{"id":12145,"date":"2017-11-29T06:50:58","date_gmt":"2017-11-29T06:50:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/?p=12145"},"modified":"2017-11-29T06:50:58","modified_gmt":"2017-11-29T06:50:58","slug":"more-than-3000-refugees-died-in-mediterranean-this-year-iom-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/more-than-3000-refugees-died-in-mediterranean-this-year-iom-says\/","title":{"rendered":"More than 3,000 refugees died in Mediterranean this year, IOM says"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Over 3,000 refugees have died crossing the Mediterranean in a desperate bid to reach Europe\u2019s shores since the start of the year, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) says.<\/p>\n

William Lacy Swing, the IOM director general, said in a statement in the Swiss city of Geneva on Tuesday that the 3,033 deaths happened across three main sea routes in the Mediterranean.<\/p>\n

“That mark (was) probably passed sometime over last weekend,” when more than 30 migrants died off the coast of Libya, the official added.<\/p>\n

“We\u2019ve been saying this for years and we\u2019ll keep on saying it: It\u2019s no longer enough to simply count these tragic statistics. We must also act.”<\/p>\n

The latest figure so far represents a 40-percent drop compared to last year\u2019s record of 5,000 drownings.<\/p>\n

The number of refugees who have arrived in Europe this year is less than half of last year\u2019s total of 348,000.<\/p>\n

The flow has been stemmed by controversial deals between the European Union, Turkey and Libya. The\u00a028-nation bloc\u00a0has been desperate to slow the refugee influx via these two main routes,<\/p>\n

The United Nations has, however, denounced as “inhuman” the EU\u2019s cooperation with Libya.<\/p>\n

The refugees are being held in “horrific” prisons and have even been auctioned off as slaves across the North African country.<\/p>\n

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has recently said that the reported auctions of African refugees in Libya as slaves amount\u00a0to \u201ccrimes against humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
<\/p>\n
PressTV-UN: Libya slave auctions \u2018crime against humanity\u2019<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The UN chief calls for probe into the reported sales of African refugees in Libya, saying the transactions may amount to “crimes against humanity.”<\/p><\/div>\n

In October, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) warned that thousands of Libyan refugees were living in dire conditions in a hub to the west of the capital Tripoli, saying they could be exposed to abuse on a shocking scale.<\/p>\n

Libya, gripped by chaos and lawlessness since the fall of dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, was the main embarkation point for mostly African refugees seeking to head to Europe until recently.<\/p>\n

Europe is facing an influx of refugees, who are fleeing conflict-ridden zones in North Africa and the Middle East, particularly Syria. More than 1.5 million people have reached Europe since 2015.<\/p>\n

Many blame major European powers for the unprecedented exodus, saying their policies have led to a surge in terrorism and war in those regions, forcing more people to flee their homes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

https:\/\/t.me\/wilayahinfo<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over 3,000 refugees have died crossing the Mediterranean in a desperate bid to reach Europe\u2019s shores since the start of the year, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) says. William Lacy Swing, the IOM director general, said in a statement in the Swiss city of Geneva on Tuesday that the 3,033 deaths happened across three …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":12146,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-news-and-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12145"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12147,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12145\/revisions\/12147"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}