Cast Away

On April 19th 2015, when over 700 men, women and children perished in the Mediterranean, Europe's leaders were swift with a chorus of outrage and promises of action. But this was a catastrophe which could have been prevented. Since 2011, increasing numbers of people fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East and Africa have been risking their lives on Europe's sea and land borders to try and forge a better future for their families, but instead of offering sanctuary, EU...
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On April 19th 2015, when over 700 men, women and children perished in the Mediterranean, Europe's leaders were swift with a chorus of outrage and promises of action. But this was a catastrophe which could have been prevented. Since 2011, increasing numbers of people fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East and Africa have been risking their lives on Europe's sea and land borders to try and forge a better future for their families, but instead of offering sanctuary, EU governments have scaled back life-saving search and rescue operations and refused to overhaul the bloc's inept asylum system. Charlotte McDonald-Gibson has spent years reporting on every aspect of this story, and here she offers a vivid glimpse of the personal dilemmas, pressures, choices and hopes that lie beneath the horrifying headlines. We meet Majid, a Nigerian teenager who exchanged the violence of his homeland for Libya, where he was driven onto a rickety boat during Colonel Gaddafi's brutal crackdown on migrants. Mohammed was studying in Damascus until his name appeared on the draft and his parents urged him to seek safety in Europe. Instead he found himself clinging to a life raft watching his friends drown in the dark waters of the Mediterranean until rescuers finally took the traumatised survivors to Malta, where he remains stranded, unable to work and surrounded by the sea on all sides. Hanan, a mother of four from Syria, is forced to gamble her children's lives on the chance of safety for her family in Europe.While the politicians wrangle over responsibility, and the media talk in statistics, Cast Away brings to life the human consequences of the one of the most urgent humanitarian issues of our time.