United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

Egypt this week passed its first bill to grant asylum to migrants, which has sparked opposition from human rights advocates who fear security concerns will override migrant protection.

The bill, ratified on Tuesday by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, aims to respond to the mass arrival of refugees arriving in the country, mainly from Sudan and the Gaza Strip.

The UNHCR High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that one million Syrian refugees are likely to return to Syria between January and June 2025 after the fall of Bashar al-Assad and his regime.

A UN refugee agency official has said that some 1 million Syrian refugees are expected to return to the country in the first six months of 2025, asking states to refrain from forcing them to do so.

The United Nations refugee agency has voiced concern at a rise in deaths of migrants trying to reach Greece by sea in small boats from Turkey, following two fatal shipwrecks this week.

The UNHCR said in a statement Friday that 17 people have died in such accidents this month, while the total so far this year is at least 45 deaths.

Coast guard officers have recovered four bodies, believed to be of migrants, in a search and rescue operation off the coast of Rhodes.

The bodies are those of three men and one woman, according to reports.

At the same time, police have found 25 people on the island.

The head of the UNHCR warned today that displacement crises in Lebanon and Sudan may worsen but stated that stricter border measures are not the solution, calling them ineffective and sometimes illegal.

Can refugees become entrepreneurs in Greece? In their quest to rebuild their lives, those seeking safety in Greece often strive for decent employment or endeavor to establish their own businesses, utilizing their skills and talents. However, numerous obstacles stand in their way.

Hungary has implemented new restrictions on state-sponsored shelter for Ukrainian refugees, limiting accommodation only to those coming from war-affected areas as of August 21. This change leaves between two and three thousand Ukrainian refugees homeless, including vulnerable groups such as families with specific needs, pregnant women, the elderly, and households with many young children.

The United Nations refugee agency on Friday said government authorities in ethnically divided Cyprus have rounded up dozens of migrants and pushed them back inside a UN-controlled buffer zone that they crossed to seek asylum.

Refugees and migrants face extreme violence, abuse and exploitation on land routes crossing Africa to get to the Mediterranean, with far more believed to be dying there than at sea, a U.N.-backed report said Friday.

Nearly 30,000 migrants have been declared dead or missing attempting to cross the Mediterranean to Europe in the past decade.