Tunisia: 15 migrants die in shipwreck off Djerba

Tunisia’s coast guard recovered the bodies of 15 people, including three children, on Monday (September 30) after a boat carrying over 50 people, mostly Tunisians, sank near the southern island of Djerba.

A coast guard spokesperson, Houssemeddine Jebabli, was reported as saying that 29 survivors were brought ashore safely as navy personnel and Civil Protection divers continued to search for the missing. The UN Migration Agency IOM later said there had been 30 survivors.

Jebabli did not give a reason for the shipwreck, which occurred shortly after the boat departed early Monday.

The incident came only days after the bodies of 13 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa were found on September 25 near Mahdia, a coastal Tunisian town about 140 kilometers from the Italian island of Lampedusa. Earlier in September, five bodies were recovered near Monastir, Tunisia, including that of a woman and a child.

Tunisia as a transit point

Tunisia, along with neighboring Libya, remains a key launching pad for migrants heading to Europe, with thousands risking the perilous Mediterranean journey in makeshift boats often facilitated by smugglers.

Every year, tens of thousands of people from countries as far away as Bangladesh attempt this dangerous crossing to reach Spain, Italy, Malta, and Greece, fleeing poverty, war, climate change, or persecution.

Recently, Tunisia has ramped up efforts to patrol its territorial waters with European funding and help, leading to a drop in migrant crossings and deaths at sea, leaving many migrants stranded in makeshift camps.

According to Tunisia’s National Guard, from January through May, authorities recovered the bodies of 462 migrants and intercepted more than 30,000 migrants off Tunisia’s coast. In the same period last year, 714 bodies were recovered and nearly 22,000 migrants were intercepted, according to the authority’s data.

Driven by worsening economic conditions and political turmoil since President Kaïs Saïed’s 2021 power grab, many Tunisians are joining migrants from other regions, risking crossings to escape increasing instability as he heads for a second term.

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Main partner in combating EU migration

Despite Saïed’s authoritarian policies, Tunisia remains one of the European Union’s (EU) main partners in combating irregular migration. Under a July 2023 agreement, Tunisia agreed to block migrant boats, fight against smugglers, and ensure the return of Tunisians in irregular situations in the EU, as well as the repatriation of sub-Saharan migrants from Tunisia to their home countries in exchange for 127 million euros in support.

However, this agreement and the subsequent anti-migrant operations have had a double effect: while they have pushed many migrants to turn back and return home, they have also encouraged many others to attempt the Mediterranean crossing as quickly as possible, regardless of safety conditions.

Tunisia’s border patrol forces had intercepted a record number of crossing attempts in the first quarter of the year, with 21,000 migrants being turned back before they could reach European waters, according to latest data by the UN refugee agency, as of April 15, 2024.

These journeys occur under extremely precarious conditions, with migrants often using metal boats that are unsuitable for such crossings. Many report that Tunisian forces maneuver dangerously close to their vessels, creating waves that pose a risk to those on board. Some migrants even allege that the Tunisian Navy has stolen the engines from their boats.

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Migrants stranded

Roughly 10,000 migrants arrived in Italy by boat from Tunisia in the first half of this year, less than a third of the total that arrived in the same period in 2023, according to Italian authorities.

“The decrease in the Central Mediterranean is largely due to preventive measures taken by the Tunisian, Libyan and Turkish authorities,” a spokesperson for Frontex, the European Union’s border and coast guard agency, said in a statement earlier this month.

Irregular migration to EU countries has dropped significantly this year. However, as border and maritime security has been tightened in the Mediterranean, there has been a spike in migrant arrivals to the Canary Islands, which are being increasingly used as an alternative stepping stone to continental Europe.

Moreover, as the number of migrants reaching Europe drops, the number stuck in transit along the Tunisian coastline has risen. Thousands hoping to get on a boat to Europe live in encampments on the outskirts of Tunisian cities and towns, where tensions have soared between migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, Tunisians and security forces. Reports of abuse, violence, disease and lack of drinking water have raised serious concerns among rights groups.

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Concerns over rescue efforts

As part of its partnership with the EU, Tunisia established its own search and rescue (SAR) zone in the Mediterranean. The official goal, according to Tunisia’s Defense Ministry, is humanitarian. “We want to strengthen the effectiveness of the Tunisian state’s intervention… to provide a maritime search and rescue service for the benefit of all vessels, Tunisian and non-Tunisian, in the Tunisian SAR zone, particularly fishing boats and Tunisian passenger ships,” a spokesperson said in an official statement.

Officially, Tunisians are now responsible for rescuing anyone in distress in their SAR zone, including migrant boats in danger.

While authorities have described this as a humanitarian effort, NGOs remain skeptical, if not pessimistic. “We call [the Tunisian authorities], but we never manage to reach anyone,” the communication team of the NGO Sea Watch told InfoMigrants in early September. “Based on our experience, it seems clear that their mission is not to save lives.”

More than 1,300 migrants died or went missing in 2023 in shipwrecks off the Tunisian coast, according to the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights (FTDES). The IOM says that over the past decade, more than 30,000 migrants have died in the Mediterranean, including more than 3,000 last year.

On Tuesday the organization wrote on X that 1,229 lives had been lost at sea along the Central Mediterranean route in 2024 so far. “Enhanced access to safer migration routes can save lives,” the post said.

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With AFP

This story was updated at 14:30 UTC on October 1, 2024, with the number of deaths increasing by three to 15 people.