‘Refugees, illegal migration to Europe drop by 74%’

The Director of UNHCR’s Europe Bureau, Pascale Moreau, has disclosed a decrease in illegal migration from Libya to Italy since July 2017.

He revealed this in the 2018 UNHCR report released in Geneva yesterday.

According to him: “This decrease of refugees and migrants continued in the first three months of 2018 with a 74 per cent drop, compared to last year’s figure.”

He said the journey to Italy was increasingly perilous, even as death rate has increased to one, for every 14 people in the first three months of 2018.

This, he said contrasted the picture in 2017, which was one for every 29 people in the same period.

The report noted that in the past months, there has also been deterioration in the health of new arrivals from Libya, with more people arriving extremely weak and thin.

The report said: “There was a rise in arrivals to Spain and Greece in the latter part of 2017.

“Due to heightened restrictions in Hungary, many refugees and migrants resorted to alternative routes to move across Europe.”

It added that some migrants cross from Serbia to Romania, while others move from Greece through Albania, Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina to Croatia.

“Women, especially those traveling on their own, and unaccompanied children have remained particularly exposed to risks of sexual and gender-based violence along the routes and in some locations within Europe,” the report said.