October 19, 2016

Trafficking and exploitation on Mediterranean route

editor:	Vanessa Ellingham

More than 70% of migrants travelling from North Africa to Europe via boat have been victims of human trafficking, organ trafficking or exploitation along the route.

This from a new survey of 9,000 migrants by the UN's International Organisation for Migration.

The idea of people having to suffer so gravely for a chance at freedom is disturbing, to be sure, but the fact that migrants must somehow find the means to pay for the exorbitant prices charged by smugglers for a not-even-safe passage to Europe should come as no surprise.

Particularly for the European politicians who make it so.

As Fairplanet reported last year, it is the lawmakers who have made what could be a very safe journey so dangerous. Remember: tourist ferries pass freely between Tunisia every single day.

But where Tunisian fishermen who also operate in the area may have previously been able to offer safe passage to those seeking asylum (a legal right all humans share), today they refuse to do this, knowing their boats - and therefore livelihoods - will be seized if they are caught helping people make the journey to Europe.

Paying a smuggler remains the last viable option. But it's hardly a safe one.

For many thousands getting on that boat means accepting exploitation as a means to affording the trip. Working without pay, sexual slavery, blood and organ donation all become means for buying that passage.

None of which would be necessary if migrants could make the journey they are legally entitled to without fishermen, ferry operators or such facing legal consequences.

There's no point in blaming smugglers, who they themselves are victims of the same politics, poverty and desperation as the migrants they shuffle across the sea.

The buck stops with lawmakers, who have every power to make a difference here, and yet they still choose not to.