UNITED NATIONS -- Foreign policy chief of European Union Federica Mogherini on Monday asked the UN to work together with the EU in addressing Mediterranean migrant crisis.
Mogherini, high representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and vice-president of the European Commission, said in a press briefing here that the EU seeks to dismantle criminal organizations that involve in trafficking and smuggling to address the crisis in one aspect to save people's lives.
She said that the EU has acted in an active and quick manner, and "the same level of awareness of the need to work together on the global scale has to be shared here by the Security Council ( and) by the UN system ... at the international level."
The EU's plan to confront the migrant crisis includes a controversial part of using military forces against smugglers and destroying their vessels for smuggling and trafficking.
"On destroying the vessels, the crucial thing for the EU is destroying the business model of trafficking and smuggling organizations, making sure that the vessels cannot be used again, making sure that the onsets of these organizations are destroyed in a larger sense," said Mogherini.
"Dismantling trafficking and smuggler's organization is a way of saving lives," she said, adding that there are criminal organizations and networks working cross borders, making money that could go to finance other kinds of activities and "they are making people slaves out of their desperation."
Earlier on Monday, UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for International Migration Peter Sutherland briefed the Security Council, saying that the situation in the Mediterranean represents a security crisis for the hundreds of thousands of refugees and about half of those who reached Europe qualify for international protection as refugees.
According to UN estimates, more than 110,000 migrants crossed through Libya in 2014 en route to Europe.
Sutherland said an effective strategy to address the crisis begins with the immediate need to save lives, adding that "if we do not frame our response in this way, it would represent a moral failure of the first order, one that would undermine international law and security."
At the end of April, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker asked the members of the bloc to set immigration quotas to help Italy and Greece to deal with rising number of illegal migrants and asylum seekers, who fled conflicts in their native countries in hope of finding a better life in Europe.
On Wednesday, the EC will hammer out a global strategy on immigration and discuss migration policy quota.
