Budapest, June 4, 2016 (UNHCR) – The UN Refugee Agency is alarmed at reports of the death of a Syrian refugee at the Hungary–Serbia border this week. UNHCR is seeking further details after being alerted about the death by the Hungarian Border Police. The man apparently drowned in the Tisza River aft...

How media framed Mediterranean tragedies: an analysis

News comment by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, on Mediterranean crossings over the weekend Since Friday, we‘ve seen over 6,000 people crossing the Mediterranean to reach Italy – bringing the total this year to over 43,000. These massive arrivals and the fact th...

Tunis, Tunisia – 1 February 2017. UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is conducting a two-week course on human rights and refugee law for the Libyan Coastguard and Navy. The training is being held on an Italian ship crossing the Mediterranean Sea. “This training represents an important opportunity t...

Libya remains one of the most complex mixed migration situations in the world, with refugees traveling alongside migrants through perilous routes, surviving dangerous desert crossings and abuses that include sexual violence, torture, detention in inhumane conditions and abductions for ransom. All th...

Budapest – UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi called on Hungary to improve access for people seeking asylum and to do away with its so-called border “transit zones,” which he said are in effect detention centres. In Budapest, he met Minister of Foreign Affairs Péter Szijjártó and In...

Earlier this month France’s President Francois Hollande announced that the informal camp for refugees and migrants in Calais, the so-called “Jungle,” will be closed in the coming days, with the camp population to be moved to centres where better help can be provided. This is welcome. The Calais ...

UNHCR is alarmed at the high death toll being seen this year among refugees and migrants crossing the Mediterranean. Already, and with two months of 2016 still to go, at least 3,740 lives are reported lost – just short of the 3,771 deaths reported for the whole of 2015. This is the worst we have see...

The European Union (EU) needs a bold, imaginative and workable approach to overcome fragmentation and manage refugee movements effectively in accordance with international law. This paper provides a vision for how this could be achieved both within the EU and globally. The last year was exception...

A study of mixed refugee and migrant flows by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, has found that around half of those travelling to Libya do so believing they can find jobs there, but end up fleeing onwards to Europe to escape life-threatening insecurity, instability, difficult economic conditions plus wi...