Photos courtesy of Reuters
More than one hundred thousand migrants crossed the European Union’s borders in July, a UN agency recently reported.
Read the following story from the Bangkok Post to learn more about the migrants.
A record 107,500 migrants crossed the European Union’s borders in July, according to new figures reported on August 18, showing they are arriving in dramatically increasing numbers and creating a humanitarian crisis for the 28-nation bloc.
POPULATION PROBLEMS
EU border agency Frontex reported that its latest figures were far higher than the previous monthly record in June of 70,000. During the first seven months of the year, there were nearly 340,000 migrants, up from 123,500 during the same period last year, Frontex said.
“This is an emergency situation for Europe. It requires all EU member states to step in to support the national authorities who are taking on a massive number of migrants at its borders,” Frontex director Fabrice Leggeri said.
WAR REFUGEES
The UN refugee agency added that during the beginning of August alone, 20,843 migrants — virtually all of them fleeing war and persecution in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq — arrived in Greece, which has seen around 160,000 migrants land on its shores since January, according to the UN refugee agency. “The pace of arrivals has been steadily increasing in recent weeks,” a UNHCR spokesman said.
BERLIN BOUND
The wave of migrants has impacted Europe from its southern islands to the northern countries. Germany, as Europe’s economic powerhouse, has become the refugees’ top destination, with one in three who arrived in the EU last year seeking asylum there. Berlin expects up to three-quarters of a million to apply for asylum in 2015, the Handelsblatt newspaper said
WORKING TOGETHER
UN refugee chief Antonio Guterres called on August 18 for more solidarity among European countries in taking in asylum seekers, insisting it was “unsustainable” for Germany, along with Sweden, to take in the majority of refugees.
France and Britain meanwhile recently signed a deal in the middle of August to try to alleviate the migrant crisis in the northern French port of Calais, where thousands of people desperate to get to Britain through the Channel Tunnel have gathered.
Exercises
Specify whether each of the following words used is in the story as a verb, adverb, noun or adjective.
1. desperate
……………….
2. crisis
……………….
3. gathered
……………….
4. dramatically
……………….
Vocabulary
- migrant (n): a person who moves from one place to another, especially in order to find work
humanitarian (n): concerned with reducing suffering and improving the conditions that people live in
asylum (n): protection that a government gives to people who have left their own country, usually because they were in danger for political reasons
solidarity (n): support by one person or group of people for another because they share feelings, opinions or aims
alleviate (v): to make something less severe
