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'A Global Failure': UN Says 7,667 People Died or Went Missing on Migration Routes in 2025
"These deaths are not inevitable," said the International Organization for Migration's leader. "When safe pathways are out of reach, people are forced into dangerous journeys and into the hands of smugglers and traffickers."
Feb 26, 2026
A United Nations organization announced Thursday that at least 7,667 people died or went missing on migration routes worldwide last year—or around 21 migrants per day—but "the real toll is likely higher."
"Sea crossings remained among the deadliest routes," according to the International Organization for Migration. IOM found that at least 2,185 people died or went missing in the Mediterranean Sea, and another 1,214 on the Western Africa/Atlantic route toward the Canary Islands.
Nearly two months into a new year, the trend in the Mediterranean has persisted. IOM pointed to the "unprecedented number of migrant deaths in the first two months of 2026, with 606 recorded" as of Tuesday.
"The continued loss of life on migration routes is a global failure we cannot accept as normal," said IOM Director General Amy Pope in a statement. "These deaths are not inevitable. When safe pathways are out of reach, people are forced into dangerous journeys and into the hands of smugglers and traffickers."
"We must act now to expand safe and regular routes, and ensure people in need can be reached and protected, regardless of their status," Pope asserted.
Despite such calls, the European Union has worked to curb migration to the continent with its Pact on Migration and Asylum—which has been condemned as a "bow to right-wing extremists and fascists," and is set to take effect next June—and the related "return regulation" that the Council of the EU finalized in December.
"The EU is legitimizing offshore prisons, racial profiling, and child detention in ways we have never seen," Sarah Chander, director at the Equinox Initiative for Racial Justice, said of the council's move last year. "Instead of finding ways to ensure safety and protection for everybody, the EU is pushing a punishment regime for migrants, which will help no one."
Reporting on the new IOM data, Politico noted Thursday:
The EU's priority now is "about bringing illegal arrivals to a minimum and keeping those numbers there," Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner said when presenting the bloc's migration strategy in January.
That's "not as an end in itself," he said, but reduces pressure on EU countries, prevents abuse, reinforces people's trust in the EU, and helps save lives. "Any smuggling trip prevented is potentially a life which we save."
As a next step, the EU "must address migration along the whole route," including by ensuring protection for people in need "closer to the point of departure," Brunner said.
Meanwhile, in the Americas, US President Trump returned to power in early 2025, having campaigned on a promise of mass deportations. He's aimed to deliver on the pledge by deploying federal agents to various cities, where they have terrorized immigrants and citizens alike with civil rights violations and, in some cases, fatal shootings.
IOM only recorded 409 deaths in the Americas last year, the lowest annual total since its data collection began in 2014. The organization said that "this is likely due to fewer people taking dangerous irregular pathways, such as crossing the Darien Jungle or the US-Mexico border. However, lags in reporting from officials means that the figures for 2025 in the Americas likely will not be finalized until mid-2026."
The overall figure is also down, from nearly 9,200 in 2024. However, IOM explained that "the decline reflects fewer people attempting dangerous irregular migration routes, particularly in the Americas, but is also due to restricted access to information and funding constraints for humanitarian actors documenting migrant deaths on key routes."
IOM called for "urgent funding to strengthen data collection to better guide the humanitarian system in delivering lifesaving responses."
Reuters highlighted that "the Geneva‑based organization is among several aid groups hit by major US funding cuts, forcing it to scale back or close programs in ways it says will severely impact migrants."
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In Act of 'Brutal Sadism,' Israel Bans Gazans From Entering Sea Under Pain of Death
"This is not about security," said the head of Gaza's fishers' union. "It's economic, social, and psychological warfare, a weapon of slow, deliberate suffocation."
Jul 14, 2025
Israel has warned Gazans to stay out of the Mediterranean Sea or risk getting killed under wartime restrictions that critics say serve no security purpose and are meant to deprive Palestinians of a key source of sustenance—and respite from the horrific realities of 21 months of constant death and destruction.
"Strict security restrictions have been imposed in the maritime area adjacent to Gaza—entry to the sea is prohibited," Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Arabic language spokesperson Avichay Adraee wrote on the social media site X Saturday. "This is a call to fishermen, swimmers, and divers—refrain from entering the sea. Entering the beach and waters along the entire Gaza Strip endangers your lives."
While Israel has imposed a maritime blockade on Gaza since 2007 following Hamas' victory in legislative elections and subsequent takeover of the coastal enclave, restrictions were tightened after the October 7, 2023 attack as part of the "complete siege" that has caused deadly malnutrition throughout the strip, where Israel's 646-day U.S.-backed onslaught has left more than 211,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
However, the IDF appears to have not enforced the post-October 7 ban on entering the sea against swimmers and bathers. Only Palestinian fishers have been targeted, with more than 210 killed since October 2023, according to United Nations data.
"We live off the sea. If there's no fishing, we don't eat," Munthir Ayash, a 52-year-old fisher from Gaza City, told the Emirati newspaper The National Monday. "Me, my five sons, and their families—45 people in total—depend entirely on the sea. With it closed, we face starvation."
It is unclear why the IDF issued Saturday's warning, which came amid excessive heat warnings as temperatures rose to over 30°C (86°F). With Gaza's infrastructure obliterated by 21 months of Israeli onslaught and safe running water in severe shortage, the Mediterranean Sea provided a place to cool off and clean up.
"I used to go every day. The sea was where I bathed, where I relaxed, where I ran from the horror of war," Ibrahim Dawla, a 26-year-old Palestinian man forcibly displaced from Gaza City's Zaytun, told The National. "Now even that's gone."
Rajaa Qudeih, a 31-year-old mother of two from Deir al-Balah, told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz Sunday: "I'm literally dizzy from hunger, thirst, and the heat. Gaza is going through the worst famine, we haven't eaten, and we can't even find a piece of bread."
