| African asylum-seekers in limbo after Israel’s reversal. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to cancel an agreement with UNHCR to resettle 16,000 Eritreans and Sudanese to Western countries and allow thousands of others to remain in the country has left the fate of the country’s 39,000 asylum-seekers in limbo once again. Some of those affected protested outside the Prime Minister’s office in Tel Aviv on Tuesday. UNHCR said that the deal, which had been negotiated “over an extended period”, represented a “win-win” for both Israel and the asylum-seekers. A statement by the agency noted, “We encourage the Government of Israel to reconsider the matter further, while standing ready to be of help”. | | |
| Donors pledge more than $2 billion for Yemen. Some 40 member states and organizations promised funding at yesterday’s donor conference in Geneva, adding their pledges to the $930 million already promised by Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates . The amount fell short of the $3 billion being called for to fund the 2018 humanitarian response plan for Yemen but was hailed as a “remarkable success” by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. He added that funding was not enough and that no amount of aid money would end the conflict. “We need unrestricted access everywhere inside Yemen and we need all the parties to the conflict to respect international humanitarian law, and to protect civilians,” he said. “Above all, we need a serious political process to lead to a political solution.” | | |
| Central Americans vow to continue as Mexico disperses ‘caravan’. Mexican officials in Oaxaca began screening more than 1,000 Central Americans travelling as part of a “caravan” towards the United States on Tuesday. Many say they are fleeing gang violence in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. The Mexican government said it would issue one-year humanitarian visas to the most vulnerable, allow others to submit asylum applications and request the rest to leave the country within 20 days. | | |
| No safe haven for Afrin's displaced. The UN estimates that 137,000 people fled a military operation to claim the city of Afrin and the surrounding area last month. In late March, photojournalist Afshin Ismaeli spent a week with some of the displaced families sleeping rough or in half-destroyed houses in Tel Rifaat and nearby villages. In this photo essay for IRIN, its clear that while they may have escaped the fighting, they are now faced with new dangers including hunger, sickness and the improvised explosive devices that litter the buildings where they are sheltering. | | |
| France urged to provide more assistance to asylum-seekers and migrants. UN human rights experts are urging the French government to do more to provide safe drinking water, sanitation and emergency shelter for an estimated 900 asylum-seekers and migrants staying in areas along the northern French coast. The Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Felipe González Morales expressed concern about “increasingly regressive migration policies and the inhumane and substandard conditions suffered by migrants”. | | |
| Coding school gives refugees chance to reboot lives in UK. Cultural and language barriers, and sometimes discrimination, make it difficult for refugees in Britain to find work. Even those with skills and experience struggle to rebuild the careers they had in their home countries, according to the Refugee Council. Reuters profiles a free coding bootcamp for refugees , run by volunteer mentors from the tech industry, that’s providing a bridge into work for participants who learn about resume writing and how to do well in job interviews as well as computer programming. | | |
| At least 10 people have been killed by wild elephants in Bangladesh’s refugee settlements in recent months. Now UNHCR is working with the International Union for Conservation of Nature to train Rohingya refugee volunteers to try to deter elephants from entering the camps. Without such interventions, elephant attacks are expected to increase during the coming monsoon season. The Elephant Response teams have already successfully deterred elephants on three occasions. | | |
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