THE AFRICAN COURIER. Reporting Africa and its Diaspora! The African Courier is an international magazine published in Germany to report on Africa and the Diaspora African experience. The first issue of the bimonthly magazine appeared on the newsstands on 15 February 1998. The African Courier is a communication forum for European-African political, economic and cultural exchanges, and a voice for Africa in Europe.
More than 1,000 migrants and refugees have died in the dangerous crossing of the Mediterranean since the beginning of the year, according to the UN. This will be the sixth year in a row with more than 1,000 deaths in the Mediterranean in a year, said the UN International Organization for Migration on Tuesday in Geneva.
Since 2014, at least 15,000 migrants and refugees have died in the Mediterranean, most of them drowned.
Many more are even believed by migration experts to have died in transit, for example, migrants travelling across the Sahara desert.
Most migrants and refugees leave their home countries to escape poverty and violence. They come from African countries such as Eritrea and Nigeria and from Asian countries such as Afghanistan and Syria. Many of the boats used for crossing across the Mediterranean are not seaworthy.
READ ALSO Promoting Safe Migration in Africa
African migrants and refugees are often unaware and without defences in the face of false information given to them by human traffickers. These smugglers lure thousands of people to undertake journeys without any preparation or knowledge, journeys filled with extreme hardships and inhumane abuses.
Each week, thousands of young Africans continue to risk their lives to reach European shores by travelling across the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean. The problem calls for sustained media campaign in the origin countries to raise awareness of the dangers and risks of irregular migration.
Femi Awoniyi
