Leaders from the EU will be meeting their African counterparts for a two-day meeting Malta.
The summit, which will be held in the 16th century old walled city of Valleta will provide an opportunity for a discussion on the exodus of millions of people from Africa to Europe. In this summit, an expected of more than 60 world leaders of countries in these two adjacent continents will have to discuss a very contentious issue on migrant-refugees, which are affecting EU governments and their resources.
The European Council President Donald Tusk, at the Maltese Parliament declared that a very important agenda to be tackled in the summit would be on economic and security problems. In details he said “much more progress on poverty reduction and conflict prevention” should be the direction that could prevent the mass exodus of people.
Arranged to be a high level meeting, this summit came as a plan after heartbreaking and life threatening episodes in the Mediterranean. Specifically, about 800 hundreds migrants lost their lives at sea after a sinking off Libya, sometime in April early this year.
No less than 150,000 migrant-refugees crossed the dangerous Mediterranean from Africa arriving mainly in Italy and Malta. A large number, Syrians in particular, are landing in Greece through Turkey and then proceeded north to the Balkans.
According to BBC reports, the emigration from Africa to Europe is dominated by people, including children from Eritrea, which is the largest group entering Europe, this year thru neighboring Ethiopia. The UN estimated that one out of every 10 migrants to Europe are Eritrean, numbering around 4,000 people monthly.
This mass movement of an estimated half of the Eritrean population is attributed to the country’s human rights record of coercion to serve in the military, although the government claimed that these are people seeking greener pastures in Europe.
The summit is a concrete move of coming up with a solution. Even now, the EU is already allocating a huge amount of €1.8bn to be held in a “trust fund” for Africa to help African countries to deal with the crisis and has also pressed member states to match up the figure.
