UN Expects 3000 Migrants To Arrive In Balkans Daily

At the Greece-FYR Macedonia border itself – reported calm after chaotic scenes late last week – people are now crossing in groups of up to 300-400 and then travelling onwards by train or bus to Serbia.

Fleming said that the migrants are largely spurred by overcrowded conditions in refugee camps in the Middle East. “People are leaving Turkey, they are leaving Jordan, they are leaving Lebanon and Syrians are fleeing directly out of Syria as the situation continues to be very dire”.

“Currently, we anticipate these arrivals continuing over the next few days at a rate of up to 3,000 people per day”, UNHCR spokesperson Melissa Fleming told a press briefing in Geneva. Most are fleeing violence in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Influx of refugees from FYR Macedonia to Serbia includes exhausted mothers with children resting in any kind of shade they can spot.

About 140,000 migrants have reached Hungary this year, over three times as many as in all of 2014, but most quickly leave for richer European Union countries like Germany or the Netherlands.

Meanwhile, Francois Crepeau, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, said Tuesday that Europe is failing in its response and needs a new migration policy that emphasizes mobility.

In a statement Tuesday, Crepeau said: “Let’s not pretend that what the EU and its member states are doing is working”.

GERMANY: The German navy says a Somali woman gave birth on its frigate “Schleswig-Holstein” early Monday.

Some 102,000 migrants entered the EU via Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Montenegro or Kosovo between January and July this year, versus just 8,000 for the same period in 2014, according to EU border agency Frontex.

To prevent a situation in which more people feel compelled to move on from these countries towards Europe and elsewhere, it is essential that support for countries of first asylum is stepped up.

The body of a third man was also recovered Monday night, but from a different part of the island, leading authorities to suspect he might have died in a separate incident. The vast majority arrive in Lesbos.

Speaking on public TV, Andrej Babis called the migrants – most of whom are fleeing bloody conflicts – “the biggest threat to Europe”. In June, the country helped block a proposal for EU countries to take in set numbers of the refugees arriving in the bloc.