to disembark. ♪ >> the headlines on al jazeera. millions of americans are voting for who will represent them in congress. the polls have closed in several states. all 435 seats in the house of representatives are up for grabs and 35 of the 100 seats are being contested. the elections will also determine the future of president biden's agenda. kimberly has more on that from the white house. >> what we have been told is that the president has spent the last few hours making calls into some radio stations targeting

minority communities, trying to get in the final hours the last few voters to go to the polls and cast a ballot in his favor, but now, as these polls are closing in the east coast and in the coming hours out to the west , the president we understand will be watching these returns as they come in with his senior advisers and we know that we expect that on wednesday, he may in fact address the nation, appealing for patience as these votes are continuing to be tallied because again, we expect that it may be some time before we get a final result. >> violence has broken out at demonstrations in sudan's capital. they were calling for the restoration. security forces cracked down on recent protests. the high commissioner urged egypt to release an egyptian political activist. he has been on a seven month hunger strike and stopped drinking water two days ago when the top 27 -- caught 27 summit

began in egypt. he has been held in jail with no charge. the french catholic church has been hit by a new scandal. a cardinal has confessed to assaulting a 14-year-old girl in the late 1980's. those are the headlines. "inside story" is next. >> as the world faces global challenges, indonesia is set to host the most difficult g20 summit. soaring inflation, food crisis, and energy instability. a rivalry and hope to bring solutions to global issues. the g20 summit on al jazeera. >> hundreds of rescued migrants want to get into italy but the governments will not let them disembark at the port. how will the new right-wing prime minister deal with the standoff and how much responsibility lies with the rest of the european union? this is "inside story."

hello and welcome to the program. italy's new right wing prime minister is facing the first major test of her pledge to block migrant rescue ships. giorgia meloni's government is refusing to allow people to disembark at the sicilian port. the charity vessel arrived on saturday after rescuing 621 migrants and refugees. women, children, and six people were allowed off but the government says the men on board are not vulnerable and must leave italian waters. dozens of people are stuck on another boat. humanitarian organizations are suing the italian government, saying everyone on the rescue ships are vulnerable and are

entitled to protection under international law. >> we will never leave the port as long as there is one person on board our vessel which has the right for international protection, which has the right to reach safe land. >> italy's interior minister says the rescue vessels are sailing under the flags of certain countries in these countries must shoulder some of the responsibility. >> i want to point out our approach. we respect people. we respect human needs. we respect these peoples emergencies, but at the end of this, those who do not qualify according to the international organizations must be taken out of territorial waters so the ship will be asked to leave italian territorial waters. >> germany's government says it is working closely with italy. >> it is important that all the rescued people on board the ships go ashore and all can be taken care of appropriately. this is what we at the federal

government are continuing to work for. we are in close contact with the italian authorities about these two ships and also about the other ships involved in this issue and we are working very specifically to ensure that the refugees and migrants receive appropriate care. >> italy is one of the main gateways into europe and since the beginning of the year, it has seen a sharp increase in margaret -- migrant arrivals. that is compared with 55,000 in the same period last year. the majority set sail in small, overcrowded boats, and are mostly from egypt, to, and bangladesh. figures show half of all refugee applications are rejected and this is usually because authorities believe another country is responsible for the claim. let's bring in our guest. joining us from rome is an italian political analyst and assistant professor at the university for foreigners.

a humanitarian activist and member of mission lifeline was involved in a rescue operation. joining us from florence is valerie, a professor of politics of european integration at the university of florence. welcome to you all. thank you for your time with us on inside story. i will start off with you first. from what i understand, you are with the crew from the german run rise above vessel which entered italian waters over the weekend. can you tell us about the conditions of the migrants and refugees on board and how many there are? >> yes. as you can see, i am front of rise above that was allowed to enter port this morning and all our guests that were still on board, 89 guests. we could disembark without any problems so now, we don't have

any guests on board anymore. in the last days, the condition went really bad so it went completely critical. we had to evacuate for medical reasons at least six persons because they collapsed on board of our vessel. and yes. >> tell us what led to the moment that everyone on board was allowed to disembark because from what we understand from some of the other vessels, only women and children have been allowed to disembark and the men were not allowed to. >> we have no information about this. we got yesterday the first contact from the italian authorities and they told us we can go to the port of calabria but it was not given as a port of safety and they were not given any reasons why we could enter this port so we were just happy that we could enter the port and that the people were

immediately disembark. >> once the refugees and migrants entered the port, give us a sense of where they go to next and what sort of services and facilities are available to them. >> here at the port, there were medical organizations. police on scene and everybody was checked for injuries. afterwords, they went to a gym or something in this way. and now, i have no information about the conditions inside. >> thank you so much for that update. let me go over to cecelia. we have been hearing from her that 89 people from the vessel that she is connected to have been allowed to disembark but the fact is, you still have at least two other vessels stranded

