In autumn last year Aylan Kurdi, a three-year-old boy from Syria, drowned in the Mediterranean. His body washed up on the Turkish coast on 2 September. A photograph of the boy, lying lifeless and face down on the beach near Bodrum, immediately went viral.
The picture told Europe that it could no longer shield itself from the refugee crisis. In 2015, more than a million migrants reached the EU via the Mediterranean Sea. Aylan Kurdi and over 3,700 others died or went missing attempting the hazardous journey. Another 2,510 died or went missing in the first five months of 2016, against 1,855 for the same period last year.
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