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69th Session of the Executive Committee of the High Commissioner’s Programme - Regional Update: Europe, 26 September 2018

Attachments

Sixty-ninth session Geneva, 1-5 October 2018

Update of UNHCR’s operations in Europe

A. Situational analysis including new developments

People in need of international protection continued to seek safety throughout Europe, as part of movements involving refugees and migrants, while facing physical, legal and administrative restrictions.

During the first seven months of 2018, refugee and migrant arrivals to the European Union were lower than in the previous two years, and dropped by 41 per cent compared to last year. While arrivals decreased significantly in Italy, there was an increase in Spain and Greece.

All countries in the Western Balkans experienced increases in the number of arrivals reported as of the end of August 2018 compared to the whole of 2017. This was particularly the case in Bosnia and Herzegovina with some 11,900 arrivals as of the end of August 2018, already 30 times greater than the 380 during the whole of 2017. The number of asylum-seekers in the Balkans have also increased with over 5,600 people between January and July 2018, 45 times greater than the 126 during the same period in 2017.

Due to increased restrictions in some countries, many refugees and migrants resorted to dangerous alternative routes when moving to and across Europe. So far, more than 1,640 people have lost their lives or have gone missing since the beginning of 2018 in the Mediterranean Sea. In the first seven months of 2018, 74 deaths were recorded along land routes in Europe, compared to 42 in the same period last year.

Between January and July 2018, 38 European countries received some 306,900 new asylum applications, representing a 23 per cent decrease compared to the same period in 2017. Of these, 98 per cent (300,700 applications) were lodged in European Union member States, primarily in Germany (81,200), France (51,300), Italy (31,400) and Greece (29,300). In 32 European countries, among the Mediterranean arrivals, asylum applicants in 2018 mainly originated from the Syrian Arab Republic (40,100 or 15 per cent), Iraq (19,600 or 7 per cent), Afghanistan (18,800 or 7 per cent) and Nigeria (13,600 or 5 per cent). Turkey continued to host the largest number of refugees worldwide. Of these, 3.5 million were Syrians, and the remaining 370,390 were refugees and other persons of concern to UNHCR of various nationalities.

Since the conflict in Ukraine began in 2014, nearly 1.8 million people have been internally displaced, and over 480,000 Ukrainians have sought asylum in other countries, including the Russian Federation (427,240), Italy (12,530), Germany (10,830) and Spain (9,260). More than 1.4 million applications for other forms of legal stay were also submitted by Ukrainians, mainly in the Russian Federation, as well as in Belarus and Poland. In 2017, the situation in eastern Ukraine continued to be marked by security incidents.