"I saw her in my dreams twice - she told me she was in a good place," says Iman.

She's talking to me from her home in the Kurdish town of Soran, northern Iraq, about her cousin, Baran, who drowned.

Despite her story starting 3,000 miles away, it will forever be linked to our shores. Kent is where Baran, whose full name was Maryam Nuri, was heading. But she never made it.

Exactly a year ago 24-year-old student Baran was among 34 people desperately fighting for consciousness in the frigid waters of the English Channel.

Within hours all but two of the group would be dead.

As the minutes passed the British and French coastguards spoke to each other, passing the buck over and over.

Harrowing call logs released earlier this month revealed 15 calls were made to the French, a boat was sent by the British but found nothing, those struggling in the water were falsely told help was on its way and then... nothing.

Within half an hour of the last call being made the French closed their mission, assuming help was no longer needed or the group had already been rescued.

The reality was that they were almost all dead or slowly dying.

Nine hours later a French fisherman discovered a deflated grey dinghy, two terrified young men moments from death and the bodies of 29 men, women and children bobbing on the surface. A year on, three bodies are yet to be found.

It was a chance discovery and if he hadn't been passing we may never have known of their fates - a fact Clare Moseley from refugee charity Care4Calais stresses.

"Those bodies were found by accident," she says.

"Three bodies are still missing, another [from a separate incident] washed up north of Holland. There's nothing to say we would ever know if it had happened before or has happened since.

"And unless we find out what happened last year and why, there could be people dying every single day."

She adds: "I'm very disappointed about what has happened since then. The French inquiry is very much ahead of the British inquiry. Twelve months on, no progress has been made. Thirty-two people froze to death in the Channel and if lessons need to be learned we need to learn them now. People are crossing every day."

It's a sobering thought and one which brings into sharp focus exactly where we are now.

Today, 365 days have passed since the biggest loss of life in the Channel in more than three decades, but has anything changed?

This year well in excess of 40,000 people have made the perilous crossing crammed into flimsy dinghies not suitable for a tidal pool - let alone the world's busiest shipping lane.

When we were having the same conversation last year the then-record was 28,500, a startling number which the government insisted would be brought down.

Timeline of a tragedy: 32 lives lost, 365 days, 40k more risk crossing...

November 2021 On November 24, 32 people die in the Channel after their dinghy sinks with details of those who lost their lives, including a a girl of five and her teenage siblings, released over the next few days. Then-Home Secretary Priti Patel commences "urgent" talks to "prevent future tragedies". A record 6,971 people cross in November.

December 2021 The Nationality and Borders Bill passes through parliament, promising to make it much harder to cross the Channel. By the end of the month more than 28,000 people will have made the journey, more than triple 2020's total and a figure which included thousands since November's tragedy.

January The number of people who crossed in 2021 is confirmed as 28,500, compared with 8,466 people in 2020, 1,843 in 2019 and 299 in 2018. Most worryingly an average of 28 people are crammed onto each boat. It's announced the Navy will be put in charge of policing the Channel and Manston will be set up as a 'processing centre' for asylum seekers. Border Force staff say they'll strike if told to implement a "morally reprehensible" policy of turning back dinghies.

February French President Emmanuel Macron says the UK's failure to establish safe routes for people to claim asylum is fuelling Channel crossings. Priti Patel says he's wrong.

March A month of records as 900 people cross in a single day, 2022's total already reaches 4,000 and it's predicted 60,000 could cross before the end of the year. The government spends £234,000 chartering private boats to help the Border Force.

April The government sign a £120 million deal with Rwanda to send asylum seekers who arrive by small boat to the African nation. If their claims are successful they will start new lives there. The Nationality and Borders Bill receives Royal Assent but charities warn both plans won't work and could encourage more people to make the crossing.

May Downing Street admits it may be 'months' before refugees are flown to Rwanda as the 2021 total passes 7,000, including more than 2,000 since the deal was struck. Later in the month, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson says 50 men will board a flight in June.

June A flight to Rwanda with 30 on board was set to leave Britain on June 14 but didn't after various legal challenges.

July The Home Office is under fire for failing to publish a report on Channel crossings as 15,000 make the journey. It emerges the Foreign Office warned against signing the Rwanda deal due to human rights concerns.

