Human tragedy continues with rising Mediterranean immigrant entries

While European countries have searched for ways to handle asylum seekers, 13,924 immigrants have entered the EU by sea so far in 2017, with "75 percent arriving in Italy and the rest in Greece and Spain. This compares with 105,427 through the first 53 days of 2016," according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

"Across the entire region, deaths at sea stand now at 366 men, women and children, compared with 425 at this time in 2016. Another factor in these statistics: traffic between Turkey and Greece, which claimed 321 lives during the first 53 days of 2016, has virtually ceased. This year IOM has recorded just two deaths on the Eastern Mediterranean route. These data include the death toll reported this week from a boat with as many as 133 passengers on board that foundered off Az Zawiyah, near Tripoli in Sunday (19/2)."

The Organization's Rome chapter reports that 10,701 immigrants arrived in Italy before the end of February, which represents a "significant increase" compared to the same time period for both 2015 and 2016.

The IOM says that the increased entries are also behind the increased death tolls in the Mediterranean compared to other time periods.After the most recent incident in Libya, which had a high death toll, "IOM Libya reported Friday that a total of 2,265 migrants had been rescued at sea off Libya since the first of the year, while 131 bodies had been recovered. An unknown number of victims remain missing."Frontex reports that in 2016 there were 500,248 irregular entries, while there were 283,175 in 2014 and 1,822,260 irregular entries in 2016 from all routes.

The United Nations Human Rights Commission, which has been tracking immigrant and asylum seeker movement, reports that over 3740 had perished crossing the Mediterranean in 2016, "just short of the 3,771 reported for the whole of 2015."

UNHCR spokesman William Spindler said in a press briefing in Geneva last October that "People smugglers are today often using lower-quality vessels – flimsy inflatable rafts that often do not last the journey. Several incidents seem to be connected with travel during bad weather."

He also explained that the smugglers were using vessels to transport immigrants that were way over-capacitated and over-encumbered which resulted in a lot of them sinking in the waters of turbulent seas. Most arrivals in Italy now come from North and Sub-Saharan Africa and it is believed that most are unable to swim, resulting in even more fatalities.