ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani on Wednesday said that the international community has to take action to put an end to human trafficking, adding that his country seeks legal migration rather than being used as a pathway by migrants to reach other European countries. “We are in favor of legal migration. We need workers in agriculture and industry but it is impossible for us to have thousands and thousands of people arriving every day because they want to go to Germany, to France. They don’t want to stay in Italy,” Tajani told Rudaw’s Diyar Kurda on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. He also said that “strong action” should be taken against “human trafficking,” referring to the latest influx of migrants into Italy. He noted that they need international support to challenge the issue. There has been an influx of migrants to the Italian island of Lampedusa in recent weeks, with thousands of new people arriving on the island. This has prompted the local authorities to warn that the island is becoming overwhelmed. Italy is set to pass stricter laws to extend the length of time the migrants can be held before being repatriated to their countries. “We have over 100,000 that arrived in Italy this year,” Francesca Basile, head of the Migration Unit of the Italian Red Cross, told Rudaw’s Zinar Shino on Tuesday, adding that most of the new arrivals are from African countries. “Here today there are more than 2,000 people inside the hospital,” she noted, reporting more arrivals on the Italian island of Lampedusa.“ During these massive arrivals, as the Italian Red Cross, we applied all the emergency protocols to ensure the first assistance to people, even if the capacity is lower.” The high-level week of the 78th annual UNGA commenced on Tuesday and will continue through next week. Hundreds of world leaders and delegates have gathered in New York to attend the event, with around 150 heads of states and governments set to deliver speeches. The theme of this year’s summit is “Rebuilding trust and reigniting global solidarity: Accelerating action on the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals towards peace, prosperity, progress and sustainability for all.”
