A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Mexico to Manila
Continue reading...Category Archives: Migration
Remain in Mexico: migrants face deadly peril as Biden restores Trump policy
The US has struck a deal with Mexico to make asylum seekers wait south side of the border while their applications are processed
The Biden administration’s move to revive Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy will subject thousands of people to “enormous suffering” and leave them vulnerable to kidnap and rape as they languish in dangerous Mexican border cities, migration advocates have warned.
After reaching a deal with Mexico, the US will by 6 December start returning asylum seekers from other Latin American countries to Mexico where they will be obliged to wait while their case is assessed.
Continue reading...The most unsafe passage to Europe has claimed 18,000 victims. Who speaks for them? | Lorenzo Tondo
As Europe outsources its border policing to Libya, rescue operations by NGOs are hampered by criminal inquiries in Italy
In the early hours of 21 June, somewhere in the vast expanse of the central Mediterranean, a Médecins Sans Frontières team on board a rescue vessel received a distress call. The motor of a small boat carrying asylum seekers from Libya had broken down, and the vessel was taking in water.
These are the first dramatic scenes in Unsafe Passage – a Guardian Documentaries film by Ed Ou for the Outlaw Ocean Project, released today – but they are also the first moments in a race against time that repeats itself again and again in the stretch of sea separating Europe from Africa.
Continue reading...Unsafe Passage: on board a refugee rescue ship racing for Europe – video
An overcrowded ship with asylum seekers leaves Libya bound for Europe – triggering a high-stakes showdown between a Doctors Without Borders vessel wanting to escort it to safety and the Libyan Coast Guard fighting to turn it back. As the Libyans issue armed threats the tension grows below deck. With European countries' responsibilities toward refugees once again in the spotlight, here is an inside view of the desperate hope that is the deadly race for Europe
Continue reading...People onboard sinking Channel dinghy ‘tried to contact UK authorities’
Home Office acknowledges people involved in tragedy may have tried to call for help as investigations continue
The occupants of a boat that sank last week in the Channel causing the deaths of at least 27 people may have tried to contact the UK authorities, the Home Office has acknowledged.
Dan O’Mahoney – the clandestine channel threat commander – said he could not say with any certainty if those onboard had rung the UK for help. Speaking to parliament’s human rights committee, O’Mahoney said HM Coastguard was now investigating.
Continue reading...Covid limits migration despite more people displaced by war and disasters
IOM report finds 9m more people displaced globally but mobility restricted due to pandemic, with vaccination proving a key factor
The coronavirus pandemic had a radical effect on migration, limiting movement despite increasing levels of internal displacement from conflict and climate disasters, the UN’s International Organization for Migration said in a report on Wednesday.
Though the number of people who migrated internationally increased to 281 million in 2020 – 9 million more than before Covid-19 – the number was 2 million lower than expected without a pandemic, according to the report.
Continue reading...Refugees forced to claim asylum in ‘jail-like’ camps as Greece tightens system
Aid agencies fear plans to scrap applications via Skype are an attempt to control and contain rather than help asylum seekers
When Hadi Karam*, a soft-spoken Syrian, decided to leave the war-stricken city of Raqqa, he knew the journey to Europe would be risky. What he had not factored in was how technology would be a stumbling block once he reached Greece.
“I never thought Skype would be the problem,” says the young professional, recounting his family’s ordeal trying to contact asylum officers in the country. “You ring and ring and ring. Weeks and weeks go by, and there is never any answer.”
Continue reading...‘She defined modern Germany’: Blair, Barroso and Prodi on Angela Merkel
When she first took office her fellow leaders included Blair, Chirac and Bush. Three of those at her first G8 summit look back on her legacy
European Commission president, 2004-14
Continue reading...The rising cost of the climate crisis in flooded South Sudan – in pictures
Families facing severe hunger are wading through crocodile-infested waters in search of water lilies to eat. Susan Martinez and photographer Peter Caton return with Action Against Hunger to find that the dire situation they reported on in March has only worsened
Desperate families in flood-ravaged villages in South Sudan are spending hours searching for water lilies to eat after another summer of intense rainfall worsened an already dire situation.
People have no food and no land to cultivate after three years of floods. Fields are submerged in last year’s flood water and higher ground is overcrowded with hungry people, in what is quickly becoming a humanitarian crisis.
Nyanyang Tong, 39, on her way to the Action Against Hunger centre with her one-year-old son, Mamuch Gatkuoth, in Paguir
Continue reading...Channel crossings are an English issue, says French minister
UK accused of having a labour market akin to modern slavery that encourages people to make risky crossings
Senior French ministers have accused the UK of operating a labour market akin to slavery and called on London to open safe routes for migrants, as the two governments continued to deflect blame for last week’s drownings in the Channel.
The criticism came hours after France’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, held a crisis meeting with European ministers and border agencies to discuss the migrant emergency around the Channel ports.
Continue reading...‘I feel inspired here’: refugees find business success in Naples
From designing homewares to recording music, many who fled to Europe are building independent lives against the odds
Pieces of fabric of various vibrant shades fill the Naples studio where Paboy Bojang and his team of four are working around the clock to stitch together 250 cushions for their next customer, The Conran Shop.
They are not long from dispatching their first orders to Selfridges and Paul Smith, and with requests for the distinctive cotton cushions with ruffled borders flooding in from around the world, they will be busy for months to come.
Continue reading...‘He’s missing’: anxious wait in Calais camps for news on Channel victims
In northern France, friends and relatives of those who died in the tragic crossing on Wednesday are desperate for answers
On Saturday Gharib Ahmed spent five hours outside the police station in Calais, desperately waiting for news. “It was so cold. There was no answer,” he said. Ahmed was seeking confirmation that his brother-in-law Twana Mamand was one of 27 people who died in the Channel on Wednesday after the flimsy dinghy taking them to the UK sank. “I want to see his body. I have to understand,” Ahmed told the Guardian.
