At the Interior Ministry headquarters on November 7 a new agreement was signed between the Interior and Foreign Ministries and the Community of Sant'Egidio, the Federation of Evangelical Churches and the Waldensian Methodist Church, in order to allow 1,000 more refugees to enter Italy through the Humanitarian Corridors projects.

The new agreement came after the success of the first memorandum, signed between the same actors in December of 2015.

How humanitarian corridors work

To limit journeys by boat across the Mediterranean, which had already caused a high number of deaths - including many children - the Community of Sant'Egidio, in collaboration with the Federation of Evangelical Churches and the Waldensian and Methodist Churches, conceived a pilot-project in 2015 to give migrants a safer way to reach Europe.

The working principle was easy: give people in "vulnerable situations" - victims of persecution, torture and violence, as well as families with children, elderly people, sick people, persons with disabilities - a safe (and legal) way to enter Italian territory.

The associations sent a team of volunteers to the countries where the projects were set up, with the purpose of establishing direct contact with refugees and selecting the ones that needed to leave the country first. When the volunteers recognise a valid reason to grant a visa, they prepare a list of potential beneficiaries to be transmitted to the Italian consular authorities, and after a check by the Ministry of Interior, humanitarian visas are issued, which are valid only for Italy.

In this way, asylum seekers arrived in Italy legally and safely and could apply for asylum, avoiding becoming prey of human traffickers in a desperate bid to reach Europe.

The first agreement

Thanks to the first agreement and a protocol with Lebanon, 1,000 refugees who fled the Syrian Civil War and hosted by Lebanon have arrived in Italy in a safe and legal way, within a completely self-financed project. This not only saved them from risky travel across the Mediterranean, but also facilitated integration in the arrival country.

In fact, the project didn’t end with the refugees' arrival, and associations performed many others tasks that Italy has had difficulty carrying out. Refugees were welcomed in houses at the expense of the associations, which also guaranteed them language courses, school classes for their children and help in finding job.

A good practice to be spread out

In addition to the renewal of the protocol with Lebanon for another 1000 refugees, a second agreement has already been signed with Ethiopia. In this project, the partners of the Community of Sant'Egidio are the Italian Bishops' Conference (Cei), Caritas and Migrantes. Five hundred Eritrean, Somali and Sudanese refugees living in Ethiopia will be accommodated in Italy, and the first group could land at Rome's Fiumicino airport by the end of November.