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Around 7,000 migrants arrived on the shore of the small island
in a two-day period, prompting pleas for help from Italy.
Authorities have organized some transfers to the larger island
of Sicily to ease the situation, something the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) expects will continue in
the coming days.
"It's imperative to move people off the island because the
resources there, the capacity is so limited," said UNHCR
spokesperson Matthew Saltmarsh.
Saltmarsh said the migrants arriving were traumatized, exhausted
and in need of food, shelter and medical care.
It is hard to identify a single factor behind this recent spike
in migrant arrivals on Lampedusa, Saltmarsh said.
Calm sea conditions, the economic and social turbulence across
the Mediterranean waters in Tunisia and Libya, and the conflict
in Sudan could all be at play.
"It can't just be on those frontline states like Italy that
receive the initial arrivals to have to accommodate them for the
longer term ... We think that now's the time for other
countries, other states, other regions to try to support the
Italians and to support the people of Lampedusa."
Saltmarsh said European countries should also agree how to share
out the task of settling recognized refugees.
"In that case we're talking about refugees, those people who
have asylum claims that are valid and that are confirmed and
that have the right under international law to stay," he said.
Lampedusa, which has a population of just over 6,000, sits in
the Mediterranean near Tunisia, Malta and Sicily and is the
first port of call for many migrants seeking to reach the
European Union.
(Reporting by Cécile Mantovani and Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber;
Editing by Kevin Liffey)
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