IMAGES of his lifeless body on a Turkish beach shamed Europe and sparked urgent calls to solve the refugee crisis.
But since the drowning of Syrian toddler Alan Kurdi in 2015, at least 8500 more refugees and migrants have died or vanished while trying to cross the Mediterranean.
Today, on the second anniversary of his death, peace in Syria has yet to be achieved and those fleeing conflict and violence in that country, as well as Afghanistan, Eritrea, Iraq and others, are still living in makeshift camps in nations they are not entitled to call their own, such as Greece.
And only one third of the promised 20,000 Syrians that David Cameron’s government promised to resettle in the UK from shelters in the Middle Easy have arrived so far.
Cameron said the dedicated vulnerable persons resettlement scheme, which was set up in the wake of Alan’s death, would provide a “direct and safe” route to Britain for displaced Syrians as an alternative to unofficial migration channels.
According to the Home Office data, around 8500 people have been accepted and accommodated throughout more than 200 local authority areas. Commenting on the figures, which include more than 1200 arrivals between April and March, Immigration Minister Brandon Lewis said he was “delighted with the significant progress”.
However, marking the second anniversary of three-year-old Alan’s death, the UNHCR refugee agency urged the international community to take “robust action” to prevent more tragedies. This includes in the cases of lone youngsters.
More than 90 per cent of the 137,000 children who made it to Italy by sea during the first seven months of the year were not accompanied by adults.
And while the numbers attempting the route from Turkey to Greece have fallen, usage of the more dangerous North Africa-Italy route has changed little in a year.
The UNHCR said: “If people see no hope and live in fear, then they will continue to gamble their lives making desperate journeys.”
Alan was travelling with his older brother Galib, five, mother Rihan and father Abdullah when their boat went down en route to the Greek island of Kos. Abdullah, the only survivor, returned his family’s bodies to Kobane in northern Syria for burial.
Last year, he told the BBC the first anniversary of their loss was esp- ecially painful, adding: “At first the world was anxious to help refugees. But this did not even last a month. In fact the situation got worse.”
As well as the deadly sea crossing, many hundreds, if not thousands, of people are understood to have perished or disappeared while attempting to cross the deserts of Libya and Niger. At an international summit in Paris on Monday, African and European leaders agreed new measures to try to curb migration, including commitments to strengthen border control in Niger and Chad.
French President Emmanuel Macron also said an agreed “short-term plan of action” would tackle the people traffickers he said had transformed the Mediterranean into a “cemetery”.
UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura told the Today programme refugee returns to Syria could be on the horizon, predicting Daesh will lose its last remaining stronghold in the country by November, paving the way for new political accord, reconstruction and elections.
Arguing that Syria has entered “the beginning of the end of the war”, he said: “If the international community helps both the opposition and the government by pushing to accept a real negotiation, then within a year it would be a possibility of having a truly credible election.”
He went on: “Only an inclusive, political, credible solution will allow that reconstruction and that will be through elections.”
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