"The sea was the only outlet left. If they kill us for going there, maybe that would be easier than this slow death," she continued. "Still, I fear for my children. My oldest is 9. How can I convince him that swimming in the sea could get him killed?"
"We are camped by the sea," Qudeih added. "Where else can we go? Are they going to ban the air from us next?"
The IDF claims the maritime blockade is a security measure aimed at preventing weapons from being smuggled into Gaza.
However, Zakaria Bakr, head of the Palestinian Fishermen's Syndicate in Gaza, and many other residents of the embattled enclave believe there is another reason why Israel is prohibiting them from entering the sea.
"This is not about security. It's economic, social, and psychological warfare; a weapon of slow, deliberate suffocation," he told The National.
Dawla said that "people here die a million times every hour; we needed the sea just to feel human again, even if only for a few minutes. And they knew that. That's why they shut it down."
"We called it our last breathing space. We knew it was dangerous, but it was the only place we had left," he added. Now, "I haven't gone for two days. None of my friends have either. We're all afraid we'll be shot just for standing there."
Ayash said of Israel: "They want to take everything. They want to erase us."
"But the sea is ours," he added. "The land is ours. No matter how hard they try, it will stay ours."
Palestine defenders around the world also condemned the IDF policy.
"There can be no possible military or security reason for banning the people of Gaza from entering the sea—except to satisfy the brutal sadism of the IDF," argued Australian journalist and commentator Mike Carlton.
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Restorative Archaeology? Time to Return Looted Treasures to Sardinia
A range of voices continue to demand the return of the island's looted treasures from private and public venues, including the British Museum in London.
Jun 28, 2025
When the small statues of a 3,000-year-old Bronze Age priestess and her archer protector take the stage at a Christie's auction next week in London, the Nurnet nonprofit organization in Sardinia plans to make their own bid to bring the sacred bronze pieces back home.
Despite decades of protests against the sale of the island's patrimony, where thousands of UNESCO-recognized Nuragic tower complexes attest to Sardinia's central role in the Mediterranean Sea during the Bronze Age, 2,000 years before the rise of the Roman Empire, a range of voices continue to demand the return of the island's looted treasures from private and public venues, including the British Museum in London.
"We think that the purchase could be of interest to the entire Sardinian community of enthusiasts," the all-volunteer organization Nurnet said in a statement, in launching a GoFundMe campaign for the auction. °The institutions do not have regulations that allow them to intervene in the short term and allocate the funds. We decided to intervene, with the savings of the members and the help of enthusiasts."
The history of Sardinia, especially the extraordinary findings from its Nuragic civilization in the Bronze Age, remains in a state of eternal recovery.
The Sardinian group successfully purchased four bronze pieces in 2015 at a similar auction, and then donated them to a local museum.
Last week, in fact, the Monte Prama Fondation, which has recently gained international attention for its 50-year restoration of massive stone giant sculptures from the Bronze Age, called on the British Museum to repatriate thousands of ancient Punic gold jewelry and Nuragic items that had been notoriously raided in the 19th century.
Despite the massive hoard of artifacts, which have been documented in various reports and a 270-page book, only a handful are on display at the London museum, while the rest have remained in storage for over a century.
While the British Museum Act of 1963 forbids the return of artifacts obtained by the institution, critics point to the museum's ability to "loan" their treasures back to the host country.
"Returning the bronzetti," Nurnet pointed out, "is also a way to tell a beautiful Sardinia story, to bring this work of art back to domu sua," the Sardinian language for "home."
For Nurnet advocates and other Sardinian groups, the extraordinary detective work of a Sardinian policeman and actions of the Cleveland Museum could serve as an example for the British Museum and other institutions.
In fact, the bronze priestess on sale at Christie's next week shares a common origin—the shadowy Switzerland art market in the 1990s.
On a recent trip to the Ferruccio Berreca Archaeological Museum in Sant'Antioco, I visited a small bronze archer in a glass case, straddling the piece of stone, with two long unwieldy horns thrusting up on his helmet, as if challenging anyone to a charge. Yet, this miniature figure in bronze, a little over eight inches tall, which was tall for the rest of the pieces in the Bronze Age collection, stood there with a gesture of confidence, his hand outstretched in an offering, as if willing to tell the story of his twisted journey.
Centuries before Homer composed The Odyssey, the Sardinians cast miniature bronzes or bronzetti, including ships, among hundreds of other types of bronze pieces. They were vessels of stories. Found mainly in sacred water temples or a rare tomb, they served as exquisite votive offerings dating back to the 12th or 11th centuries B.C.
In 1865, a shepherd uncovered a trove of bronzetti at the Nuragic sanctuary site of Abini in the heart of the central mountains, including an otherworldly figure with four arms and four eyes, with two long horns jutting from its helmet, holding the two round shields that some associated with the ancient Shardana or "People of the Sea" that arrived in Egypt, while others believed it referred to Plato's Symposium on the original four-eyed humans divided in half by Zeus.
These tiny artifacts, often no more than 5-12 inches, spread across sacred sites on the island, including the most remote uplands, and then crossed over the sea into Etruscan tombs, at numerous sites in Tuscany, Lazio, and Apuglia. They journeyed along the Italian boot of civilizations, entering the Greek Sanctuary of Hera Lacinia at the tip of Calabria, on the Ionian Sea, on the eastern coast of Italy.
Each one of these boats, like the hundreds that remained behind in Sardinia, observed archaeologist Fulvia Lo Schiavo, was "not only a work of refined artistic craftsmanship and a precious and sacred object," but it was also "in itself a story and a message," following its own cosmology and narrative.
The Cleveland Museum had hailed one bronzetti figure as an "exceptionally fine example" of bronze work in the lost-wax method, produced by "a rather mysterious group of people who lived in Sardinia in the first millennium B.C. and who left no written records." In the catalog of their notable acquisitions in 1991, the American museum dated the artifact back to the ninth century B.C. They called it "the warrior," and used it as the logo for a section in the museum.
