Europe is in the midst of an unprecedented human migration. Fleeing war, fearing for their life, and dreaming of a better life far from the poverty and upheaval of their unstable nations, hundreds of thousands are flocking to Europe’s shores. The migrants and refugees risk their lives in rickety boats and cramped lorry containers — only to be greeted by governments who can’t agree on how, or if, to welcome them.
Here’s a look at the latest country-by-country developments in the refugee and migrant crisis unfolding across much of Europe:
Hungary: Migrant standoff enters second day
Hundreds of Syrian refugees faced off with Hungarian police Friday for a second day as they refused to leave a train that stopped suddenly at a station outside the capital, Budapest.
The migrants want to travel on across the border into Austria and ultimately Germany. They fear the Hungarian authorities want them instead to go to a nearby holding camp — an option they reject because they say they were badly treated at camps when they first crossed into Hungary from Serbia.
As the tense standoff drags on, some have refused to accept food and water from the authorities in protest. A group stood by the train Friday morning holding pieces of card saying “We want Germany” and shouting “No camp, no camp.”
Government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs told CNN Friday that claims of harsh treatment by the refugees, who include families with young children, were “simply not true” and that there was “no reason to be terrified.”
If they had cooperated with police, they would already have been processed and provided with shelter, food and clothing, he said.
Kovacs said Hungary was only trying to enforce EU rules on the movement of undocumented migrants, and that it could not just let the refugees travel on to Germany without registering them.
“It is not the choice of an illegal migrant to decide where he or she would like to go — there are procedures and protocols all EU nations have to follow,” he said.
Hungary is responding to the influx of migrants heading north by building a barbed wire fence along its southern border with Serbia.
Russia: West to blame for Europe’s migrant crisis
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian leader Vladimir Putin both point the finger at Europe and the United States for what has now become one of the biggest mass migrations of people in modern times.
“To be honest, the whole Western world is to be blamed in my opinion on this issue,” Erdogan told CNN on Thursday.
Erdogan has accused Europe of turning the Mediterranean into a cemetery. In his interview with CNN, he stood by those remarks.
“That’s the reality on the ground,” he said. “Because the countries bordering round the Mediterranean — they do not want these people no matter what the cost.”
Putin, talking to reporters Friday, said it’s the West’s wrong-headed foreign policy in the Middle East and Northern Africa that’s at the root of the crisis.
“What is this policy about? This is imposing its standards without taking into consideration historic, religious, national and cultural specifics of these regions,” Putin said, according to Russian state news agency TASS.
Turkey: Toddler’s body to return home for burial
Aylan Kurdi’s last journey was supposed to take him to a safe home — hundreds of miles away from the relentless war in his native Syria.
Instead, he drowned off Turkey, and the image of his body, face down in the surf of a Turkish beach, rocketed around the world this week. His 4-year-old brother and mother perished with him.
The three were buried Friday in Kobani, the Syrian city his family left to escape the daily barrage of bombs.
Aylan’s father, Abdullah Kurdi, who survived was present as his wife and two sons were laid to the ground.
“I don’t want anything else from this world,” he told CNN on Thursday. “Everything I was dreaming of is gone. I want to bury my children and sit beside them until I die.”
Four Syrian citizens were taken into custody Thursday, suspected of human trafficking in connection with the deaths of Aylan Kurdi and nine others, according to Turkey’s semiofficial Anadolu news agency.
Luxembourg: EU foreign ministers meet
The crisis will be front-and-center when EU foreign ministers meet at an informal gathering in Luxembourg on Friday. The nations will send their home ministers for emergency talks in Brussels on September 14.
France and Germany have proposed a welcoming mechanism that would be permanent and mandatory in Europe, French President Francois Hollande said Thursday.
“What exists today is no longer enough and there are countries, and I will not name them here because we have to work with all of them, but who are not responding to their moral obligations,” Hollande told reporters.
“Europe is a group of principles, of values which oblige us to welcome those who are pushed out and look for refuge because they are persecuted.”
Greece: Thousands more arrive each day
More than 5,000 migrants and refugees a day have crossed the Aegean Sea into Greece over the past week, the International Organization for Migration said Friday.
The largest group are Syrians, followed by Afghans, it said.
Many of the families, especially the Afghans, include pregnant women and newborns, the IOM said.
The small islands of Kos and Lesbos have found themselves on the front lines of the crisis. Many new arrivals are having to wait several days to be registered by police, camping out by overstretched reception centers
United Kingdom: Pressure on to take more refugees
Britain “will accept thousands more” Syrian refugees, Prime Minister David Cameron said Friday.
“Britain will act with our head and our heart, providing refuge for those in need while working on a long term solution to the Syria crisis,” he said.
The policy shift comes after public shock over the images of Aylan Kurdi put Cameron under new pressure to offer shelter to more refugees from the Middle East.
Cameron has previously argued the best policy is to focus on bringing peace to the region but fellow EU leaders have been pressing him to do more, as are voters and lawmakers at home.
The Council of Europe commissioner for human rights, Nils Muiznieks, said Thursday that Cameron’s position “seriously concerned” him.
“The truth is that at the moment the UK is doing much less than other European countries, like Germany or Sweden, which give refuge to thousands of Syrians,” Muiznieks said in a statement.
An online petition calling for the UK Parliament to accept more asylum seekers had more than 350,000 signatures as of Friday morning — well past the 100,000 mark required to ensure parliamentary debate.
“We can’t allow refugees who have risked their lives to escape horrendous conflict and violence to be left living in dire, unsafe and inhumane conditions in Europe. We must help,” the petition states.
United Nations: Piecemeal approach doesn’t work
The head of the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, called Friday for a common approach to tackle what he said was “a primarily refugee crisis, not only a migration phenomenon.”
“Europe cannot go on responding to this crisis with a piecemeal or incremental approach. No country can do it alone, and no country can refuse to do its part,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said in a statement.
A new system must be set up, he said, based on a common policy.
“Concretely, this means taking urgent and courageous measures to stabilize the situation and then finding a way to truly share responsibility in the mid to longer term.”
At present, only the people smugglers and traffickers benefit from the chaos, he said. More must be done to open up opportunities for people to come legally to Europe to seek sanctuary, he said, and to tackle the root causes of the situation — primarily conflict.
“Thousands of refugee parents are risking the lives of their children on unsafe smuggling boats primarily because they have no other choice.”
