Over 1 million refugees in Europe in 2015: UN

One million migrants reached Europe by land and sea in 2015 fleeing conflicts and persecution, the UN refugee agency said today in what is the biggest movement of people in the continent since World War II.
According to UNHCR, some 972,500 migrants had crossed the Mediterranean Sea in 2015 (as of December 21) in addition to the International Organisation of Migration's (IOM) calculation of over 34,000 crossings from Turkey into Bulgaria and Greece by land.
Syrians accounted for about half a million people - or every one in two - crossing the Mediterranean in 2015.
Afghans accounted for 20 per cent of the crossings and Iraqis about seven per cent.

80 per cent of the people arriving irregularly into Europe - over 800,000 refugees and migrants - came via the Aegean Sea into Greece while refugees and migrants crossing North Africa and entering Europe through Italy dropped slightly from 2014 - 170,000 in 2014 to around 150,000 in 2015. The Greek island of Lesbos is now the main gateway into Europe.
IOM through its Displacement Tracking Matrix pegs the arrivals to Europe in 2015 at 1,005,504 with only three per cent coming into the continent through land.

On December 19, a rickety boat carrying 62 refugees capsized off Chios island drowning a 2-year-old Iraqi boy.

Six of the 15 bodies of refugees that have washed up on Greek shores this month are those of children, according to the Greek Coast Guard.
Fatalities continue to rise with the death toll for 2015 standing at 3,692, according to IOM estimates, which is 400 more than the death toll of 2014. This figure does not include at least 30 deaths reported of African migrants trying to enter Europe through the Canary Islands.
The director general of IOM, William Lacy Swing, has called the Mediterranean "the deadliest route for migrants on our planet".
"Migration must be legal, safe and secure for all - both for the migrants themselves and countries that will become their new homes," said Swing in a press release.

The European migration flow is, however, much less than what the neigbouring countries from the epicenters of conflict in the Middle East - Syria and Iraq-- have to face.
Roughly, 2.2 million refugees live in Turkey alone, 1.1 million Syrians live in Lebanon making up one-fifth of the country's population and Jordan has 633,000 Syrian refugees.
According to UN figures, more than 4 million Syrians have fled a brutal civil war, and more than 7 million have been internally displaced through the conflict entering its fifth year and creating the worst refugee crisis seen in 25 years.
"I don't understand why people are insisting that this is a European problem. This is a global issue," said Michael Moller, the director general of the UN office at Geneva.