UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Assistant High Commissioner for Protection Erika Feller met with local authorities and visited the Barranco Seco reception centre, which houses some 200 recent arrivals, and La Isleta military barracks, which is being used as emergency accommodation for 812 arrivals.

Most of the arrivals are from Central and sub-Saharan Africa and made the dangerous 500 mile journey from the African coast crammed in tiny, open fishing boats known as cayucos.

On Tuesday, opening a conference in Madrid on maritime interception and rescue at sea in the Mediterranean, Ms. Feller called for a broad collaborative response to the challenges posed by mixed flows of migrants, refugees and other vulnerable groups.

“Rarely a week goes by without some news of an unseaworthy boat that has sunk with its passengers on board, dead bodies being washed ashore on the holiday beaches of southern Europe, and people who have paid huge sums of money to human smugglers whose last concern is the welfare of their clients,” she said told participants.

Over the last decade, thousands of people, including migrants, asylum seekers and victims of human trafficking, have died attempting to reach southern Europe from North Africa.

Last week, Ms. Feller was in Mauritania, where she met the authorities, and, separately, with UNHCR representatives of concerned offices in the region, to discuss how and where the agency can contribute to better management of the problem.