The Italian interior ministry has asked all prefects to monitor the health of migrants at repatriation centers to prevent an outbreak of Codiv-19. One coronavirus case at a CPR in northern Italy was confirmed last week.
Dunja Mijatovic, the human rights commissioner of the Council of Europe, has asked member states to release as many people as possible from detention centers for migrants amid the coronavirus emergency. She says that these facilities "provide poor opportunities for social distancing and other measures to protect against Covid-19 infection."
Several migrant aid groups have called for the immediate release of around 900 migrants who are currently being held in French detention centers. Conditions in the facilities are completely at odds with the government’s new guidelines to try to halt the spread of the deadly coronavirus, the groups said in a statement.
A report by the organization Doctors for Human Rights has found that 85% of migrants and refugees who reached Italy from Libya had been subjected to torture in the African country.
Over 400 migrants have been picked up by the Libyan coast guard and returned to Libya over the weekend. That’s according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which called the action “unacceptable.”
Around 440 migrants who were being held on a Greek naval vessel off Lesbos have been transferred to a detention facility on the Greek mainland. Various news agencies have reported they will be held at the center, north of Athens, ahead of being returned to Turkey.
In mid-February, round 300 migrants were intercepted at sea by the Libyan coast guard and transferred to a detention center at Sharah Zawiya, in the south of Libya's capital Tripoli. The center has been open for at least a year. Recently, it has been taken under the control of the UN-backed government and has become accessible to the IOM.
A young Eritrean migrant was killed in a recent fire that ravaged part of the Zintan detention center in Libya. The cause of the fire is unknown, but migrants there fear further incidents as conditions in the center are poor and cells are overcrowded.
The government of Greece has announced that a new "closed" migrant camp will be created in the country's north as an emergency measure, as thousands of people attempt to cross into Greece at the land border with Turkey in Evros.
Caroline Gluck, Senior External Relations Officer at UNHCR Libya, talks about why the UN agency decided to suspend operations at the Gathering and Departure Facility (GDF) in Tripoli and what her staff is doing on the ground to help refugees and asylum seekers in Libya.
The UN Migration Agency IOM said in a statement that over 2,000 migrants "remain detained in deplorable conditions" in Libya. They called on EU states to ensure that migrants rescued at sea are not sent back.
Greece is putting a temporary hold on plans to build migrant detention camps on the Aegean islands. The move follows fierce local opposition to the new centers.