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IOM: Migrant arrivals into Europe tops 1 million in 2015

With arrivals of 4,141 migrants or refugees landing in Greece on Monday, IOM reports total arrivals to Europe at roughly 1,005,504, with just 3% coming by land.

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The vast majority of people – 821,008 – landed in Greece, according to the figures.


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But Europe has struggled to respond to the wave of people entering the region.


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The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) reported in a joint statement on Tuesday that over 1 million refugees and migrants have reached Europe so far this year.

Italy saw more than 150,000 come to its shores, and Bulgaria was the first European stop for nearly 30,000 newcomers.

About half of the people entering Europe were Syrians, while 20 percent were Afghans and 7 percent Iraqis, IOM said. But he notes the mass migration into Europe is primarily a refugee situation, which reflects the sad state of the world.

“Migration must be legal, safe and secure for all-both for the migrants themselves and the countries that will become their new home”.

However, a unified European Union position remains elusive.

The Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, which killed 129 people, triggered concern that extremist militants could enter Europe amid the thousands of arriving migrants and prompted calls for nations to tighten their borders.

But where Merkel has opened doors, other European leaders have put up fences. He also criticized it for allowing some countries not to register migrants and refugees, and for allowing member states to take unilateral decisions on the issue. “In Lebanon, 1.1 million Syrians form about one-fifth of the country’s total population, while Jordan’s 633,000 registered Syrian refugees make up around a tenth of the total”.

“You can not have unbroken simultaneous conflict from the western bulge of Africa to the Himalayas without expecting that a lot of people will be heading north, and obviously the resolution of the Syrian conflict is key to everything here”, he said.

A migrant holds her child while disembarking from a Coast Guard ship in the Sicilian harbour of Messina, Italy.

Deaths are also commonplace along land routes into Europe. Half are migrants from Syria.

Migrants and refugees arrive at Lesbos, Greece, on October 28, 2015.

If they do not, he says they deserve to be dealt with in a humane manner, according to immigration law. The huge milestone is a more than a four-fold increase on last year’s figures.

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And public sentiment toward the migrants remains mixed across the continent. One example is Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban who told a group of journalists in September that “I think we have a right to decide that we do not want a large number of Muslim people in our country”. Most of those who died – 2,889 (almost eight a day) – were making the sea crossing between north Africa and Italy, while more than 700 died in the Aegean crossing to Greece from Turkey.

Authorities say a boat carrying refugees has sunk off an eastern Greek islet drowning at least 13 people