In response to the leaked EU statement on the refugee and migrant crisis in the Mediterranean, which appears to claim that European leaders will not back the reintroduction of a wide-ranging and comprehensive search-and-rescue operation, Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen said:

"What the EU appears to be proposing is illegal, impractical and immoral.

"Reinstating a proper search and rescue programme is not an afterthought, it’s the most urgent thing European leaders should be doing. As they scheme, men, women and children are drowning.

"In the face of the biggest refugee crisis since the Second World War, the focus must be on the humanitarian emergency, not on plots to return people with asylum claims, to the very places from which they fled."