| Hundreds of refugees return from Lebanon to Syria. On Wednesday, buses carried some 500 Syrian refugees from Chebaa, in southern Lebanon, to the Beit Jinn district in south-western Syria. Lebanese authorities organized the convoy to Beit Jinn, an area recaptured by government forces in December. Reuters reported the repatriation was a rare case of a mass return. UNHCR said in a statement that it was not involved in organizing "these returns or other returns at this point, considering the prevailing humanitarian and security situation in Syria.” But, it said, it respects all individual decisions for refugees to return to their country of origin, especially when taken without undue pressure. | | |
| Violence uproots Colombians. Thousands of people have fled their homes amid recent clashes between rebel groups in Colombia’s north-east Catatumbo region. Reuters said the fighting has uprooted at least 1,000 families, and aid groups and the governor of Norte de Santander province have declared a humanitarian emergency in Catatumbo. The Organization of American States issued a statement describing "murders, forced displacements and kidnappings" as well as restrictions on mobility that have confined and intimidated local communities. Amid the violence, about 45,000 students and 2,000 teachers were forced to suspend classes this week, the Norwegian Refugee Council said. | | |
| Hundreds of child soldiers released in South Sudan. At a “laying down of the guns” ceremony in the town of Yambio, 112 boys and 95 girls were reunited with their families. The U.N. has secured the release of more than 2,000 child soldiers during the country’s five-year civil war, but aid groups say the problem persists. “Thousands of children are exploited as cooks and porters and as domestic slaves, while girls in armed groups are regularly subjected to serious sexual abuse, taken as ‘wives’ by their captors and kept far beyond the frontlines,” Sandra Olsson, program manager at Child Soldiers International, told CTV News. | | |
| Child marriage on the rise among Syrian girls in Jordan. The proportion of Syrian marriages in Jordan involving a child bride has more than doubled, from 15 per cent in 2014 to 36 per cent this year, according to data from Jordan’s court system. Poverty is one of the root causes driving refugee families to marry off their girls. Al Jazeera spoke with Fatima, 16, who said she was married over a year ago while living in a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan. She now has a five-month-old daughter and is pregnant with a second child. “I wish I could have continued my studies,” she said. | | |
| Austria weighs new restrictions on refugees. On Wednesday, Austria’s Ministerial Council put forward proposed amendments to the Asylum Act that would extend the time refugees have to wait before being eligible to apply for citizenship from six to ten years and that would permit the government to seize their cash and mobile phones to “pay” for their stay and review their personal data. The measure would also compel hospitals to inform the government when asylum-seekers would be discharged, to ensure “more effective preparation and implementation of deportation.” The bill is now under consideration by parliament, but rights groups have said many of the measures are illegal and excessive. | | |
| Vice News corroborates reports of horrific conditions for refugees and migrants in Yemen. Vice News visited a detention centre in the port city of Aden, Yemen, that was the focus of a Human Rights Watch report released on Tuesday. Vice found evidence of torture, forcible returns and sexual violence against migrants and refugees that appears to corroborate the HRW report. “They torture us every day,” one man told Vice. In a related video aired on HBO, Somali women spoke of having been forced to leave the detention centre on an overloaded boat that capsized. Some of the women said they lost loved ones. Voice of America is also covering the story. There are an unknown number of other makeshift prisons in Yemen, UNHCR spokesman William Spindler told VOA, "where people are kept in captivity, subject to brutality, and held either for ransom or extortion." | | |
| For South Sudanese refugees in Uganda, milayas – cloths covered in ornately sewn birds, flowers and designs – are a reminder of home. The traditional textiles, passed down through generations, are also a way to make a living. One South Sudanese refugee in Uganda's Bidibidi settlement started a women’s collective to sew and sell milayas. “Here the making of bedsheets is only for us,” said Rosa Juan. “It gives us time to talk and share thoughts, and an income.” | | |
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