The Council of Europe's Committee on Migration will address the critical levels reached in the number of irregular migrants to Europe's southern shores in a conference in Strasbourg from the 6th to 7th November.
Officials from "countries of origin" - including the Philippines, Algeria, Egypt, Senegal and others - have been invited to attend the conference.
While Malta has registered 1,445 arrivals in the first eight months of 2006, Spain has seen the number of arrivals on the Canary Islands rise from 4,700 in 2005 to some 25,000 in the first nine months of 2006, according to a recent report from the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly.
Italy has counted 16,833 arrivals so far, and Greece has intercepted 900 arrivals by sea and arrested 28,700 irregular migrants on land during the period January to June 2006.
Following on from debates in the Parliamentary Assembly, the Council of Europe's Committee on Migration has organised the conference with the Assembly's Migration, Refugees and Population Commission and the Lisbon-based European Centre for Global Interdependence and Solidarity (North-South Centre).
Already sharing the burden of dealing with these arrivals on a humanitarian level, European countries must form a common European migration management strategy. To this end, the conference aims to improve co-operation between countries of destination and "countries of origin" and will use a recent Council of Europe report on challenges and priorities for countries of origin as the starting point for the discussions.
Read more about this issue on MaltaMedia's special feature:
Lanċa Ġejja u O©¤ra Sejra: Malta and its migrations.
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