Category Archives: Migration

‘A bloody method of control’: the struggle to take down Europe’s razor wire walls

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Spain is removing lethal razor wire from its borders in north Africa, but elsewhere the controversial ‘concertinas’ stay put


You could barely see that it was a finger. “The wound was large, with several deep cuts into the flesh. He had tried to climb the fence and was up there when he was caught by police in the middle of the night,” says András Léderer, advocacy officer for the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a Budapest-based NGO.

“He lost his balance. The wound was so horrific because as he fell, he tried to grab the razor wire – and also, he said, touched the second layer of the fence, which is electrified.”

The unnamed Pakistani refugee in his 30s had attempted to cross the fence near Sombor, Serbia, to get into Hungary in 2016. The coils of metal that lacerated his finger are ubiquitous at the perimeters of “Fortress Europe” and can be found on border fences in Slovenia, Hungary, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Spain and France.

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Croatian police accused of spray-painting heads of asylum seekers

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UN has asked the government to investigate latest allegations of abuse against migrants crossing on Balkan route from Bosnia

Croatian police are allegedly spray-painting the heads of asylum seekers with crosses when they attempt to cross the border from Bosnia.

The Guardian has obtained a number of photographs of what has been described by charities as the “latest humiliation’’ perpetrated by the Croatian authorities against migrants travelling along the Balkan route.

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‘Finally, at last’: vulnerable migrants to leave Greece for UK

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Group including teenagers Walid and Mustafa will be reunited with relatives after grim odyssey

Until last week, Walid and Mustafa had never met. Owing to their disparate backgrounds, they might not have had anything in common, bar their age: both turned 18 this year.

But the fresh-faced, bright-eyed teenagers have been brought together by a common desire to escape danger in their respective homelands – Syria and Somalia – and rebuild lives shattered by war.

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Covid-19 crisis stokes European tensions over migrant labour

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Farmers risk losing harvests but populists are seeking to cash in on fears of foreigners taking jobs

The mountain slopes of Aragón, a Spanish region bordering France, are one corner of Europe where there is no ambivalence about migrant farm workers. The humans want them and the sheep want them.

“We’re trying to make sure these people can get here soon because the weather is getting warmer and we need to get the wool off the animals or it’ll be awful,” said Pedro Barato, the president of Spain’s largest farming association, Asaja.

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Qatar’s migrant workers beg for food as Covid-19 infections rise

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Desperation and fear mount in the Gulf state as thousands of labourers are left with no job, no money and no way out

Low-wage migrant workers in Qatar, one of the richest countries in the world, say they have been forced to beg for food as the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic takes a devastating toll, following a surge in the outbreak that has seen one-in-four people test positive.

In more than 20 interviews, workers in the World Cup host nation have described a mounting sense of desperation, frustration and fear. Many told the Guardian they have suddenly been left jobless, with no other way to earn a living. Others say they are desperate, but unable, to return home. Some have been forced to plead for food from their employers or charities.

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‘The situation is critical’: coronavirus crisis agony of Spain’s poor

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Charities struggle to help country’s most marginalised groups, including sex workers

Paloma Pérez, a smoker who has dealt with pancreatitis and cancer, has more reason than many to fear the coronavirus as she waits out the lockdown in her house in the mountains outside Madrid.

To limit her exposure, the 74-year-old has told the home help who used to pop in twice a week to stop coming, and her main meal of the day – usually fish or meat, but with a decent variety of sides – is left outside her closed front door by the Catholic charity Cáritas.

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Home affairs data breach may have exposed personal details of 700,000 migrants

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Exclusive: Privacy experts say the breach in the SkillsSelect platform, which affects data going back to 2014, was ‘very serious’

Privacy experts have blasted the home affairs department for a data breach revealing the personal details of 774,000 migrants and people aspiring to migrate to Australia, including partial names and the outcome of applications.

At a time the federal government is asking Australians to trust the security of data collected by its Covid-Safe contact tracing app, privacy experts are appalled by the breach, which they say is just the latest in a long line of cybersecurity blunders.

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Malaysia cites Covid-19 for rounding up hundreds of migrants

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In move condemned by UN, refugees including Rohingya arrested amid rising climate of xenophobia

Malaysian authorities have rounded up and detained hundreds of undocumented migrants, including Rohingya refugees, as part of efforts to contain coronavirus, officials said.

Authorities said 586 undocumented migrants were arrested in a raid in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, on Friday. Armed police walked people through the city in a single file to a detention building, according to activists. The UN said the move could push vulnerable groups into hiding and prevent them from seeking treatment.

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‘No food, water, masks or gloves’: migrant farm workers in Spain at crisis point

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Workers in lockdown trapped in dire conditions on fruit and salad farms that supply UK supermarkets, UN warns

Migrant workers on Spanish farms that provide fruit and vegetables for UK supermarkets are trapped in dire conditions under lockdown, living in cardboard and plastic shelters without food or running water.

Thousands of workers, many of them undocumented, live in settlements between huge greenhouses on farms in the southern Spanish provinces of Huelva and Almeria, key regions for European supply chains.

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Record 50 million people internally displaced in 2019, study finds

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Covid-19 is likely to impact aid for people forced from their homes by conflict and disaster around the world, experts warn

A total of 50.8 million people around the world were recorded as internally displaced last year, forced from their homes by conflict and disaster. This is the highest number ever, and 10 million more than in 2018.

