So far this year, more than 644,000 refugees and migrants have arrived in Europe by sea. Of these, just over a third – 34 per cent – are women and children who are particularly vulnerable to abuse as they transit Europe, UNHCR said.

“Refugee and migrant children moving in Europe are at heightened risk of violence and abuse, including sexual violence, especially in overcrowded reception sites, or in many locations where refugees and migrants gather, such as parks, train stations, bus stations and roadsides,” UNHCR spokesperson Melissa Fleming told a news conference in Geneva.

“From testimony and reports we have received there have been instances of children engaging in survival sex to pay smugglers to continue their journey, either because they have run out money, or because they have been robbed,” she added.

Fleming noted that unaccompanied children can be particularly vulnerable as they lack the protection and care of an adult. They may also be placed in detention in some countries, including with adults, posing great risks to them, she said.

Refugee and migrant women travelling on their own are also at heightened risk as they move through Europe, sometimes at night, along insecure routes or staying in places that lack basic security. Many reception centres are overcrowded, and lack adequate lighting and separated spaces for single women and families with children.

UNHCR is appealing to all concerned national authorities in Europe to take measures to ensure the protection of women and girls, including through providing adequate and safe reception facilities.

The refugee agency is also calling to all authorities, as a matter of urgency, to find alternatives to the detention of children. UNHCR and partners are working to prevent and address immediately family separations, as women and girls on their own face enhanced risks.

Together with partners, UNHCR are working with authorities to ensure access to information, to enhance the identification of persons with specific needs, including unaccompanied children, and their referral to appropriate services, to provide psychosocial support and to enhance reception areas, including through the provision of safe spaces.

It is of utmost importance here, as in other parts of Europe, that reception conditions be adequate to the task. Without this essential element, the relocation programme agreed by Europe in September is in serious peril and may fail.

After the chaotic and miserable scenes over the past few days, borders along the Balkan routes have reopened. On the Serbian border with Croatia, some 3000 people were left waiting amid uncertainty in the rain from Sunday until late Monday afternoon without shelter, and with minimal assistance on hand. UNHCR staff and staff of our partner organizations provided what support they could at such short notice including food, water, and blankets. But many people, including the elderly, pregnant women and several physically handicapped people, were soaked through and instances of hypothermia were reported. There was similar misery on the Croatia-Slovenia border.

And while conditions are still difficult in some places and there is a backlog, movement has resumed, with 4,300 people arriving in Austria from Slovenia yesterday. Meanwhile, in Austria and Germany, tens of thousands of refugees and migrants are sleeping in tents and temporary shelters because of accommodation shortages.

In the Aegean, we are saddened by the recent wave of deaths at sea among people crossing from Turkey into Greece. 19 people have died in the past 9 days in five separate incidents, almost half of these over the weekend. Infants and children were among those who have perished. Refugees we spoke to over the weekend told us that smugglers are offering discounts rates for crossings in bad weather and packing more people onto boats.

At least 123 people have died or gone missing in Greek territorial waters so far this year (in all, at least 3,135 have perished in the Mediterranean to date in 2015). We are concerned at the potential for this number to rise further as people try to beat the onset of winter and fears of new border-closures. UNHCR urges that search and rescue operations be further strengthened in this area to reduce risks.

To address the current situation in Europe, various measures of stabilization are needed in countries of first asylum and all countries of secondary movements to reduce irregular secondary movements. These measures include strong support to countries hosting the vast majority of Syrian, Iraqi and Afghan refugees, an information campaign informing of the dangers of the sea journey, and the development of legal pathways to seek protection in Europe. In countries of secondary movement in Europe, significant efforts must be made to develop a robust reception and registration capacity in order for the relocation programme to work.

Collins was an assistant nurse in a military hospital in Douala, Cameroon. After two years of working without getting paid,she and her husband decided to head to Banki, in the north of the country. The town was captured by Boko Haram, and Collins and her husband were kidnapped and held in the bush. After a couple of months, Collins managed to escape with the help of an older woman and started a six-month journey that finally brought her to Libya. It was not easy, she was already eight months pregnant at that time and she was beaten while the women travelling with her were raped.

When the Dignity I crew found her on a rubber boat at 08:00 in the morning, her face showed she was in pain. Her labour contractions had already started. Astrid, an MSF midwife on board, helped Collins deliver a baby boy she called Divan. The delivery went smoothly. It is Collins’ second child. Besides her husband, of whom she has had no news since leaving Cameroon, she also left behind a two-year-old son, Warren, with her mother in Douala,.

