Brad Blitz, dean of international politics at Middlesex University. Photo: Darrin Zammit Lupi

A new Malta-based migration organisation will compile and curate data to help policy makers come up with a better way to deal with the migration crisis.

The Mediterranean Observatory on Migration, Protection and Asylum, set up by the Maltese branch of the UK’s Middlesex University, was unveiled yesterday.

It will provide open-source information from a variety of sources, ranging from rescuers to international agencies and migrants themselves.

Addressing the launch, the dean of international politics at the university, Brad Blitz, said the observatory would be working with established stakeholders, such as the UN refugee agency UNHCR, the Migrant Offshore Aid Station (Moas), and Migrant Report, which is a new Malta-based organisation compiling information on the migration situation.

Prof. Blitz said the EU had historically been quite slow to react to humanitarian situations such as the migration crisis. He pointed to the vastness of “unfiltered” information already available as a hindrance as well as a tool.

“We want to create a situation where policy makers can react faster and also where we have early warning systems in place to act before it is too late.

“To do this you need information which is accurate, which has been selected and is representative,” he said. Moas director Martin Xuereb shared the sentiment, saying that the quality of information was essential to his team’s rescue operations.

“The difference between information and intelligence is the process by which the information is selected and turned into something valuable,” the former brigadier said.

Mr Xuereb said the observatory had provided interns from the university who, among other things, were creating new geographic maps on the evolving migration situation.

The members of the observatory yesterday had a meeting with the Office of the Prime Minister and the EU’s Asylum Support Office, Easo, before heading to Sicily for an information-gathering exercise. They will return to Malta on Thursday to give a full briefing.