| Migration top of the agenda at EU summit. As EU leaders gathered in Brussels today for a two-day meeting, the president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, made clear in his invitation letter to states and EU institutions that migration would be "the main point on the agenda". Tusk said he wanted leaders to endorse the setting up of "regional disembarkation platforms" outside of Europe where asylum-seekers would be screened and processed. The plan has been criticized by rights groups as "passing the buck ” to north African countries, none of which have so far agreed to participate in any scheme. In an interview with Al Jazeera, UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi said: "Africa has enough problems to deal with, and there's a high risk asylum-seekers could be stuck in transit countries." He added that the EU has the capacity to manage the flow in a fair way “without putting the burden on a poorer region that already hosts many refugees”. | | |
| UNHCR, IOM call for regional collaboration on search-and-rescue at sea. As the NGO rescue ship the Lifeline finally disembarked its 234 passengers in Malta on Wednesday night, after a week-long standoff, UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration appealed to EU countries to agree on a more collaborative and predictable approach to rescuing and disembarking refugees and migrants from vessels in the Mediterranean. “Denying rescue or shifting responsibility for asylum elsewhere is completely unacceptable. We need countries to come together and chart a new way forward,” said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi in a joint statement with IOM. Malta’s prime minister, Joseph Muscat, said the Lifeline would be impounded, pending an investigation of its actions in allegedly disobeying the orders of Italian authorities that coordinated last week’s rescue operation. | | |
| South Sudan rivals sign ceasefire agreement. In a bid to end their country’s protracted civil war, South Sudan President Salva Kiir and his former vice president, Riek Machar, agreed to a “permanent” ceasefire on Wednesday, to take effect within 72 hours. The agreement, signed in Khartoum, provides for the formation of a transitional unity government within four months that will government the country for the next 36 months. With several previous ceasefire agreements having failed in the past, the New York Times examines whether this one is more likely to last. Humanitarian workers told the Times they would remain sceptical until they saw “real changes on the ground”. UN chief António Guterres welcomed the agreement “at a time when the security situation in parts of South Sudan continues to deteriorate”. | | |
| Aid agencies warn of “humanitarian catastrophe” in southern Syria. Addressing the Security Council on Wednesday, UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura warned that a full-scale battle to the end in southwest Syria “could be like eastern Aleppo and eastern Ghouta combined”. The international NGO CARE meanwhile warned that civilians were paying a heavy price and that conditions for tens of thousands of newly displaced people in Daraa province were dire. Most of the displaced are in areas near the Jordanian border, in overcrowded shelters that lack the most basic necessities such as food and clean water, according to CARE. | | |
| Greece ready to take back asylum-seekers from Germany. In an interview with the Financial Times on Wednesday, Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras said he was open to an agreement with Berlin to take back asylum-seekers who registered in Greece and then travelled to Germany. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is under pressure from her Bavarian conservative coalition partners to secure bilateral agreements with other member states to curtail “secondary movements” of asylum-seekers towards Germany by the end of the month. Tsipras told the FT that any deal would need to be linked to addressing the situation of some 2,500 refugees in Greece enduring long waits to be reunited with family members in Germany. | | |
| The paradox of Europe’s migration crisis. Patrick Kingsley of the New York Times considers how the politics of migration continue to shake Europe three years after migrant and refugee arrivals peaked in 2015. While the frontlines of the so-called crisis, like Italy’s ports and Greece’s beaches, are now relatively quiet, Kingsley writes that some leaders have “successfully created the impression that Europe is a continent under siege from migrants”. Matteo Villa, a migration specialist at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies, calls it “an invented crisis” used to score “cheap political points”. Europe’s real challenge, writes Kingsley, is how best to process, house and integrate those asylum-seekers already on European soil. | | |
| After coming across a video on YouTube of US Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, a dream was born for 24-year-old Eid, a Syrian refugee who arrived in the UK in 2016. At the time he could not swim more than three metres, but he decided he wanted to become an Olympic swimmer himself. After six months of intense training, his coaches and supporters have been amazed by his progress and believe he could realize his dream of going to the Olympics in 2020, with a bit of a help. Check out his GoFundMe page to learn more. | | |
More than 150,000 people arrived in Italy by sea in 2015. So far this year, the number is less than 17,000.
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