| Nearly 12 million newly displaced inside their own countries by conflict and violence in 2017. Key findings from an annual global report on internal displacement released today show that new internal displacement due to conflict and violence reached 11.8 million in 2017, double the figure in 2016. Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for nearly half of the new displacements, followed by the Middle East and North Africa. The report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre and the Norwegian Refugee Council found that Syria was hardest hit, with 2.9 million new internal displacements last year, followed by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with 2.2 million. “The staggering number of people forced to flee from their homes due to conflict and violence must serve as an eye-opener to us all,” said Jan Egeland, NRC’s Secretary General. | | |
| Wait time for asylum decisions lengthening in the UK, says new report. Standard asylum applications are supposed to be decided within six months in the UK, but a new report published today by the charity Refugee Action found that the number of people waiting longer grew by 25 per cent in 2017, compared to the previous year. The report, “Waiting in the Dark”, describes the consequences of these long waits as “disastrous” for asylum-seekers, who are not allowed to work or study until they receive a decision. | | |
| Greece passes asylum bill to simplify procedures on islands. The bill, which was passed on Tuesday , aims to make asylum procedures simpler and faster for asylum-seekers at overcrowded reception centres on five Greek islands. Currently, asylum-seekers can wait for months while their claims are processed. However, some human rights groups have criticized the bill for shortening the appeals procedure for asylum-seekers whose claims aren’t successful and for reinstating a geographical restriction on asylum-seekers, who must stay on the islands until their claims are processed. | | |
| Another crisis looms for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. With monsoon season due to begin in Bangladesh in just a few weeks, Foreign Policy considers the multiple crises it could bring to nearly 700,000 Rohingya refugees living there – from landslides and flash flooding to disease outbreaks. Cholera is a particular concern, with already poor water quality and sanitation likely to be worsened by latrines flooding. “We’re looking at possible multiple disasters,” says UNHCR spokesperson Caroline Gluck. “It’s not a one-day or one-week weather event. It’s four or five or maybe six months.” | | |
| A Syrian teenager starts over in Canada. In this moving 12-minute film made by independent filmmakers Luisa Conlon, Hanna Miller and Lacy Jane Roberts for the New York Times, 16-year-old Ibraheem recalls the traumatic events in Syria that left him disabled and without his mother and siblings. Four years later, he and his father are trying to make a new start in Canada, but memories of their past life clearly still haunt them. “Life shows us many stories,” says Ibraheem at the end of the film. “And from them, surely, we will learn the rules of life.” | | |
| Before war broke out, Tarek Sweidan was a successful singer in Syria, touring the Arab world with his band, The Dream. Out of respect for those being killed in the conflict, he stopped singing in 2011 and two years later fled to Alexandria in Egypt. There he began volunteering as a music teacher, offering classes to refugees and locals alike. Once settled, he discovered that several of his former bandmates were also living in the country as refugees, and soon The Dream was reborn. | | |
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