The Afghan government has asked European countries to suspend deportations for three months due to the unstable situation in the country. While Germany says it currently has no plans to stop deporting rejected asylum seekers to Afghanistan, Finland has announced a temporary suspension.
The vaccination campaign is underway in Turkey, but migrants face an especially large number of challenges on the road to immunization. The government has been keeping a low profile on the issue.
The Ocean Viking arrived in Sicily on Friday morning to disembark over 500 migrants it has on board. The crew and migrants had been waiting for a week to be assigned a safe port. Food and water were about to run out when they were assigned a port on Thursday evening.
Malaria remained the leading cause of disease among refugees in 2020, despite the coronavirus pandemic. Young children in sub-Saharan Africa are especially vulnerable to the mosquito-borne disease.
Tunisian authorities rescued 267 migrants in Mediterranean Sea on Thursday, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). The migrants had tried to reach Europe from neighbouring Libya.
The Italian farm association Coldiretti has started vaccinating migrant farm workers against COVID-19 in Italy's southern city of Foggia.
Rights groups have warned about increasing human trafficking as the pandemic pushes many vulnerable individuals to the brink. They say that despite closed borders, people are crossing illegally into China and Myanmar.
Vaccinating migrants is, in the opinion of most authorities in Europe, an imperative. However, in many countries, the rhetoric clashes with the reality of undocumented migrants' lives on the ground. They find they sometimes have to run an obstacle course to get vaccinated.
The International Organization for Migration is supporting the COVID-19 vaccination campaign in Yemen and said it welcomes the government's decision to also immunize migrants.
More than 30 migrants in the Mavrovouni camp on the Greek island of Lesbos have tested positive for COVID-19, Greek authorities say. Around 100 people have been put in quarantine.
The strict COVID-19 lockdown measures imposed in France in March last year hit migrant minors awaiting recognition of their status ten times as hard as the normal population, says a new report from several NGOS, including Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
The Italian farm group Coldiretti has warned that nearly 50,000 workers could be lost during a critical phase of the harvest. The association has called for new rules on non-EU migrant workers and an extension of stay permits.