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Boat carrying migrants to Greece sinks off Aegean island, drowning 10
The assortment of migrants & refugees who’ve entered Europe by ocean & land this yr has passed the a million mark, a long-expected still symbolically vital capstone to a yr by which displaced people flocked to the Continent.
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Almost all of the million migrants traveled by sea, while 3,692 others drowned trying to make the crossing, including a 3-year-old Syrian boy whose tiny body was found washed up on a Turkish beach, horrifying the world. On Monday, the number of migrants who have crossed into Europe this year reached 1 million.
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) says there’s been a total of 1,005,504, with nearly all arriving by sea.
A total of 15 people were rescued while two remain missing.
Half of the refugees crossing the Mediterranean were Syrians, fleeing a catastrophic civil war that is entering its fifth year.
It explained further that Afghans accounted for 20 per cent and Iraqis for seven per cent. More than 200 have drowned in the Aegean and over 90,000 have been rescued.
The figures show that the vast majority – 971,289 – have come by sea over the Mediterranean.
As more refugees seek solace in Europe in 2016, more of the same can be expected.
The EU is counting on Ankara to stem the flow of refugees from Turkey into Greece and onward to Germany and other EU countries.
The biggest is the change in the composition of the refugees in the Middle East, principally Syria and Iraq, people that were staying in counties like Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan.
“This is three to four times as many migrants and refugees coming north as we had in 2014, and the deaths have already far surpassed the deaths a year ago”, IOM chief William Lacy Swing told Reuters. Furio De Angelis, the UNHCR’s representative in Canada, said that Canada’s program for resettling Syrian refugees is a “model internationally”. Germany’s strong economy has attracted many Europeans who are seeking jobs and a better life than is possible in the economically depressed Balkan countries, although many are being turned back because they are not eligible for asylum.
The war in Syria is a main cause of the influx of migrants to Europe, with a number not seen in half a century.
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The EU last week agreed to increase the numbers of Frontex border agency staff in Greece, a key arrival point. “Migration must be legal, safe and secure for all – both for the migrants themselves and the countries that will become their new home”, he added.