{"id":25314,"date":"2016-05-13T05:50:48","date_gmt":"2016-05-13T05:50:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/eu-mission-failing-to-disrupt-people-smuggling\/"},"modified":"2016-05-13T05:50:39","modified_gmt":"2016-05-13T05:50:39","slug":"eu-mission-failing-to-disrupt-people-smuggling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/eu-mission-failing-to-disrupt-people-smuggling\/","title":{"rendered":"EU mission ‘failing’ to disrupt people-smuggling from Libya"},"content":{"rendered":"

{The EU naval mission to tackle people smuggling in the central Mediterranean is failing to achieve its aims, a British parliamentary committee says.}<\/p>\n

In a report, the House of Lords EU Committee says Operation Sophia does not “in any meaningful way” disrupt smugglers’ boats.<\/p>\n

The destruction of wooden boats has forced the smugglers to use rubber dinghies, putting migrants at even greater risk, the document says.<\/p>\n

Operation Sophia began in June 2015, as the wars in Syria and Iraq fuelled an unprecedented flow of refugees from the Middle East to Europe.<\/p>\n

But the majority leaving Libya – itself wracked by fighting and human rights abuses – are migrants from sub-Saharan Africa.<\/p>\n

The operation was launched in the wake of a series of disasters in which hundreds of migrants drowned while trying to cross from Libya to Italy.<\/p>\n

The numbers risking their lives on the Libya-Italy route have been increasing, while the numbers reaching the Greek islands from Turkey have dropped.<\/p>\n

An EU agreement with Turkey to intercept migrant boats in the Aegean Sea and send many migrants back took effect in March.<\/p>\n

Last year the EU authorised its vessels to board, search, seize and divert vessels suspected of being used for people smuggling in the central Mediterranean.<\/p>\n

Judge Phineas Mojapelo’s decision could lead to a court case lasting up to 10 years, the BBC’s Nomsa Maseko reports from Johannesburg.<\/p>\n

But the former miners are still hopeful that the case could help improve their lives as well as those of their families, our reporter says.<\/p>\n

Among the defendants in the case are Anglo American, AngloGold Ashanti, Gold Fields, Harmony Gold, Sibanye Gold and African Rainbow Minerals, the Reuters news agency reports.<\/p>\n

{{‘Responding to symptoms’}}<\/p>\n

The House of Lords report states that “the arrests made to date have been of low-level targets, while the destruction of vessels has simply caused the smugglers to shift from using wooden boats to rubber dinghies, which are even more unsafe”.<\/p>\n

It says that there are also “significant limits to the intelligence that can be collected about onshore smuggling networks from the high seas”.<\/p>\n

“There is therefore little prospect of Operation Sophia overturning the business model of people smuggling,” the document concludes.<\/p>\n

It adds that the mission is still operating out in international waters, and not – as originally intended – in Libyan waters.<\/p>\n

The weakness of the Libyan state is seen by the report’s authors as another key factor.<\/p>\n

They say the absence of a formal invitation from Libya is preventing European Nato members from launching a military intervention, aimed at tackling the threat posed to Libya – and the wider region – by so-called Islamic State.<\/p>\n

“However valuable as a search and rescue mission, Operation Sophia does not, and, we argue, cannot deliver its mandate. It responds to symptoms, not causes.”<\/p>\n

The report also urges the EU to urgently develop a strategy aimed at tackling the root causes of mass migration.<\/p>\n

The mission is named after a baby born on an EU ship that rescued her mother off the coast of Libya in August 2015.<\/p>\n

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

{The EU naval mission to tackle people smuggling in the central Mediterranean is failing to achieve its aims, a British parliamentary committee says.} In a report, the House of Lords EU Committee says Operation Sophia does not “in any meaningful way” disrupt smugglers’ boats. The destruction of wooden boats has forced the smugglers to use […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-25314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25314\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25314"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=25314"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=25314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}