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In 2021, Istat estimated that 5,171,894 foreign citizens lived in Italy, representing about 8.7% of the total population. These figures do not include naturalized foreign-born residents as well as illegal immigrants, the so-called clandestini, whose numbers, difficult to determine, are thought to be at least 670,000.
Illegal entry is the act of foreign nationals arriving in or crossing the borders into a country in violation of its immigration law. Human smuggling is the practice of aiding people in crossing international borders for financial gain, often in large groups. Human smuggling is associated with human trafficking. A human smuggler will facilitate illegal entry into a country for a fee, but on arrival at their destination, the smuggled person is usually free. Trafficking involves physical force, fraud, or deception to obtain and transport people, usually for enslavement or forced prostitution.
On 27 March 2009, at least one boat carrying migrants from Libya to Italy capsized. The boat is believed to have been carrying 250 migrants from Egypt, Tunisia, Palestine and Nigeria. A rescue attempt involving the Italian and Libyan navies rescued 21 survivors from the boat and retrieved 21 bodies. A further 77 bodies subsequently washed up on the shores of Libya before rescue efforts were called off. Two other boats also went missing between Libya and Italy, carrying around 250 more people between them. A fourth boat, carrying 350 people, was rescued by an Italian merchant ship on 29 March in the same area of sea.
Refugees of the Syrian civil war are citizens and permanent residents of Syria who have fled the country throughout the Syrian civil war. The pre-war population of the Syrian Arab Republic was estimated at 22 million (2017), including permanent residents. Of that number, the United Nations (UN) identified 13.5 million (2016) as displaced persons, requiring humanitarian assistance. Of these, since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011 more than six million (2016) were internally displaced, and around five million (2016) had crossed into other countries, seeking asylum or placed in Syrian refugee camps worldwide. It is often described as one of the largest refugee crises in history.
On 5 May 2014, a yacht and a dinghy, both overcrowded and carrying migrants destined for Greece, capsized about four nautical miles off the coast of the Greek island of Samos, in the Aegean Sea. The vessels had been trying to enter Greece illegally at the time they overturned. The cause of the capsizing remains unclear, since weather conditions at the time and place where it occurred were said to have been relatively good.
In September 2014, it was announced by the International Organization for Migration that a ship sank off the Malta coast on September 11, 2014, killing around 500 migrants. There were eleven survivors. The ship left Damietta, Egypt, on September 6 and sank five days later on September 11. Two Palestinian survivors of the wreck accuse the traffickers of intentionally sinking the vessel after the refugees would not agree to transfer to a different ship.
During 2015, there was a period of significantly increased movement of refugees and migrants into Europe. 1.3 million people came to the continent to request asylum, the most in a single year since World War II. They were mostly Syrians, but also included significant numbers from Afghanistan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Iraq, Eritrea, and the Balkans. The increase in asylum seekers has been attributed to factors such as the escalation of various wars in the Middle East and ISIL's territorial and military dominance in the region due to the Arab Winter, as well as Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt ceasing to accept Syrian asylum seekers.
Alan Kurdi, initially reported as Aylan Kurdi, was a two-year-old Syrian boy of Kurdish ethnic background whose image made global headlines after he drowned on 2 September 2015 in the Mediterranean Sea along with his mother and brother. Alan and his family were Syrian refugees trying to reach Europe from Turkey amid the European refugee crisis. Photographs of his body were taken by Turkish journalist Nilüfer Demir and quickly went viral, prompting international responses. Since the Kurdi family had reportedly been trying to reach Canada, his death and the wider refugee crisis became an issue in the 2015 Canadian federal election.
Yusra Mardini OLY is a Syrian former competition swimmer and refugee of the Syrian civil war. She was a member of the Refugee Olympic Athletes Team (ROT) that competed under the Olympic flag at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. On 27 April 2017, Mardini was appointed a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador. She also competed in the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo with the Refugee Olympic Team (EOR). She was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2023, alongside her sister, Sarah.
This is a timeline of the European migrant crisis of 2015 and 2016.
On September 21, 2016, a boat capsized off the Egyptian coast with around 600 refugees on board in the Mediterranean Sea. 204 bodies were recovered, around 160 people were rescued, and hundreds of people remain missing, with approximately 300 people presumed dead. Four people were arrested for trafficking and breaking capacity laws. The incident was the worst in 2016 in the Mediterranean Sea.
The Greece–Turkey border is around 200 kilometres (120 mi) long, and separates Western Thrace in Greece from East Thrace in Turkey.
