50 miles (80 km) from the southern coastal town of Pylos, while being shadowed by the Greek coast guard. As dawn broke on Thursday, a coast guard vessel sailed into the nearby port city of Kalamata, transferring victims.

Four times the tonnage of the original Open Arms rescue tugboat and with a capacity to carry up to 1,000 people, the Open Arms Uno made its first rescue on Wednesday, picking up 101 migrants stranded on a wooden boat off the Tunisian coast."Sit down, if you don't sit down we don't continue," a crew member shouted to the excited migrants from a speed boat launched from the vessel operated by the Spanish charity Open Arms before all were taken aboard.One had jumped into the water to try to reach the speed boat…

Despite all of the challenges that COVID-19 has wrought upon the marine industry, SAFE Boats International has managed to keep building and delivering boats to its customers. A snapshot of the last six months has seen the Bremerton, Wash. boatbuilder deliver more 30 boats, and it has a healthy backlog to keep busy for the next year and beyond. Its range of boats and customers runs from small to large, and deliveries stretch across the globe.Below are highlights of vessels SAFE…

More than 4,400 migrants, including at least 205 children, were lost at sea trying to reach Spain in 2021, a monitoring group said on Monday - more than double the figure from the previous year and the most since the group began counting in 2018.The group, Walking Borders, or Caminando Fronteras, blamed increasingly dangerous routes, inferior boats and the fear of some vessels to help migrants at sea for the surge in deaths. According to Spanish official statistics, 39,000 undocumented migrants successfully reached Spain by sea or land last year…

German NGO Sea-Watch said on Friday it had rescued nearly 100 migrants in the Mediterranean overnight, many of whom were injured, some with severe "fuel burns" - chemical burns caused by exposure to gasoline mixed with seawater.Migrant boat departures from Libya and Tunisia to Italy and other parts of Europe have increased in recent months with better weather.According to the U.N.'s International Organization for Migration (IOM), more than 1,100 people fleeing conflict and poverty in Africa and the Middle East have perished this year in the Mediterranean.Late on Thursday…

At least 57 people drowned on Monday after a boat capsized off the Libyan coast near Khums, the latest tragedy in the central Mediterranean, the U.N.'s International Organization for Migration (IOM) said. "According to survivors brought to shore by fishermen and the coast guard, at least 20 women and two children were among those who drowned," IOM spokeswoman Safa Msehli said in a tweet.Migrant boat departures to Italy and other parts of Europe from Libya and Tunisia have increased in recent months with better weather.

Unite Nations organizations this week issued a joint call for the world's seafarers to be prioritized for COVID-19 vaccination, stressing their key role in supporting global trade.The heads of five UN organizations have called for maritime and air transport workers to be prioritized for COVID-19 vaccination.Seafarers and aircrew are key workers, required to travel across borders, which may—though contrary to WHO recommendations—result in the need for them to present proof of a COVID-19 vaccination as a condition for entry in some countries.

At least eight people were drowned after a boat carrying more than 35 migrants from the Maghreb region of North Africa and heading towards the Canary Islands capsized on Tuesday, emergency services said on Wednesday.Four people were found dead late on Tuesday and another four bodies were rescued on Wednesday morning. The emergency services said they were searching for any more missing persons.One of the 28 migrants rescued had to be transferred to a hospital.A Reuters reporter…

Several shipping industry executives have voiced their support for Maersk Tankers and are demanding government action to debark nearly 30 migrants from one of its tankers stranded off Malta.Maersk Tankers said its operated tanker Maersk Etienne has been stuck at sea since August 4 when its crew rescued 27 migrants from a wooden dinghy that had been adrift for days. Maltese, Tunisian, Italian and Libyan authorities have denied entry, leaving the migrants to sleep on mattresses and blankets on board…

At least 90 migrants who were returned to Libya after being rescued at sea while attempting to cross the Mediterranean to Europe were disembarking in Misrata on Wednesday after spending two nights on board, the U.N.

The bodies of five migrants who died when a boat capsized in rough waters off the southern Lampedusa coast a week ago have been found, Italy's coast guard said on Sunday, bringing the overall death toll to 18.The boat, which survivors said had departed from Libya taking advantage of a respite in bad weather, was believed to carry some 170 people. The Lampedusa coast guard managed to bring safely onshore 147 migrants after the accident on Nov. 23.After the new bout of bad weather blocked search operations for several days, on Sunday six coast guard divers helped by a remotely-operated submarine found four bodies underwater and a fifth one floating."We can only listen to the silence of the dead…

Four migrants have died and up to 16 more are missing after trying to cross into Europe from North Africa on a small raft, Spain's coastguard said on Wednesday.Rescuers saved 58 people from the raft, which was found drifting around 37 miles off the coast of Morocco on Tuesday night. Three bodies were recovered from the water and another migrant died after being taken to shore, a spokeswoman for the coastguard said.Sea-borne migration to Europe has dropped sharply since peaking in 2015 but thousands still attempt the dangerous Mediterranean crossing every year, looking to escape poverty and conflict in their home countries.The latest group was brought to Spain's North African enclave of Melilla…