Annual statistics published by the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) calculated that by the end of 2019, 45.7 million people were internally displaced – effectively becoming refugees in their own country – as a result of violence in 61 countries. An additional 5.1 million people in 96 countries had been displaced by disasters.

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Rwandan police chief accused of sexual assault of child refugee at UN centre

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Boy, 16, evacuated from Libya under EU scheme, alleges incident took place at Gashora transit facility during coronavirus curfew

An allegation that a Rwandan police commander sexually assaulted a child refugee has rocked an EU-funded scheme, under which hundreds of refugees and asylum seekers have been evacuated from detention centres in Libya.

The allegation was made by a 16-year-old Eritrean boy, who had returned to Gashora transit centre, south of Kigali, after a coronavirus-related curfew on 13 April.

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Coronavirus pandemic is becoming a human rights crisis, UN warns

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Report released on authoritarian responses, surveillance, closed borders and other rights abuses

The coronavirus pandemic must not be used as a pretext for authoritarian states to trample over individual human rights, or repress the free flow of information, the UN secretary general António Guterres warned today in a fresh attempt to bring the UN’s influence to bear on the crisis. He said what had started as a public health emergency was rapidly turning into a human rights crisis.

Government responses to the crisis have been regarded as disproportionate in countries including China, India, Hungary, Turkey and South Africa.

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Two migrants injured after shots fired into refugee camp on Greek island of Lesbos

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The two victims were taken to hospital, police said, after the incident at the overcrowded Moria camp

Two asylum-seekers have been hospitalised with light injuries after gunshots were fired into Greece’s largest migrant camp on the eastern Aegean island of Lesbos.

The unknown assailant or assailants evaded arrest, while the two injured migrants were taken to the island’s hospital as a precaution, police said on Wednesday. No further detail was provided.

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‘Millions hang by a thread’: extreme global hunger compounded by Covid-19

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Coronavirus ‘potentially catastrophic’ for nations already suffering food insecurity caused by famine, migration and unemployment

The warning from the World Food Programme (WFP) that an extra 265 million people could be pushed into acute food insecurity by Covid-19, almost doubling last year’s total, is based on a complex combination of factors.

WFP’s latest warning underlines the increasing concern among experts in the field that for many the biggest impact will not be the disease, but the hunger hanging off its coat tails.

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‘I’m trapped’: the UAE migrant workers left stranded by Covid-19 job losses

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In debt, unable to earn and refused repatriation over coronavirus fears, many migrant workers face an uncertain future

Each night, Bipul* is kept awake by the fear of loan sharks hounding his parents for the money he owes. Five months ago, the 25-year-old Sri Lankan borrowed $1,400 (£1,120) to pay recruiters to take him to the United Arab Emirates, where he got a job as cleaner at a five-star hotel. But since the coronavirus outbreak there are no longer any guests, so he no longer has work and the loan is going unpaid.

“I really need a job so I can repay it,” he says. “I also need to earn money to help my family. This is such a big problem.”

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Fire wrecks Greek refugee camp after unrest over woman’s death

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Iraqi woman, 47, dies after going to hospital with fever but testing negative for Covid-19

A fire ripped through one of Greece’s largest migrant camps, leaving widespread damage and many people homeless after the death of an Iraqi woman sparked unrest.

The blaze late on Saturday at the Vial refugee camp on Chios island destroyed the facilities of the European asylum service, a canteen, warehouse tents and many housing containers, Greek migration ministry secretary Manos Logothetis said.

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‘Relief’: appeal win means Biloela family can put claim Sri Lanka is not safe, says supporter

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‘We are moving in the right direction,’ friend says after verdict that asylum seeker family was denied procedural fairness

The Tamil asylum seeker family from Biloela say a reprieve from the federal court on Friday has given them their first “real win” in two years in their fight to stay in Australia.

The federal court ruled that the family was denied procedural fairness in the decision on whether to process their visa claim in 2019 and their deportation must remain on hold.

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Returning Venezuelans in squalid quarantine face uncertain future

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Migrants who lost their jobs in Colombia’s pandemic lockdown have been shocked by their confinement in a border town

When Jhoel Brito headed back to Venezuela last week he sought safe haven from an epoch-making global health emergency that has paralyzed scores of countries and claimed more than 120,000 lives.

After losing his job as a butcher in Colombia, the 25-year-old Venezuelan migrant believed he would be safer waiting out the coronavirus storm back home.

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Pandemic raises fears over welfare of domestic workers in Lebanon

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Covid-19 lockdown could leave migrant workers across Middle East confined to employers’ households without pay, NGOs warn

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    • Calls by NGOs for increased protection of domestic workers in Lebanon during the coronavirus crisis have cast a spotlight on the predicament of migrant workers across the Middle East, many of whom are highly vulnerable to the pandemic and without support.

    In parts of the Levant, the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia, workers from south and south-east Asia account for a large proportion of labour forces. Closed airports, bonded labour, or other forms of unbreakable employment contracts, and little access to funds, have made it close to impossible for those who want to leave to do so.

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    Food rations to 1.4 million refugees cut in Uganda due to funding shortfall

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    World Food Programme announce 30% relief reduction, as farms and businesses shut in Covid-19 lockdown, fuelling hunger fears

    Food rations have been cut to more than 1.4 million vulnerable refugees in Uganda by the World Food Programme (WFP) because of insufficient funds.

    Announcing a 30% reduction to the relief food it distributes to refugees and asylum seekers, mainly from neighbouring South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi, the WFP in Uganda warned that further cuts could follow.

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