Every year, thousands of migrants and refugees risk their lives on a hazardous journey across the Mediterranean Sea — a route marked by exploitation, extortion, kidnapping, human-trafficking, rape, and the constant threat of drowning. We often hear about new arrivals and successful crossings, but we remain largely unaware of the root causes of such migrations and the humanitarian cost they entail.

To better understand and explain this ongoing crisis, we need to contextualize certain figures and analyze data concerning migratory movements, migration routes and their respective dangers, rescue missions at sea, human rights violations in transit countries, personal accounts of migrants, comparative figures of successful sea crossings, intercepted vessels and recorded drownings, European policy, NGO efforts, etc. With these and many other factors considered, we might be able to comprehend more clearly why the situation in the Mediterranean Sea is so alarming; yet even then, we may still be unable to fully grasp how we keep hearing and reading the same harrowing stories every year, and why many preventable tragedies remain unaddressed and ignored.

Europe’s Shame is my personal take on how we can raise awareness and communicate the severity of the humanitarian crisis unfolding at our doorstep. It is a project aimed at learning, understanding, and shaping new communication tools that can reach broader audiences and engage them in a comprehensive social debate.

Europe’s Shame: https://hernancanedo.info/projects/europesshame/