Anyone in Sardinia would have called it "the archer," given the extraordinary longbow hanging off the shoulder of the figure, the distinctive arm guard on the left forearm, a quiver for the arrows on his back. At least, that's what Lieutenant Roberto Lai thought when he saw the Polaroid photo of the bronze figure for the first time. Serving with the heritage protection unit of the Carabiniere police, Lai had been placed in charge of sorting through a treasure trove of documents and artifacts traced to a notorious trafficker of art in Basel, Switzerland in the mid-1990s.
Thanks to two strange, fatal car crashes in Sardinia over a 10-year period, both of which left behind briefcases of cash, diaries with addresses of clandestine diggers and their contacts, and a chart of acquisitions, Lai was able to connect the dots with the infamous Swiss brigand and his warehouse.
Turning over the photo of the archer, Lai got the surprise of a lifetime. "Grutt'e Acqua" was scrawled across the back, tracing the piece to its origins at the 1500 B.C. Nuragic site on the smaller island of Sant'Antioco, where Lai had grown up. It was neither "mysterious," that fulsome code word often trotted out to cover a lack of historical inquiry, nor legally acquired, in Lai's view.
Lai knew the legacy of the nuraghe at Grutt'e Acqua or Grutti 'e Acqua, variously translated as "the grottoes of water," or "the grottoes and water," was not just a pile of rocks, but an intricate architectural wonder of waterways and millennial planning. But he wasn't alone.
The tomb raider also knew, like any shepherd in Sardinia, that the ornate water temples or sacred wells nearby housed the bronze sculptures that had been left as communal offerings. Trudging up my same path, the raider most likely bypassed the Nuragic reservoir that sat at the basin of the hill, a green pool encased by small boulders with the mystic air of a lake in the woods.
"Electrified" by the discovery of the photo and its connection to his island, Lai followed the trail left by the trafficker, his Polaroid in hand, only to come up empty-handed with its match to any institution or collector. Where had the archer gone? No final receipts of his transactions were to be found. The cultural heritage detective didn't give up. Over the next few years, he obsessively dug through any announcements or catalogs or listings at museums, auctions, and private collections with artifacts from Sardinia and Italy. The collections were endless. They still are today.
An entire book on ancient Sardinian artifacts behind lock and key at the British Museum dated back to "boatloads" of "very remarkable" items that had been plundered at 36 tombs in the 1850s. Much of it came from the Tharros and Mont'e Prama areas. The British Museum had its own Sardinian archer, too, though he dramatically drew back his arrow, as if to protect himself. The Getty Museum in Los Angeles featured its Nuragic archer, though it differed in the details. In 1990, The New York Times featured a show at the Merrin Gallery in New York City: "Bronzes Conjure Up Images of a Fabled Past." It included the "raw power" of a Nuragic priest from the ninth century B.C. (The Merrin Gallery would be embroiled in fraud and the acquisition of "questionable antiquities" for years.)
In fact, hardly any major archaeological museum didn't have artifacts from the Bronze Age in Sardinia. While Christie's famous auction house once called off a million-dollar auction for a 4,000-year-old stone carving from the island in 2014, after the Italian police objected to the "robbery of the heritage and civilization of Sardinia," it still continues to peddle Sardinian bronzes. One five-inch Nuragic figure from the Bronze Age went for $125,000 in 2017. It also came from a private dealer in Switzerland.
The trafficking of these prized pieces, among other riches, was an old tradition, of course, dating back to the Roman period. In 1365, the governor of Cagliari brought ancient jewels dug up from a prehistoric site to the Court of Spain, as an elaborate offering from the island. The honeycombing of ruins was so bad that a law was passed in 1481 to stop the digging for treasure, especially among the clergy.
Not just for jewels. By the mid-16th century, a common proverb recounted how the stone walls of the Nuragic, Phoenician, and Roman city of Tharros were "transported away in cartloads." In 1851, the pioneering archeologist and clergyman Giovanni Spano called on government officials to protect the prehistoric sites, which he feared had fallen into the hands of "other people who will not know how to appreciate them."
In 1923, National Geographic magazine lamented the national pasttime of tomb raiders and archaeological thieves in Sardinia, as if the craze hadn't let up. Even the Nazis craved Sardinian artifacts. During a visit to the island in the late 1930s, Adolf Hitler's deputy Hermann Göering attempted to take a priceless glass-beaded necklace that had been recently excavated at a Punic necropolis dating to 300 B.C.
One evening, scrolling online, doing his usual regimen of going museum by museum, the Sardinian detective landed on the Cleveland Museum of Art site. He was stunned by the match. It was the archer in his Polaroid.
It took 18 months of high-level negotiations, including the involvement of the attorney general in Ohio, but the Sardinians managed to convince the American museum to return the stolen artifact. In exchange, in fact, the Italian government had to agree to two conditions: that the archer, among other stolen goods, would be returned to its native place, and that Italy would loan 13 exhibits of similar value for the next 25 years.
When the archer finally arrived at the Ferruccio Barreca Archaeological Museum in Sant'Antioco in 2009, Lai stood by for its installation. The archer's placement in that little glass case was deceiving with its significance. The detective would eventually write a book, as well as a graphic novel, on the true crime adventure, as well as other histories of Sant'Antioco. Lai declared the Nuragic archer had returned to "where history had placed it."
Or recovered it, perhaps. Just like the Nurnet effort today with the bronze figures at the Christie's auction.
In effect, their campaign amounts to a new trend that should be called "restorative archaeology." In a period of cultural revival, it speaks to the process of "re-storying" the island and its history.
Meanwhile, the history of Sardinia, especially the extraordinary findings from its Nuragic civilization in the Bronze Age, remains in a state of eternal recovery.
