 The International Organization for Migration is trying to find one. And their director, General William Swing, joins me now live from Geneva. General Swing, good to... Director General Swing. Good to see you. Tell me what solution you are trying to come up with, because the last time we talked, you were talking about a kind of a task force. And has that got any further? You know, because the problem has obviously got a lot worse. Well, thank you very much, Christian. Clearly, we have a lot of work to do. If we make as our top priority saving life, then it seems the rest follows fairly logically after that. We have to do something to arrest and prosecute the smugglers. We need to open up more legal avenues of migration. We need to ensure that there are alternatives for these migrants, including the possibility of temporary protective status, asylum for those who qualify. Some will have to be returned home because they're in an irregular status. Some will be sent further north to their families to join them, particularly the Syrians. And I think we have to recognize that we are in a period of unprecedented human disasters and emergencies from the West Coast of Africa and the Gulf of Guinea across the South Asia. We have a series of conflicts like we've never seen before, at least in my 50 years in diplomacy. And there are no political processes or active negotiations right now that offer us any hope of a short to medium term solution. Therefore, we have to find a way to save life. I think we can set up temporary migration reception centers in countries of origin and transit. Unfortunately, Libya, which was our hope as a place to have these centers, is now unstable. We can't do anything really meaningful there. But we need to try to give people a chance to process themselves before they take on these criminal smugglers and get on their boats to come to Italy and then go further north. The smugglers are really the trap. Let me just interrupt you for a moment because you've said, sort of, you know, you've never seen such war and its consequences in your 50 years. For instance, one of the Coast Guards said that he had received 20 distress calls just on Monday alone. Why is this spike? We said like 900 people this year have drowned compared to 17 last year. Is this just because the wars are getting more intense or is there another reason for it? Well, the wars are, of course, we're in the fifth year of war in Syria. We have conflict in Iraq. We have conflict now in Yemen, in Libya, in Central Africa and the public, South Sudan. In addition, many of these migrants were going to Libya to work. Libya is so unstable and they're being so persecuted there that they have no alternative but to take the boats. They can't go back home. So I think that we need to concentrate on how we can help these people and save them before they get on to these boats. There needs to be more dialogue and contribution, a cooperation between the countries of origin, transit, and destination. There needs to be more attention to alternatives, a common migration policy, and to get serious about the smugglers. We have proposed a global conference on migrant smuggling. I think I mentioned this when we spoke the last time. We're serious about that. We're putting it together. But that will be much later. Meantime, it's extremely important that Mari Nostrum, the Italian naval and coast guard operation, start operating again. I think the Italians have been absolutely heroic in saving those 10,000 lives, but they need help. They're much more robust than the Triton operation. Right, and to that point, I put that point to the President of Italy, Mattarella, just a couple of weeks ago when I interviewed him in Rome. This is what he said to me about Mari Nostrum. It was not Mari Nostrum was not, in fact, as many people feared, a pull-factor which would increase the arrival of migrants because in recent months with the Triton operation, there's been an increase of 60% in the number of landings. So you see there, Mr. Sweeney, he's basically saying that everybody's fears that if we continued with this very proactive Mari Nostrum, we would just encourage people. He says that isn't the case. And actually, Human Rights Watch has really taken on Europe saying that they have shown a lack of political will to help alleviate Italy's unfair share of the responsibility. Would you agree with that? No, not at all. I think it's important to put this whole crisis in context. Okay, 170,000 to 200,000 people went north last year in an irregular status. This is not an invasion. They're going into a population area of 500 million. Lebanon with fewer than 5 million population is now supporting more than a million migrants. Jordan, similar population, is supporting a similar number. So I think there comes a time when we have to have something called humanitarian border management in which people come and they're allowed to stay usually for a temporary period. But until things are such in their country that they can return or possibly to integrate into local society, there are many alternatives there. We need more resettlement countries in Europe. Only about half of the countries are now resettlement countries. We need larger resettlement quotas for the refugees. We need more opportunities for people to immigrate legally even for a short period. All right, Director-General William Swing of IOM. Thank you so much for talking to us tonight on this really heartbreaking situation.