| Container ship carrying migrants and refugees allowed to dock in Sicily. A Danish container ship, the Alexander Maersk, was given permission to disembark 108 migrants and refugees at the Sicilian port of Pozzallo on Monday night after waiting offshore for four days. An NGO rescue ship, the Lifeline, remained at sea for a fifth day on Monday, with some 230 rescued people on board. Spain said it would not accept the boat after it was turned away by both Italy and Malta. German lawmakers who visited the vessel on Monday spoke of worsening conditions on board. On Tuesday, European Council spokesperson Natasha Bertaud said that European Commission President Jean-Claude Junker, European Council President Donald Tusk and Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat were working together to find a solution. | | |
| Pledging conference aims to head off cuts to aid for Palestinian refugees. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which assists 5.4 million Palestinian refugees, is facing a more than US$250 million funding shortfall that could see money for emergency food aid to Palestinians in Gaza and Syria run out as soon as next month. At a pledging conference aimed at easing UNRWA’s financial crisis yesterday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged member states to ensure “that food continues to arrive, that schools remain open and that people do not lose hope”. Some 20 countries announced pledges , including $51 million from the United Kingdom and $50 million from the United Arab Emirates. A full list of contributions has yet to be issued. | | |
| Italian minister calls for reception centres south of Libya. Following a meeting with Libyan leaders in Tripoli on Monday, Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini proposed the setting up of “reception and identification centres” south of Libya to help “block migration ” to both Libya and Italy, according to the Guardian. Salvini reportedly said the proposal would be put to EU heads of government at a summit in Brussels on Thursday, but did not provide details on whether neighbouring countries, such as Niger or Chad, would be willing to host such centres. According to the article, Ahmed Maiteeq, deputy head of Libya’s Government of National Accord, said Libya would not allow any foreign-run “migrant camps” to be set up on its own territory. | | |
| South Sudan rivals meet in Khartoum for peace talks. South Sudan President Salva Kiir promised to stop the suffering of the South Sudanese people at the start of another round of face-to-face talks with rebel leader Riek Machar on Monday, this time in Khartoum. The two met in Addis Ababa last week, but no agreement came out of the meeting on how to end a five-year conflict that has claimed thousands of lives and displaced millions. Reporting from the town of Nyal in South Sudan’s Sudd marshes, the Guardian said people who had fled there in recent weeks recounted seeing their villages burned to the ground as well as arbitrary shootings, rapes and looting. | | |
| Give refugees a voice to shape their own futures. Ahead of the first Global Summit for Refugees in Geneva this week, Mohammed Badran, the founder of the refugee-led network Syrian Youth Volunteers in the Netherlands and a member of the Network for Refugee Voices, writes for the Financial Times about the need to involve refugees more in policies aimed at helping them. He calls for a movement to make refugee responses participatory and bottom-up. “We want to be part of the solution,” he writes. “We have the experience; we know what works.” This week’s summit will bring together more than 80 refugee leaders from six countries to launch an international refugee-led network. | | |
| Maya Ghazal fled the conflict in Syria and found safety in the United Kingdom, where she serves as a volunteer speaker for the Children’s Society. She has set her sights on studying aviation engineering and becoming a pilot. “I am just at the beginning of my journey, and I will do whatever I can to achieve what I want and prove that everything is possible,” she writes for Rookie Magazine. | | |
Some 2.9 million more refugees fled their home countries in 2017 than in 2016, the biggest increase UNHCR has ever seen in a single year.
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