At least until tomb raiders, and institutions like the British Museum, follow the example of the Cleveland Museum.
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'Unacceptable Tragedy': 10,000+ Migrants Died Trying to Reach Spain This Year
"These figures are evidence of a profound failure of rescue and protection systems," said one campaigner.
Dec 26, 2024
More than 10,000 migrants died while trying to reach Spain this year—a more than 50% increase from 2023—according to a Spanish advocacy group's annual report published this week.
The NGO Caminando Fronteras (Walking Borders) said in its Monitoring the Right to Life—2024 report that 10,457 migrants died en route to Spain via the Atlantic Ocean or the Mediterranean Sea this year. Victims included 1,538 children and adolescents and 421 women. Victims hailed from 28 mostly African nations, with some coming from as far afield as Iraq and Pakistan.
"These figures are evidence of a profound failure of rescue and protection systems," the group's founder, Helena Maleno, said in a statement. "More than 10,400 people dead or missing in a single year is an unacceptable tragedy."
Walking Borders said its report "documents the deadliest period on record, with devastating figures averaging 30 deaths a day," up from an average of 18 deaths per day in 2023.
Estás cifras son el horror 👇🏾
[image or embed]
— Helena Maleno Garzón (@helenamaleno.bsky.social) December 26, 2024 at 12:06 AM
According to the report:
The Atlantic route, with 9,757 deaths, remains the deadliest in the world. Tragedies have increased, especially on the Mauritanian route, consolidating this country as the main departure point to the Canary Islands. The Algerian route, in the Mediterranean, is the second deadliest according to our records, with 517 victims. The Strait of Gibraltar has taken up to 110 lives, and another 73 have been lost on the Alboran route. In addition, 131 vessels were lost, with all persons on board.
Spain's Interior Ministry said earlier this month that, as of December 15, 57,738 migrants successfully reached the country this year by sea, an all-time high.
Walking Borders denounced what it called "the main causes of this increase in shipwrecks and victims," including "the omission of the duty to rescue, the prioritization of migration control over the right to life, the externalization of borders in countries without adequate resources, the inaction and arbitrariness in rescues, [and] the criminalization of social organizations and families."
The group also noted "the situations of extreme vulnerability" that push migrants "to throw themselves into the sea in very precarious conditions."
These include "violence, discrimination, racism, deportations, and sexual violence," as well as "being forced to survive in extreme conditions" prior to departure.
"The number of victims continues to grow and the act of documenting deaths or preserving the victims' memory carries the threat of persecution and stigmatization," the publication states, adding that the dead migrants' voices "can be heard in this report, crying out at their disappearance and death and questioning their fate. They call for justice and an end to impunity."
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'A Disgrace': Italy Issues New Detention Order for Ship Saving Lives in Mediterranean
"This is unacceptable for a country under the rule of law," said a representative for Doctors Without Borders.
Sep 26, 2024
International aid group Doctors Without Borders said Wednesday that it plans to appeal the latest detention orders placed by Italian authorities on its search and rescue vessel, Geo Barents, arguing the directives were aimed at preventing it from saving the lives of refugees in the Mediterranean Sea.
"This is unacceptable for a country under the rule of law," said Juan Matias Gil, a representative for the organization, which is also known by the French name Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
The latest orders against the group and its ship were issued on Monday, days after MSF helped 206 refugees disembark in Genoa, Italy on September 19.
After that rescue, the group received a distress alert from a plane that monitors the passage of asylum-seekers across the Mediterranean, where thousands of people have drowned in the past decade while attempting to reach Europe after fleeing violent conflicts, political unrest, and poverty.
The Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Center gave the Geo Barents crew approval to proceed to the overcrowded wooden boat detected by the plane, which was holding around 110 people from Syria, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Egypt.
But as MSF was about to complete the rescue, with just 20 people left in the boat, a Libyan Coast Guard patrol boat that had been donated by Italy arrived at the scene.
"They arrived, threatened to shoot, and carried out unsafe and intimidating maneuvers around the people in distress and the MSF rescue team," said Fulvia Conte, search and rescue team leader for MSF.
The group said the order, which requires the Geo Barents to be detained at a port for 60 days, is based on "twisted logic" and MSF's "alleged failure to comply with instructions from unreliable and often dangerous Libyan coast guards," said Judith Sunderland, associate director of the Europe and Central Asia Division of Human Rights Watch, who was aboard the Geo Barents as it completed the rescue.
"It is a disgrace that the Italian authorities still consider the Libyan Coast Guard to be a reliable actor and source of information."
"People fleeing Libya often tell us about violent interceptions at sea carried out by the E.U.-backed Libyan Coast Guard," said Gil. "It has been documented by the United Nations and independent investigative journalists that the Libyan Coast Guard is complicit in serious human rights violations amounting to crimes against humanity, and collusion with smugglers and traffickers. It is a disgrace that the Italian authorities still consider the Libyan Coast Guard to be a reliable actor and source of information."
Sunderland noted that earlier this month, a judge lifted a previous 60-day detention order against the ship, with Italian authorities claiming MSF had caused "a dangerous situation by rescuing dozens of people from the water at night."
"The judge concluded the rescue had been 'urgent and unavoidable' and the detention jeopardized the organization's humanitarian objectives," wrote Sunderland.
Even though MSF had approval to complete the rescue on September 19, the first detention order was issued under the Piantedosi Decree, a law introduced in 2023 which requires non-governmental rescue ships to sail to the assigned port after a rescue, without picking up people from other boats in distress.
The second order was issued Monday following an in-depth inspection of Geo Barents by the Port State Control, which said it found eight technical deficiencies on the vessel.
Conte said such inspections "are another layer of administrative and technical instrumentalization of laws and regulations that the authorities have been using for the past seven years to obstruct the work of humanitarian search and rescue vessels in the Mediterranean."
