Record number of migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean
- 9 years ago
The number of refugees and migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Europe this year has been more than 300,00 – up from 219,000 for the whole of 2014.
Those figures are from the UN’s refugee agency, the UNHCR.
So why the steep increase?
That’s a question euronews put to the regional Director of the International Organisation for Migration in Brussels, Eugenio Ambrosi:
“One element of this is of course the season, because the majority of those people come across the Mediterranean, so of course with the summer and the relatively calm sea, the number of people that try to reach the shore of Europe increases because of the weather condition.
But the main reasons of the origin of this big flow is what we are witnessing in other regions of the world that are not too far from Europe: the war in Syria has been going on for 5 years, internal as well external displacement of Syrians has continue to grow over these 5 years ; countries in the region are overwhelmed by the number of refug
Those figures are from the UN’s refugee agency, the UNHCR.
So why the steep increase?
That’s a question euronews put to the regional Director of the International Organisation for Migration in Brussels, Eugenio Ambrosi:
“One element of this is of course the season, because the majority of those people come across the Mediterranean, so of course with the summer and the relatively calm sea, the number of people that try to reach the shore of Europe increases because of the weather condition.
But the main reasons of the origin of this big flow is what we are witnessing in other regions of the world that are not too far from Europe: the war in Syria has been going on for 5 years, internal as well external displacement of Syrians has continue to grow over these 5 years ; countries in the region are overwhelmed by the number of refug