United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

A group of undocumented migrants who arrived on the eastern Aegean islet of Farmakonisi on Friday were transferred on Saturday to a reception center on Leros, one of the few islands where state facilities are not excessively overcrowded.

The United Nations called on Australia on Tuesday to take responsibility for around 800 refugees and asylum seekers stranded in a detention center on Papua New Guinea where it said many lack medical and mental health care, according to Reuters. 

The United Nations refugee agency is urging Greece's government to provide separate housing and washing facilities for women and children at island refugee camps, citing the risk of sexual violence.

The UNHCR says it has received reports from about 180 camp residents who say they have suffered some form of sexual or gender-based violence after arriving in Greece.

 Israel should stop plans to send tens of thousands of migrants back to Africa forcibly, the United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday, suggesting some could be resettled in Europe or other countries, writes Reuters.

As temperatures drop, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) once more urged Greek authorities to swiftly transfer thousands of refugees and migrants living in cramped and unsafe island camps to the mainland where better conditions and services are available.

The United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees (UNHCR) released recommendations for an asylum reform in the European Union. The UN agency mainly addressed Bulgaria, since the country will take over the Presidency of the Council of the European Union on January 1, 2018, Independent Balkan News Agency reported.

The effort to improve the living conditions of refugees and migrants stranded at overcrowded reception centers on the eastern Aegean islands of Lesvos, Chios and Samos by transferring some of them to the mainland will fail to yield the desired result as long as flows from Turkey continue.

The United Nations refugee agency called for calm on Thursday after receiving reports of force being used to remove refugees and asylum-seekers from a center closed three weeks ago on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, reported Reuters. 

The UN's refugee agency has urged Australia to avert a "humanitarian emergency" over the closure of its detention centre in Papua New Guinea, reported BBC. 

Australia holds refugees and asylum seekers arriving by boat on PNG's Manus Island and the Pacific nation of Nauru.

Opposition leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis has voiced his concern over the sharp increase in the number of migrants landing on Greece's Aegean islands from Turkey.