Two Nigerian migrants have taken a case against Italy and Libya to a UN Committee. The two women, with the help of a legal rights association in Italy, claim that Italy and Libya failed to protect their human rights as women and left them at risk of trafficking, exploitation and abuse.
The Lithuanian government says it flew 98 people back to Iraq over the weekend. It was the first chartered flight to return migrants who had entered from Belarus.
Lithuania has announced that migrants who agree to return to their countries of origin will be given €1,000, plus a plane ticket home. The amount has been increased from €300 to encourage more asylum seekers to leave voluntarily.
More than 170 asylum seekers have been evacuated from Libya to Niger with the help of the UNHCR. This marks the first such repatriation flight from the war-torn country in over a year.
Almost 5,000 Ethiopian migrants are stuck in Yemen while awaiting a chance to return home safely. This week about 300 of them are scheduled to leave Aden for Addis Abeba on two humanitarian flights run by IOM.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM), in coordination with the government of Bangladesh, has facilitated the return of 160 Bangladeshi migrants stranded in Libya, the UN agency said in a statement.
The economic repercussions of the COVID-19 crisis have forced many irregular migrants from Ethiopia to return home, where they are faced with destitution on a daily basis. Some turn to sex work as their only option to rise out of abject poverty. Others resort to prostitution to finance their next migration.
The International Organization for Migration's repatriation program for migrants stranded in Libya, which resumed in August after months of hiatus, is drawing thousands of applicants. InfoMigrants reports on the progress and conditions of these so-called voluntary returns.
50 Iraqi migrants who had been living in Germany, France, the Netherlands and Belgium voluntarily returned to Iraq by plane on Wednesday. It was the first such flight since voluntary return flights were put on hold in March because of COVID-19.
The so-called "Orderly Return Law" (Geordnete-Rückkehr-Gesetz), which was enacted in Germany a year ago has failed to achieve its objective of raising the number of deportations in the first six months of its existence.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) have in a joint statement expressed concern about the UK’s plans to intercept and return migrants attempting to cross the English Channel irregularly on boats.
Greece's program for the voluntary return of migrants to their country of origin has been reactivated by the government's migration ministry. The scheme had been suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic. According to the Greek migration minister, the first flights are expected "in the coming weeks."