A resolution encouraging the Union to send ships and resources to help people in the Mediterranean has been approved by the European Parliament.
African experts have told RT that a search and rescue campaign organized by the EU in the Mediterranean, which is supported by the European Parliament, would address the effects of the migrant crisis but not its roots.
MEPs passed a resolution earlier this week calling for a coordinated EU-wide operation in which member states and Frontex, the bloc’s border agency, would offer “sufficient capacity in terms of vessels, equipment, and personnel” to save people from the Middle East and Africa who are attempting to travel to Europe by boat.
The action came after one of the biggest disasters ever to affect the Mediterranean migrant route, in which more than 300 people perished when an overloaded fishing trawler drowned off the coast of Greece in the middle of June.
Sidylamine Bagayoko, a political analyst in Mali, cautioned that if carried out, an EU-led rescue effort may actually boost migrant flows to Europe because people would think it was safer to attempt the passage by water.
Although the European Parliament may propose numerous resolutions, he claimed that each EU member state “separately… has their own politics of rescuing migrants.”
The expert said, “Sometimes they just want to leave the migrants alone because they’ll see that if there are more and more fatalities this will deter the migrants from following the route to go to Europe.”
Usman Ayuo, a human rights campaigner from Nigeria, called the European Parliament’s proposal “a good idea.” He did, however, add that for the rescue operation to be successful, the EU will require assistance. According to Ayuo, “It must be [implemented] in partnership with the governments [of the countries] where the migrants are from.”
Bagayoko claims that the migration is a result of poverty, climatic conditions, and wars in the less developed nations. He stated that if the EU concentrated on aiding those countries in resolving their issues, then their citizens “would not have to flee to Europe and [would not] have to perish in the Mediterranean Sea.”
