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THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
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country in which his or her life may be threat-
ened.
The image that shook consciences
Whilst governments have continued to take a
passive and indifferent stance on the humani-
tarian crisis, average citizens have followed the
exodus in all its pathos via television news im-
ages.
But of the thousands of images they have
daily been exposed to on the topic, it was a
photo of a small child that has shaken people’s
consciences the most. The morning in early
September that little Aylan Kurdi made the
headline news, Europe’s collective heart was
wrenched. The photo of the three-year-old’s
body washed up on a beach in Turkey, nattily
dressed in short pants, a red t-shirt and brand-
new shoes as though he might have been on his
way to his first day of school, made us realise
how much he was like our own children and
those of our neighbours.
That photo of Aylan summed up the drama
being lived out by people forced to seek asylum
out of a fear for their very lives. It also exposed
how the failure to implement adequate and fair
visa policies can drive entire families to accept
potentially deadly solutions to their problems.
Aylan’s family had come from Kobane, a city
in northern Syria located in a zone that had
fallen under IS control. The family had applied
to Canada for asylum, where the father had
relatives. When Canadian authorities rejected
their application in July, Aylan’s parents were
impelled to seek a riskier, more dangerous alter-
native –paying traffickers one thousand dollars
for room on one of the “death boats” that offer
transit to Greece. It was not death that the
Kurdis sought on the high seas but rather the
peace and the opportunity to rebuild their lives
that had thus far remained beyond their reach.
Twelve people died on that failed journey to
the island of Kos. Six of them were children be-
tween the ages of nine months and eleven
years. Aylan and his five-year-old brother were
amongst them. Their thirty-five-year-old mother
perished as well.
Aylan is only one of the more than thousand
children who lost their lives trying to reach the
coast of Europe during 2015. According to
UNICEF and International Organization for
Migration (IOM) statistics, almost 30 % of the
refugees who have died off the Mediterranean
coast of Europe have been children. Of the one
million people who have made the crossing
since January of this year, more 20 % have been
minors.
As the heart-rending image of Aylan was re-
layed around the world, it caused a profound
transformation in collective consciousness.
Average citizens demanded that governments
provide an effective response to the refugee cri-
sis. Many political leaders changed their tack on
the issue and aligned their discourses to the de-
mand Germany had been making for months
regarding the implementation of a proportional
system of refugee quotas.
Thanks to the dramatic photo of Aylan, many
people rushed to bring blankets and food to rail-
way stations in cities such as Munich where refu-
gees were arriving in droves. Social networks
buzzed
with
hashtags
such
as
#LaHumanidadLlegoALaOrilla, #YoSoyRefugiado
and most especially #WelcomeRefugees, which
became a trending topic on Twitter in Spain.
Institutional response was immediate.
Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs and
Cooperation José Manuel García Margallo went
so far as to declare that “No decent person, es-
pecially if he or she is a parent, could fail to be