UN warns of unprecedented refugee challenge as West tightens borders
Geneva, SwitzerlandReuters The UN refugee agency is facing one of the most difficult moments in its more than 70-year history as record displacements coincide with funding shortfalls and a “short-sighted” focus on border controls, its chief said on Monday. Conflicts from Ukraine to Sudan have contributed to the displacement of some 110 million people around […]
US resumes food aid to refugees in Ethiopia
Washington, US Reuters The United States is resuming food aid to refugees in Ethiopia after assistance was paused earlier this year because donations were being diverted, a senior US Agency for International Development official said. Ethiopia’s food crisis has deepened in recent years as a result of war in the Tigray region and the Horn […]
Haiti’s displaced hope UN-backed force will bring security
Port-au-Prince, HaitiReuters “We are obliged to accept it,” said Charles Adison in one of the many schools that have been converted into makeshift refugee camps in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, speaking about a UN resolution this week that will see foreign forces entering the country to help police restore order. The United Nations estimates some 200,000 […]
Lifestory: How helping a family seeking asylum changed our church group
BILL LAWRENCE, in an article first published on Religion News Service, writes that the Afghan family opened his church’s eyes to how dangerous – and dehumanising – the asylum process could be…
UN migration chief voices concern over Mediterranean deaths, pledges new solutions
Geneva, Switzerland Reuters The new head of the UN migration agency on Monday voiced concern that the deaths of migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean were being “normalised” and vowed to work with governments to provide options for economic migration to address the crisis. US former White House adviser Amy Pope started as head of […]
“We have nothing”: South Sudanese refugees, fleeing a second civil war in Sudan, return home to bleak prospects
TONNY ONYULO, in an article first published on Religion News Service, reports…
US faith-based resettlement organisations celebrate moves to maintain refugee cap
Washington DC, USRNS Faith-based refugee resettlement groups offered qualified praise for President Joe Biden amid news his administration plans to keep the annual refugee cap level at 125,000, maintaining the elevated ceiling while shifting quotas to allow more asylum-seekers from the Western Hemisphere. “Resettling more families from our own hemisphere will be critical to maintaining our […]
Sudan’s displaced millions struggle to survive as economy seizes up
Port Sudan, Sudan Reuters About two months after heavy clashes around his home in Sudan’s capital drove Sherif Abdelmoneim to flee, soaring rent and food costs forced the 36-year-old and his family of six to return to a city where fighting still rages. Most of those who fled Khartoum after war between the army and […]
Thirty-four years after fleeing Azerbaijan, a Karabakh Armenian is on the move again
Goris, ArmeniaReuters For the second time in his life, Samvel Alaverdyan is fleeing Azerbaijan. Born to an ethnic Armenian family in the capital Baku, Alaverdyan first left as a child in 1989 when violence broke out between Azeris and Armenians over the breakaway territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Now he has escaped from Karabakh itself, where Azerbaijan […]
UN raises alarm over child deaths in Sudan as health crisis deepens
Geneva, SwitzerlandReuters More than 1,200 children have died of suspected measles and malnutrition in Sudan refugee camps, while many thousands more, including newborns, are at risk of death before year-end, United Nations agencies said on Tuesday. Chadian cart owners transport belongings of Sudanese people who fled the conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region, while crossing the […]