At 70, the global convention on refugees is needed more than ever

WHEN THE Turkish coastguard found them in the Aegean in the dead of night, they had been adrift for three hours. The air was hissing out of their rubber dinghy. The motor would not start. Anas and the eight other Somali men shielded their eyes from the glare of the searchlights. His wife, Faduma, the only woman, panted from stress and exhaustion. They had paid $2,000 apiece to a smuggler to reach Greece. Faduma, six months pregnant, was the first to climb onto the Turkish boat.

That was the couple’s first attempt to reach Europe after leaving Somalia last year. “We are never going do this again,” Anas says. He hopes to stay in Turkey.