Dozens of people are dead and hundreds are missing a few miles from the town of Pylos, in southwestern Greece

Javier Garcia, ActionAid International’s Head of Country Engagement and Transformation for Europe and Americas, said on migrant deaths off the coast of Pylos, Greece on 14 June 2023: 

“Dozens of people are dead and hundreds are missing a few miles from the town of Pylos, in southwestern Greece. Thousands of people add new names and dates to their mourning lists for their loved ones. 

“ActionAid International expresses its condolences to the families and friends of the victims and those missing. We also express our anger for the brutal foreseen consequences of the border policies and politics of the EU and its members – this shipwreck is a damning indictment of increasingly harmful policies. 

“People on the move who are in need - fleeing land grabbing, resource extraction, climate change’s consequences, and protracted political crisis fuelled by foreign weapons - deserve dignity and exceptional public migration policy. However, they currently flee to face a system that consumes bodies and lives as if they were disposable goods or products, and that uses racism for its feedback and functioning. It allows systematic violations of rights, based on the denial of the human status of migrants. 

“We know that better policy is possible. In 2022, Europe adopted the Temporary Protection Directive for people fleeing the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. And instead of replicating or adapting something that is working, Europe is betting on "necropolitics" for people on the move from Africa, Asia or Latin America. Recent EU agreements have only increased procedural rules that are unworkable and fail to address dysfunctional system issues, such as the model of responsibility for examining asylum applications in the first country of entry established by the Dublin Convention. The traffickers will now, once again, multiply their profits thanks to the lacking European migration policy, which increases the danger and inaccessibility of routes and borders. 

“This time, there are hundreds of victims in Greece. They join more than 70 people who died off Italy’s coast on February 26, half of them children. They also join 37 people who were killed on the Spanish-Moroccan border in June last year. The crimes against humanity continue.” 

To contact the ActionAid Press Office media-enquiries@actionaid.org or call +44 7586107955. 

Javier Garcia, ActionAid International’s Head of Country Engagement and Transformation for Europe and Americas is available for interview. 

ActionAid is a global federation that works with more than 15 million people living in more than 40 of the world's poorest countries.  We want to see a just and sustainable world, in which everyone enjoys the right to a dignified life and freedom from poverty and oppression. We work for social justice and gender equality and poverty eradication. 

ActionAid works to promote legal frameworks to facilitate safe pathways for migrants and refugees according to human rights conventions. ActionAid also works to ensure migrant rights are respected during migratory processes (especially sexual violence against women) at origin, transit, and destination. ActionAid members and partners in Africa and Europe monitor the migrant conditions and denounce human rights violations across the journey.