| Hundreds of people rescued in Mediterranean Sea. Spain’s maritime rescue services said on Sunday it had rescued 476 people attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea from Africa. In a separate rescue, Proactiva Open Arms, a Spanish nonprofit, rescued 105 people who were adrift at sea in a boat with no motor. People aboard told AP that smugglers had allegedly taken the engine halfway through the crossing. The Aquarius, a ship run by SOS-Mediterranee and Doctors Without Borders, was prevented by the Libyan coastguard from approaching a boat in distress off the coast of Tripoli, Libya, AFP reported. The Libyan coastguard later announced it had rescued more than 300 people who were forced to return to Libya; it reported one person dead and three missing. The IOM's Missing Migrants Project recorded 615 deaths across the Mediterranean so far in 2018. | | |
| Thousands of Hondurans to lose protected status in the US. More than 50,000 Hondurans who have lived and worked in the US since the end of the 1990s are being told to find an alternative legal migration status or prepare to leave the country. The US government said on Friday that their temporary protection will end January 2020, citing improved recovery conditions since Hurricane Mitch, which drove them out of their homeland in 1998. But, the New York Times reports, Honduras has some of the highest homicide rates in the world and remains volatile. | | |
| Refugee camps provide opportunity for private-sector investment. An innovative study by International Finance Corporation, supported by UNHCR, found that untapped opportunities exist for private-sector organizations to do business in refugee camps. The conclusion came from a study done in Kakuma, a town of 60,000 people in north-western Kenya, which hosts 180,000 refugees. More than 2,000 informal businesses are run in the camp, where 73 per cent of refugees have a regular income. “Refugees should be part of the economy, refugees should live normally. The only way to do that is by partnering with the private sector,” said Raouf Mazou, the UNHCR representative in Kenya. | | |
| Girl dies in a landslide at Rohingya camp in Bangladesh. An eight-year-old girl named Abida Begum went to collect firewood near the Kutupalong refugee camp and died when a big chunk of earth fell on her, Reuters reported. Two children accompanying her were injured but received treatment from a nearby Doctors Without Borders hospital. UNHCR and humanitarian partners have warned that upwards of 200,000 Rohingya refugees will be at risk during the monsoon season. UNHCR is airlifting aid and transporting materials by sea to provide emergency shelter for an estimated 60,000 people. | | |
| A boy returns to Afghanistan and clings to his parrot. The Shah family had spent 30 years living in Pakistan, where they fled during the Soviet war. But they’ve returned to Nangarhar province, in Afghanistan, where a newer war has forced hundreds of thousands to flee. In this feature, the New York Times follows a six-year-old boy named Bilal and his parrot, Toti, as he builds a new life. When Toti unexpectedly dies, a devastated Bilal finds hope in a makeshift school nearby. | | |
| Floods sweep across East Africa and uproot thousands. Floods in Kenya have displaced 260,000 people and affected at least 15 districts – including parts of the Dadaab refugee camp, where infrastructure was damaged and food supplies were ruined. Refugees were forced to seek shelter in schools and other buildings. Last week, Facebook activated a safety feature for users in Kenya to indicate if they were safe. In Somalia, where Quartz reported that 500,000 people were affected by floods, African Union peacekeepers were helping to relocate hundreds of people. | | |
| Election in Lebanon highlights tensions with Syrian refugees. Lebanese voters went to the polls on Sunday in the country’s first parliamentary election since 2009 and the outbreak of the Syrian war. Some politicians tried to link the growing social, economic and development challenges faced by Lebanon to the years of hosting a large Syrian refugee population. Throughout the campaign there have been calls for Syrians to return home, despite unsafe and volatile conditions in the country. | | |
| In Toronto, UNHCR is partnering with Paramount Fine Foods, a chain of Halal Middle Eastern restaurants, to hire refugees. “We believe that refugees should not be seen only as burdens for societies in which they arrive, but that they bring professional skills and talents and can contribute to the society that welcomes them,” said Jean-Nicolas Beuze, UNHCR’s representative in Canada. | | |
| About 12 per cent of refugees in the Kakuma camp identify as business owners or are self-employed. Most business owners run "dukas" (small general stores), which account for 33 per cent of businesses in the camp. | | |
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