UN special adviser Philippe Douste-Blazy calls for immediate intervention from European countries and sustained longer-term drive to tackle root causes of crisis

The Mediterranean migration crisis is a “human atrocity” on a scale not seen since the second world war and can be tackled only with short-term generosity from European nations and a sustained global push to reduce extreme poverty over the coming decades, a senior United Nations official has warned.

Philippe Douste-Blazy, a UN undersecretary-general and former French foreign minister, said the world had to understand that economic inequality was driving people from their home countries just as steadily as war.

Douste-Blazy – who advises the UN secretary general on innovative financing for development and chairs Unitaid, which uses small levies on air fares to fund health programmes – also said migration to richer countries would increase unless more was done to improve life in the the developing world.

“The wave was 10cm high two years ago,” he said. “Now it’s about 40cm high. But for your children, it will be 30 metres high. Why? Because 2 billion people in the world earn less than $1.25 a day. The difference between now and 20 years ago is that everybody looks at everybody now – it’s the globalisation of the economy and the globalisation of communications: internet, TV, radio. It’s very new.”

While he acknowledged that many refugees were fleeing violence and oppression in countries such as Syria, Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan, Douste-Blazy said “we have 50% who are trying to escape from extreme poverty”.

Referring to some of the populist ideas advanced by politicians across Europe, he added: “The solution is not to recruit more policemen, more soldiers and more coastguards – or to build walls. The only solution is to avoid the fact that the migrants are coming to Europe.”

Douste-Blazy said he had been shocked by what he saw on a recent 10-day trip to the Mediterranean and the Italian island of Lampedusa. As well as finding the bodies of 50 people who had been asphyxiated by engine fumes in the hold of a ship, and seeing women horrifically sunburned from using their bodies to shield their children from the fierce sun in open boats, he recalled one mother who reached out and touched her child’s arm for one last time before dying on a gurney in an Italian clinic.

“Everybody speaks about migrants and migration and flows of people but, essentially, this is a human tragedy,” he said. “I think it’s a human atrocity. You have to go back to the second world war to see these kinds of atrocities.”



Such sights, he said, showed why European countries had to live up to their frequently-proclaimed values by taking in refugees and migrants.

“I know that we can’t take in all the misery of the world,” he said. “I know that. But who can refuse these human beings? Who?

“I can understand that it’s very difficult to be a head of state with this kind of crisis, but I’m in line with [the European commission president Jean-Claude] Juncker and [the German chancellor Angela] Merkel: we have to share the flow of refugees and migrants in Europe. We have to find a way – and I think it will be very difficult – but we have to share. It’s obligatory.”

Given their history of welcoming refugees, he added, “it’s impossible for me to think for one second that the British people don’t want to share”.



Douste-Blazy said that the enduring crisis ought to persuade the world of the need to invest more in fighting poverty. With the UN due to meet later this month to agree the sustainable development goals (SDGs), which will replace the millennium development goals and set the global agenda for the next 15 years, he said the world needed to put its money where its mouth is.

“We have to take advantage of this gathering in New York and say, ‘Look, we’re going to organise innovative financing for development to reach these SDGs’ – a Marshall plan for sub-Saharan Africa because I don’t know one person in Mali, in Senegal, in Ivory Coast, in Syria, who would be happy to come to London, Paris or Oslo if they could stay there with their family,” he said.

“Extreme poverty is not the cause of all wars, but in this region – in sub-Saharan Africa – you have a vicious circle of extreme poverty, which leads to corruption, which leads to violence, which leads to conflict and civil war, which then leads to extreme poverty.”

Douste-Blazy conceded that overseas aid spending was a tough sell for European governments at a time of austerity, but said there were other financial initiatives that could complement national contributions.

He pointed out that Unitaid, which was founded in 2006, has raised more than $2.2bn (£1.4bn) to fight Aids, tuberculosis and malaria.

“We need innovative public financing and innovative public-private partnership financing,” he said. “The idea is very simple: take a microscopic solidarity contribution on globalised activities that benefit a lot from globalisation – air travel, tourism, financial transactions, extractive resources, internet and mobiles.”

Later this month, Douste-Blazy will launch Unitlife, an initiative that will apply the Unitaid model to the extractive industries to raise money to combat malnutrition. The micro-levies – 10 cents for each barrel of oil, 70 cents for a gram of gold and $1 on every pound of uranium – would be used to fund programmes combating malnutrition.

“It’s the beginning, but I want to convince the international community that it’s possible and that it’s painless for everybody,” he said. “If I ask 0.1% on a financial transaction, tell me who is going to be poorer? Nobody. There will be no consequences for the real economy.

“Before, it was hard to get heard but now, with the migrant crisis, I think it’s possible because we can say that it’s a solution.”



Douste-Blazy said that while he was well-versed in the old arguments on aid and corruption and not a fan of economic assistance, people would continue to leave their homes in search of a better life abroad as long as they and their children were denied such fundamental rights as drinking water, food, basic healthcare, education and sanitation.

“I prefer to teach somebody to fish than give them a fish every morning,” he said.

“But if you die before you’re five years old, you can’t go to school and so it’s impossible.”