Category Archives: Refugees

Return to the refugee camp: Malawi orders thousands back to ‘congested’ Dzaleka

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People who’ve integrated into society are expected to return to the country’s oldest refugee camp, as cost of living and anti-refugee sentiment rises

Dzaleka, Malawi’s first refugee camp, is about 25 miles north of the capital Lilongwe. Built 25 years ago in response to a surge of people fleeing genocide and wars in Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, it was then home to between 10,000 and 14,000 refugees. But the camp now houses more than 48,000 people from east and southern African countries – four times more than its initial capacity.

Several hundred continue to arrive each month, according to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), and in August 181 babies were born there. The deteriorating situation in neighbouring Mozambique is swelling the numbers further, as is the government’s recent decree that an estimated 2,000 refugees who had over the years left Dzaleka to integrate into wider Malawian society should go back, citing them as a possible danger to national security.

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At least 31 reported dead after dinghy capsizes in Channel

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Two survivors in intensive care as four are arrested over drownings in boat described as like ‘a pool you blow up in your garden’


At least thirty one people including five women and a young girl have died trying to cross the Channel to the UK in an inflatable dinghy, officials say, in what is the deadliest incident since the current crisis began.

Two survivors are in intensive care while police have arrested four people suspected of being linked to the drownings. The International Organisation for Migration said it was the biggest single loss of life in the Channel since it began collecting data in 2014.

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Aid workers say Mediterranean a ‘liquid graveyard’ after 75 feared dead off Libya

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People smugglers are putting hundreds to sea this autumn despite stormy weather

More than 75 people are feared dead after their boat capsized in stormy seas off the coast of Libya while attempting to reach Europe in one of the deadliest shipwrecks this year, according to the UN.

Fifteen survivors were rescued by local fishers and brought to the port of Zuwara in north-western Libya. They said there were about 92 people onboard the vessel when the incident took place on 17 November. Most of those who died came from sub-Saharan Africa.

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Migrant caravan and Qatar’s tarnished World Cup: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Pakistan to Poland

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Croatia violated rights of Afghan girl who was killed by train, court rules

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Madina Hussiny, 6, died after police refused to let her family apply for asylum and made them walk back to Serbia

After four years of legal struggle, the European court of human rights (ECHR) has ruled that Croatian police were responsible for the death of a six-year-old Afghan girl when they forced her family to return to Serbia via train tracks without giving them the opportunity to seek asylum.

The little girl, named Madina Hussiny, was struck and killed by a train after being pushed back with her family by the Croatian authorities in 2017.

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Lukashenko says Belarusian troops may have helped refugees reach Europe

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Leader acknowledges it was ‘absolutely possible’ his army had a part in creating migrant crisis at Polish border

The Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, has acknowledged that his troops probably helped Middle Eastern asylum seekers cross into Europe, in the clearest admission yet that he engineered the new migrant crisis on the border with the EU.

In an interview with the BBC at his presidential palace in Minsk, he said it was “absolutely possible” that his troops helped migrants across the frontier into Poland.

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‘It was mind-boggling’: Richard Gere on the rescue boat at the heart of Salvini trial

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Exclusive: the Hollywood actor, who lawyers have listed as a key witness, describes scenes of desperation on the Open Arms vessel

The Hollywood actor Richard Gere has revealed for the first time the full story behind his mercy mission to the NGO rescue boat Open Arms as he prepares to testify as a witness against Italy’s former interior minister and far-right leader, Matteo Salvini, who is on trial for attempting to block the 147 people onboard from landing in Italy.

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Gere, 72, who lawyers have listed as a key witness to the situation aboard the NGO rescue boat Open Arms, described the scenes of desperation he saw when he arrived on the vessel being held off the Italian island of Lampedusa in the summer of 2019 with conditions rapidly deteriorating.

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Refugee activist facing Greek court left ‘in limbo’ after trial postponed

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Sean Binder and 24 aid workers are accused of espionage, forgery and intercepting radio frequencies

An Irish defendant among 24 aid workers accused of espionage in Greece has said he has been left in a legal “limbo” after their trial was postponed, prolonging an ordeal that has highlighted growing hostility towards NGOs involved in migrant solidarity work.

A three-member panel of judges on the Aegean island of Lesbos, where the alleged crimes are said to have occurred, referred the case to a court of appeals citing lack of jurisdiction. It is unclear when the higher tribunal will convene.

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‘Horrific’: 10 people suffocate in overcrowded migrant boat off Libya

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MSF rescue 99 survivors who spent 13 hours on vessel trying to reach Europe as authorities accused of ignoring distress call

Ten people were found dead in the lower deck of a severely overcrowded wooden boat off the coast of Libya, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has reported.

According to survivors, those who died on Tuesday suffocated after 13 hours on the cramped lower deck, where there had been a strong smell of fuel.

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Lukashenko has got the ear of the EU at last – but it won’t help him

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The Belarusian leader may have won phone talks with Angela Merkel but Europe remains united against him

As migrants camped out in the woods prepared for another night of sub-zero temperatures, the Estonian foreign minister, Eva-Maria Liimets, on Tuesday revealed to an evening news programme the gist of what Alexander Lukashenko demanded of Angela Merkel in the first call between a European leader and Belarus’s dictator in more than a year.

“He wants the sanctions to be halted, [and] to be recognised as head of state so he can continue,” she said he told Merkel.

