EP Study: EU should focus on better reception rather than coercive redistribution of asylum seekers

14th November 2014 | News

A study commissioned by the Civil Liberties Committee (LIBE) of the European Parliament examines the need and potential for new approaches to ensure access to protection for asylum seekers, including joint processing and distribution of asylum applicants among EU...

ECtHR rules against return of asylum-seeking family to Italy without reception guarantees

7th November 2014 | News

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) held this week that returning the Tarakhel family from Switzerland to Italy without guarantees that they would benefit from appropriate conditions would violate their human rights as enshrined in the European Convention of...

Italian legal system needs reforms to ensure access to justice for undocumented migrants, says ICJ

7th November 2014 | News

In its report, “Undocumented” Justice for Migrants in Italy, on the possibilities of challenging expulsion and detention decisions issued to undocumented migrants in Italy, the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) highlights the shortcomings of the Italian system...

New report analyses access to the EU territory following ECtHR condemnation of pushbacks in high seas

7th November 2014 | News

In a new report, ‘Access to Protection: Bridges Not Walls’, the Italian Council for Refugees (CIR) analyses the impact of the case of Hirsi Jamaa and others v. Italy and argues that the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has established access to territory as a...

European Commission urged to intervene to stop violations of EU law in Ceuta and Melilla

7th November 2014 | News

ECRE, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Rights International Spain, have written to the EU Commissioner for Migration and Home Affairs Dimitris Avramopoulos to intervene with the Spanish government regarding proposed changes to Spanish immigration law that...

UNHCR: Registration of Syrian refugees drops in Lebanon due to restrictions on border-crossings

6th November 2014 | News

The UNHCR representative in Lebanon Ninette Kelley informed last week that the number of Syrian refugees registered by UNHCR offices in Lebanon had drastically decreased in the last few weeks. According to Kelley, this phenomenon is the result of the restrictions...

UNHCR launches the “I Belong” campaign to end statelessness within 10 years

6th November 2014 | News

On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the 1954 UN Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, UNHCR launched this week the “I Belong” campaign aimed at ending statelessness within 10 years. Statelessness is a limbo for more than 10 million people...

Joint Letter on Spain to the EU Commissioner for Migration and Home Affairs

6th November 2014 | News

Mr. Dimitris Avramopoulos Commissioner for Migration and Home Affairs of the European Union November 6, 2014 Dear Commissioner,   The undersigned organisations are writing to express their grave concern in relation to proposed changes to Spanish immigration law that...

European Court prevents Switzerland from returning asylum-seeking family to Italy without reception guarantees

5th November 2014 | News

  November 5, 2014. The AIRE Centre (Advice on Individual Rights in Europe), ECRE  (European Council on Refugees and Exiles) and Amnesty International welcome the European Court of Human Rights’ judgment in the case of Tarakhel v Switzerland, in which the...

UK slammed for axing rescue missions on the basis that saving migrants encourages others

31st October 2014 | News

Discussions on the responsibility to ensure search and rescue of migrants in the Mediterranean intensified this week as the UK announced that they will not support any future search and rescue operations to prevent migrants and refugees drowning in the Mediterranean,...