The List, detailing 34,361 deaths (Dying refugees is nothing new, and they don’t all drown. For 25 years we’ve looked away, 20 June), is a sombre reminder of some who have died in the legitimate exercise of their fundamental right to seek and enjoy asylum from persecution, and in their search for a place to live where they may enjoy a minimum level of safety, security and economic, social and cultural rights. However, the names of most missing and dead refugees and migrants across the world are not known, their families not traced; where bodies have been found, they are often buried in unmarked graves. Families do not know if a missing relative – a parent, spouse, brother, sister or child – is alive or dead.

On 10 and 11 May, some 50 civil society participants from around the world, and from a wide spectrum of disciplines, gathered on Lesbos as part of the Last Rights Project. The resulting Mytilini declaration of 11 May – see www.lastrights.net – is a summation of agreement reached as to the significant, fundamental issues to be highlighted. More should and will be done, but this document provides renewed focus and spotlight on the rights of the bereaved, missing and deceased, a tool for lawyers, campaigners and activists to challenge practices of states and use to persuade. It works internationally, irrespective of jurisdiction or cultures, and at local as well as higher level.

We do not want this to become just another dust-laden document on a shelf. It will be a difficult process in a contested, contentious area. It will need all our persuasion and tenacity to gain traction with states. But we believe this is achievable with momentum from signatories and endorsees, and has benefits for states in terms of efficiency and effectiveness, while reflecting an existing set of obligations.

Catriona Jarvis

Co-founder and co-convener, Last Rights

• The way immigration utterly dominated your 20 June edition is a harbinger of things to come, as people grasp that this issue, and how to tackle it, will dominate the future of politics. To solve the migration crisis, which is tearing European and now US politics apart, will require a three-pronged approach. This must consider the pros and cons of immigration from the perspective of the countries the migrants have left, the migrants themselves, and the views of the majority in the country migrants have entered or are attempting to enter. The rapid rate of population growth in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean will add to the urgency of this approach.

Democratic, progressive and internationalist policies would include ones that meet the concerns of the majority with stricter border controls, but which also grasp the urgency of seeing all foreign policy, aid and trade agreements in terms of improving the lives of the majority in poorer countries, and thus helping to minimise permanent migration globally. Progressive policies could range from increasing living standards for the poorer section of society through fair taxation to limiting arms sales, decarbonising economies and reducing resource use.

Finally, the other forces that have caused insecurity in the recipient countries – globalisation, austerity and the increasing additional threat of automation roaring up the skill ladder – must be reversed. The disruption at present caused by migration could be the prism through which such long-sought goals finally become reality.

Colin Hines

Author, Progressive Protectionism

• The more I see the restrictive policies of “Fortress Europe”, the more a line from Bruno Bettelheim’s book The Empty Fortress resonates: “But I believe that knowing the other – which is different from knowing about the other – can only be a function of knowing oneself.” In this era, populists use the words “refugees and migrants” to inspire fear and rejection. I do not know how much Alf (Lord) Dubs knew “about” Syria or Afghanistan, but he knew what it was like, as a child, to arrive as a stranger on the Kindertransport, escaping Nazis. He used what modest influence he had to amend legislation that has been overwhelmingly hostile to the most vulnerable refugees. The List may stimulate readers better to know “the other” who is desperate to come here. Critically, from behind our white cliffs, it may stimulate us to better know who we, really, are.

Woody Caan

Editor, Journal of Public Mental Health

• Before Roberto Saviano lashes out at his countrymen for “an upsurge of nationalism that displays racist animus” in opposing immigration, he needs to come up with something better than his three solutions to the problem (Italy’s war on migrants makes me fear for my country’s future, 19 June). Firstly, making all current illegal immigrants legal is the opposite of a solution. The message to would-be illegal immigrants is that if you hang around long enough you will get in. As Saviano says, it’s been done before. Secondly, “we should get to work on regulating visas”. Does that mean everyone gets a visa and you haven’t solved the problem, or does it mean only some get visas and you haven’t solved the problem? Thirdly, getting agreement from other European counties to accept Italy’s immigrants. Laughable. It’s never going to happen.

Mass migration is a massive problem, and it is not going to be solved by liberals like Saviano calling those who oppose it nationalist racists waging a war on migrants or by any other slogans or empty rhetoric.

Derek Matthews

Newcastle on Clun, Shropshire

• For centuries the “developed world” has exploited the resources of the “developing world”, holding back their chance for economic growth and security. So it is hardly surprising that the people who live there are coming here to get their money back. We need a new approach to the so-called migration problem, based on a fairer distribution of where the world’s wealth is spent.

Eric Goodyer

Birsay, Orkney

• Roberto Saviano says that when it comes to illegal immigration “Italy has not earned the right to say: ‘Right, that’s enough.’” I agree that Matteo Salvini is “flagrant in his nastiness” towards migrants trying to reach Europe. However, I was surprised when some liberal Dublin-based Italian friends of mine told me that “something must be done” about the out-of-control problem of illegal immigration in their homeland. It doesn’t help that other European countries, notably the UK and Ireland, continue to refuse to take in their fair share of refugees and economic migrants. Emmanuel Macron summed up the hypocrisy of many in the EU when he attacked Italy’s “cynicism and irresponsibility” in turning away the rescue ship Aquarius. Salvini had some justification in dismissively pointing out that France had committed to accepting 9,816 migrants under a 2015 EU redistribution scheme but had so far accepted only 640 people.

Joe McCarthy

Dublin

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters