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Migrants continue to face hardship

Two children in a refugee camp in Idomeni, Greece
Michele © AdobeStock, 2021
The EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) identifies a number of persistent and emerging fundamental rights concerns in its latest migration bulletin.

There were reports of alleged migrant ill-treatment by officials at the EU’s land and sea borders. 

Conditions in detention and reception centres and camps remain difficult in some countries.Overcrowding, and access to clean water and sanitation remain an issue. This particularly affects unaccompanied children. 

The number of asylum applications remain significantly below pre-Covid-19 levels. This is likely to be due to pandemic-related emergency measures and the global drop in travel.

Access to asylum remains complicated. Applicants face difficulties such as backlogs, technical issues during remote interviews and a lack of legal support.

Some family reunification procedures have also been put on hold because of the pandemic.

Covid-19 shutdown measures combined with a lack of IT equipment hampered access to education.

In addition, some media report incidents of hate crime and hate speech targeting migrants and refugees.

This is the last in FRA’s current series of quarterly migration bulletins. It covers 1 October until 31 December 2020.

FRA is assessing how to provide such updates in the future.

FRA regularly collected data on migration since September 2015.

Access previous migration quarterly reports >