The Syrian conflict has been pushing citizens out of their homes since 2011, but the internal turmoil caused by shifting borders between different factions since March 2014 has been particularly tumultuous. Syria’s civil war is the worst humanitarian disaster of our time. Chemical weapons and barrel bombs are now a daily phenomenon in Syrian territories. Half of the 23 million population of Syria have been forced from their homes, with four million becoming refugees in other countries. Most Syrian refugees end up in overcrowded and underfunded camps in neighboring countries. But with little hope of returning home, many of these families are seeking new lives in Europe, though the journey is expensive, uncertain, and often fatal. This year has seen a tenfold annual increase in people travelling from Greece on the Western Balkans route. It is assumed that more than 20.000 people per week are entering the Greek borders this summer. They first cross the Syrian-Turkish borders; some of them stay in the refugee camps of Turkey before they head to Europe. The next step and the most dangerous is crossing the Greek-Turkish borders. The majority of the refugees are travelling to Izmir and then are boarding into a inflatable boats to the Greek coast of Lesvos. From there, they have to walk 70km to the port of Lesvos where they get registered. The port of Athens is the next destination and from there they head north to the Greek - FYRO Macedonian borders and to other European countries where they aim to apply for Asylum.
With war, violence and persecution leaving one in every 122 humans on the planet a refugee, internally displaced or seeking asylum at the end of 2014, the UNHCR warned that the world was experiencing an “age of unprecedented mass displacement”.
