Former British Foreign Secretary David Miliband flew from his home in New York to the Greek city of Mytilene, on the rocky east coast of Lesbos, an island in the Aegean Sea. It was the fall of 2015, and Lesbos had for months been the primary landing point for refugees fleeing wars in Syria and Iraq.
Now the steady flow was becoming a deluge—as many as 3,000 refugees a day. Local officials were overwhelmed.
Driving north from the Lesbos airport, Miliband, the president and chief executive of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), one of the world’s largest humanitarian aid organizations, passed long lines of dazed men and women, many sunburnt and barefoot. These were the newest arrivals, an IRC staffer explained. After making it to shore, they would walk, often for days, to transit sites or government camps where they could apply for political asylum in the European Union.
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