Hundreds feared dead as migrant boat capsizes of Greek coast

Subject : International Relations

Section: Place in news

Concept :

Wednesday’s deadly shipwreck off southern Greece, involving a large boat carrying migrants that capsized after apparently rebuffing offers of help, is just the latest case of smugglers packing vessels full of desperate people willing to risk their lives to reach continental Europe.
The trip from Libya or Tunisia through the Central Mediterranean and north to Europe is the deadliest migratory route in the world, according to the N.’s International Organization of Migration.

Mediterranean Sea

A sea of the Atlantic Ocean, lies between the continents of Eurasia and Africa enclosed almost completely by land.
Bordering Countries (21 countries): Albania, Algeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Cyprus, Egypt, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Lebanon, Libya, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, Morocco, Slovenia, Spain, Syria, Tunisia, and Turkey.
To the west it is connected to the Atlantic Ocean through the Strait of Gibraltar, to the east with the Black Sea through the Dardanelles Straits, and to the south with the Red Sea through Suez Canal.
Nile river (Africa) drains into the Mediterranean Sea.

International Organization of Migration.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is a United Nations agency that provides services and advice concerning migration to governments and migrants, including internally displaced persons, refugees, and migrant workers.
The IOM was established in 1951 as the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration (ICEM) to help resettle people displaced by World War II.
It was first known as the Provisional Intergovernmental Committee for the Movement of Migrants from Europe (PICMME).
It became a United Nations agency in 2016.

Mandate

The IOM is the principal UN agency working in the field of migration.
The IOM promotes humane and orderly migration by providing services and advice to governments and migrants.
The IOM works in the four broad areas of migration management: migration and development, facilitating migration, regulating migration, and addressing forced migration.

Activities

The IOM works
to help ensure the orderly and humane management of migration,
to promote international cooperation on migration issues,
to assist in the search for practical solutions to migration problems and
to provide humanitarian assistance to migrants in need, be they refugees, displaced persons or other uprooted people.
The IOM supported the creation of the Global Compact for Migration, the first-ever intergovernmental agreement on international migration which was adopted in Marrakech, Morocco, in December 2018.
In addition, the IOM has often organized elections for refugees out of their home country, as was the case in the 2004 Afghan elections and the 2005 Iraqi elections.

Members

As of 2023, the International Organization for Migration has 175 member states and 8 observer states.