As fighting in Libya intensified in recent weeks, the country reported its first cases of coronavirus. The Libyan people are being forced to choose between flight and confinement. For migrants trapped in this desperate situation, life has never been so difficult.
Sophie* is from a West African country and arrived in Sweden in 2015. The following year, she gave birth to a baby boy in a Swedish hospital. Since then she has been fighting for her child to be documented as having been born on Swedish soil.
On April 5, the Malakasa camp near Athens was placed in "full sanitary isolation" for 14 days, after a migrant tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Greek authorities and the UN migration agency are providing the camp’s residents with both food and hygiene products. But residents told us: "We feel like we’ve been completely abandoned."
In Greece, thousands of refugees and asylum seekers have been waiting for months, or even years, to be integrated in Greek society or to be allowed to move on to another European country. Some are starting to lose hope. At the Malakasa migrant camp near Athens, more than 1,600 people are struggling to keep themselves occupied.
When 16-year-old Parwana Amiri arrived in Greece from Afghanistan in September, 2019, she and her family spent several months living in the notorious Moria migrant camp, on the Greek island of Lesbos. Parwana was shocked by the "inhuman" conditions in which people were forced to live and soon started to write "letters to the world" about what she witnessed. A collection of the letters have been published on the internet and are due to appear in a book later this year.
In 2018, several European countries agreed to set up a "solidarity mechanism" with the aim of fairly redistributing migrants, rescued in the Mediterranean, among them. InfoMigrants takes a closer look at the scheme's function and limitations.
Many young women embark on dangerous migration journeys. Some of them become mothers along the way. InfoMigrants spoke to a few of these new mothers about their experiences. Affoussata left Ivory Coast with her son to flee domestic violence. In France, she became the mother of a little girl. Shunted from hotel to apartment since her arrival, she is desperately looking for some stability so she can raise her children.
Many young women embark on dangerous migration journeys. Some of them become mothers along the way. InfoMigrants spoke to a few of these new mothers about their experiences. Fatoumata is Senegalese. She got pregnant in France unexpectedly. In great difficulty, she needed the support of the Mother-Child Hospital of Eastern Paris.
Many young women embark on dangerous migration journeys. Some of them become mothers along the way. InfoMigrants spoke to a few of these new mothers about their experiences. Hadil fled Syria with her husband. Today, she is a refugee in France; not even 20 yet, she already is the mother of two little girls.
In Libya, traffickers allegedly make migrants pay for a place in a closed detention center. They claim this is a fast-track method for the migrants to be evacuated and resettled in Europe. This information is false, but several hundred people have already fallen victim to the scam.
French police on Tuesday conducted a massive evacuation of the makeshift migrant camp set up in an industrial zone on the outskirts of the port city of Calais. The local aid groups that witnessed the early morning raid, say they have no idea where the evacuated migrants have been taken.
The conditions in the migrant camp in Vucjak, Bosnia, are grim. For the camp occupants, things have gotten even worse after foreign volunteers were banned from the camp. InfoMigrants went to Vucjak to talk to the people living there.