Forced migration

Syrian refugee children in the southeastern Turkish province of ?anl?urfa have staged a multilingual theatre play about the ongoing war in their country, Anadolu Agency reported on April 9.

BELGRADE - Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic and the new representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Belgrade Hans Friedrich Schodder discussed on Thursday the issue of displaced persons in Serbia and the implementation of the Regional Housing Program for refugees.

At least six people have drowned after a boat carrying migrants to a Greek island sank in the Aegean Sea on April 6, Turkish officials have said.

Nine people were also rescued, the governor of the southwestern province of Mu?la, Amir Çiçek, told the Anadolu Agency.

The migrants, believed to be Syrians and Iraqis, were heading to Greece illegally.

The United States has taken more than 5,600 refugees from Turkey, including 664 Syrian refugees, and expects to see those numbers rise in the coming months, a U.S. State Department official said April 3.

Bulgaria is bracing for a new refugee influx as the weather gets milder in the spring, the New York Times says in a recent article summarizing Bulgaria's effort to curb the flow through border security measures.

UNHCR expressed on Tuesday its concern on the prevention of refugees from entering the EU and called on Bulgaria to investigate the deaths of two Iraqis at the border with Turkey.

This was announced by William Spindler, a spokesman for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) at a news briefing on Tuesday.

Bulgaria is cutting the monthly payment of BGN 65 to refugees.

According to reports of private TV station bTV, the measure is explained with the fact that refugees are already provided with three meals a day (breakfast, lunch, dinner) instead of two (lunch and dinner), as was the case earlier.

The chairperson of the State Agency for Refugees (DAB) Nikola Kazakov stated on Saturday that Bulgaria should grant over 10 000 people with refugee status by the end of the year.

Kazakov said that most of the refugees in Bulgaria were Kurds from Syria and Iraq and nearly half of the newcomers in 2015 were illiterate.

Balkan citizens help Syrian refugees

Thousands of Syrians living in refugee camps are receiving food, clothes and other charitable assistance from Balkan humanitarian agencies.

An aid worker from the Balkans comforts a Syrian child at a refugee camp in Turkey. [Jasmin Rexhepi]

The number of asylum-seekers in industrialized countries rose by nearly half last year, driven by the devastating conflicts in Syria and Iraq, with Germany the top destination and Turkey being in the top five of the target countries, the U.N. refugee agency said March 26.