The NGO Samos Volunteers, based on the Greek island of Samos since 2015, runs a community center in the immediate vicinity of the Vathy camp and "jungle", into which 7,500 migrants are packed. It offers language courses, leisure and sports activities and, above all, a safe space to forget the harsh living conditions of the camp for a few hours.
On the Greek island of Samos, not far from Turkey, at least 7,500 Syrians, Afghans, Iraqis and Congolese are living in tents on the outskirts of the city of Vathy. Left almost to their own devices, they wait in desperate conditions for their first asylum application appointments, which - for many - will only take place in more than a year's time. Until then, it's impossible for them to leave.
In Vathy, in the overcrowded migrant camp on the Greek island of Samos, news agencies are reporting that riots have broken out. Fires were started and the police were met with stones and protests when they arrived to break up the unrest.
As 2019 draws to a close, the European border agency Frontex has released its latest reports about fluctuating trends across migrant arrivals to Europe. It found that arrivals were falling in the western and central Mediterranean and growing in the eastern Mediterranean as well as the Balkans.
Greece is living a new migrant crisis. The number of people arriving, mainly on the islands close to Turkey, has more than doubled since July. The reception facilities on these islands are now massively overcrowded and conditions are deteriorating for the migrants and also for the islanders. John Laurenson sent this Postcard from Samos.
The UN Migration Agency, IOM (International Organization for Migration) announced on Wednesday, December 11 that the Vucjak camp in the Una Sana Canton in Bosnia is now officially closed. 750 migrants were relocated to two facilities near the capital Sarajevo. Teams are now cleaning the Vucjak area.
A 27-year-old Afghan mother died after a small fire broke out in a migrant camp on the island of Lesbos. Firefighters are investigating the cause of the fire.
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.
A fire in a migrant shantytown near Foggia destroyed around 200 shacks. One woman was injured and about 400 migrants were left homeless. The authorities are setting up a temporary tent camp for them.
French police said they removed around 600 Tibetan asylum seekers from a makeshift camp near Paris on Tuesday.
Temperatures in northwestern Bosnia have dropped below zero, leaving hundreds of migrants in a makeshift forest camp struggling for survival. A senior human rights envoy who visited the camp on Tuesday demanded its immediate closure.
53,000 migrants, some with refugee status, have been evacuated from make-shift street camps in the Paris area over the past four years. Yet the camps keep springing up and hundreds are being forced to sleep rough, as the French authorities fail to find a solution.