The patrols put in place by Italy and the European Union to rescue migrants from the Mediterranean Sea are also helping human traffickers get substantially richer, researchers at Italy's Palermo University say.
Professors Carlo Amenta and Paolo Di Betta, aided by Palermo Prosecutor Gery Ferrara - a lead investigator into the migrant smuggling trade - set out to probe the phenomenon from an econometric point of view.
"Military patrol operations in the Mediterranean... have increased (migrant) arrivals, thus representing an incentive and an outside positive factor for the business of migrant traffickers," the academics say in a written presentation of their work.
By increasing the safety of sea crossings, the rescue missions make the services offered by traffickers more attractive, thus boosting their business, the researchers concluded.
Amenta, Di Betta and Ferrara have yet to publish their research in an academic journal, but Amenta presented preliminary findings at a Cambridge University seminar last week.
The first migrant rescue in the Mediterranean was Italy's Mare Nostrum, launched after the October 2013 shipwreck off the island of Lampedusa in which 366 people died. It has since been replaced by several operations run by the EU and private NGOs.
In the past, humanitarian organisations and EU institutions have responded to "pull factor" criticism against Mediterranean rescue missions by insisting that saving migrants' lives was a moral imperative.
