Refugee crisis

Myanmar and Bangladesh have signed an agreement that will in principle allow the return of rohingya refugees to their country, said official representatives quoted by AFP.

The deal has been negotiated, the agency notes but just after pressure from the international community for the recent refugee crisis.

Riots broke out last night at the Lesvos refugee-immigration reception and identification centre in Moria. According to police sources, the incident started at midnight and lasted until the morning. The UNHCR premises for refugees sustained damage, as did an area that belonged to an NGO. A public prosecutor accompanied by a strong police force intervened to defuse the situation.

British news outlet “Guardian” correspondent Helena Smith writes of the growing fury among the residents of the Greek island of Lesbos over the central government’s inability to deal with the ongoing problem of the rising number of refugees and illegal migrants and the overpopulation.

Greece's Migration Policy Minister Yiannis Mouzalas has defended the government's "pragmatic" approach to the refugee crisis - and also a March 2016 deal between EU member states and Turkey for stemming flows in the Aegean - while rejecting calls from inside the ruling SYRIZA party for an open border policy. 

Tens of millions of people will be forced from their homes by climate change in the next decade, creating the biggest refugee crisis the world has ever seen, according to a new report, quoted by the Guardian. 

The Greek government plans to provide hotel rooms to refugees in an attempt to pacify the refugee crisis, writes German newspaper Welt.

The newspaper quoted Migration Minister Yannis Mousalas, who said yesterday that 20,000 of them are already accommodated in apartments as part of the EU-funded program for sheltering 30,000 refugees.

Around 5800 refugees have attempted to cross the Bulgarian border illegally since the beginning of the year. This was made clear by a presentation of Deputy Director of the Border Police Stoyan Ivanov, during the conference "The Refugee Crisis and the Development of the Migration Processes". For 2016, border pressure was about 7 times higher - over 40,000 impeded attempts to enter Bulgaria.

 Muslim Rohingya are still fleeing from Myanmar to Bangladesh and the United Nations is bracing for a possible "further exodus", the U.N. humanitarian aid chief said on Friday, quoted by Reuters. 

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees called on the EU to continue resettling refugees, after the end of the resettlement program, which officially ended on Tuesday, reports Bgnes.

Some 82 percent of Syrian refugees in neighboring countries would like to return to their homes if security and service are provided, the Middle East and North Africa Director of UNHCR, the U.N. Refugee Agency, Amin Awad said on Wednesday.