Rabat - Over 100,000 migrants and refugees have arrived in Europe since January 2017 by crossing the Mediterranean, and 2,247 have died along the route or are missing, announced the International Organization for Migration (IOM) on Tuesday.
Rabat – Over 100,000 migrants and refugees have arrived in Europe since January 2017 by crossing the Mediterranean, and 2,247 have died along the route or are missing, announced the International Organization for Migration (IOM) on Tuesday.
Out of the 101,210 migrants, more than 85,000 arrived in Italy, almost 9,300 arrived in Greece, and around 6,500 arrived in Spain.
This figure is a large drop from the same period last year, when 231,503 migrants were registered. The majority of migrants this year arrived in Italy, while Greece was the main receiving country in 2016.
On Thursday, IOM Director General William Lacy Swing called on countries in the European Union to help the southern European countries receive the migrants who traveled by sea. “It cannot be seen as a problem only for Italy, but as a matter for the whole of Europe.”
Only 7,300 of the migrants received by Italy have been relocated to other countries in the European Union.
