Combined Monthly Europe Population Movement Operations Update
A. Context
Since the start of the migration crisis in Europe, the IFRC has launched seven emergency appeals between April 2015 and February 2016 to support the National Societies of Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Serbia. A coordination, response and preparedness emergency appeal was launched for the IFRC Regional Office for Europe with the objective to provide appropriate, timely and flexible support and resources to effectively and efficiently manage the response to the migration operations with response management and coordination, disaster response preparedness, early warning and risk reduction. In addition, there has been an international emergency appeal on behalf of the Turkish Red Crescent since November 2012. All of the appeals have been revised to adapt to the fluctuating situation. For details please click on the titles of the operations in the table on page 1.
Currently, the emergency appeals for Croatia, Hungary, Italy, Serbia and Turkey are being revised due to the changed migration situation in the respective countries. As auxiliaries to the public authorities, National Societies are supporting the migration response operations led by the governmental agencies. National Societies are also coordinating closely with United Nations (UN) agencies, International Organizations and Non-Governmental Organizations. Many National Societies are receiving support from UNHCR for their response activities and are coordinating with UNICEF on child-friendly places.
The IFRC’s Regional Office in Europe has been fully involved in the coordination of the response to the migration crisis carrying out a wide range of activities including meetings with European National Societies: operational coordination meetings, partnership meetings and WebEx meetings with partners including submitting proposals to access the New Emergency Assistance instrument (EAI) from DG ECHO for Greece and Turkey.
The latest WebEx conference was organized on 16 June 2016 with the aim to provide a situation overview and share some latest developments and to present key achievements, challenges and plans for the Regional Emergency Appeal. The current operations update summarizes the main points highlighted during that conference.