Can human empathy triumph over fearful 'security'?—at a pro-migrant demonstration in Lausanne. Flickr / Gustave Deghilage. Some rights reserved.
After a record number of migrants died in the Mediterranean in 2014, yet another incident has claimed 300 lives, including 29 who died from hypothermia on board Italian coastguard vessels. In the week from 13 February, at least 3,800 were rescued.
In the absence of political will to overhaul Europe’s flawed migration policies, interested organisations and migrants’ rights advocates responded to this most recent incident with calls for improved search-and-rescue operations. Joint Operation Triton, under the aegis of the EU agency Frontex, has been criticised for not focusing on saving migrants’ lives since the Italian-led search-and-rescue Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) ended in November 2014.
