Migrant smuggling nets criminals $7bn a year

First global study of human trafficking
paints picture of a lucrative trade

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That’s according to the first global study on the smuggling of migrants, carried out
by the UN Office on Drugs and Crimes, which found that at
least 2.5 million people were transported illegally in 2016.

Smuggling schemes are often complex, it says, and involve
systemic corruption and collusion from senior officials who are
involved in organising fake marriages and counterfeiting employment
and travel documents.

“Demand for smuggling services is particularly high among
refugees and those with a lack of alternative means to flee from
dangerous circumstances in their origin countries,” says
the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting
Project.

The UN says unaccompanied minors are even more vulnerable to
deception and abuse, and that nearly 34,000 children arrived in
Europe without their parents in 2016.

The EU is the final destination for the majority of smuggled
migrants, with more than 600,000 people believed to have arrived by
boat in Italy alone since the migrant crisis started five years
ago.

In a bid to counter growing anti-immigrant sentiment across the
continent, the EU has sought to target human traffickers.

In May this year a cross-border European operation involving law
enforcement agencies from 28 countries arrested 57 people.

Yet this falls way short of resolving a problem that continues
to divide the EU’s 28 member states.

On Sunday, EU leaders will meet for an emergency summit on
migration and asylum “that could determine the future of Germany’s
coalition government” says The Guardian. Chancellor Angela Merkel is under
pressure from her own interior minister, who is threatening to turn
away any asylum seekers already registered in other EU countries
from 1 July.

Others, such as Austria’s right-wing prime minister, Sebastian
Kurz, have called for the creation of military “secure zones” for
refugees in north Africa.

“In Europe we face a choice” Kurz said. “Either we return to
internal borders, or we secure our external borders.”