Separated by the Sea

By UNHCR STAFF, from The UN Refugee Agency

Hundreds, if not thousands, of refugee families in South-East Asia were separated by perilous sea journeys in 2015. Meet four of them.

Over 30,000 refugees and migrants travelled through South-East Asia in 2015, including about 1,000 who made perilous journeys across the Malacca Straight from Indonesia to Malaysia or who attempted to reach Australia from Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.

David Cameron: UK to accept 'thousands' more Syrian refugees

By BBC News

The UK is to provide resettlement to "thousands" more Syrian refugees in response to the worsening humanitarian crisis, David Cameron has announced.

No figure has been decided but the prime minister said the extra refugees would come from camps bordering Syria, not from among those already in Europe.

Germany urges other EU countries to take in more refugees

By The Guardian

Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, has pressed other EU countries to do more to share the burden of refugees arriving in Europe, and said “it wasn’t right” that some nations were refusing to accept them.

Merkel said the current situation, which has seen chaotic scenes in the western Balkans as tens of thousands of refugees and migrants head north towardsAustria and Germany, was “not satisfactory”. She said that Europe as a whole had to deal with the problem.

Angela Merkel warns against intolerance towards refugees

By The Guardian

Angela Merkel was met by a barrage of whistles, boos and calls of traitor when she visited an emergency asylum seeker and refugee centre near Dresden. She insisted that hatred towards refugees would not be tolerated.

About 50 protesters had gathered outside the disused DIY store turned reception centre in Heidenau, Saxony, as the German chancellor, on Wednesday, made her first visit to a refugee shelter. Her visit reportedly followed criticism that she had failed to openly condemn recent violence against the large numbers of refugees arriving in Germany.