According to the United Nations, human smuggling is defined as "the procurement, in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit, of the illegal entry of a person into a State Party of which the person is not a national or a permanent resident." Civil unrest and poverty in the Middle East in the 21st century and changing European immigration policies have been seen large numbers of refugees and economic migrants fleeing their home countries. Migrants pay people-smuggling gangs to illegally take them across the Mediterranean to Southern Europe. Refugees and other migrants use different routes to the European Union due to varying immigration policies. In between January and September 2015, the most common was the Eastern Mediterranean. Additionally, 2015 saw a major increase in the number of migrants making the Eastern Mediterranean crossing; "There were nearly eight times more detections via the Eastern Mediterranean route in the first nine months of 2015 (401,000) than during the whole of 2014 (51,000)." The European Migration Network reports that the secondary movements of migrants upon arrival in Europe are heavily influenced by people smugglers. According to the United Nations, human smuggling is a crime. However, the number of human traffickers in Turkey increased from 4,641 in 2017 to 6,278 in 2018.
Detention centres in Libya are criminal enterprises run by gangs of human traffickers and kidnappers for profit. Lawlessness in Libya has resulted in circumstances where criminals gangs abduct and detain people who are migrating to or through Libya. 5,000 migrants are held in dozens of camps that are mostly located around Bani Walid. Detainees often suffer torture and may face execution if their family do not pay ransoms to the gangs.
Melissa Ruth Fleming is an American journalist, author, and United Nations official. She has been head of the United Nations Department of Global Communications since 2019.
A Hope More Powerful than the Sea is a book by Melissa Fleming about Syrian refugee Doaa Al Zamel's experiences leading up to and during the 2014 Malta migrant shipwreck.
On 22 September, 2022, a ship carrying migrants escaping Lebanon sank off the coast of Tartus, Syria. The victims, intending to escape the Lebanese liquidity crisis, are estimated to number around 150 people, hailing from Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. It has been described as one of the deadliest shipwrecks in the eastern Mediterranean in recent years.
Sarah Mardini, alternative spelling Sara Mardini, is a Syrian former competition swimmer, lifeguard and human rights activist. Fleeing her country in 2015 during the Syrian civil war with her sister, Olympic swimmer Yusra Mardini, they pulled their boat with other refugees towards the Mediterranean coast of Greece, saving themselves and the other passengers. Continuing their journey across the Balkans, they reached Berlin, Germany, the same year. She was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2023, alongside her sister.
On 14 June 2023, an Italy-bound rusty, aging, overloaded fishing trawler smuggling migrants sank in international waters in the part of the Mediterranean known as the Ionian Sea, off the coast of Pylos, Messenia, Greece. The boat, named Adriana, which had a capacity of 400 people carried an estimated 400 to 750 migrants, mostly from Pakistan, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, and some from Afghanistan. After departing from Tobruk, Libya, on 10 June, concerns were raised by 13 June, with the vessel then located in the Maritime Search and Rescue (SAR) zone assigned to Greece. The Hellenic Coast Guard (HCG) helicopter and later the HCG vessel ΠΠΛΣ-920 arrived on scene, took aerial photos of the vessel, made offers of assistance that were allegedly refused, then remained there as an observer until the boat capsized and sank. After the Adriana had sunk in the "deepest part of the Mediterranean Sea", the HCG and the military initiated a massive search and rescue operation. One hundred and four men were rescued, and 82 bodies were recovered. By 18 June, officials had acknowledged that over 500 people were "presumed dead."
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 "'I had a feeling of death before me': A refugee's survival story of 4 days floating at sea". Canadian Broadcasting Corporation . 31 March 2017. Retrieved 15 June 2023.
- 1 2 3 Stewart, Debbie (12 July 2017). "The Syrian refugee crisis through Doaa Zamel's experiences". Great Falls Tribune . Retrieved 15 June 2023.
- 1 2 3 Fürstenau, Marcel (3 March 2017). "Doaa's dangerous journey to Europe". DW. Retrieved 2022-08-21.
- ↑ Ribeiro, João Reis (2021-12-02). "500 palavras: Doaa Al Zamel e a esperança que venceu o mar". O Setubalense (in European Portuguese). Retrieved 2022-08-21.
- ↑ Psaropoulos, John. "Greece sea disaster". www.aljazeera.com. Retrieved 2022-08-21.
- ↑ Sawyer, Jenny (2017-02-06). "'A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea' is the stunning tale of a Syrian refugee". Christian Science Monitor . ISSN 0882-7729 . Retrieved 2022-08-21.
- 1 2 Chisholm, Kate. "Acts of settlement | The Spectator". www.spectator.co.uk. Retrieved 2022-08-21.
- ↑ Pulver, Andrew (2018-10-30). "Backlash over Lena Dunham script for Syrian refugee film". the Guardian. Retrieved 2022-08-21.
- ↑ "Beyond Borders [The Documentary]". www.radiolistings.co.uk. Archived from the original on 2023-01-16. Retrieved 2022-08-21.