They were granted refugee status in 2014, just one year before Europe’s migration crisis worked itself into its febrile 2015 crescendo that left the continent itself utterly changed. That number had more than doubled to 626,960 by 2014, driven by the surge in migration across the central Mediterranean, principally from Libya to Italy. Later he would lose a cousin when a second boat they travelled in capsized on a less common migration route across the Adriatic to Italy. In 2018, the Eastern Mediterranean route registered 56,561 illegal border-crossings. In 2016, 181,376 migrants were detected on the Central Mediterranean route, the highest number ever recorded, according to Frontex.

Source: Libya Today December 31, 2019 04:30 UTC