Forgotten in Lampedusa

For migrants coming from Africa, Lampedusa is the outpost to get to Europe. This island is closer to Africa than to the European continent, all migrants try to arrive here.

The “journey of hope”  is the name that is commonly given to the crossing of that piece of Mediterranean sea that separates Africa from Lampedusa. Migrants, with old fishing boats sold by smugglers on the Libyan or Tunisian coasts, try to change their lives. Migrants come from the countries of the African coast but also from the sub-Saharan region and from the Horn of Africa among other places. Very often they have to undertake months of traveling across the African territory even in the desert before trying to embark on the coasts.

Migrants are very often young, many are children who also suffer violence in their path, looted by desert marauders or imprisoned by paramilitaries in Libya. They start in large numbers on boats even in 200 for a boat. Many find the end of their journey dying in the waves of the Mediterranean sea, those who manage to land, end up in the CIE waiting to know what will be their destiny and often they are forgotten there.