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Latest update 21.10.2019. Total number of refugees on the islands: 34,279.
"Voluntary return in safety and with dignity has long been a core tenet of the international refugee regime. In the 23 articles on ‘Return’ in this issue of FMR, authors explore various obstacles to achieving sustainable return, discuss the need to guard against premature or forced return, and debate the assumptions and perceptions that influence policy and practice. This issue also includes a mini-feature on ‘Towards understanding and addressing the root causes of displacement’."
"Asylum seekers awaiting evacuation from war-torn Libya say the United Nations has turned down scores of refugee relocation requests, including from women and children previously held in Libyan government-run detention centres where they were allegedly subject to abuse."
"The detention of migrants for more than 10 weeks on the basis of health laws was unlawful and the migrants should be released, a court has ruled."
"Spanish authorities have searched the home of our colleague and lawyer Gonzalo Boye, legal representative of Carles Puigdemont and several former Catalan ministers. The action taken by the Audiencia Nacional – a centralized court with jurisdiction over the Spanish territory – in our assessment is based on the assumed identification of Mr. Boye with his clients’ cause, the Catalan independence movement."
"The Greens made strong gains in Switzerland's election on Sunday while right-wing populist party SVP lost ground, final results showed."
"Over a year after Human Rights Watch first criticized Bosnia’s failure to protect the basic rights of migrants and asylum seekers, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) is warning of a fast-developing humanitarian emergency in a makeshift camp near the border with Croatia. Over 20,000 migrants and asylum seekers have arrived in Bosnia since January 2019, but violent and unlawful pushbacks from Croatia have created a bottleneck on the border, leaving many stranded in unsafe conditions."
"The issue of the acquired rights of EU27 and UK citizens has long been a focus of this blog. It’s also one of the key issues in the debate over Brexit."
"The partly EU-financed and trained Libyan Coast Guard has intercepted 7,404 refugees and migrants at sea and returned them to the war-torn country so far this year, according to figures from the UN's International Organisation for Migration (IOM). Many are then sent to notorious Libyan detention centres amid an ongoing backlash from human-rights organisations."
"Europeans are ageing. In 2016, there were 3.3 people of working-age for each citizen over 65 years. By 2070, this will fall to only two. As the population lives longer, our care needs grow, but fewer people will be available to deliver them. Could assistive technologies (ATs) help us to meet the challenges of elderly care?"
"A tussle is taking place in the Commission over the accession of Croatia to Schengen – membership of the Schengen zone through accession to the Schengen treaty. On one side, President Juncker; on the other, a handful of Member States, technical experts, and a mounting pile of evidence about violations at the border."
"For over three years we have been reporting on the systematic denial of rights to migrants in Lesvos, and each report includes a laundry list of violations that only seem to worsen over time. The containment policy - at first opposed by UN agencies, NGOs and civil society - has become all but the norm in Lesvos."
"We call on the European Council and the EU governments to:..."
"This latest edition of the overview of European Council conclusions to date, presented in the form of a rolling check-list, is produced by the European Council Oversight Unit of the European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS), the European Parliament's in-house research service and think tank."
"The Need to Unpack the Long-Awaited UK-US Data Sharing Agreement"
"African refugees in Libya are so desperate that some are bribing their way into detention centres in the hope of eventually being resettled out of the war-torn, lawless country, the United Nations said on Thursday."
"Turkey’s military push into Syria has sparked fears in Greece, already struggling with an alarming surge in the number of asylum seekers, of a new wave of migration to Europe."
"Protesters on the island of Lesvos, in the eastern Aegean, have reportedly prevented the Open Arms – a humanitarian vessel operated by Spanish NGO Proactive – from docking at the northern harbor of Skala Sykamias, reports said."
"Abdalla Bari was hungry. It was the morning of March 26, 2019, and Bari and more than 100 other people were floating in a 30-foot-long rubber dinghy in the Mediterranean Sea, somewhere in the expanse of water between North Africa and Italy. Men straddled the boat’s edge, each with one foot dangling above the water and the other inside the dinghy."
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