(Reuters) – Cold, hunger and danger. This is what people encounter when they leave their home countries. Many times, these conditions are life-threatening.

The U.N. refugee organization estimates that around 4.2 million people are stateless, but the real number could be much higher.

An average of 290,000. to 340,000 children per annum were born into refugee lives between 2018 and 2020.

Here is a list of all the difficulties people have had to overcome since leaving their home countries.

JANUARY

* In Bosnia, dozens of people, some fleeing conflict in Afghanistan, shelter in abandoned buildings in and around the northwestern town of Bihac. While they are waiting to cross into Croatia-member European Union, the people wrap their bodies as well as possible against snow and freezing.

* Thousands of Hondurans, including many families with children, cross the border at El Florido to Guatemala, hoping to reach the United States. Skirmishes break out at the border and Guatemalan authorities use sticks and tear gas to beat back people fleeing poverty and violence https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/honduras-crime-migration in their homeland.

FEBRUARY

* Spanish police in the North African enclave of Melilla rescue people hiding in waste containers, including one inside a plastic bag full of toxic ash, as they try to make their way to the Spanish mainland.

* German NGO ship Sea-Watch rescues more than 360 people from dinghies off the Libyan coast. It is known for being one of the deadliest migration routes in the world.

MARCH

* Deteriorating security and economic conditions in Mexico and the Northern Triangle – Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador – has led to the biggest rise in the number of migrants at the United States’ southwestern border in 20 years, with President Joe Biden’s administration racing to handle an influx of children trying to cross the border alone.

MAY

* Spain deploys troops to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in northern Africa to patrol the border with Morocco after around 8,000 people enter the North African enclave by swimming in or climbing over the fence.

Spanish soldier Rachid Mohamed talks to a young boy using plastic bottles to keep afloat as he swims across the ocean to El Tarajal, Morocco. The solder stated that the boy preferred to die. He said that it was something he had never heard anyone as young say.

Unaccompanied children and two-thirds (or more) of the Ceuta migrants were expelled by Spanish authorities. Many say that they intend to return to Europe.

JUNE

* Thousands of Belarusians escaping a political crackdown by President Alexander Lukashenko have fled to neighbouring Poland, where nearly 10,000 have applied for humanitarian visas or asylum in the past year.

* Rescue organisations operating in the Mediterranean call for an end to people being handed over to the Libyan authorities due to reports of ill treatment.

* More than 40 Africans are rescued, while four die, after their boat ran aground on the coast of Lanzarote in Spain’s Canary Islands, while more than 100 people make it safely to other islands.

The Interior Ministry statistics show that 8,222 individuals arrived illegally in the Canaries from January 1 to August 15. That’s more than twice as many people arriving there last year.

JULY

* Lithuania accuses Belarus of flying in would-be migrants and asylum-seekers from abroad to send to the European Union and begins building a 550-km (320-mile) razor wire barrier on the border to prevent them crossing illegally.

In response to the EU’s sanctions, Belarus allowed migrants to enter Lithuania as a EU member.

* Afghans who manage to make the weeks-long journey through Iran on foot to the Turkish border face a three-metre high wall, ditches or barbed wire as Turkish authorities step up efforts to block any refugee influx into the country.

* Turkey detains nearly 1,500 people near the Iranian border in just a week amid rising violence in Afghanistan.

* France and Britain agree to deploy more police and invest in detection technology on the French coast to try to stop boats packed with people making the perilous voyage across the English Channel.

Abdullah Al Badri from Kuwait described how it was to get onto a boat. “You said ‘okay, that’s it, you’re going to do (at the risk of) your life.

AUGUST

* Greece completes a 40-km fence, guarded by soldiers carrying rifles and equipped with hi-tech monitoring system, on its border with Turkey to stop possible asylum seekers from trying to reach Europe after the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan.

* Afghan migrants stranded in Serbia watch in dismay as the Islamist militants take over back home. There are about 4,500 refugees living in Serbian government camps. 1,200 migrants come from Afghanistan, according to officials.

* A ship carrying 257 people, mainly men from Morocco, Bangladesh, Egypt and Syria rescued from international waters off Tunisia, docks in the Italian port of Trapani accompanied by applause from those onboard.

SEPTEMBER

* Britain approves plans to turn away boats illegally carrying people to its shores, deepening a diplomatic rift with France over how to deal with a rise of people trying to cross the Channel in small dinghies.

* More than 10,000 mostly Haitian people live in a squalid camp under a bridge in southern Texas even as hundreds more head toward the border in a growing humanitarian and political challenge for U.S. President Joe Biden.

The Haitians are joined by Cubans, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans under the Del Rio International Bridge across the Rio Grande connecting Ciudad Acuña in Mexico to Del Rio, Texas. A few of them have set up small tents while others are able to sleep with light blankets.