The unending deaths of Africans on the Mediterranean

THE Mediterranean Sea, the ever blue waters connecting Africa to Europe via Libya, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria, is gradually proving to be the graveyard of the continent’s vastly disillusioned people, mostly youths seeking greener pastures away from a hostile and predatory environment. Only recently, about 120 Africans were reported to have drowned in a dinghy on the Mediterranean as they made for Europe through Libya. It is actually difficult to obtain precise figures about these compulsive and suicidal migrants considering the context and circumstances in which their journeys are usually made, but it is not difficult to place the desperation which fuels the bid to escape from a land which ordinarily should be their comfort zone in context, even when the expeditions guarantee certain death.

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With Libya, a failed state being for many the route to Europe and the proverbial good life, these migrants go through extreme conditions of hostility and abuse to arrive at the point of departure. They suffer enslavement, torture and rape without respite. Earlier in the year, 62 people were reported to have died on this mission of seeking asylum in Europe and then later, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said that 117 migrants who left Libya in a rubber dinghy could not be accounted for. This was after the rescue of three people from a vessel that sank in the Mediterranean.

The three survivors told IOM that 120 of them had left Garabuli in Libya. According to them, the boat started sinking after about 11 hours at sea and people started drowning. IOM spokesman, Flavio Di Giacomo, said the ill-fated travellers came mainly from West Africa, adding “ten women, including a pregnant girl, were aboard, together with two children, one of whom was only two months old.” An Italian military plane on sea patrol had first sighted the dinghy sinking in rough waters and had thrown two safety rafts into the water before leaving due to the lack of fuel. Such was the sad narrative of the dangerous and desperate odyssey undertaken by these migrants that did not exempt even infants from the derring-do.

Most European countries on the receiving end of this migration have been placed at their wit’s end. Out of love and compassion for humanity, they resist the natural urge to refuse the migrants entry because of their illegal status. For the most part, they have been kind, even considerate enough to offer medical services to the survivors. But the influx of desperate migrants and the pressure  on the facilities available are becoming unbearable. Truth be told, people from other continents do not die in their droves on the Mediterranean. But Africa, because of its legendarily bad and incompetent leadership, has denied its citizens of the right to human dignity, turning them into the wretched of the earth. It is no wonder then that Africans are scorned and treated like scum in many places.

It is imperative that the various governments on the African continent under the aegis of the African Union (AU) step up their acts. They should make the continent less hostile and more commodious. The United Nations (UN) recently warned that the situation in Libya deserved urgent attention because of the anarchy there. With the absence of law and order, different warlords take charge of different territories, re-enacting the Hobbesian state of nature. The desperation to dare the absence of law and order in Libya and leave the continent at all costs should cause the various governments on the continent to take the issue of governance more seriously. Many of these migrants even board rudderless boats in their escape mission, hinging their hope on the kindness of the European authorities.

Occasionally, they are fortunate enough to receive such help, but oftentimes, they don’t get that lucky. They drown miserably. Yet these deaths have failed to deter others who see the trip as their last hope for a better life. In the hopeless embrace of the Mediterranean, these migrants know that except the European authorities come to their rescue, they are due for instantaneous death. Yet they continue in their quest. The deaths on the Mediterranean are the shame of Africa and the various governments on the continent should take urgent steps to address  the menace.