Nearly 200 migrants and refugees rescued by a humanitarian aid boat in the Mediterranean Sea began to leave the vessel in Sicily late on Monday after spending nine days on the ship.
The migrants regained dry land at Porto Empedocle on the Italian island's western coast.
Police escorted them a short distance to another vessel, where they will be quarantined to prevent the possible spread of coronavirus.
The arrival of the rescue vessel chartered by charity group SOS...
The Strasbourg-based court ruled that authorities “had failed in their duties” with regard to the three asylum-seekers, finding France responsible for the conditions in which the three men – an Afghan, a Russian and an Iranian aged 27, 33, and 46, respectively – “had been living for several months: sleeping rough, without access to sanitary facilities, having no means of subsistence and constantly in fear of being attacked or robbed”.
The court ruled “the applicants had thus been...
The Turkish Coast Guard rescued 35 asylum seekers as a boat carrying them sank in the Aegean Sea, according to security sources on Monday.
They were directed to Turkish territorial waters by the Greek Coast Guard.
According to the rescued migrants, the boat was damaged by the Greek forces before being pushed back that led to its sinking off the Ayvalik district of the Balikesir province.
The search for four missing passengers is ongoing said the sources, who asked not to...
The Greek police have been bringing in asylum seekers living in the country and expelling them to Turkey by force while using the coronavirus pandemic as a cover for their abuses, according to a report published Wednesday.
The Wall Street Journal report, based on evidences from asylum seekers who faced violence as well as lawyers and human-rights activists, said "at least 250 asylum seekers have been forcibly expelled from Greece since late March."
Simon Campbell, the field...
Turkish coast guard units on Thursday rescued 22 migrants and refugees who were left by the Greek coast guard to die in the Aegean Sea.
As Greece continues to violate basic human rights and international law, the Greek coast guard most recently pushed 22 asylum-seekers, on an immobile rubber boat back to Turkish territorial waters after the motor of their boat was ripped off.
The migrants and refugees, including 16 Syrians, two Palestinians, two Egyptians, one Libyan and one...
Locals prevented buses carrying refugees being relocated from congested Aegean island camps to new accommodation in northern Greece, and set fire to a hotel where they were supposed to be housed, Greek authorities reported on Wednesday.
According to reports, 150 protesters prevented buses carrying 57 refugees from reaching a rented hotel in Panagitsa, Pella, North Greece, by throwing stones and other objects at the vehicles. They then set fire to a room on the hotel’s ground floor....
Driven from their homes by war and unrest, up to 10 million of the world’s 70 million refugees live in crowded camps and informal settlements. Now comes a new threat: the coronavirus rampaging across the globe.
Almost none of those who live in the refugee camps have been tested for the virus. While the relative isolation of many camps may have slowed the virus’ spread, none is hermetically sealed.
Without testing, the virus can spread unchecked until people start showing...
Saudi Arabia is stepping up the deportation of thousands of Ethiopians, including some who are suspected of suffering from Covid-19, an act that some migrant advocates have described as reckless and inhumane.
Over the past 10 days, up to two flights a day carrying Ethiopian migrants have landed at Addis Ababa international airport, before returning to Saudi Arabia loaded with cattle exports.
A total of 2,968 migrants were returned in the first 10 days of April, according to one...
The Trump administration has carried out nearly 10,000 summary deportations or “expulsions” since March 21, using emergency public health measures during the coronavirus outbreak that have given U.S. Customs and Border Protection broad authority to bypass immigration laws, CBP officials said Thursday.
The measures have allowed the agency to quickly turn away most unauthorized migrants — sending them back across the U.S.-Mexico border. The moves have dramatically slashed the number of...
Non-national migrant rescue ships will no longer be able to dock in Italy, after the country declared its ports were not safe due to the coronavirus pandemic.
"Given the spread of Covid-19, Italian ports cannot guarantee the necessary prerequisites to be qualified as 'places of safety,'" the government decree says.
While it does not mention migrants specifically, the order refers to search and rescue operations, which pluck thousands of migrants from the Mediterranean each year...
Officials in Greece have placed a second migrant camp near Athens under lockdown after an Afghan resident tested positive for the coronavirus, the migration ministry said.
Officials said the camp in Malakasa, some 38 kilometres (24 miles) northeast of Athens, was placed under "full sanitary isolation" for 14 days, with no one allowed to enter or leave.
A migration ministry source said the Malakasa facility currently shelters over 1,700 people.
The ministry said the 53-...
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic breached their obligations under EU law by refusing to take in refugees.
The ECJ says in its ruling that these countries had failed to accept their share of 120,000 asylum seekers who had arrived in Italy and Greece, under a relocation programme agreed by the European Council in 2015.
It also finds Poland and the Czech Republic guilty of failing to fulfil their obligations under an earlier...
The casinos are deserted and thousands of hotel rooms are empty. But when Las Vegas, gripped by the coronavirus, needed space for a temporary homeless shelter, officials chose a location that does not have walls, or even a roof: an outdoor parking lot.
The City of Las Vegas and Clark County on Saturday opened the shelter, on the upper floor of a convention center parking lot, after the temporary closure of a 500-person homeless shelter run by Catholic Charities after a homeless man...
Crowded tents, makeshift shacks, cramped containers, unsanitary bathroom facilities and a lack of hot water for cleaning and laundry.
In Greece’s camps, refugees and migrants are surviving conditions like these at a time when the novel coronavirus COVID-19 spreads throughout the country and the world.
Starting in late 2016, Arash Hampay, who now works as part of a humanitarian collective in Athens, spent eight months in the notorious Moria refugee camp before he eventually...
Greece has called for "urgent" EU backing to prepare for a possible coronavirus outbreak in migrant camps, a minister said Friday.
"This sort of case could have dramatic consequences. It is extremely important to act in a timely manner to avert such a possibility," junior migration minister Giorgos Koumoutsakos told EU internal affairs ministers in a teleconference Friday.
"For this reason, we feel it is necessary to have urgent EU backing to address this challenge,"...