"This one seems to have the intention to ensure we don't operate anytime soon," she said. "We are moving to quickly address these deficiencies and to go back to prevent deaths at sea."
Kenneth Roth, former executive director of HRW, said the latest orders suggest the Italian government is doing everything in its power "to stop NGO rescue ships from operating in the Mediterranean because rescuing migrants gets in the way of Italy's (and the E.U.'s) preferred approach of using the risk of drowning as a deterrent to migration."
MSF has helped rescue more than 91,000 people in search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean, including 12,540 people who have been saved by the Geo Barents crew since 2021.
U.N. special rapporteur on human rights defenders Mary Lawlor said in 2023 that the punishment and criminalization of people working to save refugees from drowning was "a darkening stain on Italy and the E.U.'s commitment to human rights," after the Italian authorities brought criminal charges for "aiding and abetting unauthorized immigration" against nearly two dozen rescue crew members and rights advocates.
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When the Wealthy Perish at Sea We Mourn, But When the Poorest Perish We Yawn
3,000 deaths of migrants made barely a ripple in most of the world’s major news media. But this summer one single tragedy on the Mediterranean has been making globs of global headlines.
Sep 01, 2024
Over
3,000 migrants fleeing from poverty and conflict, the Council on Foreign Relations recently noted, died last year trying to cross the Mediterranean into Europe.
Those deaths made barely a ripple in most of the world’s major news media. But this summer one single tragedy on the Mediterranean has been making globs of global headlines.
On Monday, August 19, amid a fearsome sudden storm, a boat deemed “unsinkable” sank off the coast of Sicily’s Palermo. Seven of the 22 people on board perished.
What made this sinking so newsworthy? The ship that sank just happened to be a luxury sailing yacht that sported the world’s tallest aluminum mast. And the casualties from that superyacht’s sinking just happened to include the high-tech CEO once hailed as the “British Bill Gates.”
That chief exec, the yacht’s owner Mike Lynch, had envisioned this voyage as a celebration over a decade in the making. Just weeks earlier, after years of legal battling, a federal jury in Northern California had acquitted Lynch and one of his VPs on charges they had artificially inflated the value of Lynch’s software company. That inflating, prosecutors charged, had sealed the firm’s 2011 sale to Hewlett-Packard for over $11 billion, a deal that netted Lynch personally about $800 million.
But within a year after the sale the value of Lynch’s company had tanked by some $8.8 billion, and H-P was referring allegations of accounting improprieties against Lynch to the British Serious Fraud Office and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The referrals would eventually produce a civil-suit victory for H-P and a 2019 criminal conviction of a key exec at Lynch’s firm.
The 59-year-old Lynch and his finance VP Keith Chamberlain would have much better luck in their own criminal trial on similar charges. Unfortunately for them, they’ll never get to enjoy their acquittal. Lynch drowned in the sinking of his yacht, as did Lynch’s top trial lawyer and the chair of financial giant Morgan Stanley’s international arm, a star witness for Lynch’s defense.
What made this Lynch yacht sinking particularly irresistible for the world’s media? On the same day as the sinking, reports surfaced that Lynch’s acquitted co-defendant Chamberlain had just died after a car ran him over while he was jogging. A sheer coincidence? And how could the captain of Lynch’s superyacht and all but one of his crew escape the boat’s sinking alive while Lynch and six other passengers perished? Such juicy meat for endless conspiracy speculation!
But we need not resort to conspiratorial theorizing to understand why Lynch’s $25-million yacht sank so quickly that stormy night. That blame belongs in no small part to climate change, not some cabal of his billionaire corporate rivals.
By this past June, points out a new Financial Times analysis, water temperatures in the Mediterranean had been rising for 15 straight months. Higher water temperatures invite ever more extreme weather events. One such event — a tornado-like waterspout with “ferocious winds” howling at nearly 70 miles per hour — hit right near where Lynch had last anchored his superyacht.
Only 16 minutes passed between the moment those harsh winds first hit the yacht and the moment the yacht sank. That “rapid sinking of such a large, modern and well-equipped yacht,” adds the Financial Times, “has raised concerns over marine safety as extreme weather events occur with more frequency and intensity.”
In other words, the superyachts that typically spend summers in the Mediterranean and winters in the Caribbean better beware.
But the mega-rich who own these yachts have, in one sense, no one to blame but themselves. Our globe remains in overall climate-crisis denial in no small part because our wealthiest have so much to lose if our world gets serious about ending the profligate corporate practices now driving our planet’s climate collapse.
The ranks of these richest include, of course, the fossil-fuel industry’s top execs and investors. But all our super rich, not just the kings of Big Oil, have a vested personal interest in “calming” climate anxiety. Coming to grips with the chaos fossil fuels have already created — and speeding a worker-sensitive transition to a carbon-free future — will take enormous financial resources. The world will only be able to raise those resources if the rich and their corporations start paying their fair tax share.
A tax of between a mere 1.7 and 3.5 percent on the wealth of the world’s richest 0.5 percent, suggests the UK-based Tax Justice Network, could annually raise $2.1 trillion. Most of the world’s richest nations, notes the Tax Justice Network’s Alison Schultz, are shying away from that suggestion.
Notes Schultz: “This needs to change now — the climate can’t wait, and nor can the people of the world.”
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Right to Asylum Must Be Protected in EU, Says Human Rights Coalition
"As this legislative cycle starts, the E.U. can and must do better than abandon its commitment to the global refugee protection regime," said an Amnesty campaigner.
Jul 09, 2024
Nearly 100 human rights organizations came together Tuesday to emphasize that members of the European Union "must guarantee the right to seek and enjoy asylum and uphold their commitments to the international refugee protection system."
The joint statement from groups including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Oxfam came as members of the European Parliament prepare for the July 16 plenary sitting, the first meeting scheduled since the bloc's June elections, which resulted in the far-right "Patriots for Europe" becoming the third-largest alliance in the legislative body.
