CRISIS IN EUROPE

They have crossed treacherous seas in unseaworthy boats, trampled through dark forests carrying their worldly possessions on their backs. They have boarded crowded trains, walked miles along lonely motorways, slept rough, given birth to children in undignified squalor. Many have arrived at Europe's door bloodied but unbowed; many have died trying to get in.

Trafficked by human smugglers, they have endured privations that have shamed an entire continent. Some have been stuffed into the backs of lorries and asphyxiated. Others have drowned in the Mediterranean, fallen from trains or frozen to death clinging to the undersides of lorries. Fleeing bloodshed and chaos at home, they have made extraordinary journeys that have tested the human spirit almost to destruction.

2015 was the year of a migration crisis unprecedented in modern times, the greatest movement of refugees in Europe since the Second World War.

More than one million refugees and migrants arrived in the European Union in 2015, while almost 3,700 died or went missing in perilous journeys which reaped huge profit for smugglers, according to the International Organisation for Migration.

Out of a total of 1,005,504 arrivals to Greece, Bulgaria, Italy, Spain, Malta and Cyprus by 21 December 2015, the vast majority – 816,752 – arrived by sea in Greece, IOM said. Almost all those arriving came across the Mediterranean or the Aegean Seas, and half were Syrians fleeing the civil war. Another 20% were Afghans, and 7% were Iraqis, according to a joint statement from IOM and the UN refugee agency UNHCR.

The crisis created division in the EU over how best to deal with resettling people.

The record movement of people into Europe is a symptom of a record level of disruption around the globe, with numbers of refugees and internally displaced people far surpassing 60 million, UNHCR said.

As long as conflicts around the globe persist and European economy attracts job-seekers, the refugee and migrant pressure on Europe will continue.

And the future looks bleak for the refugees as more countries are shutting their borders and politicians in European Union, US and beyond are taking populist stance of blocking the flow citing security issues.