Relatives of the mostly Iraqi Kurds who perished in the world’s busiest shipping lane spent the weekend in a state of anxiety and confusion. Ahmed said he last heard from his brother-in-law at 3am on Wednesday, around the time Twana set off in darkness from a beach near Dunkirk. After two days of silence, Ahmed travelled with his wife, Kale Mamand – Twana’s sister – from their home in London to northern France, arriving on Friday night.
Continue reading...Channel crossings: who would make such a dangerous journey – and why?
Most of the people who reach the UK after risking their lives in small boats have their claims for asylum approved
Last week’s tragedy in the Channel has reopened the debate on how to stop people making dangerous crossings, with the solutions presented by the government focused on how to police the waters.
Less has been said about where those people come from, with most fleeing conflicts and persecution. About two-thirds of people arriving on small boats between January 2020 and May 2021 were from Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Syria. Many also came from Eritrea, from where 80% of asylum applications were approved.
Continue reading...Inside Dunkirk’s desperate refugee camps: ‘They take risks because they feel they have no choice’
Among the makeshift tents near the French beaches, we ask what drives people to make the perilous journey in small boats and what could prevent more deaths
There was a time when, if you googled the phrase “Dunkirk, small boats”, reports of one of Britain’s finest hours would stack up in the results. Not last week. The beaches near Dunkirk have now become synonymous not with the embarkation point of dramatic rescue but of despairing tragedy.
Details of the 27 people, among them seven women and three children, who drowned in the Channel on Wednesday have been very slow to emerge, their anonymity itself an indication of their desperation. The first to be named was a Kurdish woman from northern Iraq, Maryam Nuri Mohamed Amin, a newly engaged student, who was WhatsApp messaging her fiance, who lives in the UK, when the group’s dinghy started deflating. The 24-year-old had travelled through Germany and France to join Mohammed Karzan in the UK, paying people smugglers thousands of euros to get across the Channel in the absence of other possible routes. Karzan said that he had been in continuous contact with his fiancee and was tracking her GPS coordinates. “After four hours and 18 minutes from the moment she went into that boat,” he said, “then I lost her.”
Continue reading...Priti Patel blames ‘evil’ gangs for Channel crossings but the reality is far more complicated
Analysis: The UK government’s own experts say many journeys are actually organised directly by desperate families
The government repeatedly insists that sophisticated criminal networks are driving the Channel crossings by people seeking asylum in Britain. Of all the contested claims advanced by the home secretary on the issue, it remains among the most pervasive.
True to form, in the aftermath of Wednesday’s drownings, Priti Patel wasted little time reiterating her determination to “smash the criminal gangs” behind such crossings.
Continue reading...‘We will start again’: Afghan female MPs fight on from parliament in exile
From Greece the women are advocating for fellow refugees – and those left behind under Taliban rule
It is a Saturday morning in November, and Afghan MP Nazifa Yousufi Bek gathers up her notes and prepares to head for the office. But instead of jumping in an armoured car bound for the mahogany-lined parliament in Kabul, her journey is by bus from a Greek hotel to a migrants’ organisation in the centre of Athens. There, taking her place on a folding chair, she inaugurates the Afghan women’s parliament in – exile.
“Our people have nothing. Mothers are selling their children,” she tells a room packed with her peers. “We must raise our voices, we must put a stop to this,” says Yousufi Bek, 35, who fled Afghanistan with her husband and three young children after the Taliban swept to power in August. Some around her nod in agreement; others quietly weep.
Continue reading...Kurdish woman is first victim of Channel tragedy to be named
Maryam Nuri Mohamed Amin from northern Iraq was messaging her fiancé when dinghy started sinking
A Kurdish woman from northern Iraq has become the first victim of this week’s mass drowning in the Channel to be named.
Maryam Nuri Mohamed Amin was messaging her fiance, who lives in the UK, when the group’s dinghy started deflating on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Macron tells Johnson to ‘get serious’ on Channel crisis after tweeted letter
French president says: ‘We do not communicate on these issues by tweets’ after PM issues five-point plan via Twitter
President Emmanuel Macron has told Boris Johnson to “get serious” or remain locked out of discussions over how to curb the flow of people escaping war and poverty across the Channel.
In a further sign of an escalating diplomatic crisis since the deaths of 27 people on Wednesday, the French leader criticised the UK’s decision to issue a five-point plan via Twitter instead of conducting bilateral talks.
Continue reading...Blowing the house down: life on the frontline of extreme weather in the Gambia
A storm took the roof off Binta Bah’s house before torrential rain destroyed her family’s belongings, as poverty combines with the climate crisis to wreak havoc on Africa’s smallest mainland country
The windstorm arrived in Jalambang late in the evening, when Binta Bah and her family were enjoying the evening cool outside. “But when we first heard the wind, the kids started to run and go in the house,” she says.
First they went in one room but the roof – a sheet of corrugated iron fixed only by a timbere pole – flew off. They ran into another but the roof soon went there too.
Continue reading...‘I’ll try to get across’: people camped out in Dunkirk still hope to reach UK
News of Channel deaths has reached camp, but many still plan to pay people smugglers huge amounts in hope of a better life
Everybody at the camp on the outskirts of Dunkirk, little more than a scrappy collection of tents with no toilets or running water, has heard about the 27 people who drowned on Wednesday.
Everybody knows the risks. But everybody says they still have the same plan, to try to get on a boat to the UK, because they do not believe that death will come to them – and because of their hope for a better life.
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