After the delivery, Collins was transferred to the Spanish Guardia Civil boat that will take mother and son to Italy.

Source: MSF

We are treating the medical consequences of the journey, including hypothermia and dehydration, but also acute conditions requiring medical evacuation such as septic shock, pneumonia and wounds inflicted by abuse and violence. We are trying to improve living conditions for people stranded in Greece, Italy, FYROM and Serbia. But all of our work amounts to filling the gaps left by states unwilling or unable to fulfil their responsibilities.

Many people are fleeing war, oppression and torture. Others are fleeing poverty, persecution and human rights violations. All want a safer and better life. But their exit routes are growing scarcer, while refugee hosting countries such as Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan become more overburdened. The world is faced with the worst displacement crisis since World War II. The conflict in Syria shows no sign of abating. Yet Europe is closing its borders.

Categorisations of ’migrants; , ’refugees’ or ’asylum seekers’ do not adequately or fairly describe the reality that pushes people to embark on long and dangerous journeys. Every person has a story to tell about why they were forced to risk their lives to reach Europe. When people need medical care, food, water and shelter, they should receive this assistance regardless of their legal status.

When your ministers gather this Monday for yet another summit on the so-called ‘migration crisis’, bear in mind that the decisions adopted in previous summits have so far largely failed to improve the situation. Some measures have made the situation worse: fences and forced fingerprinting only push people to choose more clandestine and dangerous routes. Lives continue to be lost at sea, in the back of lorries and in make shift camps where people live in unacceptable conditions in the heart of the European Union. It is time to put an end to these policies of deterrence. They have turned a foreseeable and manageable influx of people fleeing for survival into a policy-made human tragedy on Europe’s beaches, borders, train platforms and motorways. They are jeopardising the right to seek asylum. The current approach of ’non-reception’ and closed borders is causing death, injury and chaos.

Europe is faced with an increasing number of people seeking assistance and protection. These people are only a small portion of the millions who are fleeing intolerable suffering. No matter the obstacles, they will continue to come. They have no other choice. The current policies are untenable in the face of this situation. The only way Europe can prevent a worsening crisis on its territory is to replace the smugglers by providing a safe, legal and free alternative. We ask you to provide safe passage. Legal crossing of sea and land borders must be authorised for asylum seekers into and inside the EU. All forms of legal avenues allowing refugees to reach Europe must be put in place urgently. Efficient solutions to relocate asylum seekers from one EU member state to another must be found. Effective access to coherent asylum procedures and assistance should be provided at entry points, throughout Europe and along migratory routes. Swift registration and access to temporary protection should be provided upon arrival. Legal migration pathways must be created. Dignified reception conditions must be offered to all.

Make this life vest redundant. Provide humane, dignified and safe alternatives.

Sincerely,

Dr. Joanne Liu

International President

Médecins Sans Frontières

Lindis Hurum, MSF Emergency Coordinator on the boat describes the situation:

“It was intense. I spent 45 minutes on our fast rescue boat, staying close to them and talking to them in order to keep them calm until the other vessels arrived to assist us. It is an impressive sight when so many desperate and frightened people are crammed on a boat like this.The boat was close to tipping over – at one point I really thought it would capsize. During the rescue there was a mass man-overboard as people jumped ship, but we had passed sufficient life jackets onto the boat so all the people who jumped were rescued and no one drowned. There were many women, children and elderly men. Afterwards, I went on the boat to check that everyone had been rescued. What a sight – the conditions in the hold were terrible and I still cannot believe no one died. They were very lucky.

We transferred everyone we rescued to a Norwegian Navy Boat for immediate passage towards Italy late last night. Already this morning [Friday 07 August] we have saved a further 128 people from a rubber boat. They were all ecstatic to be alive and safe. Very emotional scenes of joy, prayer and singing broke out once they were safe on our ship. We are awaiting a transfer of a hundred or so people from another boat, and then we will also make our way towards Italy.”

Source: MSF

According to the authorities, this year more than 14,000 people – of whom more than 90 percent are fleeing war-torn Syria – have made the perilous journey in small boats across the Aegean sea from Turkey to the Dodecanese islands, in search of protection. With too few suitable facilities to host them, many refugees find themselves forced for days at a time to sleep outside in the cold and rain or in badly overcrowded police station cells while waiting to be transferred to the Greek mainland.

