Category Archives: Refugees

Helping refugees starving in Poland’s icy border forests is illegal – but it’s not the real crime | Anna Alboth

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The asylum seekers on the Poland-Belarus border are not aggressors: they are desperate pawns in a disgusting political struggle

One thought is a constant in my head: “I have kids at home, I cannot go to jail, I cannot go to jail.” The politics are beyond my reach or that of the victims on the Poland-Belarus border. It involves outgoing German chancellor, Angela Merkel, getting through to Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus. It’s ironic that this border has more than 50 media crews gathered, yet Poland is the only place in the EU where journalists cannot freely report.

Meanwhile, the harsh north European winter is closing in and my fingers are freezing in the dark snowy nights.

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Fortress Europe: the millions spent on military-grade tech to deter refugees

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We map out the rising number of high-tech surveillance and deterrent systems facing asylum seekers along EU borders

From military-grade drones to sensor systems and experimental technology, the EU and its members have spent hundreds of millions of euros over the past decade on technologies to track down and keep at bay the refugees on its borders.

Poland’s border with Belarus is becoming the latest frontline for this technology, with the country approving last month a €350m (£300m) wall with advanced cameras and motion sensors.

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Finland is the world’s happiest nation – and I want to keep it that way, says prime minister

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In a rare interview with foreign media, Sanna Marin says she is determined to defend human rights, despite asylum policy challenges

Equality, a well-funded education system and a strong welfare state are the secret to the success of the world’s happiest nation, according to Finland’s prime minister.

In a rare interview with foreign media, Sanna Marin – who briefly became the youngest world leader when she became prime minister of the Nordic nation in 2019 at the age of 34 – said Finland was committed to preserving its generous welfare state in an “environmentally sustainable way”, and saw the development and export of green technology as the key to its future prosperity.

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Lives lost at Europe’s borders and Afghan MPs in exile: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Mexico to Manila

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The most unsafe passage to Europe has claimed 18,000 victims. Who speaks for them? | Lorenzo Tondo

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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.

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Covid limits migration despite more people displaced by war and disasters

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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.

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Refugees forced to claim asylum in ‘jail-like’ camps as Greece tightens system

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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.”

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‘I feel inspired here’: refugees find business success in Naples

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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.

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UK’s ‘double talk’ on Channel crisis must stop, says French interior minister

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Exclusive: Gérald Darmanin says UK ministers must stop saying one thing in private while insulting his country in public

The French interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, has said British ministers including his counterpart, Priti Patel, should stop saying one thing in private while insulting his country in public if there is to be a solution to the crisis in the Channel.

In an interview with the Guardian, Darmanin strongly criticised what he called “double talk” coming out of London and said France was not a “vassal” of the UK.

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‘He’s missing’: anxious wait in Calais camps for news on Channel victims

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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.

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‘Shocking’ that UK is moving child refugees into hotels

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Children’s Society criticises practice of placing unaccompanied minors in hotels with limited care

Record numbers of unaccompanied child asylum seekers who arrived in the UK on small boats are being accommodated in four hotels along England’s south coast, a situation that the Children’s Society has described as “shocking”.

About 250 unaccompanied children who arrived in small boats are thought to be accommodated in hotels, which Ofsted said was an unacceptable practice.

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Channel crossings: who would make such a dangerous journey – and why?

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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.

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Inside Dunkirk’s desperate refugee camps: ‘They take risks because they feel they have no choice’

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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.”

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Asylum in the UK: the key numbers

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So often in debates about asylum, statistics are used out of context to back up a politically motivated point, or as fuel in the government’s culture war against asylum seekers. Here are the key statistics about the UK’s asylum system in context

13,210. The number of people the UK granted protection to via asylum or resettlement routes in the year to September 2021 This is significantly lower than before the pandemic hit in March 2020.

64%. The proportion of initial asylum applications that were successful in the year ending September 2021. This rate has increased in recent years. In addition, almost half of unsuccessful applications are granted on appeal.

17th. The UK’s ranking against EU countries in terms of the number of asylum applications it gets, adjusted for population. The UK’s asylum application per capita rate is almost half the EU average. Germany received 122,015 asylum applications in the year ending March 2021; France, 93,475.

37,562. The number of asylum applications in the UK in the year ending September 2021. This is 18% higher than last year, which saw a dip as a result of the pandemic, and less than half the peak of 84,312 that was seen in the early 2000s.

25,700. The number of people who have arrived in the UK so far this year after making the dangerous Channel crossing in small boats. This is three times the total number who arrived via this route in 2020.

83,733. The number of people awaiting an initial decision on their asylum application at the end of September 2021. Delays in the asylum system have increased rapidly since 2018: this is 41% higher than a year ago.

86%. The proportion of refugees worldwide who live in low-income countries neighbouring their country of origin. A very small proportion choose to travel to Europe. The UK is home to just 1% of the 26.4 million refugees who have been forcibly displaced from their home country across the world. Around half of the world’s refugees are under the age of 18.

£39.63. The amount that people seeking asylum get per week to subsist on in the UK. In France, it’s £42.84, and in Germany £65.63. In Germany, they are allowed to work 3 months from making their applications, in France it’s 6 months. In the UK they’re not allowed to work at all regardless of how long it takes for their application to be processed.

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Priti Patel blames ‘evil’ gangs for Channel crossings but the reality is far more complicated

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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.

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‘We will start again’: Afghan female MPs fight on from parliament in exile

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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.

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Kurdish woman is first victim of Channel tragedy to be named

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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.

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I crossed the Channel in a small boat. This is what it’s like – video

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Ali, 28, left his home in Iran to escape religious persecution. After being denied asylum in France, he made the decision to cross the Channel in a dinghy. He told the Guardian's Today in Focus podcast about his experience making the perilous crossing twice, in search of a better life

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‘I come, or I die’: fatalistic refugees say Channel crossing their only option

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Young people who have made the dangerous journey tell why they have risked all to reach the UK

In the early hours of Thursday morning, a group of newly arrived refugees huddled together on the coast of Dover. The smugglers had not halted their trade in moving people across the Channel and, just hours after 27 people died on the perilous journey, they were back at work.

There is little evidence that the latest loss of life will deter others from making the dangerous journey. After the tragic drowning of the Kurdish family who tried to cross the Channel in October last year, two asylum seekers who survived told the Guardian that, despite being deeply traumatised, they continued trying to cross and not long after made it to the UK.

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Blowing the house down: life on the frontline of extreme weather in the Gambia

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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.

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