UNHCR concerned over new security decree

(ANSA) - Rome, June 19 - The UNHCR on Wednesday voiced concern over Interior Minister Matteo Salvini's second migrant and security decree which sets fines for NGO migrant rescue ships that try to bring migrants to Italy.
    The UN's refugee agency said it had "expressed a very precise position on the security decree mark two, in the part that concerns rescues in the Mediterranean by private subjects.
    "In this part, the decree concerns us a lot, we believe that the increase in the mortality rate in the Mediterranean is directly due to the absence of a structured instrument of research and rescue," said Carlotta Sami, the UNHCR's spokesperson for southern Europe.
    She was speaking during the presentation of the Global Trends 2018 report in Rome, on World Refugee Day.
    "We have asked all European countries on several occasions and ever more strongly to eliminate the obstacles that have been put up in the last few years to the work of the organisations that carry out rescues in the Mediterranean," Sami said.
    "We have asked the (Italian) government to revise the decree in this part and we have asked parliament to modify it".