at sea where the men so far are not allowed to disembark. how do you think the standoff will be settled? because rome, as you have been hearing, insists that the countries whose flags these boats are flying should bear the responsibilities for the migrants and refugees in the ngo's are saying italy is breaching international law by keeping them on the ship. >> yes, absolutely. i think that what you said is correct. i think the theory that the interior of italy put forward about the fact that the states basically should be cooperating doesn't really find basis in international law so i think that the ngos are correct in claiming that italy, at this point, with this idea that the other states should be

cooperating before people are put in a situation of safety is actually breaching international law so i think they will find a solution. as it happened with many other similar situations which occurred in the past few years, i would just like to add, i mean, we are devoting much more attention to the situation now but even in the past month, under mario jockeys watch, we witnessed several standoffs so it took days before the so-called migrant ships were able -- were allowed to disembark. >> i'm glad you bring up mario drunk you because i'm going to come back to it a little later and put to you what he said earlier this year when it came to the ukrainian refugees but let me bring in valerie in

florence for just a moment. the ngos have denied circumventing procedures and they say it is their duty to protect people who are in distress but as we know, the new italian government campaigned on a hard-line migration policies so for the new prime minister, is she just carrying out the promises she made to her voters? >> i guess that is what she is doing. i am externally disappointed with what the italian government is doing but i'm also disappointed with the european union. unfortunately, the issue -- migration is an issue which is unresolved so the italian government is not behaving well. i am ashamed of being italian right now. at the same time, the point is that the countries on the mediterranean obviously face a burden when it comes to migration and this burden cannot

be only handled by the countries that are facing the mediterranean. if we look at what the legal basis of new actions are and look at what the treaty on the function of the european union says, we see that it is a shared responsibility but it is not just a legal issue. if you look at the legal issue, and we would have to mention article 78.3, which says on the function of the european union, in the event of one or more member states being confronted, an emergency situation characterized by a sudden inflow of nationals, the council on a proposal from the commission may adopt provisional measures for the benefit of the member states concerned but still, this is not such an emergency situation if you look at the numbers and this is the point. this is a situation.

if we compare the numbers of what is going on it is not a huge number of people. it is for political reasons because this issue, migration -- the government is crying so it's going to use a hard term, a distraction from big issues because we are talking about a few hundred people. in fact, for the other ship, it was only 34 people left on board so -- >> let me ask you this this issue of migration has been a burning political issue since at least 2014 when there were a lot of migrants turning up on european shores. to what extent did that fuel the rise of both the league and maloney's party? >> definitely. as i said, the issue has been

criticized. if we look at long-term interests of europe, we need more migrants. this is something we are completely overlooking so it is just a distraction on the issue but the real problem is that in europe, we do not have enough workers to take care of our aging population so we actually need more migrants but it's not just in italy. also in other european countries, we have the rise of right-wing populist parties and for them, migration is an issue where you can focus on the attention so you don't look at what the problems are. >> over to you. italy's government adopted a measure recently formalizing the closure of its ports to rescue ships run by humanitarian groups such as yours. do you expect a wider crackdown on ngos and if so, how is that going to impact your work?

>> hopefully, this will not happen because it will be a step back towards the year 2018 where exactly the same happened and as we all know, there were a lot of trials and cases on court but in any case, so the ngos side got right and did nothing wrong so we are acting completely with the law and i cannot imagine that something like humanitarian aid will be criminalized in this way so hopefully, it won't have happened again like this. >> we keep talking about the right-wing government that is currently in place right now in the anti-migration policies. does this incident signal a step back for italian authorities or is this new government simply resurrecting policies we have seen him cemented in the past? in 2019, you had that close sports policy implemented by the then interior minister and far

right leader, salvini. >> in fact, the current sort of framework that italy adopts for the management of migration, which is geared towards securitization of migration, treating migrants as a security threat, was something that was introduced before salvini was in government by a democratic party that is centerleft government so technically, things have not changed that much in terms of framework. as a colleague in florence was saying, what changed, what is changing is sort of the instrument ally station of these issues. to the previous question you asked, it's important to consider that, again, we are witnessing this kind of war being waged against ngos, but even blocking ngos would not solve the problem. if you look at the figures, how many people arrived in italy in the past 10 days, 9000 people

arrived to italy's shores. only about 1000 were on board ngo ships, right? so waging this war against ngos would not even start to deal with the problem if we want to call it a problem. >> here's the thing. valerie was saying a moment ago that this could be a way for the government to distract from the domestic issues that are going on in the country. do you agree with that? as we saw in the election -- the rising energy prices. at the same time, the prime minister and the parties did campaign on a hard-line anti-migration platform and they have been elected into power. do italians expect a hard-line policy when it comes to migration? >> i agree 100% with your colleague in florence. absolutely, it is -- it diverged attention towards fabricated

