Tag Archives: UNHCR

World must tackle ‘once in a generation’ refugee crisis

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras meets United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Special Envoy Angelina Jolie at the Maximos Mansion in Athens, Greece, March 16, 2016.

By Lin Taylor

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Global leaders must come together to tackle a ‘once-in-a-generation’ migrant crisis, said U.N. special envoy Angelina Jolie, or risk greater instability that could drive more refugees to Europe.

The United Nations and the declaration of human rights were among the world-changing outcomes of the global refugee crisis after World War Two, Jolie said, adding that the international community is now at a similar pivotal moment.

“I believe this is again that once-in-a-generation moment when nations have to pull together,” the Hollywood actress and director told the BBC.

“How we respond will determine whether we create a more stable world, or face decades of far greater instability.”

Jolie said inaction or uncoordinated efforts that did not address the underlying causes of the crisis would only lead to more conflict and displacement.

“If these things continue to happen, there will be further displacement and more people on the borders of Europe and elsewhere,” she said.

Europe is grappling with its largest migration wave since World War Two, as a traditional flow of migrants from Africa is compounded by refugees fleeing wars and poverty in the Middle East and South Asia.

The U.N. refugee agency has said the number of people forcibly displaced worldwide was likely to have “far surpassed” a record 60 million in 2015, including 20 million refugees, driven by the Syrian war and other drawn-out conflicts.

The Oscar-winning actress argued against closing borders to refugees and migrants.

“If your neighbor’s house is on fire you are not safe if you lock your doors. Isolationism is not strength,” she said.

European Union leaders, alarmed by an influx of one million refugees and migrants into the bloc of 500 million people, struck an accord with Turkey in March that would grant Ankara more money to keep Syrian refugees on its territory.

The deal sealed off the main route by which a million migrants crossed the Aegean into Greece last year, but some believe new routes will develop through Bulgaria or Albania as Mediterranean crossings to Italy from Libya resume.

Jolie, special envoy for the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, said she was disappointed in some politicians for fear-mongering and a “race to the bottom” approach to the refugee crisis.

She said it has led to “countries competing to be the toughest, in the hope of protecting themselves whatever the cost… and despite their international responsibilities.”

When asked about Republican Donald Trump’s U.S. presidential campaign, Jolie said it was divisive.

“America is built on freedom of religion so it’s hard to hear that this is coming from someone who is pressing to be president.”

(Reporting by Lin Taylor @linnytayls, Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters that covers humanitarian news, conflicts, land rights, modern slavery and human trafficking, women’s rights and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org to see more stories)

UNHCR condemns tear gas against refugees

A migrant catches his breath after inhaling teargas thrown by Macedonian police on a crowd of more than 500 refugees and migrants protesting next to a border fence at a makeshift camp at the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations’ refugee agency UNHCR condemned on Monday the use of tear gas by Macedonian police against refugees on the border with Greece and said such action damaged Europe’s image.

Dozens of migrants and refugees were wounded on Sunday when Macedonian police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at crowds on the Greek side of the border, aid workers said, an act Athens called “dangerous and deplorable”.

“Time and again in recent months we have seen tension unfolding at various European borders, between security forces on the one hand and people fleeing war and in need of help on the other,” UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards said in a statement.

“People get hurt and property is damaged. Harm is done to perceptions of refugees and to Europe’s image alike. Everyone loses.”

About 11,000 migrants and refugees have been stranded at the Greek border outpost of Idomeni since February after a cascade of border shutdowns across the Balkans closed off their route to central and western Europe. They have been sleeping for many weeks in the open in dismal conditions.

Edwards said it was urgent to move people voluntarily to sites being put in place by the Greek government, a process that UNHCR was willing to help with.

A wider solution, a plan to relocate 160,000 people across Europe, was agreed many months ago but has still not been put into action, he said.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Europe on cusp of self-induced humanitarian crisis, UNHCR says

GENEVA/BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The build-up of thousands of migrants and refugees on Greece’s northern borders is fast turning into a humanitarian disaster, the United Nations said on Tuesday as the European Union prepared to offer more financial aid.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said clashes at Greece’s border with Macedonia on Monday – when migrants battered down a gate and were tear-gassed – simply underlined the urgency with which the EU needed to act on the crisis.

But Austria – which last month limited the number of migrants it lets through to 3,200 a day – stuck to its position that it did not want to become an overcrowded waiting room for thousands wanting to make it further north.

Croatia, which is also on what is now the well-trodden migrants route northwards from Greece, said it might deploy its armed forces to help police control flows.

But near Idomeni, on the Greek-Macedonian border itself, a tent city mushroomed, prompting some despair among those trapped there. “Macedonian police put us here, the Greeks don’t want us back,” Yase Qued, a 16-year-old from Afghanistan, told Reuters.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) called for better planning and accommodation for at least 24,000 it said were stuck in Greece, including 8,500 at Idomeni.

“Europe is on the cusp of a largely self-induced humanitarian crisis,” U.N. refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards told a news briefing.

“The crowded conditions are leading to shortages of food, shelter, water and sanitation. As we all saw yesterday, tensions have been building, fuelling violence and playing into the hands of people smugglers,” he said.

Migrants have become stranded in Greece since Austria and other countries along the Balkans migration corridor imposed restrictions on their borders, limiting the numbers able to cross.

Police chiefs from Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia, meeting in Belgrade, agreed to improve the system of joint registration of refugees to unblock gridlocks in Greece.

The burgeoning crisis adds to last year’s chaos when more than a million migrants and refugees arrived in the EU, many fleeing the war in Syria and walking from Turkey northwards.

Some 130,000 have reached the continent so far in 2016.

CRISIS AID

The European Commission, the EU executive, said it would float a plan on Wednesday to offer emergency financial aid for humanitarian crises inside the 28-nation bloc – comparable with operations it has launched elsewhere in the world.

Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker spoke to Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Monday and European Council President Donald Tusk was on a visit to Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Greece and Turkey.

Tusk’s tour comes ahead of a special European Union summit on the crisis next Monday. Germany’s Merkel said television pictures of migrants desperate to make their way into western Europe via the Balkans drove home the urgency of the summit.

“The pictures show us clearly every day that there is a need for talks,” she said after meeting Croatian Prime Minister Tihomir Oreskovic in Berlin.

“We also naturally need to deal with the very difficult situation in Greece and see how we can fulfill what the (European) Commission demanded from us, namely to end the politics of waving people through and to return to the Schengen system as soon as possible and to the greatest possible extent.”

The difficulty of reaching agreement on an issue which goes to the heart of public fears for security and safety in many countries was underlined by Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann, who honed in on comments from German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere that suggested he thought Austria might wave through too many migrants.

“What is not acceptable is to say that they should definitely come and then the interior minister says he is against waving people through (to Germany),” Faymann told a news conference after a weekly cabinet meeting.

“Then how should they go to Germany?”

The UNHCR, meanwhile, urged all EU member states to reinforce their capacity to register and process asylum seekers through their national procedures as well as through an EU relocation scheme.

“Greece cannot manage this situation alone,” Edwards said.

Despite commitments to relocate 66,400 refugees from Greece, EU member states have so far pledged just 1,539 spaces and only 325 people actually have been relocated, he added.

(Additional reporting by Lefteris Papadimas in Idomeni, Francois Murphy in Vienna, Aleksandar Vasovic in Belgrade, Paul Carrel in Berlin; Writing by Jeremy Gaunt; Editing by Mark Heinrich)