UN rights boss deplores detention of migrants in Europe

Reuters, Geneva :
The United Nations human rights boss on Monday decried a “worrying rise” in detention of migrants in so-called “hotspots” in Greece and Italy and urged authorities to find alternatives to confining children while their asylum requests are processed.
“Even unaccompanied children are frequently placed in prison cells or centers ringed with barbed-wire. Detention is never in the best interests of the child – which must take primacy over immigration objectives,” Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said in a speech. “Alternatives to the detention of children must be developed.”
Zeid told the U.N. Human Rights Council that he deplored “the widespread anti-migrant rhetoric that we have heard, spanning the length and breadth of the European continent”.
The United Nations said Monday it will try to resettle a record 170,000 refugees urgently in need of a new home next year as it grapples with an unprecedented displacement crisis.
The projected resettlement figure from the UN refugee agency represents an increase of nearly 30,000 people compared with this year.
But it is still less than 15 percent of the 1.19 million refugees worldwide who will be “in need of resettlement” in 2017, the UNHCR acknowledged in a report released Monday.
That group mainly consists of refugees who the UN believes will not be able to return home or integrate in their current host country.
But resettling 1.19 million people over a 12-month period is not feasible based on recent trends, UNHCR spokesman Leo Dobbs told AFP.
The agency therefore expects to recommend that the 170,000 people most in need of resettlement should be moved to third countries.
Dobbs noted that the final decision in each case rests with prospective host countries, but in recent years the overwhelming majority of those recommended for resettlement have been given new homes.