Turbulent seas and falling temperatures are not stopping desperate people from seeking safety in Europe. Last month, more than 218,000 people made the perilous Mediterranean crossing — nearly as many as in all of 2014. So far this year, more than 3,400 people attempting to cross have died or are missing.
More than two and a half million people, mostly Syrians and Iraqis fleeing war, have gone to Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, where they are facing increasingly dire conditions. Many families have exhausted their savings, and children are forced to work menial jobs instead of attending school. United Nations agencies that provide food aid and winter supplies have had to cut thousands of people from support in these countries. They simply don’t have enough funding.
Thousands who have made it to Europe are also at risk of exposure, hunger and illness. Some European leaders, paralyzed by rising xenophobia that they themselves have stoked, are doing little to help. European Union members promised in September to accept 160,000 refugees who were already in Europe, but only 116 had been relocated by the start of November. Of the 2.3 billion euros ($2.46 billion) pledged by European governments to help refugees, less than €500 million has been received. For a union founded on values of solidarity and dignity, this is shameful.
Germany stands alone among the European Union’s 28 member states in welcoming legitimate asylum seekers on the scale required. It plans to take in 800,000 people this year.
There is much that European and other governments need to do now, like stepping up contributions to United Nations agencies working in Jordan, Syria and Turkey.
Greece, where refugees are expected to arrive at a rate of 5,000 a day, needs emergency help. The European Union should swiftly relocate refugees from Greece and Italy to states that have promised to accept them. And shelter, clothing and food are urgently needed by the people straggling across Europe, left at the mercy of winter by Europe’s miserable failure to respond to the biggest influx of refugees since World War II.
Migrants and refugees wait for a bus to Serbia after visiting a registration center in southern Macedonia.
Credit Robert Atanasovski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images