“Over the past four months, we have seen no will to improve the reception system,” says Kostas Georgakas, MSF field coordinator. “No medical screening is provided for the arrivals and, more importantly, vulnerable people are neglected. Recently a group of doctors from the Ministry of Health was sent to screen refugees for Ebola – despite the fact that most refugees come from Syria and Afghanistan, not from West Africa. But those suffering cardiovascular problems or diabetes receive nothing.”

The Greek authorities have a responsibility to conduct vulnerability screenings and provide adapted care for these people, yet a lack of resources and political will means little concrete action has been taken on the ground.

“We have seen intolerable overcrowding, with 53 people crammed into a cell meant for six,” says Georgakas. “These conditions are unbearable for even one night, especially for people already suffering physically and psychologically from fleeing war. What little they are offered after such a grueling journey is shameful, and is dangerous for their health.”

As a result of the deplorable reception conditions, an MSF mobile team has launched two emergency operations in the Dodecanese islands since late August. In that time, the team has provided medical care to more than 350 refugees and distributed more than 3,000 kits of essential relief items including sleeping bags, soap and other hygiene items.

Patients have told MSF teams that they were pushed back to Turkey before eventually being able to reach Greek shores. Greece has the obligation to honor the fundamental rights of all persons under its jurisdiction, regardless of nationality. States must, at all times, guarantee the non-refoulement of refugees and asylum seekers from territorial lands and waters, and ensure that those persons receive decent treatment upon arrival, including access to an efficient and equitable asylum procedure.

“Greece closed its land borders and now it must respond to the flow of refugees arriving on the Aegean islands with the dignity and respect that these people deserve,” says Manu Moncada, MSF’s operations coordinator for migration. “Higher fences and inhumane living conditions on the islands will not deter the desperate, who will be forced to take ever more dangerous routes in search of safety, with many losing their lives in the process.”

Since 2008, MSF has responded to the urgent medical and humanitarian needs of newly arrived migrants in Greece, as well as to asylum seekers and migrants in administrative detention. In collaboration with two Greek organisations, MSF is also providing medical rehabilitation for victims of torture in Athens.

She still relives the trauma of September 10, when an unidentified vessel rammed into the smuggler’s trawler that was carrying Doaa and more than 500 other people, including many women and children, who dreamed of reaching Europe. The vessel quickly sank off the east coast of Malta; there were just 11 survivors.

The young woman, who showed tremendous courage in saving one baby and trying to keep another alive during the three days she spent in the water before being rescued by a Greek vessel and taken to Crete, says she is even more determined to reach Sweden where she has relatives.

But her resilience and determination to survive and to try and save others has inspired many people in Greece, including the local authorities in the Crete port of Chania, were she was taken after being rescued by a Greek Navy helicopter. People there believe that Doaa should be given Greek nationality for her bravery.

“What she did – suppressing the instinct for self-preservation and trying to save two babies – is astounding,” said Dimitris Nikolakakis, a senior public health and welfare official in Chania.

Doaa’s story begins in the south-western Syria town of Dera’a, where she was born and grew up in a family of nine. But as the war escalated, her family decided to flee to nearby Jordan in 2012 before making their way to Egypt. Doaa was just 16 at the time.

She spent two-and-a-half years in the northern Egyptian resort of Gamasa, where she worked as a seamstress to help supplement the money her father made as a barber. But Doaa believed there was no future in Syria or Egypt and so she decided, like thousands of others, to try and reach Europe by boat despite the news of ever more horrendous sinkings and deaths on the high seas.

“Three thousand people have drowned so far this year in the Mediterranean. It is unbelievable that such tragic loss of life takes place on Europe’s doorstep,” said Laurens Jolles, UNHCR’s regional representative for southern Europe.

But Doaa and her fiancé, Bassem, went ahead and found a place on a trawler that was used to smuggle refugees and migrants from Egypt to southern Europe. Four days after the trawler set sail from Damietta in the Nile Delta, it was stopped by another boat. “The people on it asked us to stop. They threw pieces of metal and wood at us and swore at our captain,” recalled Doaa. “Our boat refused to stop and they circled us and rammed us. They waited until we had sunk and they left.”

