Migrants in Italy lack access to protection
The difficulties migrants in Italy face are detailed in a new report published by Centro Astalli, a Jesuit centre providing support to refugees and migrants.
The report acknowledges the decline in the number of people arriving in Europe seeking protection but says that those who do make it across the Mediterranean “face greater difficulties in having their requests for protection processed and in integrating into society.”
The study also notes that at least 10,000 migrants are excluded from the reception system, and that “informal settlements with limited or no access to essential services are spread across the entire national territory.”
Italy relies on first reception centres to house asylum-seekers, described as “large structures, isolation from urban centres and poor or otherwise difficult contacts with the external world”, and notes overcrowding and “degrading” conditions.
Those who leave these reception centres, particularly in Rome, end up deprived of all forms support, both legal and material, the report says.
Another report by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) released in February of this year said at least 10,000 asylum seekers and refugees in Italy between 2016 and 2017 were living in an estimated 47 “informal settlements” or stranded at the country’s northern border without access to basic necessities and medicines. Small children under the age of five were found in 17 of the settlements. The “informal settlements” in the MSF report included abandoned or occupied buildings, open-air accommodation, tents, shacks, cabins and containers, mainly in the Lazio region, followed by Puglia, Sicily, Calabria and Piedmont.
IOM, the UN migrant agency, reported earlier this year that 119,310 men, women and children arrived by sea as irregular migrants to Italy last year, the lowest total in four years.
However, a recent report from the UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency, showed that although the number of people reaching Italy from Libya has decreased by 74 per cent in the first three months of 2018 compared to the same period last year, the share of those migrants losing their lives along the way has more than doubled.
The SaMiFo Centre, which promotes the protection and health of migrants in Italy, reported a growing number of victims of abuse, especially arriving from detention centres in Libya. Medical and psychological examinations often revealed the traumatic experiences endured by migrants. A fourth of the migrants who had visited the counselling centres had been through significant experiences of torture and abuse.
TMP – 08/05/2018
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