Over the last decade, European governments have invested heavily to militarize their sea borders and outsource control responsibilities to partners in Africa and the Middle East.
But despite exponentially growing border budgets, people continue to take to the sea to reach EU territory, encountering violence and death. It’s time to admit that this repressive strategy has failed and to ask what should come next.
In late 2013, shortly after the Lampedusa shipwrecks off the coast of Italy that claimed more than 400 lives, the Italian government deployed Operation Mare Nostrum in the central Mediterranean. More than 150,000 people were rescued in the following 12 months.
