At least 10 migrants die in latest Aegean Sea accident

The number of migrants and refugees who have arrived in Europe over the past year has topped 1 million, marking the highest migration flow since World War II.

A migrant holding a baby waits at the border with Greece near Gevgelija, Macedonia, November 21, 2015. A total of 34,215 crossed by land routes, such as over the Turkish-Bulgarian border. That’s a rate of more than 10 deaths each day this year. In January, 5,500 people crossed; in October, that number increased to more than 221,000.

“We do not want more refugees, we want to avoid refugees being created and for that, peace is essential”.

According to the organizations’ figures, half a million people who ventured across the Mediterranean this year were Syrians, Afghans accounted for 20 per cent and Iraqis for seven per cent. There has also been negative rhetoric from specific European leaders. “Migration must be legal, safe and secure for all – both for the migrants themselves and the countries that will become their new homes”. Some have opened their doors while others are building fences. The IOM says more than 820,000 came that way in 2015, many fleeing wars in Syria and Iraq. One report said the dead were Syrians.

Overall, sea arrivals this year dwarfed those of 2014, when the UNHCR recorded 219,000 migrant landings in Europe via the Mediterranean.

A further 3,600 died or went missing, the two agencies said in a joint statement – with the United Nations stressing that the migration crisis was an global issue, not just a European problem.

The boat carried refugees and migrants from Turkey, Xinhua quoted an official as saying.

With more than 200 staffers in Syria, the IOM has helped more than 3.6 million people there with services including shelter, water and sanitation, an IOM spokesman said. A key policy, the system to share 160,000 refugees, has moved at snail’s pace. So far, only one in Lesbos is operational.

France’s anti-immigration National Front party won an unprecedented 27 percent in a nationwide vote in regional elections this month.

Swing, meanwhile, accused the West of having “refugee amnesia”.

The UNHCR has praised Canada for its plan to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees.

“I think we need all of us to be concerned, because we have never had a situation in recent times, where you have so many unresolved conflicts without any semblance of hope out there that any of these can be resolved in the short to medium term”. The vast majority crossed by sea, with more than 800,000 travelling from Turkey to Greece.

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.