The Middle East and North Africa are in turmoil. Iraq has just joined Syria and Libya among the most destabilised countries within a few hundred kilometres of Malta’s shores.

Perhaps the most significant consequence for Malta, and the most worrying threat, is that the floodgates of irregular immigration through the central Mediterranean – already wide open – could now be given added impetus.

Following the distressing tragedies off Lampedusa last October, when hundreds of men, women and children perished at sea, the Italian Navy mounted Operation Mare Nostrum in a bid to avoid a repeat of those tragedies.

Italy is under severe pressure from irregular migration, having for months virtually single-handedly dealt with thousands of migrants. In the last weeks it has rescued tens of thousands.

While Malta has not so far borne anywhere near the same burden as Italy, it still finds itself in the front line “actively contributing to one of the largest aero-naval operations… in the Mediterranean over the past years”.

These recent events are almost certainly an indication of worse to come, as Syrians, Libyans and sub-Saharan Africans from war-torn countries and broken states seek to escape their fate.

For Malta, its ability to cope with the scale of immigration being envisaged poses challenging social, political, practical and economic difficulties. The arguments are genuine. This is a tiny and extremely densely populated island.

Although Sicily has been worse hit in recent days, it at least enjoys the safety valve of being part of Italy. Malta has no such safety valve. When immigrants arrive here, they are stuck.

Coming on top of the 5,000 or so asylum seekers currently in Malta, the prospect of more arrivals magnifies the situation. What should Malta be doing to ease the situation? On the diplomatic front, firmer steps must be taken to appeal for solidarity from EU states to help frontline countries like Italy, Greece and Malta to cope with an influx of this magnitude.

A mechanism exists to trigger the so-called burden-sharing concept among EU member states in exceptional circumstances in the face of a mass influx of displaced people.

This would give migrants temporary protection status in all EU states and would bind countries to cooperate in the transfer of people enjoying this status from one country to another. It would seem prudent for Malta to work to invoke this mechanism now.

Although there is an urgency, the reality is that obtaining a decision by ‘qualified majority’ will take time. Ultimately, a key solution lies in creating holding centres in Africa, manned by humanitarian agencies, which could offer some kind of protection to asylum seekers. This cannot happen overnight. While Malta’s current resources have not yet been overwhelmed (our detention centres can cater for just under about 2,000), the government must be prepared to handle many hundreds more until the laborious process of implementing the mechanism grinds into action.

This will require the opening of additional temporary accommodation centres to house the immigrants and the administration and manpower oversight to run them.

Time is of the essence. The government must go into overdrive, both on the diplomatic front and in drawing up practical contingency arrangements.

It is no good hoping the problem will go away. The lesson of the last decade of migration flows to Malta is that it will not. It also needs to ensure anti-migrant sentiments remain in check. Let’s remember that utimately, many of those arriving on our shores are fleeing persecution.