With throngs of desperate immigrants from African and Arab countries coming to the shores of Italy and Greece, Europe stands before a humanitarian crisis.

Recently a dozen Syrians who were trying to reach Greece drowned off Turkey. According to the Turkish coastguard, the migrants had set off from Turkey's Bodrum peninsula for the Greek island of Kos on Wednesday morning. Shortly after their attempt to reach Greece the two boats they were in sank.

An image of one of the dead, a young boy lying face down on the beach, has ignited international outcry.

The distressing shot of the dead child, which was released by a Turkish news agency and can be seen at the Daily Beast, shows the young boy wearing a red T-shirt and lying face-down on the beach near Bodrum.

As the BBC reports among the dozen dead were five children. There were 23 migrants on board the two boats. Only nine are believed to have survived.

The boy pictured is a 3-year-old named Aylan Kurdi. He drowned along with his 5-year-old brother Galip and their mother, Rihan. The father of the family, Abdullah, was one of the survivors.

The image of the boy has been met with much criticism as a kind of exploitative move on the part of unscrupulous journalists. The Daily Beast, who published the image anyway, called the tendency to show dead migrants “disaster porn.”

The Independent explained their reasoning behind showing the deeply distressing images of the dead by saying, “The decision to publish these images because, among the often glib words about the ‘ongoing migrant crisis’, it is all too easy to forget the reality of the desperate situation facing many refugees.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has made her position on this “ongoing crisis” clear. As reported by Economist, Merkel issued a call to action on Aug. 31, warning that the migrant crisis, if not met, will have grave consequences for the future of the European Union.

“If Europe fails on the question of refugees,” Merkel said, “it won’t be the Europe we wished for.”