A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Pakistan to Poland
Continue reading...Category Archives: Migration and development
‘We have fallen into a trap’: for hotel staff Qatar’s World Cup dream is a nightmare
Exclusive: Seduced by salary promises, workers at Fifa-endorsed hotels allege they have been exploited and abused
When Fifa executives step on to the asphalt in Doha next November for the start of the 2022 World Cup finals, their next stop is likely to be the check-in at one of Qatar’s glittering array of opulent hotels, built to provide the most luxurious possible backdrop to the biggest sporting event on earth.
Now, with a year to go before the first match, fans who want to emulate the lifestyle of the sporting elite can head to Fifa’s hospitality website to plan their stay in the host nation. There they can scroll through a catalogue of exclusive, Fifa-endorsed accommodation, from boutique hotels to five-star resorts.
Continue reading...‘Critical lifeline’ of migrant cash expected to near £600bn in total
Sum sent back home from former residents of low-income countries surpasses overseas aid and rich nations’ direct investment
Migrants from low- and middle-income countries are expected to send almost £600bn to support friends and relatives by the end of the year, after global economic growth spurred a 7.3% rebound in remittance payments.
The increase in cross-border payments, especially from migrants based in Europe and the US, reversed a 1.7% fall in remittance payments last year, the World Bank said.
Continue reading...‘A moment in history’: making a perilous sea-crossing with refugees – photo essay
Ahead of a UK exhibition of her photo series Journey in the Death Boat, Güliz Vural describes travelling with Syrians being smuggled to Greece from Turkey
Standing on a Turkish beach ready to join a group of Syrian refugees on an inflatable boat bound for Greece, the photojournalist Güliz Vural’s biggest fear was that the people traffickers organising the illegal crossing would not let her onboard.
If she had known that within a few hours of leaving Turkey she would be under arrest, accused of people trafficking herself, she would have thought twice about the journey.
The migrants carry the inflatable boat they will travel in down to the beach. They had to leave all their possessions as they crammed themselves in. Nearly 50 Syrians made the crossing in a boat designed to carry 12 people, adding to the anxiety felt by the children in particular.
Continue reading...Greece accused of ‘biggest pushback in years’ of stricken refugee ship
Cargo ship, carrying 382 migrants, was towed across the seas for four days before Athens was forced into a rescue after mayday call
It was hailed as the biggest search-and-rescue operation in the eastern Mediterranean for a decade. But the bid to save hundreds of refugees on a stricken ship in the Aegean Sea has led to allegations that the operation bore all the hallmarks of an illegal pushback before the Greek coastguard was forced to change tactics.
Only days after 382 asylum seekers disembarked on the island of Kos, criticism has mounted over their “unnecessarily prolonged” ordeal at sea.
Continue reading...Concerns grow over Poland’s treatment of migrants stuck at Belarus border
Warsaw defies critics to extend state of emergency as it seeks to portray migrants as dangerous
Concerns over Poland’s treatment of migrants stranded on its border with Belarus are mounting after Warsaw this week ignored domestic and international criticism to extend a state of emergency and sought to portray them as dangerous deviants.
The European commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, met the Polish interior minister, Mariusz Kamiński, in Warsaw on Thursday night but won no concessions on the bloc’s request for monitors from the EU’s Frontex border force to be allowed into the zone, despite growing fears for the migrants’ safety after the deaths of at least five people.
Continue reading...The climate crisis is destroying the human rights of those least responsible for it | Patrick Verkooijen and AK Abdul Momen
The UN must urgently appoint a special rapporteur on climate change and human rights to galvanise action on the biggest threat to fundamental freedoms
Climate breakdown is making a mockery of human rights.
Start with the most fundamental right of all: the right to life, liberty and security. Two million people have died as a result of a five-fold increase in weather-related disasters in our lifetimes. And given that 90% of these deaths have occurred in developing countries, which have contributed the least to global heating, the climate crisis is also making a mockery of the notion that we are all born equal – as the UN Declaration of Human Rights and numerous national constitutions assert.
Continue reading...‘My future is overseas’: Tunisians look to Europe as Covid hits tourism
As the pandemic deals a death blow to an already struggling sector, former workers see little hope for recovery
The seafront along the town of Hammamet in Tunisia is deserted. Looking out at the bright empty coast from his souvenir shop, Kais Azzabi, 42, describes the crowds that would stroll along the broad boulevards. Today, there is nobody.
“It was very busy here,” he says, gesturing to the street and the Mediterranean Sea beyond. “Since the corona started, everything stopped.”
Continue reading...Haitians fleeing and Hotel Rwanda case: human rights this fortnight – in pictures
A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Myanmar to Germany
Continue reading...‘He saw the panic’: the Afghan men who fell from the US jet
One was a young footballer, another a dentist. Their shocking deaths haunt the families who could not stop their desperate bids to escape
When Zaki Anwari scaled the fence of Kabul airport, he was determined to escape. The 17-year-old footballer with the Afghan national youth team had taken a break from studying maths for his exams to accompany his brother as he tried to catch a flight. Zaki had always told his family he was not interested in going abroad, unless he could return to Afghanistan.
But the Taliban takeover had changed things. Zaki did not have a passport but, as night fell on Kabul after the Taliban took control of the city, he told his brother Zakir that he wanted to leave. Zakir did his best to talk him out of it, but he would not let go of the idea.
