While traveling to Cyprus, Pope Francis intends to turn all eyes to the migration issue, a major issue on this Mediterranean island located not far from Turkey, Lebanon and Syria. 

For this, he wanted to put migrants in the spotlight.

The Sovereign Pontiff will preside over an ecumenical prayer with several migrants on Friday 3 December at a church near the buffer zone administered by the UN.  

Arrived the day before, the Pope urged the European continent to "unity".

"We need to (...) walk together", he said, referring to the Mediterranean as "a sea which has cradled so many civilizations, a sea from which people, even today, disembark, peoples and cultures of all parts of the world ".     

Himself from a family of Italian migrants settled in Argentina, the 84-year-old pontiff never ceases to advocate the reception of thousands of "brothers and sisters", without distinguishing between religion, or refugee status or economic exile. 

He also intends to transfer 50 migrants from Cyprus to Italy, announced the Cypriot President who met François on Thursday in Nicosia.

The modalities of this transfer were not specified by the Vatican, which did not immediately confirm this announcement.  

Cyprus welcomes largest number of asylum seekers in Europe 

For this initiative, the Sovereign Pontiff was thanked very warmly by the Cypriot President, Nicos Anastasiades.

Faced with a massive influx of refugees for several months, the Republic of Cyprus says it has recorded the highest number of first-time asylum seekers in Europe compared to its population. 

Nicosi says some 10,000 irregular migrants arrived in the first ten months of the year, most from the north of the island.

Cyprus has been divided since the Turkish army invaded the north in 1974, in reaction to a coup by Greek-Cypriot nationalists who wanted to reattach the island to Greece. 

The proportion of applicants and beneficiaries of international protection in Cyprus corresponds to 4% of the population, according to the Cypriot Minister of the Interior, Nikos Nouris.

"It is obvious that this is a huge number compared to the population of Cyprus, which is 1.2 million inhabitants, and its financial and human resources," he warned in an interview with the weekly Marianne in mid-November.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), more than a fifth of new asylum seekers in the first nine months of 2021 were Syrians.

However, the number of asylum seekers from West Africa increased in 2019. Most migrants arrive from Turkey "through areas which are not under the effective control" of the government of Cyprus, according to Nikos Nouris.  

Arrivals by sea and crossings of the "green line" 

Some of the migrants reach Cyprus by sea, the island located on the borders of the European Union being less than 100 km from the Turkish shore. 

But the vast majority of those arriving this year pass through the "green line", the 180 km long demarcation line separating the Greek-Cypriot communities in the south and Turkish-Cypriot communities in the north.

The Republic of Cyprus accuses Ankara of instrumentalizing migrants, arriving by plane from Turkey to the northern part of the island, by allowing them to cross the border with the South.

This buffer zone between the two parts of the island is theoretically monitored by UN patrols. 

The overwhelmed Cypriot government is seeking to limit these arrivals, which add to the more than 33,000 people residing illegally in Cyprus.

Last spring, some thirty kilometers of barbed wire were erected on the "green line" west of Nicosia.

Cyprus is also considering asking the European Commission for the right to suspend asylum applications from people "entering the country illegally".  

With AFP 

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