TRANSCRIPT
Anna Lakatos is originally from Ukraine.
She and her family fled to Hungary after the Russians invaded, and they are now facing the prospect of having to move on again.
"We have been sitting here since eight in the morning, but nobody says anything whether anyone will help us or are we going to sleep out here with the children till the morning. I don’t know what will happen."
She and her family have lost their supported accommodation under new rules that state only Ukrainian nationals who came from areas the Hungarian government considers "affected by war" are entitled to state-subsidised housing.
Ms Lakatos fears her family would be in peril in Ukraine.
"When the men go home they are taken to the front immediately. When a boy becomes 18 he is taken to the front. My older sister just buried her 21-year-old son. I felt her pain and I don’t want to put my family in danger."
They are far from alone.
In the village of Kocs, hundreds of mainly women and children - many of whom are from the Roma minority and speak Hungarian - now sit on the street with their belongings after they had to leave a local shelter.
Anita David says she does not want to return to Ukraine's western Transcarpathia region - far from the frontlines of Russia's invasion - because she fears her teenage sons would have to go and fight.
"We would not like to go back. Despite us being from Transcarpathia the war goes on there too, even if there are no bombs there, but our boys are taken to the war, being just 17 or 18 years old, and our children are grown up."
Aniko Bakonyi is the refugee program director for the Hungarian Helsinki Committee.
"This is what we see here, that the accommodation provider no longer has a contract with the defence committee providing accommodation for people coming from Ukraine, most of whom have temporary protection, so he basically said, 'you guys need to leave this accommodation'. He did provide food for them during the day."
Ms Bakonyi says an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 people are affected by the change - and it's unclear what would happen to the families sitting on the street in Kocs.
"There are many small children here. So this a very difficult situation for the families. And we are not sure whether they will be able to spend the night somewhere. We tried to phone around among the big charities if they have any emergency accommodation and they didn't seem to have any. We are not sure how long this situation can go and how long this can be kept like this."
Giulia Naboni, from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' (UNHCR) representation in central Europe, says the agency fears people would be left with no choice but to return to Ukraine against their will or face homelessness.
She wants the Hungarian government to reconsider its decision.
"While of course we know that Ukrainians might want to return - many of them want to return to Ukraine - and of course, returning to one's own country is and should remain a fundamental right - it should also be an informed decision and a fully voluntary one and not a forced one."