August The total to cross passes 25,000 with a record 1,259 crossing in a single day.

September The total surges past 2021's figure and reaches 33,000 by the end of the month. More than 1,000 cross in a day for the second time. Home Secretary Suella Braverman takes charge but is soon sacked for security breaches.

October Home Secretary Suella Braverman is reappointed by new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, two weeks after being sacked. She brands those crossing the Channel an "invasion" a day after far right terrorist Andrew Leak hurled petrol bombs at the Western Jet Foil asylum facility at Dover, and is blamed for terrible conditions at Manston which have resulted in violence, infectious disease and an alleged sexual assault on a member of staff. Sunak promises tighter co-operation with the French.

November Suella Braverman visits Manston for the first time. She renews a deal with France to tackle crossings, hiking the amount paid annually to £63 million and increasing police on beaches by 40%. The number to cross passes 40,000.

A common sense solution?

When furious and often incoherent debate rages online, a fact often missed is what both sides have in common.

The human stories and any discussion of a feasible solution is engulfed by a cloud of hate. When we covered the tragedy a year a go 96 people reacted with Facebook's laughing emoji, with not a single one willing to engage with us when challenged.

But analysing the multiple factors which led them to that point, the misinformation they'd swallowed and the sheer lack of willing to listen to reason, doesn't solve what has rapidly become a humanitarian crisis.

There is a misconception that one side of the debate is eager for as many people to pile onto unseaworthy craft as possible, but that is evidently not the case.

What unites everyone, regardless of political stance or personal feelings, is a desire to stop the crossings.

Clare, whose charity helps refugees on both sides of the Channel, says the only way to achieve that aim is to establish safe routes.

"People with a genuine claim should be given safe passage to the UK to complete their application," she says.

"It would immediately put people smugglers out of business.

"Of those who come, 98% claim asylum. If they applied and got turned down abroad that takes away the incentive, if the system is set up properly.

"It's one thing to give away all your money and risk your life for a chance of a new life. iI's quite another to do that if you knew it would be an illegal life."

Clare says the recent rise in the number of Albanians being smuggled by criminal gangs is a symptom of the government's repeat failure to implement a "common sense" solution.

Currently the snail's pace asylum system is exploited by bad actors and sabotaging itself by the resultant overcrowding. Safe routes through centres in Europe and further afield would clear the backlog, she says.

Priti Patel and Suella Braverman's repeat references to economic migration fly in the face of the government's own statistics, which clearly show more than 80% of those who arrive on our beaches and apply for asylum have legitimate and ultimately successful claims.

"The government does not want to solve the problem..."

The safe routes solution certainly does seem to make sense - and given everything from wave machines to exotic islands have been mooted, it begs the question: Why haven't the government tried?

"The government does not want to solve the problem," says Clare. "The asylum system distracts from all the other problems the country is facing.

"Someone summed it up well when they called it a 'crisis of design'.

"An MP said the other day that the language used in the House of Commons about this issue is like being at an EDL rally."

She adds that in years to come we'll look back in horror on a period of "state-sanctioned violence against asylum seekers" when it comes to the rhetoric and policies used.

"The way we are treating refugees in hotels to the point they are self harming and killing themselves... That is state-sanctioned violence," she says.

There are, she explains, countless examples of genuine asylum seekers whose mental health has been horrifically impacted by the system currently in place.

"A year on, it's a worse situation."

Back in Iraq, Iman tells me after a month they received Baran's body and she is laid to rest at a cemetery in the town. Her family regularly visits and leave flowers.

Baran left her home to join fiancé Karzan Assad who worked as a barber in Portsmouth.

"The biggest gift for me is to know I never in any way tried to hurt my cousin and friend," Iman says.

The National Crime Agency and French authorities were approached for updates on the investigation into the deaths but failed to provide any information.

In total, 20 people have been arrested since the tragedy, five soon after and 15 and the end of June. Nationals of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and France were held suspected of being part of a network of facilitators who organised places on the boat for a number of those who died.

They will all now be subject to French judicial proceedings which could see them charged with manslaughter.

At 6pm tonight a vigil will be held in Parliament Square for the 32 people who lost their lives. Another will take place at the same time at Sunny Sands, Folkestone