refugee and migrant crisis

The processes for supporting the world's 25.9 million refugees and 3.5 million asylum seekers, continue to be fatally flawed and putting the responsibility unfairly upon some of the poorest countries, says Oxfam ahead of the first ever Global Refugee Forum, taking place in Geneva this week.

More than 80 million people around the world are now officially displaced from their homes. Migration is not a threat to be stopped, it is a complex phenomenon to be managed. Everyone has the right to be safe and to be treated with dignity. Oxfam works with refugees and migrants to help protect people on the move who, when leaving home, are often in the most vulnerable moment of their lives.

EU policies and action have facilitated the containment of tens of thousands of people in Libya, a country where they have been exposed to appalling abuse, say 13 organisations in support of a complaint to the EU Court of Auditors.

The European Union’s latest row with Turkey will aggravate what is already Europe’s worst humanitarian disaster, Oxfam and the Greek Council for Refugees (GCR) said on the fourth anniversary of the EU-Turkey deal.

The extreme actions taken by security forces against people seeking asylum and the recent violent attacks against workers for human rights and humanitarian organizations in Greece are an alarming development, said 256 organizations in a joint statement on Friday.

European Union member states should urgently relocate unaccompanied children from the Greek islands to safety in their territory, 65 human rights, humanitarian and civil society organisations said in a statement today.

The Global Refugee Forum ended today with refugees making sure that their message to be fully included in all decisions about their futures was heard by world leaders.

Despite real strides taken to include more refugees at the Forum, where they have been represented on high-level panels alongside governments, business leaders, and UN agencies, only 2% of the total 3000 participants were refugees. World leaders must do more to bring real change and uphold their pledges to the 25.9m refugees worldwide.

People who have fled war, violence and persecution need support to find safety and rebuild their lives. However, in the EU 'hotspots' in Greece, people are faced with an asylum process which is extremely complicated to navigate.

The death of a mother in a Greek refugee camp is appalling, and a direct consequence of the EU's migration policies, says Oxfam.

Migrants, including children, at the French-Italian border have been illegally detained and pushed back to Italy by French border guards, testimonies gathered by a coalition of French NGOs, including Oxfam, show. THe organziations have submitted the accounts to a prosecutor in France who is looking into abuses of fundamental rights at the border with Italy.