| Land arrivals to Greece now outpacing sea arrivals. Some 2,900 people have crossed Greece’s northern land border with Turkey so far this month, according to UNHCR, which noted that land arrivals have outpaced sea arrivals in April. The UN’s refugee agency raised concerns today about conditions at over-stretched reception centres and police detention facilities in the Evros region and urged Greek authorities to identify open transit sites where new arrivals, many of them Syrian and Iraqi families, can be directed to for registration. UNHCR noted that some families with children were being held in police detention in dismal conditions. Since the start of the year, at least eight people have died trying to cross the Evros river, which forms a natural border between Greece and Turkey. Last week, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies warned that the sharp rise in land arrivals could signal the start of a summer emergency. | | |
| Bombardment of Yarmouk intensifies. In a statement on Thursday, UNRWA warned of the “catastrophic consequences ” of the escalation in fighting in and around Yarmouk, a camp for Palestinian refugees south of Damascus. Over a week of intense bombing and shelling, at least 19 civilians have been killed and 150 injured, mostly women and the elderly, according to a former camp resident still in touch with some of the estimated 1,500 families who remain there. Reuters spoke over the phone to some of those among an estimated 5,000 who have fled Yarmouk in the last week to the neighbouring town of Yalda, where the sounds of war are still close enough to terrify their children. | | |
| Venezuelans arriving in Colombia to receive food vouchers. Starting on Monday, the World Food Programme will begin distributing monthly US$35 vouchers to thousands of hungry Venezuelans arriving in neighbouring Colombia. The vouchers, which will be redeemable at local shops, are to target the most vulnerable, such as malnourished children and pregnant mothers. The programme aims to reach 350,000 Venezuelans over the next eight months but will depend on the international community contributing US$46 million to cover the costs. | | |
| Israel’s only mental health clinic for refugees faces closure. The Gesher Clinic has treated 800 asylum-seekers, including torture and human-trafficking survivors, since it opened in early 2014. Currently it has nearly 300 patients and another 200 on a waiting list, but Haaretz reports that its operating budget will run out in two months and there are no plans to renew it. Most of the clinic’s patients are young men, mainly from Eritrea, with post-traumatic stress stemming from experiences in their home countries and during their journeys to Israel. | | |
| Toronto asks for help to manage homeless asylum-seekers. Toronto Mayor John Tory says his city needs help from the federal and provincial governments to accommodate asylum-seekers, who now occupy 40 per cent of beds in the city’s shelters for the homeless. Tory said Toronto and other Canadian cities needed “significant additional resources ” to pay for housing and other services for refugees and asylum-seekers, whose numbers have increased in the past year. Last week, Quebec’s immigration minister asked the federal government for additional funding to prepare for an expected increase in asylum-seekers crossing the border with the United States over the summer. | | |
| Deaf asylum-seekers and refugees in Vienna are learning sign language and written German through courses offered by an Austrian organization, Equalizent. In this short BBC film, Ghaith from Iraq uses sign language to explain his hopes for the future: “I want a job, a wife and to get married. I love kids, but I was always alone. I want to give my children a positive feeling for life and not the negative things I experienced.” | | |
The number of refugees and migrants who have arrived to Evros so far this month is equivalent to half of all recorded arrivals via the Greece-Turkey land border in 2017.
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