UN refugee agency, UNHCR, called on Thursday for an end to “systematic” expulsions and pushbacks of refugees and asylum-seekers at Europe’s land and sea borders.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) on Thursday reported yet another devastating shipwreck in the Central Mediterranean, which has claimed the lives of at least 74 migrants off the coast of Khums, Libya. It is the eighth such incident since the beginning of October.
The UN human rights office OHCHR, called on Friday for urgent action to address the “unimaginable horrors” faced by migrants attempting to cross the central Mediterranean Sea in search of safety in Europe.
Thousands of refugees and migrants in eastern and western Africa, are dying while others face harrowing abuse in their attempts to reach the continent’s Mediterranean coast in search of a better life, a joint UN/Danish Refugee Council report said on Wednesday.
A monthly average of 11,500 people traveling from the Horn of Africa to Yemen last year made the so-called Eastern Route the busiest maritime migration path on earth, the UN migration agency said on Friday.
A landmark UN migration study published on Monday shows that 93 per cent of Africans making the journey to European countries along irregular routes, would do it again, despite facing often life-threatening danger.
A move by Italian lawmakers to impose fines of up to €1 million on vessels and organizations carrying out search and rescue operations off the country’s coastline, sparked a new warning on Tuesday from the UN that the measure risks deterring future lifesaving efforts in the Mediterranean.
Around 1,600 children were reported dead or missing between 2014 and 2018 – an average of almost one every day – but many more go unrecorded, a new UN report revealed on Friday.
A rescue operation on the Mediterranean concluded on Tuesday with confirmation that seven people drowned and 57 were rescued, following a shipwreck off the Greek island of Lesvos, the UN migration agency, IOM, said.