Three people wounded in clash between camp residents and youths near coastal city of Tripoli
Hundreds of Syrian refugees have fled their makeshift camp in north Lebanon after their tents were set alight when fighting broke out between local youths and camp residents.
At least three people were wounded in the clash on Saturday in the Miniyeh region near the coastal city of Tripoli, after which youths set fire to the camp, Lebanon’s state-owned National News Agency said.
Continue reading...Desperate relatives in Britain plead with Home Office for flexibility as paperwork holdups delay family reunions while deadline looms
The Home Office has said it will not allow a group of stranded refugee children to join their families in the UK if their cases do not make it through the Greek asylum system by 31 December when the EU family reunification programme comes to an end.
Around 20 children who are eligible to join their relatives in the UK under the current family reunification scheme are still waiting for their cases to be completed in Greece, before the UK government ends the programme when it leaves the EU on the 31st December.
Continue reading...Lipa facility had been criticised by rights groups for failing to provide basic services
A fast-moving fire has destroyed a migrant camp in Bosnia strongly criticised by rights groups as inadequate due to its lack of resources.
The blaze broke out at the Lipa camp, close to the border with Croatia, on the same day the International Organization for Migration (IOM) had declared the effective closure of the facility, saying Bosnian authorities had ignored its appeals to supply basic services.
Continue reading...Shocking dossier of systematic violations of asylum seekers along the notorious ‘Balkan route’ compiled by watchdog groups
A 1,500-page “black book” documenting hundreds of illegal pushbacks against asylum seekers by authorities on Europe’s external borders was released last week and handed over to the EU commission.
Compiled by the watchdog organisation Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN), the Black Book of Pushbacks is a collection of 892 group testimonies, detailing the experiences of 12,654 victims of human rights violations along the Balkan migration route, one of the most gruelling in the recent migrant crisis given the alleged violence of border police officers.
Continue reading...Mental health problems are spiralling among adults and children at ‘Moria 2:0’ camp as winter sets in and security tightens
Nadia hasn’t slept. The mother of five spent last night trying to soothe her seven-year-old son, Matin, who is autistic, while heavy rain fell on the family’s tent. He was crying and asking for the noise to stop. “I tried to explain to him that the rain is not in our control,” she says, “but in these moments, you can’t reach him any more.”
The family, originally from Parwan province in Afghanistan, are living in the new refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos that was built in three days, after the fire that razed to the ground parts of the infamous Moria camp.
Continue reading...Two Kurdish asylum seekers made frantic attempts to save lives of family whose boat capsized in rough conditions
Two asylum seekers who were in the same boat as a Kurdish Iranian family who drowned trying to cross the Channel have spoken out about their frantic attempts to save the family’s lives after the vessel capsized.
Rasul Iran Nezhad, his wife, Shiva Mohammad Panahi, both 35, and their children: Anita, nine, Armin, six, and 15-month-old Artin, were among 22 people who boarded the boat, a rigid polyester structure about 20ft long, in October.
Continue reading...One in three on Aegean isles have contemplated suicide amid EU containment policies, report reveals
Years of entrapment on Aegean islands has resulted in a mental health crisis for thousands of refugees, with one in three contemplating suicide, a report compiled by psychosocial support experts has revealed.
Containment policies pursued by the EU have also spurred ever more people to attempt to end their lives, according to the report released by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) on Thursday.
Continue reading...Asylum seekers forcibly returned to their home countries have faced arrest and threats. Some have died
They came for him, as he had said they would. They came for him with knives.
Samad Howladar had spent five years inside Australia’s offshore detention regime, held within the Manus Island detention centre until he was deported, in handcuffs, back to Bangladesh in March 2018.
Continue reading...Fleeing Ethiopia and Somalia, refugees made their way across the world’s busiest migration route, only to be left in the hands of smugglers in a lawless land
Saudi Arabia was Tigrit’s dream: a place where she could find work as a cleaner or maid, and send money back to her husband and young daughter in Ethiopia. Now, like hundreds of thousands of East Africans who have left home and travelled across the Red Sea in search of a better life, she finds herself stranded in Yemen instead.
“We’re stuck. I don’t have food or money for phone credit to call home. I don’t have anything,” she said, sitting on the floor in a building site with no electricity or running water on the edge of the desert.
Continue reading...Home Office accused of making ‘no arrangements’ for transfers of unaccompanied minors after EU rules expire at end of year
Unaccompanied children in France are being told by the French authorities that they should give up hope of being reunited with family in the UK after the Home Office failed to offer the help it had promised.
With the deadline to enter the UK legally and safely under the EU’s family reunification rules due to expire at the end of the year, the Home Office is accused of reneging on its vow to help unaccompanied children reunite with family in the UK.
