Non-governmental organisations (NGOs), which have been significant in taking the burden off merchant shipping to rescue hundreds of thousands of migrants in the Mediterranean, have been accused of facilitating the trade in human lives.
As TradeWinds reported last week, NGOs have played an increasingly significant role in rescuing migrants in the past 12 to 18 months.
Italian coastguard figures show that NGOs were involved in one-quarter of all migrant-related search-and-rescue (SAR) operations in the Mediterranean last year.
