Spanish Parliament passes legislation allowing for unlawful summary returns in Ceuta and Melilla

12th December 2014 | News

12 December 2014 The conservative-led lower house of the Spanish parliament approved legislation on Thursday 11 December allowing for the summary expulsion to Morocco of migrants entering the country’s cities of Ceuta and Melilla in North Africa. The amendment...

ECtHR: detention of unaccompanied child in Greece violates right to liberty

12th December 2014 | News

12 December 2014 The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has held that the detention of an unaccompanied child at Feres and Soufli border post for over five months constituted inhumane treatment as well as a violation of the right to liberty and the right to an...

New Ukrainian law protects Ukrainian internally displaced people but excludes stateless & foreigners

5th December 2014 | News

5 December 2014 Ukraine has adopted a new law to protect the rights of the more than 513,000 people displaced within the country. The law, approved by the Ukrainian President on 20 November, had been backed by the Parliament on 20 October. The majority of the...

Khartoum Process: EU and African Union launch initiative against smuggling of migrants

5th December 2014 | News

5 December 2014 Ministers of the 28 EU countries as well as Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Djibouti, Kenya, Egypt and Tunisia, as well as the European and African Union Commissioners in charge of migration and development and the EU High...

International effort to resettle refugees from Syria is shameful, says Amnesty International

5th December 2014 | News

5 December 2014 In a new report, Left out in the Cold: Syrian Refugees Abandoned by the International Community, Amnesty International admonishes the abysmal international response to the Syrian refugee crisis both in terms of offering resettlement to the refugees and...

Syrian refugees in Greece request dignified living conditions and access to other EU countries

5th December 2014 | News

5 December 2014 “We escaped from death in Syria. We escaped from death in the Aegean. We want to live with dignity in Europe”, demand the more than 150 Syrian refugees who, since 19 November, have been staging a protest in front of the Greek Parliament in Athens. For...

CJEU prohibits intrusive questioning and tests to determine sexual orientation of asylum seekers

4th December 2014 | News

4 December 2014 The Court of Justice of the European Union has held that the Charter of Fundamental Rights places certain restrictions on national authorities when trying to establish the sexual orientation of asylum seekers who claim they fear persecution on account...

Norway, France, Belgium & Netherlands pledge to admit more refugees from Syria ahead of UNHCR Conference

27th November 2014 | News

27 November 2014 As the ministerial-level pledging conference on resettlement and other forms of admission for Syrian refugees, to be held in Geneva on 9 December, approaches, some European countries, Norway, France, Belgium and the Netherlands, have shown their...

Amnesty International and nearly 150 NGOs demand an end to repression of NGOs in Russia

27th November 2014 | News

27 November 2014 On 19 November, activists from Amnesty International in Russia handed over an open letter to Vladimir Putin at the building of the Presidential Administration. It was signed by 148 national and international NGOs from Russia, Germany, the UK, Poland,...

New Master’s Course in International Migration and Refugee Law at the University of Amsterdam

27th November 2014 | News

27 November 2014 The Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam is introducing a master in International Migration and Refugee Law as of September 2015. The master’s track will address international migration from the perspective of international, and European and domestic...