Cate Blanchett was appointed as a goodwill ambassador for the U.N.’s agency for refugees. In her new role, she will help raise awareness about the worldwide refugee crisis.
The EU-Turkey deal will see the return of Syrian refugees from Greece to Turkey in exchange for more funding and visa-free travel ban for Turks to Europe.
Concerns rise all over Europe that finds itself inadquate to handle the ongoing rush of refugees crossing over from the Mediterarnean with Greece as its first stop. More than 100,000 asylum seekers have made the trip in just two months, an unprecedeented number according to migrant officials.
Slovenia said on Tuesday it would deploy the army to guard its border and appealed for help from the European Union as migrants streamed through the tiny country and many thousands more spent another cold night outside in the Balkans.
As the worst refugee crisis since World War Two forces Europe to break down hurdles and accept hundreds of thousands of migrants, Japan, which took in just 11 asylum seekers last year, is looking to clamp down even further.
At least 850,000 people are expected to cross the Mediterranean seeking refuge in Europe this year and next, the United Nations said on Tuesday, giving estimates that already look conservative.
The number of refugees and migrants crossing the Mediterranean to reach Europe has passed 300,000 this year, up from 219,000 in the whole of 2014, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said on Friday.
Thousands of migrants stormed across Macedonia's border on Saturday, overwhelming security forces who threw stun grenades and lashed out with batons before apparently abandoning a bid to stem their flow through the Balkans to western Europe.
A passenger ship carrying hundreds of Syrian refugees was heading to the Greek mainland from islands in the Aegean Sea on Wednesday amid confusion over its final destination and the fate of passengers.
More than 20 years after the first wave of Rohingya Muslims fled Myanmar, fear is spreading through the sweltering camps of mud houses where they found shelter in southern Bangladesh that they will soon be on the move again.
Malaysia has found 139 graves, and signs of torture, in more than two dozen squalid human trafficking camps suspected to have been used by gangs smuggling migrants across the border with Thailand, the country's police chief said on Monday.
They are coming in their thousands, a steady stream of men, women and children bearing what few possessions they can carry as they flee their native Burundi and the pro-government militias they fear are bent on death and destruction.
A boat crammed with migrants was towed out to sea by the Thai navy and then held up by Malaysian vessels on Saturday, the latest round of "maritime ping-pong" by Asian states determined not to let asylum seekers come ashore.
A five-day humanitarian truce to allow fuel, medicine, food and aid workers to enter Yemen could be a "lifeline" for civilians trapped in conflict zones, aid agencies said on Wednesday.
As many as 700 migrants were feared dead on Sunday after their boat capsized in the Mediterranean, raising pressure on Europe to face down anti-immigrant bias and find money for support as turmoil in Libya and the Middle East worsens the crisis.
Worsening violence in Yemen has made almost half the country's population "food insecure", with flour shortages, closed shops and disrupted supply routes driving up food prices, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said on Thursday.
The United Nations refugee agency urged Kenya on Tuesday to reconsider an order to close the teeming Dadaab refugee camp, saying it would not be part of any transfer of Somalis back to their homeland that violated international law.
Kenya has given the United Nations three months to remove a camp housing more than half a million Somali refugees, as part of a get-tough response to the killing of 148 people by Somali gunmen at a Kenyan university.
Two merchant ships and an Italian coast guard vessel went to the rescue of more than 600 migrants who sent emergency calls for help from their packed rubber boats near the Libyan coast on Saturday.
An estimated 300 people probably died this week after attempting to reach Italy from Libya in stormy weather, the U.N. refugee agency said on Wednesday after speaking to a handful of survivors.
Chad's prime minister has appealed for international aid for thousands of Nigerian refugees who fled attacks by Islamist militant group Boko Haram across the border into the Lake Chad region.
