As the United Nations Refugee Agency warned in the first days of September, the death rate for refugees attempting to reach Europe has risen. That sounds even more cruel considering that the numbers trying to make the crossing has fallen.
For every 18 people crossing to Europe over the central Mediterranean between January and July 2018, one person died. This is twice more than over the same period in 2017, when there was one death for every 42 refugees and migrants attempting the crossing.
Summer in the United States brought the scandal with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection Agency (CBP). Both bodies were accused of having a zero tolerance policy and of separating illegal immigrant children from their parents. Annual immigration arrests have soared since January 2017, from 110,568 in 2016 to 143,470 in 2017.
Although the buzzwords ‘refugee crisis’ were left in the year 2015, the problem of mass migration remains one of the central topics in the 21st century, given the vast number of economical and socio-political crises — from Syria to Venezuela — and even the global climate migration crisis, awaited by scientists. Given the importance and difficulty of a decent migration policy, can we rely on decentralized technologies to make it better? In fact, yes.