Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said that western countries must play an active role to resolve conflicts in the countries creating massive flows of refugees. Speaking at a high-level meeting on migration in New York on the sidelines of the 70th session of the UN General Assembly, the Greek PM said that numerous people in Europe were surprised by the massive waves of refugees “but, honestly, they should not have been… Countries much poorer and with a much smaller population are still facing even greater challenges for a length of time. What we need now are specific actions.”

During the meeting, convened by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Tsipras proposed a three-pronged approach to resolving the issue of migrants and refugees arriving in Greece, mainly from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. The goal of these refugees are to head to northern European countries through the Greek islands.

The three points recommended by Tsipras are:

* UN mediation to help resolve conflicts in Syria and Lybia using diplomatic channels.
* UN generous support for a resettlement mechanism for refugees coming from Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.
* Syria’s neighbors should be supported to accept more migrants, in order to help break up human trafficking rings.

He pointed to EU action to found a mechanism to distribute 160,000 refugees among EU member states. Greece, in the last 25 years has been the center of migratory flows with over 25 million people coming to the country with over 300,000 people crossing over Turkey’s borders.

“Over 80% of them are fleeing wars and conflicts,” he said, “which we as a global community did not succeed in managing and resolving effectively.”