The Director-General of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), António Vitorino, appeared before the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties Committee (LIBE) on Monday 2 December to sound the “alarm” on the migration situation in the Greek islands, but also in the whole region, in Cyprus and Bosnia.
Without wanting to create “panic”, the former president of the LIBE committee, then European Commissioner, pointed out that the situation has become considerably more strained in recent weeks and months, with a “sharp increase” in arrivals in Greece and Cyprus over the past 2 years. Europeans must therefore work to better prevent these movements and to better prepare for arrivals.
IOM operates 29 temporary reception centres in Greece and houses 4,200 unaccompanied minors.
But the IOM Director also spoke about the global situation and was very concerned about the situation in Venezuela, with millions of people displaced. A situation that he considers similar “to the Syrian crisis”.
On the occasion of the publication of a global report on migration and 1 year after the Marrakech Pact, he also recalled that there are only 272 million migrants in the world, most of them economic migrants, and that, although there are “100 million” more since the beginning of the 21st century, they still constitute only 3.5% of the world’s population.
The Portuguese also pointed out that in most parts of the world, whether in Asia or Africa, the majority of migrants remain close to their countries of origin and in neighbouring areas, but he warned against future migration in relation to climate change. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)