There were so many of them: weary young men, some barely teenagers, trekking across Europe to reach the promised German land. I remember wondering a few months back, during the peak of the Syrian migration wave, why the women had been left behind.
There were reasons men sought refuge first: the arduous journeys, the pressing need for work before applying for family reunification and, above all, escape from recruitment by the army or militias. It is not unusual in war for parents to send their boys away.
Yet the impact of this gender imbalance was a largely overlooked aspect of the migration crisis. In Angela Merkel’s remarkable drive to show compassion for a people the world had tried so hard to ignore, some risks were understated. It seemed insensitive and politically disadvantageous, in the face of opposition to the migration surge, for supporters of the German chancellor’s humanitarian policy to dwell on the consequences.