A/HRC/7/5 page 15 C. Refugees from hunger 36. Refugees from hunger are among the most excluded and discriminated people. They are also among those who suffer most from the lack of coherence in States’ policies. The Special Rapporteur argues that to be coherent, States must extend legal protection to protect people fleeing from hunger and other severe violations of their right to food. He calls for the creation of a new legal instrument to recognize them as “refugees from hunger” and grant them, at the very minimum, the right of non-refoulement with temporary protection so that they would not be sent back to a country where hunger and famine threaten their lives. This need to strengthen protection for people forced to leave their homes and land because of hunger was recognized by the General Assembly in its resolution on the right to food (A/62/439/Add.2, resolution XVII).31 1. Fleeing from hunger 37. Millions of people do cross international borders and some try to reach developed countries to escape pervasive hunger, especially people living in sub-Saharan Africa. Many try to reach the Canary Islands from Mauritania or Senegal. According to the Government of Spain, 37,685 African migrants reached Spanish shores in 2005. Another 22,824 migrants reached the islands of Italy or Malta, leaving from the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya or Tunisia.32 They also try to reach Greece through Turkey or from Egypt. In 2006, the Spanish authorities detained at least 28,000 people arriving in the Canary Islands after a dangerous journey across the open sea in overcrowded open fishing boats.33 Many arrive in terrible conditions, too weak to walk or stand and chronically undernourished. Yet most of them are detained and held in processing or detention centres before being forcibly repatriated to their countries of origin. 38. Nobody knows how many thousands of people die while trying to make the journey, but bodies regularly wash up on the beaches or get tangled up in fishermen’s nets.34 On 18 December 2006, the international press reported that over 100 refugees had drowned in a single day off the coast of Senegal on their way to Spain.35 However, as Markku Niskala, Secretary-General of the International Federation of the Red Cross has pointed out: “This crisis is being completely ignored: not only does no one come to the help of these desperate people, but there is no organization that even compiles statistics that record this daily tragedy.”36 31 See note 8 above. 32 Tribune de Genève, 14 December 2006. 33 BBC News, 30 November 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/6160633.stm. 34 BBC News, 24 October 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/ hi/talking_point/5404816.stm. 35 Le Courrier, Geneva, 10 December 2006. 36 Amnesty International, 3 October 2005, AI Index EUR 41/011/2005 at www.amnesty.org.