The international community should consider the possibility of taking people traffickers before an international criminal court, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat told a Migration Summit at UN headquarters in New York.

He said that migration was increasingly becoming an organised international crime and those behind it needed to be treated as criminals.

He spoke on Malta's experience and how the island, despite having received thousands of migrants in the past, had still offered to take migrants from Italy and Greece as part of the EU relocation programme. 

He said the management of the EU's borders were a collective responsibility and the solution should be sought through joint action on the basis of international solidarity.  

Dr Muscat also co-chaired a round-table on immigration where he again stressed that countries need to work together.