This is the best summary I could come up with:

The tragic incident adds to hundreds of migrant deaths via shipwreck in the last year — as the number of people seeking asylum in Europe after being forced to flee conflict and poverty in their home countries grows.

The recent uptick is due to a host of factors, including a surge in migrants from Libya and Tunisia to Italy; traffickers putting people on unstable iron vessels; and insufficient resources dedicated to rescue efforts by European governments.

At the same time, the European Union has struggled to put forth a coherent immigration policy that offers legal pathways for migrants and instead many countries have focused on proposals aimed at strengthening their borders.

“The devastating rise in deaths in the Mediterranean is not simply down to more people making crossings,” says Josie Naughton, the head of a UK-based nonprofit called Choose Love dedicated to providing refugee aid.

“It is deeply alarming and disappointing that EU countries are trying to abdicate to their duties to rescue people in distress at sea under international law,” a Human Rights Watch spokesperson previously told CNN.

Tunisian President Kais Saied has been aggressively unraveling his country’s democracy in recent years, and has implemented overtly racist policies against sub-Saharan Africans, which has hastened their exodus from Tunisia.

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