Frontex, the European Union’s external border enforcement agency, is exposing migrants to inhuman and degrading conditions, Human Rights Watch said in a report issued today. Migrants apprehended along Greece’s land border with Turkey are sent to overcrowded detention centers in Greece.

Ministers from Asian labor-sending countries meeting in Dhaka this week should together endorse protections for migrant workers, Human Rights Watch, Migrant Forum in Asia, and CARAM Asia said in a briefing paper released today. They should give priority to protecting migrant domestic workers, who are at especially high risk of abuse, and to ending recruitment-related exploitation, the organizations said.

In a few weeks Hungary takes over the EU presidency and with it the difficult task of moving forward the EU's negotiations on a common migration and asylum policy. But Hungary's own record may hamper its chances of leading an EU reform that fully respects the rights of migrants and asylum seekers.

(Brussels) - The Greek government's failure to follow through on its promise to reform the country's broken asylum system creates an urgent need for  the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the European Commission to intervene, Human Rights Watch said today.

A presidential decree that would introduce emergency reforms, which had already been postponed until September 1, 2010, has been pushed back again for several months following the recent government reshuffle.  Full-scale reform of the system is now unlikely before the end of 2011, at the earliest.