The trawler sank in minutes. Most of the passengers were below decks. “Some people grabbed ropes hanging from the ship’s masts to save themselves. Some were cut to pieces by the propeller when they fell into the water. Most drowned,” Doaa said. “We were from Sudan, Africa, Egypt, Syria, some from Libya, some Palestinians from Gaza.”

Doaa found herself in the water with 100 or so survivors, shocked and bewildered at the murderous behaviour they had just seen. She grabbed a life belt and looked around for her fiancé. She realized he must have gone down with the boat.

For three days, the survivors floated in the Mediterranean without food or drinking water. They were at the mercy of the winds and currents – and gradually they started to die. “Some people died of stress; others willed it to happen,” Doaa noted. “One man took off his own life vest and sank. Some died of fear, some of cold. The weather was rough. It was cloudy and cold.”

People began to ask Doaa to take care of their children. A man with his one-year-old granddaughter handed over the child and Doaa put it on her life belt. “Then a mother came with an 18-month-old baby girl and a six-year-old boy and asked me to take care of the baby and I kept it too. I watched the grandfather and the mother and her son die.”

Doaa said the goal of saving the two babies increased her determination to survive. She was rescued by a Liberian-flagged vessel some 90 nautical miles south-west of Crete on September 13. “The one year-old baby died just as we were about to be picked up” and taken to Chania. The other child rallied and recovered.

UNHCR’s Jolles said Doaa’s ordeal and the number of people who drowned was yet another sign of the need to do more to resolve the problem of people risking all to reach Europe. “There is an urgent need for a joint European response, based on collaboration among states and European Union support,” he said.

“For the moment, an efficient rescue operation needs to be maintained aimed at saving lives, in absence of other available alternatives,” Jolles stressed in a clear reference to the Italian Navy’s operation which has rescued 150,000 people at sea since late October 2013, including many people in need of international protection.

Doaa, meanwhile, waits alone to hear what her future will bring after such a costly journey. She was recently moved from Chania to the Greek mainland and is staying with a Greek family as the authorities try to locate her family in Sweden.

Source: UNHCR. John Psaropoulos in Athens, Greece contributed to this story

The ongoing conflict in Syria is increasingly encroaching on UNRWA camps, and the Agency estimates that over half of the 529,000 Palestine refugees in Syria are now displaced, either within Syria or to neighbouring countries, including Lebanon and Jordan . The Saudi contribution will support UNRWA efforts to continue delivering food and cash assistance, as well as emergency relief, health and education services to the Palestine refugee population.

Welcoming the donation, UNRWA Commissioner-General Filippo Grandi said: “With the areas of Syria where most Palestinians live seeing intensified fighting, the number of Palestine refugees displaced and destitute is growing by the day. Once again, Saudi Arabia has demonstrated its commitment to mitigating the suffering of Palestine refugees.”

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is one of the major UNRWA donors. As the Agency’s foremost Arab partner, Saudi Arabia has provided consistent support to the Agency’s work in health, education, and relief and social services. It has also contributed to the reconstruction of Nahr el-Bared refugee camp, in Lebanon , and to a flagship project to rehouse Palestine refugees in Rafah, Gaza . Phase I of that project was inaugurated in February 2013.

UNRWA is a United Nations agency established by the General Assembly in 1949 and is mandated to provide assistance and protection to a population of some five million registered Palestine refugees. Its mission is to help Palestine refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, West Bank and the Gaza Strip to achieve their full potential in human development, pending a just solution to their plight. UNRWA’s services encompass education, health care, relief and social services, camp infrastructure and improvement, and microfinance.

Financial support to UNRWA has not kept pace with an increased demand for services caused by growing numbers of registered refugees, expanding need, and deepening poverty. As a result, the Agency’s General Fund (GF), supporting UNRWA’s core activities and 97 per cent reliant on voluntary contributions, has begun each year with a large projected deficit. Currently the deficit stands at US$ 54.3 million.

“The war is now well into its third year and Syria is haemorrhaging women, children and men who cross borders often with little more than the clothes on their backs,” the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement released to mark the milestone. “This trend is nothing less than alarming, representing a jump of almost 1.8 million people in 12 months.”

One year ago today, the number of Syrians registered as refugees or awaiting registration stood at about 230,670 people.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said Syria had become “a disgraceful humanitarian calamity with suffering and displacement unparalleled in recent history.” He added that “the only solace is the humanity shown by the neighbouring countries in welcoming and saving the lives of so many refugees.”

