(3 Minutes Read)
An Italian naval ship carrying eight people rescued near the island of Lampedusa docked at the Albanian port of Shengjin on Friday. It was only the second group of migrants to arrive in the city as part of a deal between Rome and Tirana.
Under the agreement, individuals intercepted by the Italian Coast Guard will be housed in two reception centres in Albania, with a maximum capacity of 3,000 people at any given time. These centres will be staffed by Italian personnel, who will assess the migrants for potential asylum in Italy.
Those who do not qualify for asylum will be sent back to their home countries. But an initial group of 16 migrants taken to Albania last month were all moved to Italy within days, four of them because they were minors or had health issues. A Rome court ruled that the other 12 could not be held in the Balkan nation because their countries of origin could not be classified as safe” under European law. As a result, their asylum applications could not be processed under a fast-track procedure in Albania.
Read Also:
Human rights groups maintain that the deal between Albania and Italy sets a dangerous precedent and called upon the world community to urge Italy to follow a more humanitarian approach towards immigrants.
