GETTY The tiny island of Lesbos in Greece has been overwhelmed by the crisis

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The stark warning came from a new report published by the University of York, City University London and the International Organization for Migration’s Global Migration Data Analysis Centre. The report says the crisis is only deepening as the EU - which many say caused the crisis - as well as the struggling authorities’ own national governments, simply turn their backs on the issue. At the same time, the EU is creating a gargantuan £51billion slush fund to send to Africa to help them solve the migrant crisis but ignoring their own member states. According to the research report there is a severe lack of coordinated policy particularly in Greece and Italy, heavily hit by incoming numbers. Dr Simon Robins, lead author of the report and a senior research fellow at the Centre for Applied Human Rights at the University of York, said what they discovered in Greece and Italy was "shocking."

GETTY The EU is not doing enough to support local authorities

GETTY Thousands of migrants are in camps waiting to be processed

He said: "The main problem identified is a lack of coherent and coordinated policy concerning deceased migrants in both Greece and Italy. "The policy vacuum at the national level means that local municipalities and authorities are overwhelmed and are not provided with the capacity or financial resources to deal with the nature and volume of the humanitarian crisis. "There are a large number of agencies with overlapping mandates that fail to coordinate with one another, leading to no one being sure who is responsible for what. "The different state and local agencies involved have little support from national governments or from the EU." The study focussed mainly on the Greek islands of Lesbos and the Italian island of Sicily which has been taking the lion's share of people who arrive in Europe by boat. Dr Roberts added: “Behind the visible catastrophe of shipwrecks and deaths in the Mediterranean is an invisible catastrophe in which bodies are found and not enough is done to identify them and inform their families. “This is devastating for their families back home.

"They likened it to a form of torture where they are caught between hope and despair, not knowing whether they would ever see their loved one again, not knowing if they should give up hope and focus on the rest of their lives. “More than anything these people want to know if their loved one is alive or dead. "If they are dead, they want to bring their relative home and have them buried visibly in their community.”