More than 97 per cent of Syria’s refugees are hosted by countries in the immediate surrounding region. As of the end August, the number of Syrians registered as refugees or pending registration was 110,000 in Egypt, 168,000 in Iraq, 515,000 in Jordan, 716,000 in Lebanon and 460,000 in Turkey. Over half of them are children under 17 years of age.

The refugee crisis has placed an overwhelming burden on the host countries’ infrastructures, economies and societies, and with an average of almost 5,000 Syrians fleeing into these countries every day, the need for international support has reached a critical stage.

“The world risks being dangerously complacent about the Syrian humanitarian disaster,” said UNHCR Special Envoy and renowned actress, Angelina Jolie. “The tide of human suffering unleashed by the conflict has catastrophic implications. If the situation continues to deteriorate at this rate, the number of refugees will only grow, and some neighbouring countries could be brought to the point of collapse.”

Ms. Jolie added that the world was “tragically disunited” on how to end the Syria conflict. “But there should be no disagreement over the need to alleviate human suffering, and no doubt of the world’s responsibility to do more. We have to support the millions of innocent people ripped from their homes, and increase the ability of neighbouring countries to cope with the influx.”

Ministers from Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey meet today with UNHCR in Geneva in a bid to accelerate international support.

A further 4.2 million people are displaced inside Syria. Taken together, these numbers –amounting to more than 6 million people – mean that more Syrians are now forcibly displaced than people from any other country.

With the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) increasing, the World Food Programme (WFP) appealed for humanitarian access inside Syria to avoid a situation in which hunger becomes an additional factor pushing more people to flee the country.

Last month, WFP was only able to dispatch food for 2.4 million people – short of its goal of feeding three million people a month – as a result of the deteriorating security situation.

The agency said it plans to further scale up its operations to reach 4 million during October, as recent assessments found that agricultural production will further decline over the next 12 months if the present conflict continues.

Meanwhile, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is supporting a major push to ensure that crisis-affected children in Syria could keep learning. Together with the Ministry of Education and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), UNICEF will this month launch a home-based self-learning programme that will enable over 400,000 children in conflict areas to continue following the national curriculum.

In a briefing to reporters in Geneva, UNICEF spokesperson Marixie Mercado said there are some 1.9 million students in grades one to nine that have dropped out of school over the last academic year. Over 3,000 schools have been damaged or destroyed, and more than 930 are now being used as shelters for the displaced.

UNICEF is also building prefabricated classrooms in governorates that have been significantly damaged and is procuring school bags with stationary supplies for up to a million children in all 14 governorates. In addition, thousands of teaching-learning kits, recreations supplies and early childhood education material are being delivered.

Field officers with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported the first group of some 750 Syrians crossed over the pontoon bridge at Peshkhabour at the Tigris River before noon on Thursday, but in the afternoon a much larger group of 5,000 to 7,000 people followed.

“The factors allowing this sudden movement are not fully clear to us at this stage and as of this morning we are not seeing further large-scale crossings,” UNHCR spokesperson Adrian Edwards told reporters in Geneva.

Some of the Syrians had reportedly been waiting near the Tigris River for two to three days, camped at a makeshift site. UNHCR monitors at the border saw scores of buses arriving on the Syrian side dropping off more people seeking to cross.

Mr. Edwards said both the Syrian and Iraqi sides of the frontier at the Peshkhabour crossing are normally tightly controlled.

The vast majority of the new arrivals are families, mainly from Aleppo, Efrin, Hassake and Qamishly. Some families told UNHCR they had relatives residing in northern Iraq, and some students travelling alone said that they had been studying in northern Iraq and had only returned to Syria over the recent Eid holidays.

“UNHCR and partner agency teams, together with local authorities, worked into the early hours of this morning to aid the new arrivals,” Mr. Edwards said.

UNHCR thanked Iraqi authorities and particularly the Kurdistan Regional Government for their involvement in negotiations to permit the new arrivals to cross and the transport and other assistance that was provided at the frontier.

As of Friday, almost 2 million Syrians have fled the war and registered as refugees or applied for registration, with two-thirds of these having arrived this year. There are now more than 684,000 Syrian refugees in Lebanon, 516,000 in Jordan, 434,000 in Turkey, 154,000 in Iraq, and 107,000 in Egypt.

UNHCR has urged countries in the region and elsewhere to keep borders open and to receive all Syrians who seek protection amid the fighting that has so far claimed over 100,000 lives since it began in March 2011.