| More Syrians evacuated from Eastern Ghouta. The Russian military said on Thursday that Syrian government forces had taken control of the last rebel-held area in Eastern Ghouta. News Deeply reported that the nearly two-month campaign claimed at least 1,700 lives and led to the evacuation of more than 151,000 people, nearly 90,000 of whom fled to eight shelters in rural Damascus. Earlier this week the UN Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Syrian Crisis, Panos Moumtzis, expressed his deep concern about the displacement of close to 700,000 Syrians since the beginning of 2018. | | |
| Boko Haram said to have abducted over 1,000 children since 2013. UNICEF said today that it has verified the abduction of more than 1,000 children in north-eastern Nigeria by Boko Haram since 2013. It said the actual number could be much larger. The conflict is in its tenth year, Reuters reports. Over 100 of the 276 schoolgirls abducted in the town of Chibok four years ago have been freed and now live and study on a university campus, according to the New York Times, whose reporters took dozens of their portraits. But more than 100 other Chibok girls still remain captive. | | |
| The East and Horn of Africa: a region on the move. A report by the International Organization for Migration outlines a range of factors driving displacement and migration in the East and Horn of Africa: conflict, insecurity, extreme weather, political unrest, the youth bulge and uneven economic growth. IOM found that the majority of people on the move within the region are women and children, with 35 per cent of people saying they had not received humanitarian assistance. As of December 2017, there were 5.2 million refugees and asylum-seekers in the region, up 30 per cent from the start of the year. | | |
| Top EU court rules that refugee minors have a right to family reunification. The European Court of Justice ruled on Thursday that unaccompanied refugee minors have a right to family reunification even if they turn 18 years old during the asylum application process. The ruling could impact tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors who apply for asylum, according to Deutsche Welle. The right to be reunited with their families “is not at the discretion of member states,” the court said. | | |
| Loss of hope proves deadly among South Sudan’s displaced. At a temporary camp in Malakal, South Sudan, some 25,000 people are now seeking refuge from the country’s civil war. But the stress of being trapped there may have contributed to seven suicides and 31 suicide attempts in 2017, according to Médecins Sans Frontières. Dr. Jairam Ramakrishnan expected to find people there experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder, after enduring such violence. “But I see a different picture,” he said. “People are resilient and survive without many of the telltale signs of PTSD. But over time, faced with being stuck in the current living circumstances without any improvement in their lives, many people develop a sense of hopelessness.” | | |
| Protected status expires for Liberians who sought refuge in U.S. Thousands of Liberians found safety in the United States after escaping civil war, poverty and disease in the 1990s and early 2000s, but their protected status will soon expire, according to the Los Angeles Times. “Those who have built a life in the U.S. now must decide whether to return to a country they haven’t known for years,” it said, “or stay put and live a life on the margins, risking deportation.” | | |
| On the edge of Jordan and Syria, in the border town of Mafraq, Syrian refugees are learning conservation stonemasonry. The skill set could help them rebuild the hundreds of ancient monuments and architectural heritage that have been destroyed in the war. | | |
| At least 2,295 teachers have been killed and more than 1,400 schools have been destroyed in the Boko Haram conflict. | | |
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