3500 migrants a year drowning in the Med is unacceptable. It's action time!

The migrant crisis has shifted and evolved since I posted about Mediterranean drownings here and here starting October 2013. Despite commendable action by Italy, Greece, Spain, the EU, and private groups including MOAS, TeamHumanity, and Proem Aid, the absolute number of migrants drowning in the Mediterranean has remained about 3500 souls annually. The locus of the fatal departures is now Izmir, Turkey. Reporting on the the situation is available online in English from Guardian reporter Patrick Kingsley (thank you, Patrick).

If 3500 people a year were dying in airplane crashes along a particular route, it would spur aircraft industry, pilot association, government and academic expert action. My fellow boaters and naval architects, it's time to act.

While Turkey has plenty of problems, it's not Libya. Turkey has naval architects, schools of naval architecture, boat and ship builders, mariners (professional and amateur), regulatory authorities and a coast guard. We need to study the problem, develop solutions, and partner with Turkish authorities to stop the fatalities. Whatever people's reasons for putting to sea in small boats, if they're going to do it, they should do so safely. There's no shortage of of available labor - the migrants themselves need jobs. What's lacking is knowledge, organization, relevant standards, advocacy, and enforcement of those standards. There is a role for us to play. I ask for your partnership.

ORGANIZATION NAME: To be determined. Any ideas?

GOAL: To reduce the number of deaths by drowning in the Med/Aegean, as documented by The UN High Commissioner for Refugees and IOM.

METHOD: PDCA (+8D once we are prepared to organize into teams)

GOVERNANCE: To be determined. For now, we are a "coalition of the willing".

PARTNERS SOUGHT:

• The Government of Turkey, The Government of Greece, The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, IOM.
• MOAS, TeamHumanity, Proem Aid
• Schools of naval architecture in Turkey and the world over. In Turkey these include ITU and YTU. In Greece, NTUA and TEI. Near me these include Webb Institute, The United States MerchantMarine Academy, The New York Maritime College, Stevens Institute, and The United States Coast Guard Academy. To my northeast, in Boston, is MIT.
• Also the press, and YOU!

My next post will contain specific asks.

WHO'S IN ????

 

Only workable way to solve this is to make it 100% fatal to even attempt.

In my old home town of Mtn View/Sunnyvale there was(is?) the famous "Blue Cube" top secret military installation right off the freeway.

Literally no one actually knew anything about what it was all about.

I was known for the warning signs on the fences on all sides saying "Warning: Deadly Force Authorized. No Trespassing".

The local legend is not only COULD they shoot you, but they would make sure they killed you to protect the Secrets of the Cube.

There were also legends that once they did kill you they (as a Federal installation) didn't have to answer to local police or your relatives as far as disposal of your body, so no one knows if they ever have killed anyone. Only thing we know is no one has ever crossed the line and lived to tell.

But we also know that no one even knows of anyone who even said they were gonna test Cube perimeter security.

Really wanna save lives?

1)stop feeding the alligator. enabling fast breeding 3rd world populations to enjoy a lifestyle they are too lazy to create for themselves only makes the problem worse.

2)enact the proven Blue Cube security policy. Blast any illegal boats with enough firepower that there is literally nothing left to investigate. The only information would be that not a single crosser has shown up as successfully making the crossing.

Drownings would drop to zero, and their own govts would quickly start reforming.

 

I'd also like data as to what boats are being used, and in what numbers. Patrick Kingsley has reported that there are specific inflatable models being imported to Izmir from China. What are these boats? Who is the manufacturer? Here's the quote (click on it for the full article):

At Emre’s boat shop in central Izmir, one of Turkey’s main ports, you can’t turn around without bumping into a pile of inflatable rubber boats. On this day there are 16 stacked in beige boxes, all numbered with the same inscrutable code, SK-800PLY, and all newly delivered from China. If Emre’s math is right, all of them will be discarded on a Greek beach within a couple of days. For Emre’s shop is where you can buy boats that take refugees to Europe – and where they are still being sold at a rate of nearly a dozen a day.

“In the summer we were selling more,” Emre tells a potential Syrian customer. “But right now we’re still selling six of the cheaper boats every day, and five of the more expensive ones. How many do you want?”​

 

This is clearly a state-level problem and can't be addressed by well-meaning privateers.

 

Yet this website suggests nationalistic policies are the cause.

Bureaucrats typically are not people of action, and in my experience, don't understand boats. My concept is to assemble a team of experts (including naval architecture faculty and students), develop proposals, and take them to the government of Turkey. One way or another, there will not be change until citizens, wherever they are, advocate for change.

While I understand where you're coming from, nobody is presently making a bigger difference than the volunteers who have responded to this crisis. See:

• [B][U]https://aegeanheroes.org/[/U][/B]
• MOAS, TeamHumanity, Proem Aid

Remember Dunkirk.

What ultimately needs to happen is that the governments of the world need to work together to bring peace to Syria and resolve various other issues. But they've yet to succeed. I agree that the result produced by volunteerism is mixed in that the rescue operations may be encouraging more people to try it. That's why I want to reevaluate and focus on a strategy that will reduce the number of deaths in absolute terms.

