Sarah Crowe

Governments along the Western Balkan route into the European Union must do more to help migrants and refugees who are dying in the cold winter weather rather than just violently push them back from the border, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said on Friday, adding that the "situation in Greece is dire."

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) called on the Greek government to move 1,000 refugees to more shelters on mainland Greece with heating installations. During a regular press briefing Sarah Crowe, head of the UN’s service for children said it was a matter of “saving human lives and not one of a bureaucracy, making special reference to Greece.

Refugees and migrants are dying in Europe's sudden cold snap, and governments must do more to help them rather than pushing them back from borders and subjecting them to violence and confiscations, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said on Friday.

Children now make up over a third of the migrants making the perilous sea crossing from Turkey to Greece, the U.N. said.

For the first time since the start of the migrant crisis in Europe, there are also now more women and children crossing the border from Greece to Macedonia than adult males, according to U.N. children's agency UNICEF.