 I'm Hala Gurani, sitting in for Christiane. It's an age old tale, people making their way through perilous conditions in search of a better life, desperately doing what they can. It is now a growing crisis in Europe where tens of thousands of migrants from North Africa and the Middle East seek out a new life each year. But Italy is warning that it may stop rescuing migrants trying to cross its borders unless the European Union does more to help out. The country's interior minister says government just can't handle the volume of people making the journey across the Mediterranean Sea. Just this year alone, over 40,000 migrants arrived on the Italian coast. That is more than the whole of last year. And Syrians fleeing violence in their country formed the largest group of those migrants with just over 11,000 crossing. Fewer people are dying at sea because the Italian Navy set up a rescue operation in October last year after shipwrecks left hundreds of migrants dead since then more than 20,000 have been rescued at sea, plucked from the waters essentially. But the Italian government now says it is quite simply overwhelmed. Joining me from Geneva to talk more about this is Ambassador William Lacey Swing who heads up the International Organization for Migration. Ambassador, thanks for being with us. Italy says it is- Thank you very much. Italy says it is next month going to ask the EU to just take over this operation. That this is costing it more than $12 million a month and it can't do it alone. Do you think that you will listen? Look, I think, thank you very much for this opportunity. This is a key issue. We're engaged in a period of what we can only call desperation migration. We're in a period of unprecedented human mobility and unprecedented multiple complex humanitarian emergencies from Libya to Syria to South Sudan, the Central African Republic, Somalia and then all the natural disasters such as the typhoon in Philippines. So more and more people are leaving out of desperation and far too many are dying along the migratory route. We tracked 2,370 people who died on the high seas and in the deserts of Africa and the Middle East in 2013 alone. This has to stop and to do that, I think policies have to change. And why is there such an increase this year? Because all of last year, the number was similar to just the first six months of 2014. I think it's largely because of the crises that I mentioned. There are no political processes in place right now that seem to be going anywhere. There's a very mixed flow. Many of these people are in need of international protection under the UNHCR convention. Some are simply going out of Syria trying to get to their families in Northern Europe. And we really have to crack down on the traffickers and smugglers because as governments draw the visa regimes ever tighter and deny more and more possibilities to get there legally, people will go there and put their life at risk. You're talking, sir, about the traffickers, the prime minister of Italy, Matteo Renzi, saying that intervention needs to happen in Libya where you have these criminal gangs essentially charging migrants to use these terribly unsafe vessels. Is that realistic that Europe and because two thirds of these migrants end up outside of Italy, so is it realistic to expect this type of intervention? I think what is needed at this point is a way to keep people from putting their lives at risk. The top priority has to be to save life. And we're very grateful to Mare Nostrom, the Italian operation since the disaster off Lampedusa in October. They've saved some probably 36,000 lives in this period. And they have done a great service to everyone. But I think there are things that can be done. We've made our views known. There could be migrant assistance and protection centers in North Africa, for example, where people could go and be processed before going to Lampedusa and Malta. And that would save life and allow some people to come on board legally. But who should share the burden here? Italy is pretty much saying at this point, we set up this operation, sure it saved lives. Our Navy and Coast Guard are participating in it, but we cannot do it anymore. We don't have the funds. Should other EU countries not pitch in? Well, we believe that there should be shared responsibility among all of the countries that have been receiving migrants. It's difficult under the Dublin Convention to do this, but there needs to be more reaching out, not only by Europe, but by other countries. I know that the United States has taken a number of the migrants from Malta to help out there, and more things like this could be done by other countries. Now, while the numbers are great and I wouldn't make light of that, but you're talking about 50,000 migrants are going to an area that is approximately 450 million or 500 million people in all of Europe. So surely there must be a way somehow to share that responsibility. All right, we'll see how they respond when Italy formally requests that this responsibility be shared. Ambassador William Lacey Swing, the head of the International Organization for Migration. Thank you very much for joining us on CNN Today.