Rising Tide

As Macedonia, Austria and other European nations tighten borders against refugees fleeing Syria and other conflict zones, Greece must manage a bottleneck. Tent camps and reception camps are over-crowded, and food is in short supply. “Now almost 30,000 migrants are bottled up in Greece” and “local aid agencies worry that 200,000 people may arrive in March alone,” reports the Economist. NGOs and ordinary Greeks are assisting the migrants. The EU has approved a €700 million humanitarian aid package for three years, and aid agencies hope the funds are distributed directly to NGOs rather than filtered through the Greek government struggling with debt. A NATO naval mission was planned to patrol the strait between Greece and Turkey, but that could shift the bottleneck to Turkey. The European Union and Turkey are meeting in a summit to determine a destiny for migrants from the Middle East and North Africa. – YaleGlobal