It’s been a full decade since people started drowning in the Mediterranean in their thousands – and sadly, not much has changed. Back in April 2015, the world first started paying serious attention to what we now call the “migrant crisis.”
People fleeing war, poverty, and disaster across the Global South risked everything to find safety in Europe. For a brief moment, it felt like hope might win – leaders promised millions for rescue missions, and Germany’s Angela Merkel declared: “Refugees welcome”, reported the Independent.
But now we know that optimism didn’t last. It’s grim reading: in 2016, there were 389,877 migrant arrivals in Europe. Fast forward to 2023, and the number’s still staggering at nearly 293,000. Tragically, deaths haven’t gone away either – over 4,000 people were recorded dead or missing just last year.
Speaking to the UN last month, the secretary general of the Muslim World League reminded us that migration itself isn’t the crisis – the real crisis is the suffering that forces people to flee. And if we really accept that, we can’t just think of migration in cold numbers and policies; we need compassion at the heart of any response.
The brutal truth is Europe wasn’t ready back in 2015. When millions arrived needing safety, Europe’s moral foundations were shaken. Instead of rising to the challenge, we saw a massive surge in far-right politics across the continent – the biggest since World War Two. And today, that moral gap is even wider.
It’s why voices like the Muslim World League keep pushing for safer migration routes, instead of just throwing money at border walls or outsourcing the problem to other countries. Those strategies just make journeys deadlier, and desperate people will still risk it because they have no choice.
Real solutions mean tackling instability at the root, which is why there’s a big focus on supporting stability, particularly by empowering women and girls across the Islamic world. That work might seem far removed from dinghies in the Med, but it’s vital for building societies where people feel safe enough to stay.
At the same time, we have to rethink how we talk about migration. Migrants have massively contributed to Europe – look at Germany: over 10,000 refugees from 2015 are now fluent enough in German to attend university, and more than half are in work, paying taxes.
And with climate change already driving new waves of displacement, we’re nowhere near ready for what’s coming. Unless we build our compassion from the ground up, starting with small everyday acts in our own communities, we’re setting ourselves up for even worse.
Ten years on, the choice is clear: either let hatred and fear define us, or let our shared humanity be the legacy we leave behind – Voices/independent
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