Between January 1 and April 21 this year, 36,390 migrants, including children and pregnant women, entered Europe by sea, according to the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR). While there has only been a slight increase on the number of arrivals during the same period in 2014, there has been a staggering rise in the number who are dying. In April of last year, 96 migrants died, while so far this month more than 1,200 migrants have died in the Mediterranean. In the five years since the Arab Spring uprising, Italy has consistently received the largest number of migrants each year, but the Southern European country is often just the first step on a journey to Northern Europe. “We cannot wait for bad seas to stop migrants. Anyway, they will take a ship and come to Italy or Spain,” said Alfonso Giordano, ECIA Managing Director, on Newsweek by Lucy Westcott.