Europe’s role in the other human rights disaster unfolding on our doorstep

In recent weeks, European countries have welcomed with open arms the more than 4.6 million refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine.

However, this warm welcome tends not to be available to the hundreds of thousands of people from African and Middle Eastern countries forced to leave their homes by conflict or violence.

Irish Times reporter Sally Hayden's new book My Fourth Time We Drowned examines the experience of migrants being held in detention centres in Libya and the humanitarian disaster unfolding in this north African country.

Most people held in these centres tried to reach Europe by crossing the Mediterranean Sea but were caught and sent back by the European Union-funded Libyan coastguard.

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Hayden says she wrote the book because she wanted to document the consequences of European migration policies and Europe’s role in forcibly turning people away.

“We’re all culpable here because this is about who gets to stay comfortable and who doesn’t, who experiences atrocities and who doesn’t, who gets saved and who doesn’t,” Hayden told the In the News podcast.

“This is a really horrific situation that is ongoing and everybody should be paying attention to it and I don’t know why they’re not.”