Over the past 2 weeks, there has been a problem that is increasing dramatically. In the Mediterranean sea, nearly 741 migrants drowned trying to make a better life for themselves in Europe. It gets even worse! 7,000 migrants were stranded in the Andaman Sea with very little food and fresh water, which will soon run out.  The boats are often severely overcrowded, and extremely unsanitary. This makes spreading disease or malnutrition much more likely. These ships are also structurally dangerous, causing a greater chance that the ship will capsize or sink.

 

This is an example of a huge risk that boat migrants will take. The reason they do it is because they need a better life. The migrants pay people called smugglers to sneak them into richer countries. But, many countries in Europe are turning their boats away because their cities are already full to capacity. If they take anymore people they would need more houses, jobs, and food.

Recent actor and star Matt Dillon shared his thoughts. “It was heartbreaking,” he said after meeting a young man with a raw, open leg wound from a road accident with no means to treat it. Mothers carrying babies with clear signs of malnutrition stood listlessly outside row after row of identical bamboo huts, toddlers playing nearby in the chalky white dust. “No one should have to live like this, and these people are really suffering,” said Dillon, who is one of the first celebrities to get a look at what life is like for the people of Rohingya in the western state of Rakhine. “They are being strangled slowly, they have no hope for the future, and nowhere to go.”

This is why Kiva helps these people. Things like this matter in the world, and no person in the world should ever have to go on a boat to try to sneak into another country. These are the simple things in life. If we just helped a country get better, we could change millions and million of lives around the world and no one would ever want to move or leave their country.

 

Liam.M