Demography

Workers at the Greek Council for Refugees have issued a statement saying that they have not been paid for six months.

The employees claim that the government has not released the necessary funds for programs run by the organization even though two-thirds of the costs are covered by the European Union.

The council provides assistance to asylum seekers and refugees.

With Turkey struggling to meet the basic needs of around 1.7 million Syrian refugees, the government is now planning to issue temporary identity cards for Syrians in order to allow their employment within a legal framework.

About 13.6 million people have been displaced by conflicts in Syria and Iraq, and many are without food or shelter as winter starts, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said on Nov. 12

Amin Awad, UNHCR's director for the Middle East and North Africa, said the world was becoming numb to the refugees' needs.

The European Union should not turn into a fortress to deal with immigration but should do more to stop migrant smugglers in their tracks, the new EU commissioner for migration, home affairs and citizenship, Dimitris Avramopoulos, told Kathimerini in his first interview since taking up the job at the beginning of the month.

By Roula Salourou

The demographic threat is evolving into one of the social security system’s biggest, both in Greece and the European Union in general.

The latest EU report on the bloc’s aging population showed that the prospects are particularly concerning in Greece, as the current ratio of one over-65-year-old for every three people of working age will shift to 1:2 by 2040.

The explosion in the world's ageing population presents herculean challenges for health systems, especially in poorer countries, the UN's World Health Organisation (WHO) warned on Nov. 6.
      
As people live longer, the need to care for long-term, age-related health problems will grow, it said.
     

European migrants made a net contribution of GBP 20 B to UK public finances between 2000 and 2011, according to economists at University College London.

Four foreign citizens have been taken to hospital following a brawl that involved Syrian and Afghan nationals in a refugee camp in Bulgaria, bTV channel reported on Wednesday.

A recently renovated building of the refugee camp in Harmanli, in southern Bulgaria close the border with Turkey, was severely damaged during the accident late on Tuesday.

Seasonal traveling agriculture workers were first brought from Sudan in the 1830s to work at the Mediterranean plain, Çukurova, by the Ottoman pasha from Kavala, Kavalalı İbrahim Pasha.

A new report from Montenegro's interior ministry said that of the 16,000 refugees and displaced people who have been living in the country since the 1990s conflicts, only 1,038 have managed to obtain citizenship.

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