New research from the International Rescue Committee shows that EU states “have consistently neglected the needs of Afghans seeking protection — leaving millions stranded in Afghanistan or neighboring countries, and failing to provide adequate safety and inclusion for the small proportion who manage to reach Europe,” the IRC said on May 31.

Since 2021, around 41,500 Afghans at risk have reportedly been admitted to the EU through humanitarian admissions, including through emergency evacuations in August 2021. “However, this figure is vastly outpaced by rising needs,” the IRC said.

The IRC’s new report, Two years on: Afghans still lack pathways to safety in the EU, “highlights how many of the schemes set up to bring Afghans to safety in Europe are falling short of their targets.”

The European Commission asked Greece to begin an investigation into a New York Times report based on footage showing the country’s Coast Guard abandoning migrants in the Aegean Sea last month, a top official said on Monday, the New York Times reported.

In a statement on Twitter released the day after Greek elections, the EU home affairs commissioner, Ylva Johansson, said her officials had written to Athens with a formal request “that this incident be fully and independently investigated,” the Guardian reported.

More than a million people have been displaced by fighting in Sudan so far, including a quarter of a million refugees, a U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) spokesperson said on Friday, Reuters reported.

“The latest figure includes some 843,000 people displaced internally and around 250,000 people who have fled across Sudan’s borders, U.N. refugee agency spokesperson Matthew Saltmarsh told a Geneva briefing,” the news agency said.

Video evidence shows asylum seekers being rounded up, taken to sea and abandoned on a raft by the Greek Coast Guard, the New York Times reports on May 19.

The Times article includes video footage provided to it by an activist who shared it with The New York Times.

Greece’s government “has consistently denied mistreating asylum seekers and points to the fact that it shoulders a disproportionate burden of managing new arrivals to Europe,” the article noted.

“But the video, provided by an Austrian aid worker, Fayad Mulla, who has spent much of the past two and a half years working on the island and trying to document abuses against migrants, may be the most damning evidence yet of the Greek authorities’ violation of international laws and E.U. rules governing how asylum seekers must be treated.”

The European Union “could see another record number of people seeking to reach its borders this year via irregular crossings, with more migrants driven by poverty and climate change rather than conflict,” the EU’s Frontex border agency said (Reuters, May 12, 2023).

Frontex reported approximately 330,000 unauthorized arrivals via all routes last year, “the highest since 2016, with the increased numbers provoking harsher anti-immigration rhetoric in EU states including Denmark, the Netherlands and Austria,” Reuters reported.

A group of Baptist churches in North Carolina are retrofitting vacant church-owned buildings for refugee housing, Yonat Shimron reports in the Washington Post.

“Organized through the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina but open to any religious congregation, a new initiative encourages churches to refurbish church-owned parsonages, office buildings, youth clubhouses or single-family homes and make them available to refugees or humanitarian parolees for a nominal fee,” Shimron noted.

In late April, the network held its first housing and hospitality summit with 210 congregational leaders, “mostly from North Carolina, to learn more about how to use vacant church properties to minister to refugees. The conference made plain twin realities: a glut of underutilized church properties and a severe shortage of affordable housing for newly arrived refugees with few means.”

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) is partnering with the Sustainable Hospitality Alliance to engage the hospitality sector in helping people affected by humanitarian crises and disasters, the Alliance reported on May 2.

“With almost 100 million people who are currently forcibly displaced worldwide, the partnership will see both organizations act in close collaboration to make the world’s hospitality industry aware of how they can work with and support refugee communities,” the Alliance said. “From facilitating skills training and offering employment, to providing temporary accommodation to refugees as they resettle to the new communities they will call home, there are multiple ways in which organizations can make a difference.”

The IRC will be able to engage with the Alliance’s global network, representing over 50,000 properties and 7 million rooms globally.  The Alliance’s members include world-leading companies who will be encouraged to participate in the IRC’s programs and activities.  In locations affected by humanitarian catastrophes, the local hospitality sector will be encouraged by the Alliance to identify ways in which they can support and help raise awareness of the IRC’s emergency response and recovery work with displaced communities.

The IRC will have access to specific and beneficial Alliance tools and resources, such as its online portal for refugees.  The platform, Hospitality Unite, is backed by the Alliance and was launched last year to support Ukrainian refugees looking for hospitality work throughout Europe.