Have you read Mountains Beyond Mountains? I first met Dr. Paul Farmer about the same time author Tracy Kidder did. Paul organized Harvard Medical School students to staff a clinic in Haiti on a rotating basis. Today the organization he founded, Partners in Health, is on the front lines of fighting outbreaks of infectious disease around the world. Not all good things come from government.

One of my peripheral goals relates to public policy. Ideas such as those advocated by W. Edwards Deming have created a revolution in the field of quality assurance, and are now being taught in business schools. I want to demonstrate that these methods can be applied to social problems, and will lead to better outcomes than adversarial debate. But we have to commit, and we have to do it. If we don't get off our duffs and act, who will?

 

I think people die because what they're doing is illegal. If it wasn't, there would be regular ferry boat runs or airlines moving people.

 

They have a internationally recognized right to apply for asylum. The problem is that they are not allowed to exercise that right until they actually land on the shores of a country that respects it. The US has had a similar policy toward Cubans for decades. It's a mixed message, and that's a problem, but do you blame refugees for it?

 

Back in the 1970s West Germany was thinking "As a rich nation its on us to take care of Refugees, BUT.....since it cost so much to do ANYTHING in Germany, we could take care of so many more if we did it in a nation with much lower Cost of Living." Brazil was considered and OK with since most refugees had higher education than average Brazilians and Germany was gonna pay all costs for nice apt, stipend, medical, and even a VW bug. Not a single "refugee" accepted the Brazil idea even though on paper they were in fear of their lives. They all demanded to stay in Germany or other 1st rate Western nation.

I was thinking of heading to Germany and trying to get in on the deal! Why not? 2yrs paid vacation in Brazil! I'm pretty sure their are enough English language schools so it wouldn't be a waste.

 

OK, but not sure what the lesson is. They can stay in Turkey, but they're not allowed to work there legally, and it's a little unfair to Turkey (and Lebanon + Jordan) to expect them to harbor all the refugees, yes?

I'm not trying to get into a debate about what the nations of the world should do about this crisis. I'm just saying let's not bury our heads in the sand. The crisis does exist, and the solution is not to let people die at sea. It's both wrong, and fails to solve the problem.

 

Name? How does coyotaje translate into Turkish or Arabic?

 

Ditto

 

Follow the money.

The ******** that are making MEGA PROFITS from buying these countries oil, gold and other minerals are the real problem. These people must be made to pay for the disasters that they are supporting and financing.

Take Eritrea as an example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eritrea

Eritrea has the worlds worst human rights history ruled by Isaias Afwerki.
57% exports is Gold
25% exports is Copper
the rest is minerals and oil

So - who is buying this Gold???
Who is making the big bucks, because President Afwerki is just a puppet.
Just another dumb stupid "African"

Let the ******** that are buying this gold pay for the crap that's going on in Europe today.

Sorry to say, but show me where has Africans and these Isis gunslingers contributed anything meaning full to our modern "Caucasian" society in their entire history. Look at "our" cars - planes - TV - computers - mobile phones - internet, and the guns they use, show me what these savages have contributed = NOTHING.

That's why I say let the "fat cats" that's making the money pay for this mess.
Send the whole lot home to where they come from and stop the big bucks flowing into the hands of dictators. I am living in a beautiful country that is systematically being plundered by stupid lazy people and thieving political parties. Come and live here and you will soon realise that now that Sweden is **** capital second to South Africa, you will not think about saving those lives at sea. STOP IT IN ITS TRACKS while you still can.

Who knows, maybe, just maybe Donald Trump has at least a valid point.

Sorry about the rant folks, but that is my true colours.

 

Turkey and Jordan are receiving IIRC a couple hundred million dollars or Euros a month in aid from the UN and EU countries,so it's not really costing them much.

Our new prime minister is bringing 25,000 of them here.
A recent article had: they get $250 for 5 days food stipend for 4 people,and complain it's not enough as it only lasts 2 days....and were disappointed because they expected to have a nice (free) home. They'd been in the country but 2 weeks,after all.

Here's an idea,get a bunch of container ships and make the containers semi habitable.
Load up maybe 10,000 on each one and...I notice there's a nice big harbour just down the road from you,ought to be able to take a couple hundred thousand.

 

Apparently the EU has now cut a deal like that with Turkey. We'll see if it helps. The BBC reports I've read don't detail what Turkey agreed to do, while others suggest the deal may lead to increased arrests and torture of migrants in Turkey. The excuse of the US is that we're paying aid money in place of bringing refugees here. Another, which does make sense to me, is that we in the US should be focusing on the refugee crisis from Guatemala and El Salvador, which have become dangerous in the extreme. I personally wish our US politicians would take an approach more like that of Canada's Justin Trudeau (and Connecticut's Governor Malloy), but I appreciate that good people can have other opinions for various reasons. Like many of us, I have international policy views; but if I want to get into those I'll look for another forum. What I want to do here is work with people who may not agree with me about everything in a clearly delimited context toward a clearly defined goal; reducing deaths at sea (without judging people or their motives).

 

To prevent deaths at sea should not be given safer ships but avoid people having to flee their country.