| Potential for “humanitarian disaster” in Syria’s Idlib, says UN. During the first day of a donor conference for Syria, several top UN officials warned of a humanitarian catastrophe in the northern province of Idlib, the last major territory still in rebel hands, if it becomes the next target of a military campaign. UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said parts of Syria had become “a death trap for civilians ”. More than half of Idlib’s population of 2 million are internally displaced people, including tens of thousands of fighters and civilians who fled there from Eastern Ghouta in recent weeks. Jan Egeland, head of the UN’s humanitarian taskforce in Syria, described Idlib as “one giant area of displacement”. Grandi and Egeland expressed fears that an assault on the area would leave displaced people with nowhere to flee. | | |
| Israel drops plan to deport African asylum-seekers. Israel said in court on Tuesday that it had failed to find a third country willing to take in deported Sudanese and Eritrean asylum-seekers, that it would stop holding pre-deportation hearings and that it would allow asylum-seekers to renew their residency permits every 60 days. The announcement was made in response to a high-court petition filed by human rights groups challenging the validity of the deportation plan. After pulling out of an agreement with UNHCR to resettle 16,500 asylum-seekers to Western countries and to allow a similar number to remain in Israel, the government had tried unsuccesfully to negotiate a deal with Uganda to send deported asylum-seekers there. Following yesterday’s announcement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would draft legislation to reopen detention facilities for asylum-seekers that the Supreme Court had ordered closed, including the Holot facility. | | |
| Syrians’ access to health care at risk in Jordan. Both UNHCR and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) have warned that a change of policy in Jordan has significantly hiked the cost of public health services for Syrian refugees and put even basic medical treatment beyond the reach of most. Since 1 March, fees for Syrians have increased by between two and five times and aid agencies like UNHCR are struggling to help cover the costs, particularly for the treatment of chronic conditions. MSF noted that patients were travelling further afield to access its free-of-charge health services. | | |
| “Forgotten” Kachin conflict intensifies in northern Myanmar. AP reports that fighting between the Myanmar army and Kachin Independence Army fighters has intensified in recent months, with at least 10,000 people displaced since January. The long-running conflict in the north has been over-shadowed by the mass displacement of the Rohingya in the west, but a UN fact-finding mission in March reported “marked similarities” between the two crises, including grave abuses by security forces and restrictions on humanitarian access. Earlier this month, UNHCR called for human rights protections for civilians caught in the crossfire and improved access to help fleeing families. | | |
| US Supreme Court to weigh legality of “travel ban”. Today the court will hear the administration’s arguments on the legal merits of a policy that blocks entry to the United States for most people from several Muslim-majority countries on national security grounds. Many of those affected by the policy have been refugees. The lead challenger is the state of Hawaii, which argues that the ban violates federal immigration law and the US Constitution’s prohibition of religious discrimination. The court is expected to issue a ruling by the end of June. | | |
| New partnership will use big data to find solutions to displacement. UNHCR and the World Bank signed an agreement on Friday to establish a new centre for collecting, analysing and disseminating data on forced displacement. This report by Mashable considers the centre’s potential to help aid agencies better tailor their assistance to refugees by pooling data from humanitarian and development agencies and combining it with cutting-edge tech to improve predictions of future refugee flows. | | |
| To coincide with this week’s conference in Brussels, the EU has released a series of videos called “Everyday Heroes”. If you want to brighten your day, watch this one in which six-year-old Farah, who lives in Za’atari camp in Jordan, talks eloquently about why she’d like to be a teacher one day – “How else would I be able to teach children?” – and her fondness for football and poetry. | | |
For Syrian refugees in Jordan, the cost of giving birth in a hospital has risen from US$85 to US$338 since a policy change in March.
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