Europes refugee crisis has been described as the worst of its kind since World War II, at the end of which there were more than 40 million refugees in the region and led to the creation of international laws and organizations that would become the foundation of the worlds refugee response today. Fast-forward to 204: 29,000 refugees crossed the Mediterranean into Europe, according to the U.N. So far this year, more than 300,000 people have made that journey, many of them to escape civil wars (PRIs The World). From a financial standpoint, since the beginning of 204, 2 million refugees and migrants have entered Greece and in line with UPI News Current, $254 million in refugee-related funding has come from the European Commission. Of this total, the Greek government received $2 million, a further $5 million went to organizations dealing with refugee protection, asylum and migration (Breakdown of spending on refugee crisis in Greece.): the International Organization for Migration, the U.N. refugee agency and the European Asylum Support Office. Helpful as it is, this amount of money is not anywhere near what is needed, and if it were to be divided evenly for all refugees, each individual would have to live with aroun
d $8 a year. Refugees are not aiming to displace other people seeking entry to Europe, defenders argue, but merely trying to escape the violence and chaos of their home countries.
A 0-year-old child tried to commit suicide in a Greek refugee camp. Perhaps the most shocking thing about this story is that it is not unique. Routine police beating and squalor in Moria, the largest camp on the island of Lesbos and home to about 8,000 people, have pushed the situation to a breaking point. Moria fails to meet just about every standard set by the UNHCR. New arrivals are crammed into inadequate sports tents, or on to farmland where lighting has not been installed, and up to 90 refugees share one filthy toilet. The EU started closing its borders to migrants in October 205, when Hungary blocked asylum-seekers who had previously been waved through the Balkans and Central Europe so they could reach Western Europe. It was the height of Europes refugee crisis. That month alone, the U.N. recorded more than 200,000 migrants crossing from Turkey to Greece all of them bound for Western Europe (Democracy Chronicles). By the end of 205, more than a million migrants had entered the EU. Most were from war zones, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan.