Migrants are arriving in Spain's Canary Islands at record speed
this year. Over 39,700 migrants came to the Canaries
by mid November. That's a 23% increase over the
previous year, according to Spain's Interior Ministry. That's
the fastest increase in arrivals by sea in all of
the EU, according to its border agency Frontex.
The islands are on track to break records for the
number of irregular migrant arrivals for the second year in
a row. Frontex says smuggling networks are exploiting instability
in the Sahel region, including in Mali, where
conflict is a key driver of the surge. It's
engulfed in an insurgency, and its economic troubles have
gotten worse since the military seized power in 2020.
We young people in Mali no longer have to fear
death because we have seen all kinds of deaths,
explains this migrant from Mali. If you stay where
you came from or take the wooden boats, you
might die, so it doesn't matter. Nearly 10,000
Malians arrived in the Canaries between January and August compared
to nearly 800 in the previous year. Some are
coming from even Further away, according to Manuel Dominguez
, the vice president of the Canary Islands Autonomous Region
, they have been diverted towards the Canary Islands from
the southern border of Europe, where the entry of
irregular migrants has been made impossible, so much so
that we are starting to see the arrivals of the
first irregular migrants from Asia. Which is worrying us
a lot because it seems that the world is starting
to look at or see the Canary Islands as one
of those main uncontrolled ports of entry to the European
Union. One NGO estimates at least 800 migrants have
died this year trying to reach the Canaries. In
September, the islands experienced the worst shipwreck on record
. 63 of 90 passengers are believed to have drowned
. Francisco Navarro, whose NGO runs a migrant center
, says it's difficult to understand the scale of the
crisis. We are experiencing a humanitarian tragedy that has
no precedent, he says.