Since the beginning of December, the Migrant Solidarity Wilson group has been distributing meals to homeless migrants in Paris. Every Tuesday, outreach workers venture out on motorcycles to reach those who are becoming increasingly isolated in the French capital.
Lydia Veyrat, a healthcare assistant who works in a retirement home in Isère, will be given a residence permit, the French government announced. Previously she had been threatened with expulsion.
Following the demolition of an informal migrant camp on the Place de la République in central Paris, various NGOs have drawn attention to the fact that migrants are regularly victims of police violence across France. They also say that the use of force in such contexts is futile – especially without a coordinated migrant reception strategy.
Lydia Veyrat, a Beninese healthcare assistant employed in a home for the elderly, received an order to leave French territory. The local prefect argues that she is not sufficiently integrated into society. Her lawyer has filed a formal appeal with the interior ministry, denouncing the "ludicrous situation".
France has entered a new COVID-19 lockdown until December 1. President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to keep the country's public services running, including the asylum services. While authorities have adapted safety measures, there are some things to keep in mind. InfoMigrants took a look.
Roughly 300 migrants are camping out under the national highway in the Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis. Nearly every morning police officers order them to get out; and food distribution points keep getting pushed farther away from the heart of the French capital.
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.