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Sea Watch 3, which conducted five operations on December 24 to rescue 440 African migrants stranded at sea, had sailed the Italian shores for seven days awaiting clearance to dock at Pozzallo, and joins Geo Barents, a ship assigned to Doctors Without Borders that transferred another 558 people rescued from the Mediterranean, and who disembarked on Tuesday in Augusta.
More than 67,000 irregular migrants, most of them Africans, landed this year on the Italian shores. Another 1,000 were added in the last few days alone, after the Geo Barents ships, whose passengers got off on Tuesday in Augusta, and Sea Watch 3, which are due to do so this Friday in Pozzallo, were authorized.
The Sea Watch 3, a German-flagged ship belonging to the non-governmental organization of the same name, received the safe harbor assignment after a week wandering between Catania and Syracuse, awaiting authorization. The information was offered by the NGO itself through its social networks.
🔴 The Italian authorities have assigned the port of Pozzallo / Sicily as place of disembarkation for the # SeaWatch3.
One week after our first rescue operation, the 440 rescued people on board will finally be allowed to go ashore.
– Sea-Watch International (@seawatch_intl) December 31, 2021
On board Sea Watch 3 are 440 people rescued in five operations on Christmas Day, including 116 women, 35 children under the age of four and 167 unaccompanied minors, between the ages of eight and 17.
Six people had to be transferred before to hospitals, including a pregnant woman and children and adults with injuries and ailments resulting from the days adrift before the rescue. The Italian Coast Guard brought supplies to the ship during the wait, including powdered milk and diapers for the infants.
A humanitarian tragedy in the waters of the Mediterranean
At least 1,864 people lost their lives in 2021 trying to reach the Italian coast from Africa, according to figures from the World Organization for Migration. Another 23,150 are reported missing since the agency, which belongs to the United Nations system, began monitoring this area in 2014.
This year, more than 32,000 migrants were captured and returned to their country by the Libyan Coast Guard, almost three times more than in 2020, and another 20,000 were forced by local authorities to return to Tunisia, according to a bulletin from the Tunisian Forum for the Economic and Social Rights.
Human rights organizations and left-wing activists have denounced that the increase in arrests is due to the collaboration that the Italian Government has maintained with the coast guards of the countries of North Africa, which it would have provided with equipment, financing and training to that function as a barrier to illegal migration to the Sicilian coasts.
Only 15% of the migrants who arrived in Italy from Africa in 2015 did so transferred by NGOs, an indicator of the precariousness in which the rest arrived.
A long road with no guarantees for insertion
In accordance with figures from the Institute for International Policy Studies, more than 670,000 illegal immigrants make life in Italy. Of these, only 78,421 are in foster care, most of them (13%) in Lombardy.
More than 52,000 are in reception centers, another 25,000 have joined the Reception and Integration System and almost 400 are still in the so-called ‘hotspots’, transit facilities that have been enabled for identification purposes and subsequent assignment to another institution.
According to government data, Tunisians (23%) constitute the most declared nationality at the time of irregular entry. Seven out of ten migrants come from African countries.
The fate of the 440 migrants from the Sea Watch and the 558 from the Geo Barents is still unclear, beyond the assignment of a port of entry.
With Reuters and AP
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