Seven years have passed since that terrible October 3rd, 2013, when 368 people, mostly Eritrean women and children, drowned in a shipwreck off the coasts of Lampedusa. A tragedy painfully repeated several times in recent years. More than 19,000 migrants died or went missing from 3 October 2013 to 2020. The death toll of the last seven years is dramatic, considered that 37,000 deaths have been recorded since 1990.
The Mediterranean, particularly the central route between North Africa and Italy, is the area with the highest number of fatalities involving migrants. Despite the sharp decrease of migrants' arrivals along the Mediterranean Sea route, the mortality rate, i.e. the percentage of victims at sea on total arrivals, is estimated to be higher in 2020 than in the previous year. (source IOM)
Since 2013, 3 October has been celebrated in Italy as the National Day in Remembrance of the Victims of Immigration.
The Community of Sant’Egidio has not been looking at these deeply unjust deaths, but working together with Italian Protestant Churches and Waldensian Table opened the first humanitarian corridor from Lebanon in 2016. Since then the Humanitarian Corridors have continued from Lebanon and new ones have been implemented from Ethiopia and Greece. They have become a model to welcome and integrate refugees avoiding dangerous boat trips in the Mediterranean.
