Migrants ‘live in subhuman conditions’ in Italy
About 10 000 asylum seekers and refugees in Italy are living in subhuman conditions in squats and other makeshift settlements, MSF said.
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- About 10 000 asylum seekers and refugees in Italy have no access to official reception centres and are living in subhuman conditions in squats and other makeshift settlements, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Tuesday.
In a report, MSF said it studied 35 sites across the country, including former factories and train station depots.
Half the sites did not have access to electricity or running water, and a third of the refugees were not covered by the national health service.
“This is an invisible population, ignored or tolerated by institutions,” the president of MSF Italy, Loris De Filippi, said in a statement, charging that irregular migrant settlements are regularly cleared, with no offer of alternative accommodation.
MSF said Italy had made insufficient progress in expanding its asylum reception capacity.
At the end of last year, it had 110 000 places available for asylum seekers but had received 148 000 requests over the 2014-15 period.
According to the medical charity, Italy’s asylum reception facilities avoided “paralysis” only because most migrants who land on its shores move on to northern Europe.
Out of 320 000 sea arrivals in 2014-15, less than a third filed Italian asylum requests, MSF said.
DPA