#missing migrants project

Invited by @dvoeverie-stitches to participate in Hledání Noclehu for tonight, I greeting Mother Mary into my home as Stella Maris, the Star of the Sea. This iteration of her is the patroness of Acadians since the late 19th century, though I do think her protective and merciful hands were appreciated by Acadians who worked the sea and were deported on its waves.

My Stella Maris rosary enrobes a scrimshaw of her likeness, with a little cabin lights the way to home in a dark and cold wilderness. My mother's newly woven table cloth cradles Her and a devotional card is held for Her presence. Cedar incense wafts in the air, denoting the importance of cedar in many traditions here on Turtle Island, as well as to those voyageurs who baptized themselves with cedar fronds before taking the dangerous riverine highways in the 17th and 18th centuries.

I welcome Mother Mary Star of the Sea tonight as I remember refugee stories that involve crossing dangerous bodies of water, even now. December 13th was Acadian Remembrance Day, when Acadians commemorate the sinking of the Duke William and the Violet, as well as the wreck of the Ruby in 1758, marking one of the deadliest transports befalling Acadian deportees during the Great Upheaval, claiming the lives of more than 850 souls. For mourning, it's tradition to wear a black star that day.

The ocean still claims many lives today as we evidently see in the global news, where we often see these migrant tragedies unfold in real time.

As directly quoted from the UN News on November 12th 2025:

"Forty-two people are missing and presumed dead following a shipwreck off Libya – the latest fatal crossing in the Central Mediterranean, where more than 1,000 lives have been lost this year."

"The Missing Migrants Project was established in 2014. Since then, more than 25,600 people have died or disappeared in the Central Mediterranean, which spans from North Africa to Italy.

It is the world's deadliest migration route due to factors that include the length of the journey, which can take days; increasingly dangerous smuggling patterns, gaps in search-and-rescue capacity and restrictions on the work of NGOs saving lives at sea.

Furthermore, migrants often make the crossing in unseaworthy, overloaded inflatable boats. As many of these vessels can be launched at one time, this can complicate search and rescue efforts."

I feel that as human beings, regardless of background, seeing someone drown should distress us, and make even the hardest of hearts realize that no one should be considered illegal. Immigrants, migrants, refugees all deserve compassion, effective assistance, care, safety and warmth. They did back then, and they do now.

Berlin - For the fifth consecutive year more than 3,000 people are believed to have died or gone missing on migratory routes across the globe, the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) Missing Migrants Project (MMP) reports.

New Post has been published on https://is.gd/XT7RKX

BRUSSELS | EU nations split over asylum; 112 migrants die in shipwreck

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union countries remained deeply divided Tuesday over how to reform EU rules for managing the influx of refugees and migrants, as U.N. agencies reported that an estimated 112 people died over the weekend when a smuggler’s boat sank as it tried to reach Europe.

The estimated toll made the shipwreck off Tunisia the deadliest this year in the dangerous route from North Africa across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.

EU migration ministers, meeting in Luxembourg, were pessimistic that new proposals to update the bloc’s asylum system would be accepted by many of the bloc’s 28 nations.

Well over 1 million people, mostly Syrians fleeing war at home, entered Europe in 2015, overwhelming Greece and Italy and surprising Germany, which took in hundreds of thousands of refugees. Their arrival strained relations among EU neighbors and fueled anti-migrant sentiment, especially in central and eastern Europe.

EU leaders have insisted that the deadlock over how to handle migrants and refugees must be broken this month.

In his first policy address, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte declared Europe’s immigration policy a “failure” and demanded that it be renegotiated. Italy has been the primary entry point for thousands of migrants to Europe via the Mediterranean this year.

Conte insisted the rest of the EU must take on a greater burden of accepting refugees, as well as negotiating with migrants’ home countries to return those who don’t qualify for asylum.

Germany’s deputy interior minister, Stephan Mayer, said “there are still considerable deficits” in the proposals to overhaul EU immigration laws, while Dutch Migration Minister Mark Harbers said there are “a lot of member states that still have points of discussion.”

“First we have to fix the front door, fix the back door,” Belgian Migration Minister Theo Francken told reporters. “Then we can find a compromise on who’s doing what. When we don’t have a solution for the massive influx of illegal aliens in our Europe, Europe will end, and we will never get out of this crisis.”

Denmark’s prime minister, however, predicted that a new European asylum system could be in place as soon as next year and said asylum-seekers whose applications have been rejected could be sent to a country “that is not on the migrant’s wish list.”

Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen gave no further details Tuesday besides that fact that several European countries have discussed the plan.

Most of the disagreements focus on who should look after the migrants when they arrive and for how long. Under current EU rules, people must register for asylum in the European country they first arrive in. This has meant that Greece and Italy have carried most of the burden. But some nations — Hungary and Poland notably — have refused to honor any migrant quotas shared among European nations.

In Geneva, the U.N. migration agency said the weekend capsizing off Tunisia of an overloaded smuggling boat is now believed to have killed 112 migrants.

Leonard Doyle of the International Organization for Migration says his group counted 60 confirmed deaths and 52 people missing and presumed dead from the capsizing off the eastern city of Sfax. Officials said another 68 people survived.

The rescue operation was temporarily called off due to bad weather but resumed Tuesday as Tunisia’s prime minister traveled to the island where the boat took off from late Saturday. Tunisian police were searching for eight smugglers implicated in the capsizing — all from the lIe of Kerkennah.

“There are no words to describe this drama,” said IOM mission chief in Tunisia, Lorena Lando. “Behind the numbers, men, women and children lost their lives following an uncertain dream.”

Doyle said the toll makes the capsizing “the single biggest incident of dead and missing this year” on the Mediterranean, after two other shipwrecks off the Libyan coast in January and February that each left 100 people dead or missing and presumed dead.

IOM’s “Missing Migrants Project” reports there have been 785 deaths on the Mediterranean so far this year, less than half the figure over the same period last year.

In southern Germany, authorities arrested two Syrian men on suspicion of people smuggling in the Ludwigsburg region and searched 10 premises in two German states. ___ Keaten reported from Geneva. Frank Jordans in Berlin, Nicole Winfield in Rome, Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen and Bouazza Ben Bouazza in Tunis, Tunisia contributed.