War, Famine, and Drought – the Unholy Trinity Changing Our World

Apr 27, 2015 | Boyd Tonkin
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Earlier this week, the outgoing Deputy Prime Minister at last backtracked on his government’s part in the withdrawal last year of EU search-and-rescue operations for migrants in the southern Mediterranean. Clegg argued that amid the proposals now aimed at stemming the flow, “It’s all too easy to forget that they are human beings.” At the core of this mass quest for refuge lies not just a human body – like the 1,200, beyond Titanic’s toll, drowned over the past week alone – but a human mind. That mind registers hardship and peril at home, chooses among options, gathers assets, plans a route, weighs the risks, and sets off on a journey into hope. In the Mediterranean, we know how that journey has ended for 1,750 people already this year and about 3,300 last. However misguided, each of those shipwrecked (or, arguably, murdered) victims had taken a rational decision to flee conflict, penury or persecution – often enough, all three at once. Forget the bloodless reckoning of “push factors” against “pull factors”. From Syria to Nigeria, Iraq to Eritrea, every one of those lost souls who chose to entrust their fate to a frail craft on the Libyan shore run by a scheming crook will have acted from a wholly individual blend of hope and fear, aspiration and desperation.