| UN Security Council delegation urges Myanmar to improve safety ahead of Rohingya returns. The envoys concluded their visit to Myanmar on Tuesday by asking the government to improve security conditions and collaborate with international organizations, including the UN, before beginning the process of repatriating some 700,000 Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh. They also called on the government to sign a memorandum of understanding similar to that which UNHCR recently finalized with Bangladesh, committing itself to ensuring that any returns are “safe, voluntary and dignified”. At a news conference in the capital, Naypyitaw, Britain’s ambassador to the UN, Karen Pierce, emphasized the need for UN agencies to be given unconditional access and for a “proper investigation” into alleged atrocities by Myanmar’s security forces to be carried out. In a Facebook statement, Myanmar’s army chief denied that his forces had committed abuses against the Rohingya. Commenting on the importance of the UN Security Council visit, Daniel Sullivan of Refugees International, said it should spur further access and accountability in Myanmar. He pointed out that repatriation was “far from becoming an acceptable reality” for the majority of Rohingya refugees, particularly as they continue to flee across the border citing starvation and lack of access to medical care. | | |
| Thousands of Yemenis risk being caught up in fighting in Al Hudaydah. More than 4,000 civilians living near active frontlines in Al Hudaydah Governorate are in danger as sporadic armed clashes continue in several districts, the UN has warned in its latest humanitarian update for Yemen. An airstrike that hit a fuel station in Abs District on 24 April killed 20 people and injured 30 others. According to updated casualty figures collected from health facilities by the World Health Organization, nearly 9,500 people have been killed and over 55,000 injured over the last three years of fighting in Yemen. Restrictions on the availability of food, fuel and medicines resulting from the war threaten to take an even greater human toll. This moving infographic published by the BBC puts the humanitarian crisis in context by highlighting the case of one malnourished six-year-old girl and then zooming out to the staggeringly high numbers of Yemenis who are going hungry and urgently need aid. | | |
| Some 55,000 Rohingya refugee children at risk from floods and landslides. As pre-monsoon rains began in Cox’s Bazaar last week, damaging some refugee shelters, UNICEF estimates that children will make up more than half of those likely to be affected by flooding and landslides. The agency is pre-positioning emergency water, sanitation and nutrition supplies and opening additional diarrhea treatment centres. With children at risk of becoming separated from their families, UNICEF is also distributing plastic, identification bracelets and setting up points where families can report missing children. | | |
| Aid agencies in Afghanistan brace for influx of returnees. Afghan refugees in Pakistan are under increasing pressure to return home even as new violence makes headlines every week in Afghanistan. About 11,000 people have already returned in 2018, but UN agencies are preparing a contingency plan for up to 700,000 returnees. IRIN reports that the Afghan government and donors have yet to tackle the returnees’ most pressing needs for jobs, schools and a secure place to live. As a result, many end up in crowded informal settlements on the outskirts of urban centres where they struggle to eke out a living. | | |
| Israeli law requiring asylum-seekers to hand over portion of salaries not being enforced. The law, which went into effect a year ago, requires asylum-seekers to deposit 20 per cent of their salaries into a closed account which they cannot access until they leave the country. But the Population and Immigration Authority said on Monday that only 11,000 out of 38,000 asylum-seekers in Israel had opened an account and that, in many cases, employers were deducting the required amount only to pocket it. Haaretz reports that the authority intends to start enforcing the deposit law more aggressively now that plans to forcibly relocate the asylum-seekers have fallen through. | | |
| Ugandans with memories of war grow food for refugees. The New York Times reports from a village in Northern Uganda that was at the centre of fighting between the Lord’s Resistance Army and government forces over a decade ago. Villagers who lived in a camp for the internally displaced during the conflict have since returned and started growing crops that are now being sold to the World Food Program to feed recently arrived refugees from South Sudan. “We were in the camps so we know what life is like there,” said one of the farmers. | | |
| A table tennis club in Brighton, England is giving young refugees like 16-year-old Amine from Sudan a chance, not only to learn table tennis, but to make friends and practise their English. The club also offers them a way to give back to the local community by involving them in a programme to coach local school children from minority backgrounds. Amine was referred to the club by his social worker last year. “When I came here I felt nervous. I didn’t know anyone,” he said. “Since joining the table tennis club I have made loads of friends.” | | |
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