it's the biggest crisis of its kind in
Europe since the aftermath of world war
two Europe is struggling with a migrant
crisis that has resulted in more than
3,000 deaths since the beginning of this
year so why is it happening now
primarily because of growing conflict
and instability in the Middle East
Africa and Asia many of the refugees
come from Syria where a civil war has
been raging for more than four years
Syrian President Bashar al-assad's
government has been accused of using
barrel bombs and chemical weapons
against its own people and the extremist
group Islamic state has taken over large
parts of the country putting civilians
under brutal and violent rule four
million people have fled the country
with around two million Syrians in
Turkey more than a million in Lebanon
and more than 600,000 in Jordan more
Syrians are heading to Europe as refugee
camps in these neighboring countries are
overcrowded and underfunded war-torn
Afghanistan and Iraq are also major
sources of refugees and large numbers of
people are fleeing civil war in Libya
while others are fleeing poverty and
conflict in Eritrea and Nigeria plus
there are European migrants thousands of
people are leaving Kosovo and Serbia
trying to escape poor economic
conditions back home according to the EU
s border agency there has been almost
three times the number of migrants
illegally crossing into Europe between
January and July this year so what is
their end goal many want to get to
Germany Sweden and the UK where there
are better economic conditions and
growth so jobs will be easier to find
plus many of those seeking to get to the
UK speak at least some English how are
they trying to get there there are
established routes that lead to Greece
Hungary or Italy nearly 200,000 people
have arrived in Greece alone so far this
year many migrants from Syria and Iraq
travel through bordering Turkey from
there they had to Greece on boats across
the Aegean Sea from Greece many had to
the Western Balkans to continue their
journey Macedonia Serbia and Hungary all
see an estimated 2,000 migrants arriving
each day
in Italy more than 100,000 people have
landed so far this year with people
taking the dangerous Mediterranean route
from Libya do the migrants get to
northern Europe many do Germany expects
to process 800,000 asylum applications
this year but many also get stuck in
Hungary and Greece waiting for the
documents they need to travel to other
European countries and in a
controversial move Hungary has built a
fence along its border with Serbia in an
effort to stop the flow of people coming
in how is the EU dealing with this so
far there's not much of a common
strategy the EU has boosted maritime
search and rescue efforts and a number
of countries have agreed to resettle
qualifying migrants Germany France and
Italy say asylum seekers should be
distributed fairly across the European
Union but there's tension in the bloc
countries are at odds about instituting
a quota system with poorer members
resistant to taking a broader share
Germany France and the UK have agreed to
resettle tens of thousands of migrants
but a europe-wide plan is still lacking