Libia

“What this government wants to do is to go and look for smugglers all over the globe,” declared the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, in the press conference of Cutro, a few days after the shipwreck that led to the death of 92 people.The so-called smugglers seem to have become the heart of the government's line on immigration, with a new decree which further tightens the penalties for those who drive a boat carrying migrants.The persecution of smugglers is not a new strategy:in the last decade it has been a cornerstone of Italian and European migration policies.What has it meant so far? Is this really the solution to stopping departures and deaths at sea?And who really are the smugglers? “We cannot fail to see that it is a very hot political issue and that there is a strong demand, just read the newspapers, for the punishment of the highest possible number of smugglers on the face of the earth", explains to Blue suitcase Gigi Omar Modica, magistrate who has been dealing with irregular im...

For the Lombard councilor, more courage and responsibility is needed in the management of emergencies.Miani (expert in environmental medicine: «More greenery in cities would drastically reduce climate deaths»

No about-face.The Italy-Libya Memorandum of Understanding on migrants renewed for another three years Update November 2, 2022: In the end there was no about-face.From today, Wednesday 2 November, the Memorandum of Understanding on migration between Italy and Libya will be renewed for another three years.Signed on 2 February 2017, under the Gentiloni government, article 8 provides that the Memorandum is valid for three years and is tacitly renewed upon expiry for an equivalent period, "unless notified in writing by one of the two contracting parties, at least three months before of the expiration of the validity period (November 2 this year, ed.)".First the Draghi executive and now the Meloni executive have not asked to review the agreement.Hence the automatic renewal. The 2017 Memorandum of Understanding states that Italy is committed to financing reception centers in Libya and the training of Libyan staff.But as Open Migration reconstructs "these 'reception centres' are...

Of Nancy Porsia The refinancing for the Libyan Coast Guard has already been approved by the Council of Ministers at the beginning of July, and the Senate will soon be called to vote.Although the torture, deaths and more generally the systematic violation of the most basic rights of migrants in Libya have been widely documented by investigations and reports, the Italian Parliament could for the fifth consecutive year vote in favor of refinancing the Libyan Coast Guard. Bodies swollen with water, with skin scaly from sun and salt burns, scattered in random order along the shoreline, return to dot the Libyan coasts.“This is a horror we thought was a thing of the past.Instead he comes back on time,” says a man from Zwara, a city on the coast in the far west of Libya.It was him last May 21st, to find the bodies of two children spat out by the sea together with that of a woman.“It was dawn, I was taking a walk, like every morning, by the sea near the family holiday home, wh...