MIGRATION

Maisha Akwaaba Project raises awareness of the dangers and risks of irregular migration through advocacy work of the returnees but also to empower them to be able to build a decent and sustainable livelihood in Ghana

The Dublin Regulation is the European law that determines where an asylum seeker’s claim is processed. But does it cover everyone, even those with a tourist visa? We asked Petra Baeyens from the European Legal Network on Asylum for answers. Marion MacGregor reports Under the Dublin system, the first country of entry into the EU is generally responsible for examining …

Perhaps no other phrase uttered during Angela Merkel's long chancellorship has made such an impact. The words "Wir schaffen das" ("We can do it") were meant to express confidence in the face of a huge, self-imposed task. How has Germany and those who came to seek asylum in the country managed since then?

A first contingent of 134 Iraqis took off from Athens on Thursday, August 6, in Greece’s first voluntary returns flight. The scheme, funded by the European Union is aimed at relieving pressure on Greece, which is struggling to cope with the amount of migrants and asylum seekers who have reached its shores. This is the “biggest voluntary return our country …

A judge has ruled against the municipality of Castel Volturno in Italy’s southern Campania region after it refused to pay a maternity grant and family benefits to a Nigerian migrant. The judge said that similar EU legislation demanded the woman be treated equally. The municipality of Castel Volturno near the southern city of Caserta had argued that the Nigerian mother-of-five …

The FrauenComputerZentrumBerlin e.V.  is offering a free digital empowerment training program to improve the media competence of women migrants and refugees in the city. The course, which begins on 12 August, aims at improving the computer and language skills of the participants, who will learn how the Internet, computer and smartphone work and how they can use these technologies independently …

Roughly 1.83 million people seeking protection were registered in Germany last year, the Federal Office of Statistics said Thursday.  Compared with 2018 the total number rose by 3%, or 55,000 people, reflecting the smallest yearly increase since 2012, according to the statistics office. The figures refer to people seeking protection on international, humanitarian or political grounds. They include asylum-seekers with …

Migrants and refugees in the EU can apply to reunite with their children and bring them to Europe if the children are minors. But what if they reach maturity during the application process? They can still be reunited with their parents, because what matters is the age they were when the application was filed, the European Court of Justice has …

The issue of mental health is one of those taboos among Black people. Even the World Bank identified that ‘Mental disorders, such as depression, anxiety, and substance use disorders, affect millions of people worldwide. They impose an enormous global disease burden that leads to premature mortality and affects functioning and quality of life’. It is high time, we in the …

A man has been charged to the Aschaffenburg district court on Thursday (16 July) for having called for the commission of a criminal offence on a website on the subject of “citizen asylum”. The accused man from Hanau is listed as the person responsible in the imprint of the website, as the court and public prosecutor’s office confirmed on Wednesday. …

For the first time since the beginning of the corona pandemic, a group deportation flight took off from Frankfurt Airport on Tuesday (14 July). On board the plane to Islamabad in Pakistan were 19 Pakistani nationals who had been deported mainly from Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg. This was confirmed by the federal police at Frankfurt Airport to the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. …

The police of North African countries to prevent refugees from crossing the Mediterranean to Europe. EU Interior Ministers and their North African counterparts have agreed. Amnesty sharply criticises agreement. Europe is also relying on African police to stop refugees crossing the Mediterranean. Germany’s Federal Ministry of the Interior announced in Berlin, the interior ministers of EU countries and North African …

Pope Francis has likened the living conditions in migrant detention centres in Libya to concentration camps. He made the comments on  Wednesday during a mass commemorating the pontiff’s journey to the Italian island of Lampedusa seven years ago, his first pastoral visit outside Rome after his election. Sertan Sanderson reports Pope Francis used the German term “Lager” during his sermon, …

  Will you be sent back to Italy if you had your fingerprints taken there, but then applied for asylum in another EU country? What happens if you are to be deported under the Dublin Regulation but you refuse? We put these questions and more to a number of experts, including German lawyer Albert Sommerfeld. Marion MacGregor reports The Dublin …

A group of associations and NGOs have set up a camp for young migrants in the heart of Paris to highlight the plight of homeless asylum-seekers in France. While they wait for their paperwork to be handled, they do not benefit from any care, causing many to literally live in the streets. Charlotte Oberti reports A stone’s throw from the …

Italian authorities have broken up a network facilitating illegal immigration from Ghana to Italy, the Italian news agency ANSA has reported.  The group is said to have  a contact point in Ghana which facilitated migration to Italy and other countries using false documents. ANSA reported that police carried out three arrest warrants issued by the preliminary investigation judge at the …

A total of 80,366 applications for migrant regularisation in Italy have been submitted in the first month of the scheme, which began on 1 June as part of post-COVID-19 relaunch measures. The vast majority of the cases have already been processed. However, the Italian interior ministry said the number of applications is continually growing. Applications for migrant regularisation have picked …

Carola Rackete, 32, is a ship captain who works for the German sea rescue organisation Sea-Watch. She gained international fame in June 2019, when as captain of Sea-Watch 3, she rescued a total of 53 migrants in distress from the Mediterranean Sea. And after weeks of waiting for approval  despite a ban by Italian authorities, she piloted the rescue ship …

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Thursday condemned France for the “inhuman and degrading living conditions” of three asylum-seekers who were “living in the street without any resources”. The Strasbourg-based court ruled that authorities “had failed in their duties” with regard to the three asylum-seekers, finding France responsible for the conditions in which the three men – an …

Asylum applications in Europe increased by 11% in 2019 compared with the previous year. The European asylum support office expects the overall rise to continue, despite the current pandemic-related slump. Asylum applications in the EU account for one-third of the global total. Charlotte Hauswedell/InfoMigrant reports In 2019, asylum applications in EU+ countries rose by 11% compared with the year before …