Canary Islands migrant crisis is ‘unsustainable’

Following a record-breaking year of migrant arrivals, President Fernando Clavijo, announced that the current Canary Islands migrant crisis was ‘unsustainable’ on 30^th December, according to Anadolu Agency.

Clavijo further elaborated on the situation, remarking that the Canary Islands do not possess the capacity to attend to migrants in accordance with human rights.

The past few weeks have seen an influx in irregular migration from North Africa to Europe, and in the past year, 44,700 migrants have successfully travelled from northwest Africa to the Canary Islands. Tragically, a recent report made by the NGO Walking Borders estimates that nearly 10,500 people have died in attempts to migrate.

READ: Record levels of migrants take perilous route to Canary Islands

The Canary Islands, with a population of around 2.2 million, is now hosting around 6,000 unaccompanied child migrants, and this number is projected to increase as the past month has seen a large volume of irregular migration from North Africa.

Clavijo described the situation as an ‘unprecedented migrant crisis’, with extremely overwhelmed facilities, and further criticised the lack of intervention from the Spanish government.

He further described his proposal to alleviate the migrant crisis in the Canary Islands by relocating 4,000 underage migrants to the rest of Spain, but it has been ignored by Madrid.

“That means we would keep around 1,800, which is still a lot for us, but it would allow us to treat them with dignity,” he said, citing the inability of the Canary Islands to properly facilitate appropriate care and support to children who have migrated.

Earlier this year the Spanish far-right party Vox vetoed government spending proposals in the required regions.

Anadolu Agency