| Venezuelans stranded at Colombia-Ecuador border. Several media outlets reported from Colombia’s border with Ecuador over the weekend, where a new passport requirement for Venezuelans seeking to cross came into force on Saturday. By midday Sunday, the number of Venezuelans stranded at the border after long treks through Colombia had reached nearly 1,000 , Al Jazeera said. Up to half of Venezuelans travelling through Colombia lack passports, according to Colombia’s migration authority. Those who make it through Ecuador without passports are likely to face the same obstacle when they reach Peru, which has introduced a similar requirement. UNHCR expressed concern over the new passport rules, saying they would force people to take more dangerous routes. UNHCR’s deputy representative in Colombia, Yukiko Iriyama, told Al Jazeera that the situation required a regional approach and that UNHCR was working with Ecuadorian authorities to arrange passage for those at the border. | | |
| Former UN chief Kofi Annan dies. World figures have been paying tribute to the former UN Secretary-General and Nobel Prize laureate, who died on Saturday at the age of 80. The Kofi Annan Foundation said he had died peacefully in a hospital in Bern, Switzerland, surrounded by his family. Annan, a Ghanaian national, served two terms as UN Secretary-General from 1997 to 2006. The current UN chief, António Guterres, hailed Annan as a good friend and mentor who was “ a guiding force for good”. UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said Annan had remained “an enduring voice on behalf of refugees and all who are oppressed”. | | |
| Germany and Greece reach deal on returning asylum-seekers. The Germany interior ministry reached an agreement with Greece on Friday that will allow it to send back asylum-seekers who arrive at the German-Austrian border after having already been registered in Greece. A spokesperson for the German interior ministry said the agreement would be signed in the coming days. Germany reached a similar deal with Spain last week. Deutsche Welle reports that the deal is unlikely to have a big impact, with only 150 asylum-seekers entering Germany through Austria after having applied for asylum elsewhere since mid-June, according to interior ministry figures. | | |
| Rights groups set deadline to move refugee children off Nauru. A coalition of more than 30 humanitarian and human rights groups in Australia has called on the federal government to move all asylum-seeker and refugee children off Nauru by 20 November . Meanwhile, a unanimous motion passed by the Australian Medical Association’s federal council on Saturday appealed for the government to “act urgently to guarantee the health and wellbeing” of more than 120 children and their families who have been held on the island, some of them for as long as five years. Efforts to move a 12-year-old boy who has been on hunger strike on Nauru for more than two weeks to a hospital in Australia failed over the weekend after the boy’s stepfather was barred from travelling with him, reports the Guardian. | | |
| Khaled Hosseini: How have we become numb to refugee deaths? Following a week spent listening to refugees in Lebanon and Sicily, author and UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Khaled Hosseini reflects on why the collective outrage that gripped the world when images of Alan Kurdi went viral appears to have receded and been replaced by increasingly divisive public debate. Wondering if numbers are to blame for the numbing affect, he wishes the world could hear the stories he has been hearing from refugees. “Stories are the best antidote to the dehumanisation caused by numbers,” he writes. “They restore our empathy.” | | |
| This trailer for UNHCR’s new podcast series, ‘Awake at Night’, includes excerpts from some of the revealing conversations recorded by UNHCR’s communications chief, Melissa Fleming, with humanitarian workers who have devoted their lives to serving refugees. Fleming asks what drives them to take such great personal risks and what are the experiences and insights that keep them awake at night. | | |
As of June 2018, an estimated 2.3 million Venezuelans, more than 7 per cent of the population, had left the country — mainly to Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Brazil.
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