The human rights coalition underscored obligations under Article 18 of the E.U. Charter of Fundamental Rights and expressed concern about "the recent and increasing attempts by the E.U. and its member states to evade their asylum responsibilities by outsourcing asylum processing and refugee protection risk undermining the international protection system."
As the groups detailed:
Italy, for instance, is currently seeking to process asylum applications of certain groups of asylum-seekers outside of its territory, from detention in Albania—which risks leading to prolonged, automatic detention, a denial of access to fair asylum procedures with necessary procedural guarantees, and delayed disembarkation for people rescued or intercepted at sea. Others, such as Denmark and Germany, are assessing the feasibility of this type of arrangement. Fifteen E.U. member states and some political groups have endorsed similar shortsighted measures to shift asylum processing outside E.U. territory and encouraged the European Commission to explore ways to facilitate this through further legislative reform, including through a watered-down 'safe third country' concept.
These attempts must be seen in the context of parallel containment efforts that seek to stem departures and prevent the arrival of asylum-seekers to E.U. territory through partnership agreements with third countries, with little to no attention to the human rights records of those authorities.
The coalition stressed that "as the extensive track record of human rights violations in partner countries such as Libya demonstrates, the E.U. and Member States have no adequate tools and competencies to effectively monitor or enforce human rights standards outside of E.U. territory."
A report published in November by Doctors Without Borders features stories of violence that migrants endured in nations including Libya and Tunisia while trying to get to the E.U. That publication also points out that 2023 was the deadliest year for migration in the Central Mediterranean since 2017, due in part to E.U. countries failing to assist those at risk of drowning.
In addition to sounding the alarm about current E.U. policies and practices, the coalition on Tuesday cited examples including Australia's offshore detention scheme, which "demonstrates how these models have created prolonged confinement and restricted freedom of movement, deeply harming both the mental and physical health of people seeking protection."
The organizations also pointed to an asylum scheme attempted by the United Kingdom—which left the E.U. in 2020 following the 2016 Brexit vote—and Rwanda, which the statement notes "is not yet in effect following the U.K. Supreme Court declaring it unlawful and in any event is unlikely to be operationalized at any significant scale."
The U.K.'s failed attempt to forcibly remove people to the African country was "projected to cost a staggering £1.8 million per asylum-seeker returned," which is equal to €2.13 million or $2.3 million. The coalition called such schemes "not only an unjustifiable waste of public money, but also a lost opportunity to spend it in ways that would truly aid people seeking asylum by investing in fair and humane asylum systems and the communities that welcome them."
Olivia Sundberg Diez, Amnesty's E.U. advocate on migration and asylum, said in a statement Tuesday that "attempts by states to outsource their asylum responsibilities to other countries are not new—but have long been criticized, condemned, and rejected for good reason."
"Just as the U.K.-Rwanda scheme is, rightly, collapsing, the E.U. and its member states should pay attention, stop making false promises, and wasting time and money on expensive, inhumane, and unworkable proposals," she continued. "As this legislative cycle starts, the E.U. can and must do better than abandon its commitment to the global refugee protection regime."
The meeting scheduled for next week will follow the Pact on Migration and Asylum that the European Parliament passed in April and the Council of the E.U. adopted in May. The coalition highlighted that "civil society organizations have been clear about their serious concerns" regarding the reforms while also explaining that "the transfer of asylum-seekers outside of E.U. territory for asylum processing and refugee protection is not provided for in the pact, nor within current E.U. law."
"After the E.U. and member states have spent close to a decade attempting to reform the E.U.'s asylum system, they should now focus on implementing it with a human rights-centered approach that prioritizes the right to asylum per E.U. law and fundamental principles of international refugee law to which they remain bound," the coalition concluded. "They should not, mere weeks after the reform has passed, waste further time and resources on proposals that are incompatible with European and international law."
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World Leaders Urged to Protect Syrian Refugees Amid Lebanon's Crackdown
"Lebanon's authorities must stop summarily deporting refugees to a place where they are at risk of violations, lift restrictions, and end their vitriolic campaign against refugees," said one Amnesty campaigner.
May 27, 2024
Amnesty International on Monday reiterated human rights groups' rising concerns about a Lebanese crackdown on Syrian refugees as the European Union hosted a conference in Brussels focused on "supporting the future of Syria and the region."
The conference comes at right-wing leaders in the E.U. campaign as anti-migrant ahead of the bloc's June elections and after European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen in early May announced a three-year, €1 billion ($1.06 billion) assistance package to support "the most vulnerable people in Lebanon, including refugees, internally displaced persons, and host communities," as well as "urgent domestic reforms" and "border and migration management."
The package was seen as part of the E.U.'s efforts to limit migration to Europe, as refugees leave Lebanon and try to cross the Mediterranean Sea to reach Cyprus and Italy—journeys that often involve crowded, unsafe vessels and lead to deaths.
"Once again, President Von Der Leyen has put her desire to curb the flow of refugees at any cost into Europe before the E.U.'s obligations to protect refugees fleeing conflict or persecution," Aya Majzoub, Amnesty's deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, said Monday.
"This appears to have emboldened Lebanese authorities to intensify their ruthless campaign targeting refugees with hateful discourse, forced deportations, and stifling measures on residency and labor," she continued. "Yet, Lebanon remains the country hosting the largest number of refugees per capita and has struggled to assist refugees amid an acute economic crisis."
"I swear if there is a safe zone in Syria, I would've been the first to return... The regime isn't safe for us."
Less than a week after the E.U. aid package was revealed, Amnesty explained, "the Lebanese General Security announced sweeping new measures against Syrian refugees including restrictions on their ability to obtain residency permits and work in the country, and has stepped up raids, collective evictions, arrests, and deportations."
