Refugee resettlement significantly delayed

Only 870 refugees from Greece and Italy have been resettled to other countries – and none to Switzerland – despite the European Union’s pledge to distribute some 160,000 refugees in a show of solidarity last year. Swiss Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga confirmed a first group of 1,500 refugees will arrive in Switzerland starting this month. Here’s how the resettlement has gone so far. While EU member countries meet in Brussels as part of their latest summit on the refugee crisis – largely an outgrowth of the five-year-old war in Syria that has killed a quarter million people, displaced half the population and destroyed towns and villages – their resettlement plan hatched last autumn seems to have failed. Their efforts barely cover two thirds of the contingent of 160,000 refugees that was agreed upon. Some 60,000 still need to be resettled even as 133,000 more arrived in Europe via the Mediterranean Sea since the beginning of the year. More than 1 million ...