Population

The number of people driven from their homes by conflict and crisis has topped 50 million for the first time since World War II, with Syria hardest hit, the UN refugee agency said Friday.
      
The UNHCR said there were 51.2 million forcibly displaced people at the end of 2013, a full six million higher than the previous year.
      

Afghan refugees suspended a sit-in protest in front of the Ankara headquarters of the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) on June 7 after 53 days amid increased pressure from the police, vowing to return to demonstrate if they did not receive a concrete answer to their demands.
 

Brutal and diverse, coarse and noisy, the enemies of the European Union are inside the gates. Chauvinists and angry anti-capitalists, neo-Nazis and drunkards, charlatans and demagogues, they spit hatred, they flatter insecurities, they profit from indignation.

After spending more than a decade in substandard collective centres, thousands of refugees in Montenegro are to get improved accommodation over the next three years.

The Montenegrin government, with foreign donor support, has launched a programme for re-housing displaced persons, which envisages the construction of at least 900 housing units.

Turkey’s Alevis march against discrimination

Euro court finds Turkey guilty in freedom of thought case

Gay rights activist sued by PM fined for using word ‘queer’ in tweet

"Serbia likely to export less, no food shortage"

BELGRADE -- Serbians should not worry that the disastrous floods that hit last week will create a shortage of food products, an expert has said.

The head of Bulgaria's Refugee Agency Nikolai Chirpanliev urged for changes in the EU rules on refugees, reports the public broadcaster BNT. 

He said it was not fair that the refugee waves are concentrated in just a few countries, while the rest don't share in the care of the refugees. 

Life expectancy of Bulgarian population calculated for the period 2011-2013 has increased by 0.5 years and has reached 74. 5 years.

Bulgaria will demand that EU funds be allocated for the integration of people which have been granted refugee status, the State Agency for Refugees announced.

Number of fake asylum seekers "reduced"

BELGRADE -- The number of fake asylum seekers from Serbia has been reduced since the beginning of the year, including the number of those seeking asylum in Germany.

There the problem was "the most acute," Nenad Banović, president of a commission tasked with monitoring the visa-free regime, said on Wednesday.