| German Cabinet approves new family reunification law. The new legislation will allow refugees with subsidiary protection, a form of protection that falls short of full refugee status, to bring their close family members to Germany from 1 August. After drawn out negotiations, Germany’s coalition government agreed in February to reintroduce family reunification , which has been suspended for this category of refugees for the past two years, but to cap the number of relatives of refugees admitted to the country at 1,000 per month. Only spouses, unmarried minors and parents of minors will qualify for the scheme and priority will be given to “humanitarian cases”. UNHCR has recommended prioritizing families with small children . The new legislation is particularly significant for Syrian refugees in Germany, the majority of whom have subsidiary status. Local media reported on Wednesday that some 26,000 enquiries about family reunification had already been made at refugee agencies across the country, three months before the legislation is due to come into force. | | |
| UNHCR resumes refugee evacuations from Libya to Niger. The agency flew 132 mostly Eritrean refugees and asylum-seekers to Niger on Tuesday, where they will await resettlement to a third country. Between November 2017 and mid-February of this year, UNHCR evacuated over 1,000 vulnerable refugees from Libya, but has had to suspend the process in recent months due to delays in resettlement to Western countries. A smaller number have been resettled directly from Libya to Italy and France. Another evacuation flight to Niger is planned for next week. | | |
| First new land ready for relocation of Rohingya refugees. Aid agencies working in Bangladesh announced on Wednesday that they have completed work on a 12-acre plot of land that will receive nearly 500 families currently living on steep, sandy hillsides at high risk from landslides during the coming monsoon season. The Bangladesh government has allocated 500 acres of new land for relocations, but only a fraction of it will be ready before heavy monsoon rains begin next month. Aid agencies are also warning that critical services to help safeguard the refugees are under threat due to a major funding shortfall. A joint appeal has only secured 16 per cent of the total US$950 million needed to respond to the crisis this year. | | |
| “Catastrophic sanitary conditions” for rough-sleeping refugees in Paris. City officials have called on the government to provide shelter for more than 2,000 migrants and refugees who are sleeping rough under bridges and by canals in what aid groups describe as “catastrophic sanitary conditions” . One camp under a bridge near Porte de la Villette is home to around 1,600 people, many of whom have escaped violence and dictatorship in countries such as Sudan and Eritrea. The Guardian spoke to some of the men and women at the camp about the physical and mental exhaustion of living in such conditions. | | |
| Ethiopians risk lives to reach war-torn Yemen. Most of the 99,000 migrants who reached Yemen last year were Ethiopians fleeing political persecution and poverty in Oromia. The Guardian chronicles the often deadly journeys they undertake to reach Djibouti's coast before they even cross the Red Sea or set foot in Yemen. Most hope to reach wealthy Saudi Arabia but few make it there without suffering multiple abuses on the way. | | |
| Venezuelans in Brazil at risk of exploitation and enslavement. Venezuelans escaping to Brazil enter the country via a remote highway where ranchers, miners and traffickers are exploiting the desperate newcomers in conditions akin to slavery , alleges this opinion piece in the New York Times. At least 10 Venezuelans have been rescued from slavery in the past year, but powerful businessmen and landowners are often able to act with impunity. Bosses from remote ranches are reportedly scouting shelters in Boa Vista for labourers and making false promise about room, board and wages. According to Isabel Marquez, a UNHCR representative told the Times that some are paid and some are not. | | |
| One night in January, as Omer Yavuz was leaving a gym in Adiyaman, Turkey, he was moved to see a young shoeshine boy staring longingly through the gym’s window. He took a picture of the boy, who turned out to be 13-year-old Mohammed Khaled, a Syrian refugee, and shared it on Instagram. The picture went viral, eventually reaching the gym’s owner who offered Mohammed a life-time gym membership and helped him register for school. In this AJ+ film, Mohammed talks about how the picture has changed his life. | | |
Between June and August, 2.5 metres of monsoon rains are expected to fall in the area of Bangladesh where nearly 900,000 Rohingya refugees are living, mostly in shelters made of bamboo and plastic.
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