Alwaght- More than 300 migrant children have drowned trying to reach European shores in the six months since 2 September 2015 when photograph of Syrian toddler Alan Kurdi, whose tiny body washed up on a Turkish beach, shocked the world.
An average of two children has drowned every day crossing the eastern Mediterranean Sea since September 2015, new figures show.
More than 340 migrant children have died making the perilous crossing to Europe in that time, according to a joint statement by the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR), the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and children’s charity UNICEF.
October was the worst month, with 84 children losing their lives, half of them on one of the deadliest days, Wednesday 28th.
The mounting death toll comes amid a trend of more women and children attempting to cross from Turkey to Greece.
In June last year one-in-ten of refugees and migrants registered at the border of Greece and FYOR Macedonia were children, according to IOM.
According to EU border agency Frontex, around 885,000 people came to Europe in 2015 via the eastern Mediterranean migratory route, largely migrants and refugees arriving on Greek islands such as Lesbos. The vast majority were Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis.
That figure rose to just one-in-three by October, a change driven by refugee families wanting to reunite, according to Euronews.
The new figures come as a European Council summit intended to be partly about migration was largely derailed by talks aimed at keeping Britain in the European Union, Newsweek says adding Leaders of the 28 EU member states have spent much of their two-day meeting working on the fine detail of a renegotiation of Britain’s EU membership, which means a planned discussion on the initial framework for a new refugee policy may have to take a back seat.