Continue reading...Australia declared in 2013 that asylum seekers who arrive by boat would never settle here. Hundreds of people’s lives are still on hold to prove that point
For more than seven years, Australia’s policy has been clear: if you seek asylum by boat you will never be settled here. You will be sent offshore and have your asylum claims heard there.
Between the declaration of that policy by prime minister Kevin Rudd on 19 July 2013 and the last transfer offshore in December 2014, Australia sent 3,127 people seeking protection as refugees to Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island.
Continue reading...US official among sources saying soldiers from Eritrea are fighting in operations against Tigray People’s Liberation Front
A US official and other diplomatic sources have backed accusations that Eritrean soldiers are fighting alongside Ethiopian troops to help Abiy Ahmed’s government in the war on the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), complicating an already dangerous conflict.
The claims made to Reuters, which interviewed several unidentified diplomats in the region and a US official, follow mounting allegations by Tigrayan leaders that Eritrea, long a rival of Ethiopia, had joined with Ethiopian forces against a common enemy despite denials from both nations.
Continue reading...After walking across deserts and crossing seas on small boats, Noor wants to reveal the plight of women and girls in Yemen
A woman who crossed eight borders, two deserts and one sea to get to the UK to claim asylum has spoken for the first time about her incredible journey.
The 29-year-old, who calls herself Noor, escaped from Yemen when her life was threatened and travelled alone with only smugglers and other desperate migrants for company en route. It is highly unusual for a woman from a country such as Yemen to embark on this kind of journey unaccompanied.
Continue reading...Operation to move 2,500 families begins despite safety concerns and lack of consent from refugees
Bangladesh has begun moving Rohingya families from camps near the Myanmar border to a settlement on a remote island, despite concerns about its safety and a lack of consent from the refugees.
More than 1,600 Rohingya refugees set sail on Friday from Bangladesh’s southern port of Chittagong for the remote island of Bhasan Char in the Bay of Bengal, a naval official said, Reuters reported.
Continue reading...In part three of the Temporary podcast we meet Elaheh, who had to suddenly flee Iran, not realising she might never see her family again. Now a recognised refugee in Australia with a young son, her visa’s restrictions dictate whether her son will ever meet the strong women who raised her
Temporary is a project from the University of New South Wales Centre for Ideas and Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law in partnership with Guardian Australia, inspired by the book Refugee Rights and Policy Wrongs by Jane McAdam and Fiona Chong. Series artwork by Matt Huynh.
You can find additional information, photography and artwork at the Kaldor Centre’s Temporary website.
Continue reading...Large proportion of victims not placed in specialist safe housing, leaving them vulnerable to further exploitation, says charity
Female trafficking survivors in the UK who have the legal right to be placed in safe housing are being forced to live in “inappropriate and insecure” accommodation where they risk being re-trafficked and exploited, according to a new report.
Anti-trafficking charity Hibiscus Initiatives says that 98% of modern slavery victims referred to it in the past two years were not given specialist safe housing as is their right under UK law, but were instead housed in unsafe asylum accommodation.
Continue reading...Authorities in Canary Islands move hundreds of people from Arguineguín camp
Spanish authorities on the island of Gran Canaria have emptied and begun dismantling the much-criticised dockside camp that was used to house thousands of migrants and refugees, as the Canary Islands continue to struggle with a huge rise in migration.
The makeshift camp was set up in the town of Arguineguín in August amid a surge in the number of people making the dangerous Atlantic journey from Africa to Europe. So far this year, about 20,000 people have arrived by sea in the Canary Islands – 8,000 of them in November alone.
Continue reading...Spanish archipelago has received 20,000 migrants and refugees this year, 8,000 in the last month
In the Canary Islands, 2020 will be remembered as more than just the year of the coronavirus.
The streets of Arguineguín, a small town on the island of Gran Canaria, are thronged not with tourists in search of winter warmth, but with police officers, health workers and journalists, all scurrying to and from the crowded dock, which has become the newest symbol of an old phenomenon.
Continue reading...Both countries agree to double police patrols on route already used by more than 8,000 people this year
Britain and France have signed a new agreement aimed at curbing the number of migrants crossing the Channel in small boats.
The home secretary, Priti Patel, and her French counterpart, Gérald Darmanin, said they wanted to make the route used by more than 8,000 people this year unviable.
Continue reading...Letter to home secretary raises concerns about sites holding 600 men in Kent and Pembrokeshire
Healthcare professionals have called for former army barracks being used to house asylum seekers to be closed over concerns about the residents’ wellbeing.
Medical staff have written to the home secretary, Priti Patel, with a damning assessment, to raise concerns about the sites at Napier barracks in Kent and Penally barracks in Pembrokeshire, which between them are holding more than 600 men.
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