On Wednesday evening, twenty-seven people, including three children, died by drowning in the English Channel. It was the single greatest loss of life in the channel since the International Organization for Migration began collecting data in 2014 — surpassing the drowning last year of a Kurdish-Iranian family, including a fifteen-month-old child later found on the Norwegian coast. The tragedy comes days after a charity appears to have been pressured into pulling out of supporting migrants in Calais, France, by a government bent on making political capital by attacking Channel migrants.

On the same day, a boat containing around four hundred people began taking on water in the Mediterranean. When monitors raised the alarm, the Libyan Coast Guard — a close partner in the European Union’s efforts to prevent migration — was reported by the refugees on board the sinking vessel to have opened fire on them. Even the following day, after several on board were reported dead, no rescue mission had been mounted, though Tunisian authorities eventually intervened.

These were not isolated cases. In three separate incidents last week, people seeking safety drowned en route to the Canary Islands. In Poland, the body of a teenage Syrian was laid to rest in a small cemetery. He died in a forest patrolled by thousands of police and troops combing the country’s border with Belarus.