This year, more than 130,000 migrants have arrived in Europe by sea, according to the UN. Many attempt to cross from North Africa and the Middle East in unsafe, overcrowded vessels. The incredible dangers of these routes into Europe have been highlighted this month by a pair of disasters that left more than 700 people dead.

Last week, about 500 migrants died after their ship was rammed by another boat near Malta. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) described it as “the worst shipwreck in recent years”. According to two of the nine survivors, the boat sunk when it was deliberately rammed by traffickers after the migrants refused to a smaller and even more precarious vessel. News of the sinking emerged as another vessel – this one carrying 250 people – sank off the coast of Libya. It is thought that more than 200 people drowned in that incident.

The sheer scale of loss of life is shocking; although perhaps not unexpected in the context. According to the IOM, more than 2,500 people have drowned in the Mediterranean this year. Around 2,200 of those have been killed since June alone. By comparison, around 700 migrants died in 2013 attempting the crossing. The leap in deaths reflects instability across the Middle East and North Africa; people are willing to take increasingly desperate and dangerous routes to get out.

In western Europe, refugees and migrants tend to feature in public discourse only as a problem to be managed. The deaths of hundreds at sea, therefore, do not prompt outraged coverage; the focus remains primarily on how to keep people out. But this is not an insignificant problem. As a point of comparison to the 2,500 who have died on the Mediterranean this year, the World Health Organisation says that around 2,500 people have died during this year’s Ebola epidemic. According to the UN, the conflict in Ukraine has killed a similar figure. Both crises are given far greater political priority than the deaths of migrants.

Of course, Europe’s tough border policies – which leave few legal routes into Europe open and indirectly embolden people smugglers - are a significant contributing factor to the large number of deaths at sea. Accordingly, there are clear policy steps that can be taken to reduce the dangers. In an excellent blog for Human Rights Watch, Judith Sunderland outlines some of these possible moves:

“First, the EU should create safe and legal avenues for refugees and asylum seekers to seek protection in Europe rather than risk their lives on the perilous crossing by sea. To date, EU policies have focused largely on enforcing borders – keeping people out – rather than ensuring access to safety for those who need it. The EU Home Affairs Commissioner asked the member states in July to consider humanitarian visas or allow asylum applications in third countries. Both ideas merit adoption.

“Second, the EU should not downgrade its rescue efforts at sea. The Italian Navy operation Mare Nostrum, launched last October after two deadly shipwrecks, has brought tens of thousands of people safely to Italian shores. Critics say the operation has encouraged boat migration, yet more than half of those who have made the journey are fleeing human rights abuse in Eritrea and war in Syria. The prospect that Mare Nostrum will be replaced soon by “Frontex Plus,” a far more limited operation by the EU’s border agency, raises the spectre of a rising death toll (already at nearly 3,000 so far this year).”

The only way to significantly decrease these death tolls is a change in EU policy; prosecuting networks of smugglers has its part to play, but addresses a symptom rather than a root cause. Sadly, the political appetite to make those changes does not seem to be forthcoming. These shipwrecks are, sadly, unlikely to be the last tragedies at sea we will hear of in the coming months.