A shipwreck in the Mediterranean last week claimed the lives of around 500 people, another grim chapter in a wider story of human despair and people smuggling that politicians and authorities seem powerless to tackle.
Since the International Organization for Migration launched its missing migrants project in 2014, an estimated 27,000 people trying to reach Europe have been recorded as dead or disappeared while trying to cross the Mediterranean. More than 21,000 of those deaths have occurred on the route from Libya or Tunisia north to Greece or Italy.
