On March 7th in Brussels the NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu will discuss the migration situation and the alliance operation on migration monitoring in the Aegean Sea. According to Tass, the issue of access of ships of the Second NATO Naval Group in the territorial waters of Turkey will be discussed, which Ankara has not yet provided to its partners in the alliance.
The head of the regional office of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement in Russia, Davron Muhamadiev, said that the situation with migrants in Europe has a tendency to deteriorate.
"Today [in the world] there are 73 million internally displaced migrants of different categories, including 43 million who have been internally displaced as a result of conflicts, wars, crises, situations of violence. If we extrapolate this to the total number of migrants, in total there are about 214 million migrant workers in the world today, of whom 43 million are people who have left their homes as a result of wars, crises and conflicts."
As for the situation in Syria, then in four years of conflict the situation of the people has deteriorated considerably. "More than 7 million people in Syria are in need of assistance, including 5 million are IDPs, then 3 million are in neighboring countries, every month more than 2.5 million are receiving assistance from the Syrian Arab Red Crescent," Muhamadiev said.
With regard to the situation in Europe, it is directly related to the crisis that is happening now in Syria, and, as we know, active migration to Europe began in August of last year. To date, more than 600 thousand displaced persons are in Europe, and, unfortunately, more than 3 thousand have died on the route of their travel itinerary. The main routes of the migrants are through Greece and Italy. These two countries accept the main streams of refugees. As for the countries of migrants’ origin, 53% of them are citizens of Syria, and then from such countries as Afghanistan, Eritrea, Iraq, and already a number of African countries, including Somalia, Sudan, Gambia," Muhamadiev said.
