The migration issue in Italy and Tunisia

The Correspondents’ Club is now interested in the migration issue. It is becoming more and more difficult to manage because there is an influx of migrants, particularly in Italy and Tunisia. Since the beginning of the year, there have already been four times more arrivals of migrants on the Italian coasts than at the same period in 2022.

The reception center located on the small Italian island of Lampedusa which can accommodate 400 people is, for example, totally submerged. There were more than 2,000 migrants for an island of 6,500 inhabitants which is barely 130 km from the Tunisian coast. Italy notably calls on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to release funds for Tunisia.

In this Maghreb country, at least twenty-nine migrants died and dozens of bodies disappeared after three shipwrecks of boats leaving the Tunisian coast this weekend. In addition to Tunisians fleeing an increasingly difficult economic situation, a large proportion of sub-Saharans present in the country are seeking to leave. Tunisian President Kais Saied has violently attacked black migrants. He accuses, “a plot to weaken Tunisia’s Arab-Muslim identity”. In a few hours, these migrants, who have sometimes been living in Tunisia for years, found themselves evicted from their homes and driven from their jobs. Several hundred have chosen to return to their country in planes chartered by their government, others have chosen to flee north by sea.