Rights groups in the region and around the world have condemned the Lebanese moves and stressed that they, along with the United Nations and E.U., have concluded that Syria remains unsafe for refugees—a sentiment echoed by displaced Syrians.
"I swear if there is a safe zone in Syria, I would've been the first to return! Safe, as in not under the control of the [Syrian] regime. The regime isn't safe for us," one Syrian mother told Amnesty, referring to the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
"Many like us, if they're granted the capacity to return to the regions not controlled by the regime, they run back, without the need for organized return trips! If I had 1% hope that my husband and I will be safe upon return, I swear we wouldn't stay in such harsh conditions here," added the mother, who requested anonymity for safety reasons.
Alia, another Syrian mother now living in Lebanon, told the BBC that "we live in constant fear and anxiety... Every evening when my son comes back home, his youngest brother hugs him—relieved that he hasn't been arrested."
"I started overhearing people at places like the supermarket or the street saying: 'Look at the Syrians. They are living the good life while we can't afford anything in our own country,'" Alia said. "If only they knew what kind of life we live."
Amnesty's Majzoub argued Monday that "as a show of solidarity, European states should increase the number of resettlements to European countries of Syrian refugees residing in Lebanon."
"Donors at the annual humanitarian conference for Syria and refugee host countries must press the Lebanese authorities to immediately cease their unprecedented crackdown on Syrian refugees and lift abusive measures aimed at pressuring them to leave the country despite the well-documented risks they could face upon their return," she said.
"Human rights organizations unanimously agree: No part of Syria is safe for refugee returns," Majzoub added. "Lebanon's authorities must stop summarily deporting refugees to a place where they are at risk of violations, lift restrictions, and end their vitriolic campaign against refugees. E.U. countries similarly have a legal and moral obligation to refrain from forcibly turning back boats carrying migrants to Lebanon."
Over the past 13 years, Syria's civil war has forced millions to flee their homes. The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said that as of March, 7.2 million Syrians were internally displaced and over five million had fled to countries including Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan.
"We're going to be sending a very clear message from Jordan as a host country that we feel that refugees are being abandoned," the Jordanian foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, told reporters while arriving in Brussels for the conference, according to Reuters. "Host countries are being abandoned."
With wars raging in Ukraine, Sudan, and the Gaza Strip, U.N. agencies and international humanitarian groups are also stretched thin and having a hard time providing adequate assistance to civilians within Syria. As The Associated Press reported Sunday:
Living in a tent in rebel-held northwestern Syria, Rudaina al-Salim and her family struggle to find enough water for drinking and other basic needs such as cooking and washing. Their encampment north of the city of Idlib hasn't seen any aid in six months.
"We used to get food aid, hygiene items," said the mother of four. "Now we haven't had much in a while."
"We have moved from assisting 5.5 million a year to about 1.5 million people in Syria," Carl Skau, the U.N. World Food Program's deputy executive director, told the AP. "When I look across the world, this is the (aid) program that has shrunk the most in the shortest period for time."
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Rights Groups Demand Justice for Migrant Shipwreck Off Greek Coast
"The Greek authorities' response to the Pylos tragedy is a crucial test of their willingness to investigate human rights violations against racialized people on the move," said one researcher at Amnesty International.
Dec 14, 2023
Six months after a boat carrying 750 migrants and asylum-seekers capsized off the coast of Pylos, Greece, two international human rights organizations said Thursday that Greek authorities have failed to deliver justice and get to the bottom of how the shipwreck happened.
The boat sank on June 14, killing more than 600 people.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) interviewed 21 of the 104 survivors as well as five relatives of victims who have not yet been found, representatives of the Hellenic Coast Guard, and international aid groups—and determined that Greek authorities failed to mobilize "appropriate resources for a rescue" as they "ignored or redirected" offers of help from the European Union as the boat approached Greece.
The fishing trawler was "severely overcrowded" with men, women, and children traveling from countries including Syria, Egypt, and Pakistan, when it set sail from Libya in June.
The boat was reportedly bound for Italy, but entered the Hellenic Coast Guard's search-and-rescue region in the Mediterranean Sea several days after leaving Libya. The marine authority was alerted to the Adriana's presence about 15 hours before it sank, but Amnesty and HRW found in its interviews that despite learning that the boat was in possible danger of sinking, the Coast Guard did not take action to avert disaster.
"At several points, the Coast Guard received information about conditions on the boat that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch believe should have been interpreted as indicators of distress as set out in E.U. law and that trigger the duty to rescue under E.U. and international law of the sea," reads the groups' report. "At 12:47 EEST, [E.U. border agency] Frontex told the Greek authorities that the boat was heavily overcrowded and no one was wearing life jackets."
An activist who was in touch with people on the boat also reported on social media that at least six people had died aboard the Adriana, and the captain of another nearby tanker told the Hellenic Coast Guard the fishing trawler was "rocking dangerously."
But the groups found that the Coast Guard sent a rescue vessel equipped with just 43 life jackets, eight life preserver rings, two inflatable life boats with room for 39 people, and one auxiliary inflatable raft—supplies that would have left hundreds of people on the boat without any way of getting to safety if they'd been used.
Frontex confirmed to the two groups that it twice offered aerial support to the Greek authorities, and that its calls went unanswered.
Eleven of the survivors told Amnesty and HRW that the Coast Guard "attached a rope to the Adriana and accelerated, causing the boat to veer in various directions before capsizing."
A survivor named Gamal told the groups that as the Greek boat approached the Adriana, he was sitting on the roof.
"I was so excited, I wanted to see those people who came to rescue us," he said. "When they tied the rope... they pushed our boat to the left very fast... They go left, the boat sinks left, then they go right, the ship sinks more on the right."
Greek officials have denied making a failed rescue attempt, and have claimed that people aboard the Adriana "rejected assistance"—an allegation which, if true, "does not relieve competent authorities on the scene of their duty to protect lives at sea."
