Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi on Wednesday pressed the European Union to help shoulder the burden of curbing migrant trafficking in African countries, after more than 800 migrants drowned when a ship capsized Sunday in the Mediterranean Sea.
And, overnight, the U.N. Security Council urged a more muscular response to combat trafficking and encouraged more financial aid and assistance to Italy and other southern European countries on the crisis’ front lines.
Renzi, addressing Italian lawmakers in Rome on Wednesday, said the 28-member European Union must prioritize the migrant crisis if it “wants to be more than a simple assembly of countries that are members of an economic club,” the Associated Press reported.
While Italy has rescued 200,000 migrants since early 2014, its “noble generosity alone isn’t enough,” Renzi said. “We are asking Europe to be Europe, not just when it’s time to devise a budget.”
Measures could include setting up refugee camps in Africa, with U.N. support, and expanding sea patrols to deter “21st-century slave drivers” preying on migrants, Renzi suggested, according to the AP.
European leaders have scheduled an emergency summit Thursday in Brussels to discuss how to halt human trafficking and bolster rescue efforts. Thousands fleeing violence and poverty in northern Africa and the Middle East have risked perilous Mediterranean crossings for relative safety in Europe.
With Sunday’s capsizing alone, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees “now believes the number of fatalities to have been over 800, making this the deadliest incident in the Mediterranean we have ever recorded,” spokesman Arian Edwards said in Geneva.
Italian Defense Minister Roberta Pinotti also said human traffickers must be targeted with military intervention.
The rights group Save the Children reported Wednesday that it has learned some 60 adolescents were on board the ship when it capsized off the Libyan coast. It warned that if current trends continue, some 2,500 migrant children could die in similar accidents on the Mediterranean this year.
A Save the Children It said four boys claiming to be younger than 18 survived Sunday’s accident, when the migrant ship’s captain mistakenly rammed his vessel into a merchant ship that was coming to its rescue.
Italian prosecutors in the Sicilian city of Catania said the Tunisian captain steered his overloaded boat into a Portuguese container ship just before it capsized off the coast of Libya on Sunday. Authorities say it is the Mediterranean’s deadliest migrant disaster. There were only 28 survivors.
The prosecutors absolved the merchant ship of any responsibility for the tragedy.
