UNITED NATIONS: Europe’s migrant crisis took center stage at the United Nations on Wednesday with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon seeking to muster a global response to the worst refugee crisis since World War II.

Leaders from some 70 nations prepared to meet as Greek authorities recovered the bodies of a migrant woman and a child who drowned when their dinghy capsized in the Aegean, the latest reminder of the tragedy.

The UN chief opened the UN General Assembly in New York this week with a call to Europe “to do more” amid sharp divisions between the continent’s leaders on how to respond to the migrant flow.

“We should not be building fences or walls, but above all we must look at root causes, in countries of origin,” said Ban.

Europe’s handling of the crisis has come into focus amid an intense diplomatic debate over the way forward to end the four-year war in Syria, which has driven four million people from their homes.

Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu took to the podium of the General Assembly to press demands for a “safe zone” to be created in Syria to protect civilians fleeing barrel bombs and the Islamic State group.

Sheltering two million Syrian refugees, Turkey has proposed creating the protected area near the Turkish-Syrian border as a way to cope with the mass influx of refugees from the war-torn country.

Initial reaction to the proposal was cool, but with refugees massing at European borders and thousands of migrants drowning in the Mediterranean, Turkey’s plan could gain traction.

In his address, Davutoglu said the United Nations had “failed” to save lives in Syria and stressed that Turkey had “assumed more than its fair share of the burden” from the refugee crisis. “Our doors will remain open,” the prime minister declared, though warning that the refugee crisis will not end before a “legitimate government” is formed in Syria.

Among the hardest-hit countries in Europe, Germany announced that a record number of between 270,000 to 280,000 refugees had arrived in September, more than the total for all of 2014.

Germany said it could step up checks on asylum claims as migrants arrive at its land borders, while the Czech Republic held police drills on its border with Austria as it mulled re-introducing border controls.

The huge influx, Europe’s biggest since World War II, has exposed deep rifts in the continent about where the newcomers should go and what should be done to stem the flow.

Published in Dawn October 1st, 2015

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