Written question asked by Jim Cunningham (Labour) on Monday, 14 January 2019, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Thursday, 17 January 2019 (named day). It was answered by Alan Duncan (Conservative) on Thursday, 17 January 2019 on behalf of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Mediterranean Sea: Refugees

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what recent assessment his Department has made of trends in the number of migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean from Libya.

Answer: 2018 saw an 80 percent reduction, comapred to 2014 in the number of migrants crossing the central Mediterranean from North Africa to Italy – from 119,000 in 2017 to 23,000 in 2018, according to UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) figures. The number of fatalities on the central route has not reduced by the same rate. According to UNHCR the proportion of dead and missing compared to the number of arrivals doubled in 2018 to 5.6 percent from 2.4 percent in 2017. The largest proportion of migrants crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa during 2018 continued to be from Libya, although the proportion crossing from Tunisia increased during 2018. The European Commission reports the Italian Ministry of Interior as stating that 56 percent of migrants heading for Italy departed from Libya.

Secondary information