The groups' report comes weeks after official investigations were opened by the Greek ombudsman, the European ombudsman, and Frontex's fundamental rights officer. Greece began its probe due to the Coast Guard's "refusal to conduct an internal disciplinary investigation," said Amnesty. Only 13 survivors have been summoned to make statements to the Naval Court, which opened its own investigation in June.
"Greece must ensure that survivors and families' of the hundreds who lost their lives can safely and effectively participate in proceedings to the highest degree possible and ensure that investigations are carried out in a timely manner, guaranteeing the completeness and integrity of evidence admitted," said Adriana Tidona, migration researcher at Amnesty International.
Amnesty pointed out that there have been "historic failures in Greece's investigations of shipwrecks involving people on the move," including in its probe of the sinking of a boat near Farmakonisi in 2014, in which 11 people were killed. The European Court of Human Rights condemned Greek authorities for "the shortcomings in its rescue efforts and in its subsequent investigations" into that disaster.
"Almost 10 years since the deadly Farmakonisi shipwreck," said Tidona, "the Greek authorities' response to the Pylos tragedy is a crucial test of their willingness to investigate human rights violations against racialized people on the move at the country's border."
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'Left to Drown': MSF Slams EU Sea Migration Policies
"How many more deaths in the Central Mediterranean will the European states wait for before they halt their hostile and inhumane approach?" asked a search-and-rescue representative.
Nov 22, 2023
Doctors Without Borders on Wednesday called out European countries for "dangerous" policies and practices that have already made 2023 the deadliest year for migration in the Central Mediterranean since 2017.
The group, known globally as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), put out "No One Came to Our Rescue": The human costs of European migration policies in the Central Mediterranean, a report featuring medical and operational data as well as testimonies of people saved at sea.
"MSF has been running search-and-rescue (SAR) activities since 2015 as a direct response to European Union (E.U.) policies of disengagement and nonassistance along this stretch of the sea," the report states. The organization launched operations with the ship Geo Barents in May 2021 and has since saved at least 9,411 lives as of September.
"For more than two years, MSF teams on board Geo Barents have treated the physical and mental health impacts of European migration policies," said SAR representative Juan Matias Gil. "Patients' wounds and stories reflect the scale of violence to which they were subjected in their country of origin and along their journey, including in Libya and Tunisia."
"We documented numerous cases in which Italy and Malta failed to lawfully coordinate rescues and ensure assistance to those at risk of drowning, leading to delayed rescues or no rescue at all."
Of 3,660 medical consultations conducted on the ship this year, most patients had "conditions directly related to long journeys at sea," but MSF also saw 273 people affected by serious violence, with "scars from gunshot wounds, broken and severed limbs, and scars and bruises caused by recurrent violent beatings with metal bars, electric cables, baseball bats, machetes, and knives," according to the report.
"In addition to physical injuries," the publication continues, "these conditions include mental health conditions and the direct consequences of sexual and gender-based violence such as sexually transmitted infections (STIs), unwanted pregnancies, and female genital mutilation (FGM), among others."
The report says that "our teams have seen firsthand the manifold ways in which E.U. states have gradually withdrawn from their SAR obligations and have simultaneously enabled third countries to forcibly return people to unsafe places such as Libya, where many are either trapped in inhumane conditions or have no choice but to take to the sea due to a lack of safe and legal options."
A 19-year-old from Cameroon, rescued by MSF in June 2022, told the group that the previous November, the Libyan Coast Guard "caught me at sea and sold me to the jail of Roshofana." There, guards beat prisoners, "and they were filming and taking pictures while doing so," said the man, who worked for his freedom. "Sometimes, when people were wounded, they piled them up in one place and filmed them."
Europe has given the Libyan government millions of euros, and "since 2017, more than 120,000 people have been intercepted at sea by the E.U.-trained Libyan Coast Guard with E.U.-donated vessels, and illegally pushed back to Libya," MSF pointed out.
"Tunisia has overtaken Libya as the main departure point for people on the move, with nearly five times more arrivals than last year," the group noted. In response, the E.U. has "expanded its Libya strategy," providing millions of euros to "curb undocumented migration—including through incentives, trainings, and material support to increase interceptions at sea."
MSF highlighted that along with enabling interceptions, E.U. governments have directly neglected and hampered SAR efforts.
"In 2022 and 2023, we documented numerous cases in which Italy and Malta failed to lawfully coordinate rescues and ensure assistance to those at risk of drowning, leading to delayed rescues or no rescue at all," the group said. "They have left a deadly void in which people at risk of drowning are either left to drown or forcefully returned to unsafe countries."
While MSF and other groups "have faced frequent harassment by the authorities, including criminal charges, inspections, and prolonged detainment," the publication explains, "November 2022 marked the beginning of a new phase of escalation in the obstruction of NGO-led search-and-rescue activities" led by a new Italian government.
"Italian authorities prohibited Geo Barents and two other SAR ships from stopping in their territorial waters, and eventually facilitated only those considered most vulnerable to disembark," the document details. "The 'selective' disembarkation lasted for three days and eventually, following intense media coverage, political pressure, and the intervention of medical specialists on board the rescue ships, all survivors could eventually disembark in Italy."
Then, in January, "the Italian government introduced a new set of rules applying exclusively to civilian rescue vessels," which "has had a very tangible effect on the presence of NGO ships at sea and their ability to rescue," the report adds. Gil stressed that "while the new Italian rules target NGOs, the real price is paid by those fleeing across the Central Mediterranean, who are left without assistance."
"How many more deaths in the Central Mediterranean will the European states wait for before they halt their hostile and inhumane approach?" he asked. "We urge the European Union and its member states, especially Italy and Malta, to immediately change course in order to prioritize the safety of those seeking sanctuary at European shores."
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