problem because, in fact, even italy's electorate was and still is very much worried about the cost of living crisis, energy, war, etc., but at the same time, migration has always been a controversial issue so it's very convenient right now for the government. i would not even say that this is a test for the government. quite the opposite. it is very convenient for italy's government to be able to talk about migration rather than explaining to the country how they are going to deal with the cost of living crisis, what the plans are for the future in terms of security vis-a-vis the russia and ukraine were, etc. -- war, etc. >> how much support, public support, do you think there is

in italy for a harder migration policy? >> i think, first of all, we should remember only 26% of those who went out and voted actually voted for maloney and although, ok, we have a center-right government in power, that does not correspond to the majority of the population in italy because there were 60 million people who simply did not go out and vote so we should remember, a lot of people in italy are not actually supporting the current government. it is due to the electoral law and actually, if you look at the importance of ngos in italy and especially of the catholic church, you will see that a lot of people are in fact in favor of a different approach for migration. there is a very interesting survey that was made about a year ago and it shows how

perceptions can be even wrong. a lot of people in europe about the presence of migrants in their own country was much higher than it actually is. which means that there are problems with the perception. it depends what is the message of the political parties. >> for the sake of time, my apologies had from what you have seen on the ground, how hostile has italy's policies towards migrants and asylum-seekers become in recent years? >> it has a really big impact and the people, you can see the people are really suffering. if they are kept on the ships, like hostages, i would say, a horrible scenario that you can see in the people are really

suffering. i think it's an absolutely no go that the politics are deciding about decisions on the ship about the people on the ships. that were just from that case. >> you were mentioning marco jockey at the beginning of the program so this is what he said earlier this year. italy has welcomed refugees from ukraine with open arms. more than 85,000, mostly women and children, have sought shelter from the war in our country. italians have thrown open the doors of their homes and other schools. we will not look the other way. a lot of people say the double standards here are really glaring. is it a certain type of refugee that they want to be allowed into italy? >> i think it is evident to anyone that this is a double standard. why are we treating, for instance, syrian asylum-seekers and ukrainian asylum-seekers stephanie? we also saw certain things we would not have wanted to see on

the european border. ukrainian citizens who were not white were rejected, for instance, told to go back to the end of the queue. they were not being let in. i think there is absolutely a double standard in this sense and actually, maloney played during the electoral campaign in italy. they were using this a lot. they were saying that those who cross the mediterranean, they are not real migrants. or real refugees for the real refugees are, for instance, ukrainian ones, so this kind of narrative i think is very dangerous like discriminating between who is a natural, good refugee, or who is not. i think it is very, very tricky. >> what is the role for european countries as a whole? you were mentioning the responsibility and where it lies

just a moment ago. we saw european countries come together and share responsibility when it came to ukrainian refugees and rightly so because a refugee is a refugee at the end of the day but when it comes to people coming from other countries, what is the role of european countries and how do you get them to share that responsibility with countries like italy, for example? >> well, my answer is that unfortunately, right now, the majority of european political leaders are very shortsighted so they are really concentrating on short-term issues and very often following the next elections. it's very difficult to have a long-term strategy. this is what we are missing in europe. africa is right in front of us, the continent right in front of us. we seem to be ignoring what is going on in that continent because we keep pushing our own

agenda. for instance, digital transition of priority -- is that the case of africa? maybe we should consider what is actually going on on that continent? we are talking about 9000 people over the recent days. we should be considering that in the case of the african continent, you have internal displaced persons, forcibly displaced. we are talking about millions. uganda has one million, 500 refugees in its own territory so what is going on in africa is so much bigger than what comes over to europe and if we do not understand that it is in our own interest of the african continent to approach the issue in a different way, i think it is really going to backfire on us. >> let me ask you this. will italy's tough new approach divide members because following one of the vessels that entered the italian waters, berlin

denied any responsibility for the ship. that vessel flying under a german flag. italy should be the one to allow rescue people ashore. then you heard from hungary's prime minister and, victor or, who said we owe a big thank you to melania's government -- giorgia meloni's government. >> solidarity is what is written in our treaties. we are very far from solidarity and the point is that solidarity is also in our own interest so what we are doing right now is, from my point of view, is not in the interest of europe. the kind of approach that we are taking to the problem and the fact that we are not supporting a country such as italy because it is clear that italy cannot take all of the risk for what is happening that we should also be aware that migrants are coming into europe even from other parts of the world, not just through the mediterranean.

this is a small minority of people. >> final words to you if you would like to comment. we have 30 seconds left on the program. >> absolutely. i think the big issue here is the shortsightedness so to speak of the political elements in europe. the ironic thing just to conclude it is now, giorgia meloni is rightly calling for more solidarity but actually, the leaders which are against that european union are the nationalist leaders that are considered to be her sort of political allies and counterparts so we see another paradox there. >> thank you so much for joining us. thanks to all our guests. thank you so much. thank you for watching. you can see the program any time by visiting our website and for further discussion, go to our facebook page. join the conversation on

twitter. our handle -- thanks for watching. bye-bye for now. ♪

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