Category Archives: Migration

‘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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    Calls in Italy to rescue people at sea after fears of more migrant deaths

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    Politicians urge government to act as EU states are accused of abandoning boats in distress

    Italian parliamentarians have urged the government to rescue people at sea amid fears that many migrants may have drowned over the weekend as they tried to make their way to Europe from Libya.

    EU member states have been accused of abandoning people at sea after failing to respond to information provided by NGOs that four boats, carrying 258 migrants between them, were in distress.

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    Venezuelans return home as coronavirus piles more misery on migrants

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    With many South American countries under lockdown of some sort, exiles are taking to the road – but still only a fraction of the 4.5m who left Venezuela

    Jenny Salazar fled her native Venezuela last year, trudging hundreds of miles down a motorway to Colombia’s capital with only a suitcase and her nine-year-old daughter in tow.

    “It was tough, walking up and down those mountains. But it was the only way we could survive. Staying in Venezuela meant we would die,” the 34-year-old street vendor said of her economically ruined homeland.

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    Migrant children on Greek islands to be flown to Luxembourg

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    Luxembourg to take in 11 minors after member states and Switzerland pledge to find homes for 1,600

    Eleven children trapped on Greek islands will be flown to Luxembourg next week, the first of a European Union migrant relocation scheme that highlights the uncertain fate of thousands.

    The group will leave Chios and Lesbos for Luxembourg as part of an EU voluntary effort to help the most vulnerable quit Greece’s desperately overcrowded refugee and migrant island camps.

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    ‘Coronavirus doesn’t respect barbed wire’: concern mounts for Greek camps

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    Calls grow for EU countries to accept refugees as outbreaks fuel fears that virus could rampage through overcrowded facilities

    The spectre of coronavirus striking severely overcrowded refugee camps in Greece has hovered menacingly for months.

    International aid organisations, human rights groups and doctors have sounded the alarm. With the spread of the pandemic, calls for action to prevent impending medical catastrophe have become shriller. In Aegean islands on the frontline of the crisis, health carers speak of days gained, not won.

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    ‘I just want to go home’: the desperate millions hit by Modi’s brutal lockdown

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    The Indian prime minister’s handling of the pandemic has heaped more misery on the country’s poorest citizens

    For more than a decade, Begum Jan had managed to survive on the streets of Kolkata. A longtime wheelchair-user, she had a specific spot on a busy street. Rickshaw drivers and passers-by always made sure she had something to eat.

    But last week, for the first time since she became homeless after falling ill with tuberculosis and losing her job as a housemaid, the 62-year-old was in danger of starving.

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    Coronavirus: Indian migrant workers sprayed with disinfectant amid mass exodus from cities – video

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    Video footage shows Indian health workers spraying disinfectant on a group of migrant workers, amid fears that a large scale movement of people from cities to the countryside risks spreading the coronavirus widely. The prime minister, Narendra Modi, has ordered the country's 1.3 billion people to remain indoors until 15 April, saying that was the only hope to stop the pandemic. 

    But the order has left millions of impoverished Indians jobless and hungry, prompting a mass exodus from cities to the countryside

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    Fears for Iranian refugee removed from Jakarta-Melbourne flight amid coronavirus crisis

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    Australian safe haven visa holder Amir denied re-entry and sent back to Europe in case reminiscent of detained footballer Hakeem al-Araibi

    Refugee advocates fear time is running out for a refugee to return to his Australian home after he was denied the right to board a flight from Indonesia to Australia because of his visa status.

    In what advocates fear may be a repeat of the Hakeem al-Araibi case, which left a refugee wrongly detained in a Thai prison after a series of bureaucratic bungles over his visa status, Amir, a young Iranian refugee on an Australian safe haven visa, has been sent back to Turkey amid the coronavirus crisis.

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    Sixty-four Ethiopians found dead in truck in Mozambique

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    Bodies found in cargo container alongside 14 survivors

    Sixty-four people from Ethiopia have been found dead crammed inside a freight container in north-west Mozambique, a senior hospital official has said.

    The victims were discovered on Tuesday in a blue cargo container loaded on to a truck in the province of Tete. They were surrounded by survivors. Daily temperature highs in Tete are currently about 34C (93F).

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    Libya’s refugees face being cut off from aid due to coronavirus

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    Fear of being left without money or food following suspension of some NGO activities adds to already desperate situation

    Hundreds of refugees forced to leave a UN-run centre in Libya earlier this year, including survivors of the Tajoura detention centre bombing, are among those worried about being cut off from aid in the coronavirus outbreak.

    Last week, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) announced it would suspend some activities in Libya, including work at a Tripoli community day centre and a registration centre where new arrivals can sign up for help. UNHCR will also stop making visits to detention centres until staff are given personal protective equipment, though a spokesperson said the agency will increase phone counselling and outreach to refugee community leaders. Both UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration have halted resettlement flights for refugees and migrants globally.

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    Fears of catastrophe as Greece puts migrant camps into lockdown

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    Doctors say coronavirus outbreak could be disastrous amid ‘horrific’ conditions

    As the Schengen area closed its external borders last week, in a move designed to replace the closing of member states’ national borders against imported Covid-19 infection, some internal barriers still went up in Europe. The day after the European commission’s announcement, the Greek government introduced a set of measures that would apply to the migrant camps in the Greek islands.

    As of Wednesday, the camps have been locked down from 7pm to 7am. In the daytime, only one person is allowed out per family, and the police control their movements. Some camps, on the islands of Leros and Kos, have been closed entirely.

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    Child killed in Lesbos refugee camp fire

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    Blaze broke out in living container, exacerbating tensions inside the dangerously overcrowded Greek camp

    A child has died in a fire in the Moria refugee camp on Lesbos, according to the Hellenic Fire service. The fire broke out in one of the living containers situated inside the camp on Monday afternoon and was fanned by strong winds, but has since been brought under control.

    The child has not been named and the cause of the fire is as yet uncertain.

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    Greece hopes EU-Turkey talks will ease tension over refugee crisis

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    Greek PM tells the Guardian planned talks including Merkel, Macron and Erdoğan are an opportunity to ‘set the record straight’

    Greece is hoping critical talks between the EU and Ankara will help ease the border crisis that has weighed heavily on the country since Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, declared he had “opened the gates” to Europe for migrants and refugees.

    In an exclusive interview, the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, said planned talks between the German and French leaders on one hand, and Erdoğan on the other, on Tuesday would be an opportunity to finally “set the record straight”.

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    Migrants on Greek islands to be offered €2,000 to go home

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    One-month EU scheme offers more than five times usual sum in bid to ease pressure in camps

    Migrants on the Greek islands are to be offered €2,000 (£1,764) per person to go home under a voluntary scheme launched by the European Union in an attempt to ease desperate conditions in camps.

    The amount is more than five times the usual sum offered to migrants to help them rebuild their lives in their country of origin, under voluntary returns programmes run by the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration (IOM).

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