Migrants, who were rescued by the Libyan coastguard in the Mediterranean Sea off the Libyan coast, wait following their arrival at the naval base in the capital Tripoli on Monday. — AFP photo
The number of refugees and migrants arriving by land and sea in the European Union has passed 1 million this year, while a further 3,600 died or went missing, the UN refugee agency and the International Organisation for Migration said on Tuesday.
Half of those arriving were Syrians fleeing the war, another 20 per cent were Afghans, and 7 per cent were Iraqis, the two agencies said in a joint statement.
Out of a total of 1,005,504 arrivals to Greece, Bulgaria, Italy, Spain, Malta and Cyprus by December 21, the vast majority – 816,752 – arrived by sea in Greece, IOM said.
‘We know migration is inevitable, it’s necessary and it’s desirable,’ IOM chief William Lacy Swing said in the statement.
‘But it’s not enough to count the number of those arriving-or the nearly 4,000 this year reported missing or drowned. We must also act. Migration must be legal, safe and secure for all-both for the migrants themselves and the countries that will become their new home.’
The UN refugee agency UNHCR is planning for arrivals to continue at a similar rate in 2016, but IOM spokesman Joel Millman said it was impossible to forecast future numbers.
‘So much is in the balance, the resolution of the Syrian war, and the disposition of the European border protection moves that are being contemplated,’ he said.
‘We never thought it would reach this level. We just hope people are treated with dignity.’
The record movement of people into Europe is a symptom of a record level of disruption around the globe, with numbers of refugees and internally displaced people far surpassing 60 million, UNHCR said last week.
‘I don’t understand why people are insisting that this is a European problem. This is a global issue,’ Michael Moller, director of the UN office in Geneva, told a news conference on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, eleven migrants bound for EU member Greece, including three children, drowned off the Turkish coast on Tuesday when their boat sank in the latest tragedy in the Aegean Sea, the state-run Anatolia news agency said.
Seven people were rescued in the incident off Turkey’s Aegean Sea resort of Kusadasi but coastguards found the bodies of 11 people, including three children, it added.
The migrants appeared to have been trying to reach the Greek island of Samos which lies opposite Kusadasi.
Source: New Age