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Belarusian border crisis could last for months, says Polish minister

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Warning comes as police fire teargas and deploy water cannon against people trying to cross into Poland

Poland’s defence minister has said the crisis on the Belarusian border could last for months, as Alexander Lukashenko claimed he had agreed to direct talks with the European Union on solving the crisis.

The agreement was reported by Belarusian state media, which said that Lukashenko and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, spoke on Wednesday for the second time this week.

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Most people who risk Channel boat crossings are refugees – report

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Analysis contradicts Priti Patel’s claim that 70% are single men who are economic migrants to UK

Nearly two-thirds of people who migrate to the UK in small boats are deemed to be genuine refugees and allowed to remain, a report says, in an apparent contradiction of past statements by the home secretary, Priti Patel.

Analysis using Home Office data and requests under freedom of information laws has concluded that 61% of migrants who travel by boat are likely to be allowed to stay after claiming asylum.

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‘If I can get a plane into the sky, I can do anything’: female Afghan pilot refuses to be grounded

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Months after Mohadese Mirzaee became Afghanistan’s first female commercial airline pilot, the Taliban took Kabul. Now a refugee in Bulgaria, she is determined to fly again

Sitting alone in her small flat in Bulgaria, Mohadese Mirzaee contemplates the future. Three months ago, she left behind her family, and her dream job, in Afghanistan. At 23, Mirzaee was the country’s first female commercial airline pilot.

“Today, I don’t know where to go, but I’m not giving up. I’ve started applying for pilot jobs anywhere because I know I need to get back to flying,” she says by phone from the capital, Sofia.

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EU agrees new sanctions against Belarus over border crisis

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Sanctions to target ‘people, airlines, travel agencies and everyone involved in this illegal push of migrants’

The EU has agreed on new sanctions against Belarus targeting “everyone involved” in facilitating the transport of people to Belarus’s border with Poland, where thousands are stuck in makeshift camps in freezing weather.

The EU accuses Alexander Lukashenko’s regime of waging a “hybrid attack” against the bloc by allowing people from the Middle East who are desperate to reach the EU to fly into Minsk then head for the Polish border.

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Fortress EU is beating Belarus, with refugees as pawns in cruel game

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Analysis: Lukashenko’s strategy seems to have backfired, with a united European Union placing sanctions against his regime

There was chaos at the border. Thousands of Middle Eastern refugees and migrants had massed at the crossing point to the European Union, hoping for a better life. Many had been taken to the barbed-wire fence on state-funded buses, after the authoritarian leader made good on years-long threats “to open the gates to Europe”. But when people arrived, the hope of a better life collided with police teargas and stun grenades.

This was not a scene from the Polish-Belarus border this week, but Greece’s land border with Turkey less than two years ago.

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‘I loved my job in the police. Then the Taliban came for me’

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After a vicious beating, Fatima Ahmadi fled Afghanistan with her children for Pakistan. But her pleas for asylum in the west are met by silence

Fatima Ahmadi only stopped screaming when the Taliban held a knife to her child’s throat, and told her: “Shut up, or we will kill your son.” They had burst into the policewoman’s Kabul home one late September morning, demanding she hand over her weapons. She told the Taliban she had no guns at home, but they said she was lying, ransacked the house, then began beating her, pulling out handfuls of hair, and when she would not stop shouting, they grabbed her nine-year-old son.

The knife was pressed so violently into his throat it left a red welt, visible in photographs seen by the Observer. Ahmadi’s back was covered with bruising from an assault so vicious that she lost control of her bodily functions. The men eventually left, but with an ominous warning. “We will come back.”

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Brexit has made it easier for small boat crossings to reach UK, refugees say

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Outside EU, people can no longer be returned to other European countries under legislation known as Dublin regulation

Refugees living in northern France say Brexit has made it easier for them to reach the UK in small boats, as it emerged that record numbers of people crossed the Channel in one day.

Despite the worsening weather conditions and the UK government’s attempts to deter them, 1,185 people made the crossing on Thursday, according to the Home Office.

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Poland-Belarus crisis volunteers: ‘Border police can be very aggressive’

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Grupa Granica strives to bring supplies to stranded migrants and help them deal with border officers

The call came in at about 1.30pm in the afternoon. A group of 15 people, all Iraqi Kurds, had been found in the woods of Narewka after managing to cross the border from Belarus into Poland. One woman could barely walk. Others had early signs of hypothermia.

The young volunteer who answered the phone – one of about 40 members of Grupa Granica, a Polish network of NGOs monitoring the situation on the border – knew they had to act quickly.

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‘Unacceptable’: migrants face ‘desperate situation’ at Poland-Belarus border

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Children and families among those being warned to ‘go back to Minsk’ as police hostility and humanitarian crisis worsens

For two days the same looped recording has been blaring out from speakers on the Polish border: “Attention! Attention! Crossing the Polish border is legal only at border crossings.”

The ominous warning is directed at the thousands of asylum seekers massed in Belarus on the opposite side of the barbed wire running between the two countries.

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Germany urges unity as crisis worsens for migrants at Poland-Belarus border

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German interior minister says Poland needs support to deal with ‘hybrid threat’ of politically organised migration

Germany needs to get the “whole of the democratic world” onboard to support orderly immigration to Europe, its interior minister has said, amid a worsening crisis at the Poland-Belarus border.

Horst Seehofer accused Belarus and Russia of exploiting refugees and migrants in an attempt to destabilise the west, and said EU countries must stand together in the face of a “hybrid threat” posed by “politically organised migration”.

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