The head of the Central African Republic (CAR) has accused the Western countries of triggering a migration crisis by pillaging Africa’s natural resources through slavery and colonization.
Taking the podium at the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, Faustin-Archange Touadera addressed the migrant crisis on the Italian island of Lampedusa, where thousands of African migrants arrived last week.
“These young people who symbolize the present and the future of our continent are desperately seeking to join the countries of the European continent in search of an El Dorado,” Touadera said.
“This escalation of the migrant crisis is one of the appalling consequences of the plundering of natural resources of countries made poor by slavery, colonization and Western imperialism, terrorism and internal armed conflicts,” he added.
Elsewhere in his speech, Touadera said that Africa must be given a greater say in solving the migrant crisis.
“The UN must go beyond our common commitment to revive global solidarity by involving African countries in the search for global solutions to the migration crises and the existential issues facing young people on the African continent,” he said.
In her UN speech, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who heads the post-fascist Brothers of Italy party and took office in part on pledges to crack down on migration, called on Italy’s EU partners to share more of the responsibility,
Over the weekend, Meloni warned that the “future of Europe is at stake” in the wake of a surge in the number of migrants and refugees arriving from the North African coast.
This comes after more than 8,000 migrants arrived on Italy’s island of Lampedusa in recent days.
Fissures quickly emerged in Brussels on how to respond to the Lampedusa crisis.
The EU is pushing to overhaul rules on how to handle the migrant flow. In France, members of the far right say Paris should not allow any migrants from Lampedusa across the border from Italy.
France has said it would not welcome the migrants from the island but is willing to help return them to friendly countries, such as Ivory Coast and Senegal.
More than 127,000 migrants have arrived on Italy’s shores this year, almost double the same period last year.
Over 2,000 people have died this year crossing from North Africa to Italy and Malta, according to the UN migration agency.
Opposition to immigration, also known as anti-immigration, has become a significant political ideology in the US and many other Western countries.
Human Rights Watch has already said that the European Union border guard agency’s oversight mechanisms have failed to safeguard people against serious human rights violations at the EU’s external borders.
An analysis of the actions of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, known as Frontex, shows a pattern of failure to credibly investigate or take steps to mitigate abuses against migrants at EU external borders, even in the face of clear evidence of rights violations.
