8,522 lost in Med since boy’s death shocked the world

MORE than 8,500 refugees and migrants have died or gone missing while trying to cross the Mediterranean since the death of Alan Kurdi, the Syrian toddler whose body washed up on a Turkish beach two years ago today, according to the latest UN figures.

Some 4,337 people are believed to have drowned since Sept 2016 while attempting to reach European shores. A further 4,185 people died in the previous 12 months, from Sept 2015 until the end of Aug 2016.

Many of the children trying to reach Europe travel on their own, said a spokesman from UNHCR, the UN’S refugee agency. This was the case for 92 per cent of the 13,700 children who arrived in Italy by sea in the first seven months of 2017.

Photographs of three-year-old Alan’s body, in a red top and blue shorts and lying face down on the sand near the Turkish resort of Bodrum on Sept 2 2015, shocked the world and drew attention to the plight of refugees.

His death shifted the political discourse on asylum seekers. European leaders appeared to have been shocked into more compassionate policies.

The UNHCR said that although the number of refugees arriving in Europe had “drastically decreased” since Alan’s death, perilous sea journeys continued to result in the deaths of thousands.

Restrictions imposed on the Turkeygreece route are partly responsible for the reduction in the number of people arriving, but this has led many to take the more dangerous crossings from Libya to Italy and the Strait of Gibraltar from Morocco to Spain on inflatable vessels and rickety fishing boats.

Hundreds of thousands of migrants, mostly sub-saharan Africans, have crossed the Libyan desert with the help of people traffickers.