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."
How many people asked for asylum in the European Union? Where did they come from? In what country did they request asylum? Here’s what you need to know about asylum applications in the EU in 2019.
According to a confidential EU report, 70,000 migrants have crossed from Turkey to the EU this year. The numbers raise questions about whether a EU-Turkey refugee deal is unravelling.
A new UN study takes a closer look at who the migrants coming from Africa to Europe are - and why they left. One of the findings: Migrants are often more educated than their peers who stayed home.
The far-right group Britain First has launched a campaign called "Operation White Cliffs" to patrol Britain's beaches in a bid to stop migrants attempting to land on UK shores after crossing the Channel in small boats. Local anti-racism campaigners have organized counter demonstrations and British authorities have meanwhile advised all citizens to avoid taking direct action and to leave that work to the authorities.
France and Italy have agreed on a new system to distribute migrants across the European Union. It comes ahead of an interior ministers meeting in Malta next week.
The decision to give the post of interior minister to bureaucrat, expert and long-standing ministry official Luciana Lamorgese could be read as a sign that Italian migration policy is about to change. Could her appointment be a break from the policies pushed hard by outgoing minister Matteo Salvini?
The UN's special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants criticized Hungary's 2015 decision to declare a state of emergency over the so-called refugee crisis. He added that the measure amounted to little more than scare tactics, and criticized the country's transit zones as being detention facilities.
Greece's new government announced its intention to reinforce the country's borders, as a rise in numbers of migrants crossing over from Turkey has recently been recorded once more. The EU's migration commissioner, Dimitris Avramopoulos, pledged his help to this end, as he met with the new prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
Jean Asselborn, Luxembourg's foreign minister, has warned of a "huge wave of refugees" in case of an escalation of the conflict between the United States and Iran about uranium enrichment. The Islamic Republic of Iran is home to roughly one third of the 2.7 million Afghan refugees worldwide.
Sara Sharfaldeen was a journalist in Sudan. She lived in a luxury apartment block, had a driver and a live-in housekeeper and was the political editor of a newspaper. Her work placed her under scrutiny from the government and she felt forced to flee in 2015 arriving in the UK by plane.
The European Union’s statistical office, Eurostat and the European Asylum Support Office EASO have released their latest figures on asylum for 2018. Overall, the total number of asylum applicants decreased by over 50 percent compared to figures from 2015. Germany welcomed the greatest number of asylum seekers, followed by France, then Greece, Spain and Italy.