THE government has failed to learn lessons from the Channel disaster, rights groups have claimed amid renewed calls for safe routes on the first anniversary of the tragedy. 

Candle-lit vigils will be held on Thursday evening in France and England to remember and demand justice for those who lost their lives on November 24 2021, when a dinghy carrying 34 people capsized in the English Channel. 

Twenty-seven bodies were recovered, including seven women and three children, while five people remain missing in the worst maritime disaster in the Channel in over three decades. Just two survivors were rescued from the waters.