On Tuesday French security forces dismantled the largest informal migrant camp in Calais in northern France. The destruction of the Verrotiéres camp had been announced and planned several days ahead of time. It had been constructed on private land and a fence has now been erected to prevent migrants from returning.
Calais police tend to dismantle the city’s illegal tent camps in the mornings, just around breakfast time. This is a time slot when many of the migrants leave their tents to get breakfast at one of two food distribution points located a few kilometers away. Police insist there is no correlation.
Andrea Tripoli, the mayor of San Ferdinando in the Italian region of Calabria, has ordered the immediate clearing of a tent camp hosting migrant farm workers employed on the agricultural plains of neighboring Gioia Tauro. In the past year, fires at the tent camp have killed three migrants.
Migrant children can find it difficult to maintain their access to formal education. For many, education is interrupted for several years at a time. For others, education can be a reason for migration, or an opportunity in the host country. In Greece, those who are seeking asylum or are refugees have a right to the country’s state education but a little less than half of refugee children are not yet signed up to formal education.
Moussa Ba is not the first migrant to die in a shanty town in Italy. Dozens have died in these makeshift settlements, in particular in the southern regions of Calabria, Puglia and Sicily. Most of them were very young immigrants.
The UN Migration Agency IOM and Qatar Charity have signed an agreement in which Qatar Charity will provide funds to improve the response to the situation of refugees and migrants in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Two new facilities are set to open soon in a bid to ease the pressure on the overcrowded refugee camps on the north eastern Aegean islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Kos and Leros.
There is a shortage of medical staff at several Greek migrant camps. The situation has been worsened by the state's failure to appoint permanent professionals after the EU's PHILOS program – which had been supplying staff – expired.
Freezing weather is exacerbating difficult conditions for migrants in overcrowded refugee camps in northern Greece. Last week the cold spell led to a protest by dozens of migrants at a camp near Thessaloniki. Greek officials have blamed the number of people flooding into the camp from the islands and across the Turkish border. But could the situation have been prevented?
More than 2000 migrants are sleeping on pavements and in illegal camps in the French capital, Paris, according to the organization France Terre d’asile (FTA -France, land of asylum). And the numbers are increasing, warns the organization.
Many migrants are stuck along the Bosnian-Croatian border, as Croatian border police keep pushing them back into Bosnia. There are now reports that they have suffered instances of violence and theft by those authorities.
Greece's government is scrambling to clear-out thousands of migrants from the island of Samos - home to the country's most crowded and abysmal refugee camp. Authorities have already failed to meet a deadline for its evacuation, stoking a showdown with local authorities that have threatened to sue the migration minister for failed action. Anthee Carassava reports from the refugee camp of Samos.