Europe’s refugee crisis neither began nor ended when the body of a Kurdish boy was found washed up on a Turkish beach in September.

In all, he was just one of 3,770 people who lost their lives in 2015 as over a million people crossed into Europe fleeing wars in Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Some are forecasting that many millions more will try their luck in 2016 and beyond, as the conflicts prompting this exodus offer no end in sight.

Doctors Without Borders this week called the response of European governments a “catastrophic failure,” pointedly summing up how countries’ “capricious” policies of opening and closing borders created “senseless stress and hazardous conditions of passage.”

The Conversation