Rome: A migrant boat capsized off the Italian island of Lampedusa, leaving more than 40 people missing, according to the UN.

According to Chiara Cardoletti, a UNHCR representative in Italy, the shipwreck occurred on Thursday, and at least one newborn baby is among those missing.
46 migrants from Cameroon, Burkina Faso, and the Ivory Coast were aboard the ship when it departed Sfax, Tunisia, according to Flavio Di Giacomo, a spokesman for the UN migration agency IOM, on Friday.

Strong winds and large waves caused the boat to capsize, he claimed. Some survivors were brought back to Tunisia, while others were taken to Lampedusa.
Seven women and a minor were among those reported missing. All of the survivors are grown men, he continued.

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Since November, he claimed, "we have noticed more migrants arriving from sub-Saharan Africa than Tunisians."
He said that people from sub-Saharan Africa were fleeing discrimination in Tunisia as a result of this.

In reference to the tragic shipwrecks of migrant boats that have already occurred in Italy, Greece, and Spain, Cardoletti wrote on Twitter, "It is unacceptable to continue counting the dead at the gates of Europe."

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"A shared and coordinated international rescue mechanism at sea is now also a matter of conscience," Di Giacomo also emphasised how weakly constructed, poorly welded boats were, sinking at the first sign of damage.

He argued that without "patrols of European ships to monitor the Tunisian route as well as the Libyan route, we will witness a disaster this summer" that "we are therefore unaware of certain shipwrecks."

One of the main entry points for migrants travelling across the Mediterranean is the southern Italian island of Lampedusa, which is situated about 145 kilometres from the coast of Tunisia.

Out of the 105,000 people who entered Italy last year, more than 46,000 arrived there, according to the UNHCR.

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Shipwrecks of migrant boats have increased recently, and Frontex, the European border agency, reported in mid-June that the number of migrants entering the EU via the central Mediterranean "more than doubled" in 2023 compared to the same period last year.

A crammed Libyan trawler capsized last week off the coast of Greece. Currently, 82 people have died and 104 have been rescued from the water, but witness accounts indicate that many hundreds more perished with the ship and that their bodies are still missing at sea.

A few days prior to the tragedy, EU ministers had finally agreed to revise the bloc's regulations in order to more fairly divide up the responsibility of hosting migrants and asylum seekers.

The European Commission introduced a New Pact on Migration and Asylum in September 2020. It is a set of reforms that it hopes will be enacted by spring 2024 and that, among other things, mandates that EU members assist one another in taking care of asylum seekers.