289 children have died since the start of 2023, according to the UN

Some 289 children died in the first six months of 2023 trying to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe, Unicef ​​announced on Friday July 14. A figure twice as high as the same period in 2022. “We estimate that in the first six months of this year, 11,600 children have made the crossing, also double compared to the same period of 2022”, also said Verena Knaus, the official in charge of migration and displaced persons. Also according to the United Nations Children’s Fund, in the first three months of 2023, 3,300 children making the crossing were unaccompanied or had been separated from their families.

For their part, MEPs are calling for the creation of safe humanitarian corridors to allow children to find refuge in Europe. They called on Thursday for the development of a “reliable and permanent search and rescue strategy” migrants in the Mediterranean, after a deadly shipwreck in mid-June off the Greek coast. An old and overloaded trawler from Libya was shipwrecked off Greece on the night of June 13 to 14. Only 104 migrants were rescued while the boat was carrying around 750 people. 82 bodies were recovered but the other castaways are presumed dead.