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...

Speech by Filippo Grandi, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, at the European Policy Centre, Brussels Mr Van Rompuy, Ladies and gentlemen, A year has passed since the peak of what has been called – though I am not sure the terminology is correct – the “European refugee crisis”. A...

With the onset of winter, improving living conditions for asylum-seekers and migrants continues to be the number one priority for humanitarian actors in Greece. It is also still a major challenge. People living in tents out in the open have been moved to alternative accommodation and UNHCR’s accommo...

The Republic of Malta and the Republic of Estonia will successively hold the Presidency of the Council of the European Union (EU) in 2017 in a challenging context. In 2015, over one million refugees and migrants undertook dangerous journeys across the Mediterranean Sea in search of safety. The capa...

Ahead of the informal meeting of the European Council in Valletta tomorrow, we call on European leaders to take decisive action to address the tragic loss of life on the Central Mediterranean route and the deplorable conditions for migrants and refugees in Libya. To better protect refugees and migr...

Switzerland – The Director-General of the International Organization for Migration William Lacy Swing, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein and the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Libya Martin Kob...

Brussels, 10 February 2017- UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, welcomed today renewed commitments taken at this week’s Senior Officials’ Meeting on migration in Valletta, Malta, and called for the full inclusion of refugees in all migration-related EU actions. “I am encouraged by the reiterated engagem...

In a new report, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, details the impact of the increased border restrictions introduced in 2016 on refugee and migrant movements towards and inside Europe. It shows that people continued to move but undertook more diversified and dangerous journeys, often relying on smuggle...

This is a summary of what was said by UNHCR spokesperson Cécile Pouilly – to whom quoted text may be attributed – at today's press briefing at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. UNHCR is deeply concerned at a new law which has been voted this morning at the Hungarian Parliament and which foresees ...