Aylan Kurdi’s dad: “Nobody’s doing anything”

Abdullah Kurdi, 41, told Germany’s Bild daily.

Wearing a red T-shirt and denim shorts as he lay face-down in the sand, the shocking image of Alan drew the world’s attention to the deadly journey made by thousands of migrants.

Facing a humanitarian and political crisis because of the sheer number of arrivals, the European Union this year reached a deal with Turkey to discourage refugees from crossing into Europe. The dying goes on and nobody’s doing anything’.

In July, negotiations ahead of a September United Nations refugee and migrant summit put plans for a “Global Compact on Refugee Responsibility-Sharing”, proposed by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, on hold until 2018.

The image of 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi, lying facedown after a perilous journey across the Mediterranean, shook the world.

Both, according to Crowe, have had stirred the world’s conscience to what is happening in Syria and humanised the story.

In January, the EU’s criminal intelligence agency Europol said at least 10,000 unaccompanied child refugees had vanished after arriving in Europe, at risk of falling prey to trafficking gangs.

“Europe has been gradually closing borders – and even if those boarders aren’t physically closed, the bureaucracy is so hard for people that they just can’t get through”, she told Newstalk Breakfast. “In fact the situation has got worse, the war has escalated and more people are leaving”. In the first eight months of this year, more than 3,000 of those people have perished at sea – considerably more than in the same period in 2015.

“These things must be shown to make clear to people what is happening”, he said.

A year on, his father, Abdullah Kurdi, who now lives in Iraq, has expressed his disappointment that more has not been done to address the plight of refugees.

The recent images of Omran Daqneesh, the child pictured bloodied and covered in dust after being pulled from the rubble of his apartment block in Aleppo, have had a similar effect, showing the strength of public feeling about the violence that is forcing many refugees to flee.

On the anniversary of Alan’s death, faith leaders, council chiefs and celebrities gathered for a memorial outside the Home Office and handed in a letter for Home Secretary Amber Rudd, urging immediate action to bring the 387 refugee children now in Calais to Britain.

The outcry following Alan’s death led to widespread demands for more refugees to be settled in the UK. We should be letting them in today’. Criminal trafficking gangs are getting stronger, extremists are able to exploit the crisis, and the disorder of an unmanaged response threatens community cohesion and stability.

“We believe that the Government must now introduce a national dispersal system and indeed pass regulation to allow them to do so in the spring of this year”.

While sponsors who contact MCC remain focused on the Syrian crisis, others have said they want to help lesser known groups in need around the world.

The death of Alan Kurdi resulted in unprecedented expressions of sympathy and solidarity for refugees all over Europe, with many people volunteering to help and spontaneously giving food, water and clothes to refugees and even offering to take them into their homes. “Now I’m probably safer than I’ve ever been in my life”.