People smuggling

‘We failed completely to break people smuggling in the Mediterranean’ – UK Lords’ inquiry author

The EU-spearheaded Operation Sophia, launched in 2015 to stop human smuggling in the Southern Central Mediterranean and“prevent the further loss of life at sea,” has not only failed its goal but effectively led to an increase in people trafficking and deaths, according to a damning report released by the UK House of Lords’ EU External Affairs Sub-Committee on Wednesday.

“First of all, we need to look at why we’ve not been able to disrupt the smugglers’ business programs of smuggling people from countries such as Eritrea and Niger and other countries too, to take the treacherous journey, to go to Libya and then from Libya to get into very dangerous waters in very unseaworthy vessels,” the chairwoman of the committee which produced the report, Baroness Verma, told RT.

The search and rescue operations involving sophisticated vessels have actually played in the hands of people smugglers who adapted and effectively stopped from getting people to Europe, abandoning them in unseaworthy vessels in international waters.