The wooden fishing boat, jam-packed with stick-figure people screaming and praying, was sinking fast. It was late October and the trawler’s engine had failed en route from Libya to Italy. Freezing waves smashed over the bow and into the hold, where 70 children — 50 of them unaccompanied — were crammed among 300 refugees and migrants. Darkness was falling and hopes fading when the Save the Children ship finally got to them.

As the rescue vessel docked at Trapani, in northern Sicily, the children trooped off, unsteady on dry land, to be met by Red Cross workers who put pink Crocs on the girls and blue Crocs on the boys, then handed each of them a bag with a sandwich and a bottle of water.