Continue reading...Yemen at war: conflict, chaos and rare joy – in pictures
Over the past four years, photographer Giles Clarke has reported from Yemen for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), documenting the tragedy of a country devastated by war but also the resilience of its people. The photojournalism festival Visa pour l’image is featuring his work at an exhibition in Perpignan, France
Continue reading...The disappeared in Mexico, Afghan female footballers and a giant puppet: human rights this fortnight in pictures
A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms from Thailand to Texas
Continue reading...Where’s Edelyn? The search for the Filipina maid who vanished in Saudi Arabia
Mired in debt, the mother of three left to work as part of the Gulf’s kafala labour system. She was last heard from in 2015 and her family want answers
Edelyn Eborda Astudillo wanted a better life for her three children. The 36-year-old from Mariveles in the Philippines, and her husband, Crisanto, had been unemployed for six years and things were getting desperate. So, in early 2015, Edelyn made the decision to travel to the Middle East to get a job as a domestic worker.
After applying to a Philippine recruitment agency, Manumoti Manpower, Edelyn was soon on a flight abroad. She was placed in a house to work for a couple in Taif, in the west of Saudi Arabia.
Continue reading...How street art is helping young migrants paint a brighter future in Italy
An innovative community project has brightened buildings, ‘brought people together’ and provided an emotional outlet after traumatic journeys
Jadhav*, 18, from Bangladesh, arrived in Italy 10 months ago, but is still haunted by memories of his journey with people smugglers across the Mediterranean Sea.
“There were 156 people packed into a small boat. There were women and children,” says Jadhav in broken Italian and Bengali translated on a smartphone app. “Waves were coming over the side. People were weeping. There was no hope of survival.”
Continue reading...‘Sometimes I have to pick up a gun’: the female Afghan governor resisting the Taliban
Salima Mazari, one of only three female district governors in Afghanistan, tells of her motivation to fight the militants
It is early morning in Charkint, in the northern Balkh province of Afghanistan, but a meeting with the governor is already well under way to urgently assess the safety of the 30,000 people she represents. Salima Mazari has been in the job for just over three years, and for her, fighting the Taliban is nothing new, but since July she has been meeting with the commanders of her security forces every day as the Islamist militants’ attacks across the country increase.
As one of only three female district governors in Afghanistan, Mazari has attracted attention simply by being a woman in charge. What sets the 40-year-old apart, particularly amid the recent wave of Taliban violence, is her hands-on military leadership. “Sometimes I’m in the office in Charkint, and other times I have to pick up a gun and join the battle,” she says.
Continue reading...Fleeing the Taliban: Afghans met with rising anti-refugee hostility in Turkey
As violence causes a fresh wave of desperate journeys, populist politicians claim their country has become a ‘dumping ground’
- Photography by Emre Caylak for the Guardian
It was a journey that had taken weeks, and there were times when the 65-year-old Afghan widow, who walks with the aid of a stick, had to be carried by her son.
Their trek, across 15 canyons she says, left Durdana with badly scarred feet. “I have not had a day of peace in over 40 years. I had to come to Turkey, there was no choice.”
Continue reading...‘We walked 18 hours, no food’: Taliban advance triggers exodus of Afghans
As the conflict intensifies amid the withdrawal of US-led forces, a new wave of families are being forced to flee via perilous routes to Iran and Turkey
A weary Zebah Gul and her eight children are gathered quietly in a small room at a transit centre in Herat, north-eastern Afghanistan. Their six-month attempt to escape the war and find safety has failed.
They have just spent a week in Iranian police detention after being caught trying to cross the border into Turkey, and are beginning to make their way back to their besieged home province of Takhar, on the opposite side of the sprawling country.
Continue reading...Migration and Covid deaths depriving poorest nations of health workers
Fragile health systems are at risk due to high numbers of medical staff leaving to work in richer countries, say experts
The loss of frontline health workers dying of Covid around the globe, is being compounded in the hospitals of developing nations by trained medical staff leaving to help in the pandemic effort abroad, according to experts.
With new Covid waves in Africa, and with Latin America and Asia facing unrelenting health emergencies, the number of health worker deaths from Covid-19 in May was at least 115,000, according to the World Health Organization. Its director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, acknowledged data is “scant” and the true figure is likely to be far higher.
Continue reading...No man’s land: three people seeking asylum stuck in Cyprus’s buffer zone
The Cameroonians, who had ‘no idea’ they had jumped into the demilitarised area, have been trapped for almost two months
A few months after Grace Ngo flew into Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus from her native Cameroon, she decided to head “for the west”. Smugglers pointed the student in the direction of the Venetian walls that cut through the heart of Nicosia, Europe’s last divided capital.
A little before midnight on 24 May, Ngo leapt from the breakaway Turkish Cypriot republic into what she hoped would be the war-divided island’s internationally recognised Greek south.
Continue reading...Fresh evidence of violence at Libyan detention centres as boats turned back
Amnesty International says sexual abuse and beatings rife at camps for those forcibly returned after trying to cross the Med
New evidence of starvation and abuses inside migrant detention centres has been collected from migrants inside seven facilities across Libya.
A report by Amnesty International comes less than a month after Médecins Sans Frontières announced it was suspending its operations at two centres in Libya because of increasing violence towards refugees and migrants.
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