“There is a tendency among European countries,” remarked Vatican Secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, last month, “to encourage their counterparts on the Southern coasts of the Mediterranean to effect more rigid controls on migrants.” He further noted that interceptions and decentralizations violate some fundamental human rights, including the opportunity for those fleeing from persecution to express their claims.

Many of the migrants, refugees and asylum seekers involved in maritime migration situations are victims of violence or trauma: men, women and children who have suffered countless abuses en route, been beaten, stabbed, drugged, raped, starved or thirsted to near death, asphyxiated or been thrown overboard. Many others, including especially children, have witnessed these atrocities being committed against members of their family and other fellow migrants.

“What is needed is commitment and a standard of regular, better-resourced and universal humanitarian response,” remarked ICMC Head of Policy, John Bingham. “At the heart of the DRIVE project is a sense of the urgency in these situations, and a real determination to increase the capacity of European stakeholders to identify and refer refugees and those in need of protection to protection-sensitive processes.”

The new 15-month project entitled, “DRIVE Referral (Transnational NGO Cooperation in Differentiation, Refugee Identification and Vulnerability Evaluations for Referral)” engages eight national and international NGOs (ACCEM, CEAR, CIR, ECRE, JRS Malta, ICMC, Praksis and Save the Children Italy) in concentrated efforts to strengthen international networking, compile a collection of good practices and develop training and practical mechanisms for differentiation and referral specific to boat arrivals in Greece, Italy, Malta and Spain.

The project will further build upon ICMC’s experience in facilitating refugee status determination, pre-screening and registration through the ICMC-UNHCR Resettlement Deployment Scheme, which, since 1998, has deployed over 500 experts and assessed more than 500,000 refugees, including in Malta, where ICMC resettlement experts have worked since 2007.

In addition to actively involving local NGOs, the DRIVE project counts with the additional collaboration the Council of Europe, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) at national and international levels.

Mediterranean: Need to ensure reception, identification and referral of ‘boat people’ urgent (948.95 KB)