The almost 100 migrants who are missing and presumed dead after their boat sank off the Libyan coast on Thursday has added to what was already the deadliest year on record for deaths of refugees and migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea. Before the latest tragedy, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees confirmed that at least 3,800 people have died, making 2016 the deadliest ever. The previous highest number: 3,771 lives lost during 2015. By the time 2014 ended, 3,279 people were dead or missing in the Mediterranean. The likelihood of death while making the journey has thus dramatically increased. People smugglers are today often using flimsy inflatable rafts or ones made out of plastic like that which sank on Thursday, that often do not last the journey. Several incidents seem to be connected with travel during bad weather. Changing tactics by smugglers are also to blame, with several occasions where there have been mass embarkations of thousands of people in feeble boats at a time. This may have something to do with the shifting smuggler business or geared toward lowering detection risks, but it also makes the work of rescuers harder. These mass embarkations mean the emergency workers need to rescue several thousand people on several hundred boats. Many of the people on these barely seaworthy boats cannot swim. They might come from a landlocked country like Mali, Niger or Ethiopia, or from a remote interior village in Sudan or Nigeria. Smuggling has become a big business. Since Libya is a popular jumping-off point for migrants seeking to reach Europe from North Africa, smuggling networks are well established there, and the lack of an effective central government makes the job of traffickers easier. Smugglers and traffickers are bulk-buying inflatable rubber craft from China that have less carrying capacity and are more limited by sea conditions. In other words, they are more unsafe. Smugglers are often connected to militias who provide quite a lot of money to the local community, thereby becoming major players in Libyan politics. As EU borders become more challenging to navigate, migrants will be more likely to turn to smugglers to facilitate their illegal crossings and criminal gangs are likely to be boosted, not deterred. In addition, plans to return fleeing refugees to war-torn Libya are likely to escalate the death toll even further. Libya is a country that is divided, which cannot guarantee human rights, which has produced hundreds of thousands of displaced people. If the concern is to prevent deaths, then safe passage should be promoted rather than send people back home or diverting them so that they have to seek longer and more dangerous routes. Dinghies are also a ploy by smugglers who are aware that the migrants they send off have a chance of being picked up by European vessels. They are setting out in boats that are designed to sink. The high loss of life comes despite a large overall fall this year in the number of people seeking to cross the Mediterranean to Europe. An agreement between Turkey and the European Union to halt migrants from travelling to Greek islands has drastically reduced the number of boat arrivals there. But there has been a traffic increase on the highly perilous journey between North Africa and Italy. Too many migrants are fleeing war or persecution or seeking a better life. Almost everyone rescued today says their families paid large sums of money - as much as $5,000 - to smugglers. For many, the money was their life savings. As long as there is need for asylum from refugees and demand from economic migrants, the business of people smuggling will continue to exist and the smugglers will adapt to changing circumstances.