At a signing ceremony held at the International Organization for Migration (IOM) offices in Ankara, Turkey, Vladimer Gvilava, chief of mission IOM in Turkey, and Boran Bekbulat, Damen sales manager Turkey, signed a contract for the building and delivery of nine Damen SAR 1906 search and rescue boats for the Turkish Coast Guard Command.Financed by the European Union, these 19-meter boats will be in addition to the six vessels of the same class ordered in 2016, which were delivered to Turkish Coast Guard Command the following year.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) clarified that it follows the UN position indicating that Libya cannot yet be considered a safe port."IOM in Libya is present at the disembarkation points to deliver primary assistance to migrants that have been rescued at sea. However, following their disembarkation, migrants are transferred to detention centres under the responsibility of the Libyan Directorate for Combatting Illegal Migration (DCIM) over which the Organization has no authority or oversight," it said in a statement.The detention of men, women and children is arbitrary, it said. The unacceptable and inhumane conditions in these detention centres are well documented…

More than 100 migrants are believed missing and 38 confirmed dead off the coast of Djibouti after two boats capsized, the U.N. migration agency said on Wednesday.The overcrowded boats, carrying mostly Ethiopians, had set sail on rough seas when they capsized shortly after departing Djibouti, said Lalini Veerassamy, chief of mission in Djibouti for the International Organization for Migration.Djibouti's coastguard is continuing its search for survivors, she said, adding that beyond the IMO's rough estimate it was not clear how many more migrants might be missing.Many thousands of migrants from the Horn of Africa region board boats from Djibouti each year, hoping to cross to the Arabian Peninsula in search of work. (Reuters, Reporting by Maggie Fick Editing by Gareth Jones)

At least 17 migrants died in the space of 24 hours while trying to cross the sea from North Africa to Spain, and rescuers picked up more than 100 others, the Spanish coast guard said on Monday.Two rafts were found in the Western Mediterranean between the Iberian peninsula and Morocco and Algeria with 80 people aboard, and 13 dead. They were taken to the Spanish North African enclave of Melilla, the coast guard said.The coast guard also found four bodies and rescued 22 men in the Atlantic off the southern Spanish city of Cadiz.Spain has now become the main destination for undocumented migrants and refugees from Africa and the Middle East trying to reach Europe.More than 47,000 people made the treacherous journey to Spain, often on flimsy dinghies and rafts, between Jan. 1 and Oct.

At least 34 migrants have died in a shipwreck in the western Mediterranean, which 26 people survived, the U.N. migration agency said on Tuesday, citing the Moroccan navy and a Spanish aid agency.Joel Millman, spokesman of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), told Reuters, "The boat was adrift since Sunday with 60 people aboard. At least 34 have drowned, it looks like there were 26 survivors."The information came from the Moroccan navy and a Spanish non-governmental organisation Caminando Fronteras, he said.A Moroccan official, asking not to be named, said 11 bodies had been recovered, adding that the dead were all migrants, not Moroccan nationals. (Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay and Zakia Abdennebi; editing by William Maclean)

Italy on Friday urged Malta to go to the aid of an overcrowded boat carrying hundreds of migrants, only hours after the Italian president intervened to end a dispute within the ruling coalition over rescued immigrants.There have been two similar stand-offs with Malta since Italy's new populist government, which pairs the far-right League party with the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, took power on June 1.Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, who is also leader of the League, said Italy would not take in the migrants because they were Malta's responsibility. Malta, a small island nation, has generally refused to take in large numbers of boat migrants.Italy has seen more than 650…

Rescue ship Aquarius, which has picked up almost 3,000 migrants from the Mediterranean this year, will carry out rescue missions without waiting for orders from coastguards and will not return people to Libya, its search and rescue head said."When we see there is a vessel in distress, with a high likelihood of people dying, we will go and rescue them immediately as per international maritime law," Nick Romaniuk told Reuters on board the Aquarius.Over the last year coordination centres asking rescue vessels to go on standby or wait for clarification on certain things had added to the danger of people needing to be rescued, which is why they would no longer wait…

Italy and Malta are refusing to allow charity ships in ports; governments say charity ships help people smugglers. Charities counter that policy will cause more deaths at sea. For the second time in a week, Malta on Monday detained a humanitarian vessel that normally rescues boat migrants off the coast of Libya, where two shipwrecks have claimed the lives of as many as 200 people in recent days. The Sea Watch 3 vessel, operated by a German charity, requested to leave port after undergoing maintenance and the port authority refused, a Sea Watch spokeswoman said. The port authorities said only that the vessel's status was under review.

Nigerian migrants who survived a deadly sea crossing last year filed a lawsuit against Italy for violating their rights by supporting Libya’s efforts to return them to North Africa, their lawyers said on Tuesday.Seventeen plaintiffs petitioned the European Court of Human Rights last week, Violeta Moreno-Lax, a legal advisor for the Global Legal Action Network, told reporters. She was among four lawyers and several humanitarian groups involved in the case.The migrants say Italy violated multiple articles of the European Convention on Human Rights…

At least 48 migrants were killed when their boat sank off Tunisia's coast and 67 others were rescued by the coast guard, officials said on Sunday, one of the worst migrant boat accidents in recent years.The boat went down near the southern island of Kerkenna, a tourist spot, in the night to Sunday, the defence ministry said in a statement. The victims were Tunisians and other nationalities, it said, without giving details.The rescue operation was suspended late on Sunday but will resume on Monday morning, officials said.Human traffickers increasingly use Tunisia as a launch pad for migrants heading to Europe as Libya's coast guard, aided by armed groups…