Centro Astalli: arrivals by sea doubled. More and more abuses on women
The war in Ukraine will raise the number of displaced persons in the world to 90 million. Fr.
Camillo Ripamonti, president of Centro Astalli, deplored this terrible figure during the presentation of the 2022 Annual Report of the Jesuit Refugee Service, based in Rome.
As of today, according to the statistics, by mid-2021, it is estimated that refugees and displaced persons numbered around 84 million, compared to just over 82 million the previous year. In just a few weeks, the number of Ukrainian refugees who have arrived is much more than the number of migrants and asylum seekers who landed during 2021. So, the war in Ukraine, the report points out, shows that these people do not represent “an invasion, nor a threat to our security”. “The crisis we are experiencing in Ukraine,” Fr. Camillo Ripamonti, president of the Centro Astalli, told Vatican News, “makes us think of the many other crises we have experienced around the world. We have already forgotten the situation in Afghanistan in August 2021 and the war in the Horn of Africa. So, there are so many crises that form part of that world war of which Pope Francis often speaks”.
Arrivals and the lack of reception
According to the report, in 2021, the number of migrants arriving by sea doubled, totalling more
than 67,000. 9,500 were unaccompanied minors. There is evidence of torture and abuse suffered by
those received in the facility.
Two years after the establishment of the decrees on security, there is still no end to the crisis, which
has worsened owing to the effects of the pandemic, which “has aggravated the vulnerability of
refugees and social marginality”. Even today, about two out of three migrants are housed in Cas, the
Extraordinary Reception Centres. The need for an organic plan for integration is even greater, even
more so due to the persistence of the pandemic, also considering the immense exhaustion of refugee
families who cannot continue living on informal, parental or friendship support networks.
Defying all fear, we need more knowledge and opportunities to meet together, Centro Astalli insists,
who, in 2021, welcomed 17,000 people, 10,000 of whom in Rome.
“It is unacceptable and a disgrace for our civilisation that, in Europe, since 2014, 24,600 migrants
have lost their lives mainly in the Mediterranean”. Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, President of the
Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the EU, (Comece) highlighted. “European countries,”
he said, “cannot consent to this process of systematic dehumanisation of migrants and refugees,
which also dehumanises us.
Download an infographic of the Annual Report (in Italian).
Watch the full presentation stream on Facebook.
This article was first published on Vatican News.
