The image of two black migrants looking dazed as a procession of unnamed coffins filed solemnly by at Mater Dei’s morgue last Thursday spoke louder than a thousand words. “See their silent faces, they scream so loud,” Sting had written in the song They Dance Alone for mothers of those who disappeared under the Pinochet regime in Chile. Would he have written anything different here?

For too many years, migrants’ screams and appeals for help from border states like Italy, Malta and Greece were lost in the horizon. At an emergency summit in Brussels just hours after Thursday’s funeral, EU leaders finally realised that our region is living through the greatest humanitarian disaster since World War II.

More than 1,700 migrants have died trying to reach Europe in the past four months. Sadly, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s warning in 2013 that the Mediterranean is turning into a graveyard is no longer just a good media soundbite – but, as one of our cartoons today shows, a grim reality.

Thursday’s summit was positive on a number of counts. Funding for the EU’s search and rescue mission has been trebled and aid for frontline states increased.

A number of countries pledged vessels to the Mediterranean, which will offer much needed support to Italian and Maltese rescue, as well as the privately-funded MOAS operation which restarts its migrants’ mission next week.

It was also good to see a commitment to resettle higher numbers of refugees and to explore internal relocation programmes, as well as offering support to African border states.

Leaders have belatedly realised that they were wrong to contend that Italy’s Mare Nostrum rescue mission had served as a pull factor before the plug was pulled. Quite the contrary. The flow of migrants has increased by 160 per cent since it was halted.

But for all the leaders’ goodwill, one cannot help feeling that they know no better than to throw money at a problem which they do not really understand, and they did so as fast as possible following the headlines that were made when over 700 migrants lost their lives as they tried to make the crossing. The terms of engagement for EU’s Mediterranean mission remain un­changed, which means vessels will not be dispatched close to Libya where migrants’ boats are going down. Nor is it encouraging to hear leaders like David Cameron, who is facing a migrant-fuelled election campaign in the UK, say that Britain is prepared to do its bit to help by sending a Royal Navy ship – as long as it takes the migrants anywhere but his backyard. Overburdened Italy and tiny Malta perhaps?

For all the talk, the summit failed to impose mandatory resettlement to ease pressure on Mediterranean states.

While the idea to go after the traffickers is welcome, it appears impossible to sustain long-term without the UN Security Council’s blessing.

Ultimately, war and extreme poverty in African regions will continue to make people flee. As the UNHCR pointed out, the choice we have is how well we manage their arrival. By creating more borders we will merely see migrants resort to riskier routes.

Sadly, leaders failed to discuss potential ways of making it easier for refugees to seek asylum in Europe, though it was encouraging to hear Dr Muscat speak of the need to involve NGOs at an upcoming migration summit in Malta. They are the experts on the ground.

Thursday’s funerals touched the Maltese, touched the world. But news agendas change as quickly as the weather. What will not change are the causes and consequences of the migration problem unless the rest of the world seeks to address it.

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