Sources on the ground say that the humanitarian situation is worsening, that there is not enough food and water, hygienic conditions are unbearable and many need medical assistance.
Advertisement
More than a million refugees and migrants arrived in Europe a year ago – mostly via Turkey to Greece – and another 130,000 have reached the continent so far in 2016.
Edwards noted that, as of Monday, the number of refugees and migrants in Greece who needed to be provided with accommodation had soared to 24,000, adding that about 8,500 of this group were near the border with Macedonia.
“Europe is on the cusp of a largely self-induced humanitarian crisis”, Adrian Edwards, spokesperson for the United Nations refugee agency, said at a news briefing.
The majority of the arrivals are women and children, with many fleeing recent violence in northern Syria.
Tusk, in Vienna on the first leg of his pre-summit tour along the Balkans migration route, said after talks with Faymann: “We must face together the consequences of our decisions”.
“The pictures show us clearly every day that there is a need for talks”, she said after meeting Croatian Prime Minister Tihomir Oreskovic in Berlin.
Tension has once again begun rising at the Idomeni camp along Greece’s Macedonia border, where migrants and refugees exhausted of waiting to cross into Macedonia held a protest on Tuesday. The UNHCR, meanwhile, urged all European Union member states to reinforce their capacity to register and process asylum seekers through their national procedures as well as through an European Union relocation scheme.
Advertisement
The agency also shed light on the situation where despite commitments to relocate 66,400 refugees from Greece, EU member states have “so far only pledged 1,539 spaces, and only 325 actual relocations have occurred”.
