A survey of recent data suggests that all the migrant smuggling routes across the Mediterranean now lead to Turkey and via the Greek Turkish border to Greece from which migrants then hope to cross further to Italy and other EU countries.
It has been already a few years since Spain has pursued a long term strategy of cooperation and aid for development towards not only Morocco but also Senegal, Mauritania and other countries of West Africa with a view to enrolling their cooperation in controlling irregular transit migration from their coast to the Canary islands and Spain. This strategy has been proven successful and along with the Integrated System of Border Vigilance (SIVE) has largely prevented irregular migration towards Spain.
Italy has recently (in May 2009) signed an agreement with Libya to enroll the cooperation of Libyan authorities in stopping dinghies from leaving the coast near Tripolis where migrants and smugglers used to gather and prepare for the crossing. This agreement has been particularly effective although it is heavily criticised by the UNHCR authorities in Italy and elsewhere and by many NGOs because Libya does not guarantee the human rights of the returning irregular migrants, who are generally subjected to inhuman treatment and held in detention without trial.
The stopping of the flows across the Mediterranean has led to the Turkey-Greece corridor having become the only path to… Europe! The situation is critical since the Evros crossing is overcrowded, police detention facilites are inadequate, while smugglers continue to make money, almost without any hindrance. The BBC documentary is telling of the crisis that Greece is facing and the inadequacy of the measures taken including the still non functioning system of asylum. Even if the documentary includes some gross exaggerations such as the statement that Greece hosts up to 2 million irregular migrants (Greece has only 11 million inhabitants in total – could it possibly be that 1 every 5 people residing in Greece is an irregular migrant?) it unfortunately provides for a bleak albeit realistic picture of what is the fate of the irregular migrants and asylum seekers crossing the Greek borders and/or suviving in Athens.
A handful of right wing extremists have actually been mobilising since the summer 2009 and particularly the last summer chasing migrants out of the inner city neighbourhoods through violent means. Indeed the issue of irregular migrant and asylum seeking families in need of support and protection (they will not disappear overnight no matter how violent the extreme right wing groups will become) will be one of the hot issues that the Mayor of Athens (to be elected on the local/regional election of 7 November 2011) will have to deal with. Hopefully instead of ‘clean(s)ing’ the city the new Mayor will consider the human rights of all and in particular the rights of the children of irregular migrant and asylum seeking families.
Anna Triandafyllidou and Thanos Maroukis are preparing a new book on Migrant Smuggling Across the Mediterranean, to be published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2011. The book provides new data and critical insights analysing the dynamics of migrant smuggling across the MEditerranean with a special focus to the Turkey-Greece path via the islands and the Evros land border.