| EU leaders agree to seek cooperation with Egypt on migration. On the second day of an informal meeting in Salzburg, EU leaders agreed to explore a deal with Egypt for “in-depth cooperation” on migration. Although EU officials warned that discussions with Egypt were still at an early stage, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz suggested that Egypt could be an important partner in intercepting ships carrying asylum-seekers and migrants and returning them to its shores. Speaking to Al Jazeera, Giulia Lagana, a senior analyst at the Brussels-based Open Society European Policy Institute, said it was unclear how such a deal would work in practice considering that very few migrants are arriving from Egypt . She added that any deal with Cairo would be “extremely dangerous from a human rights point of view”. EU Council President Donald Tusk told a news conference on Thursday that the EU would be seeking similar agreements with other North African countries in the coming weeks and that an EU-Arab League summit would take place in Cairo next February. | | |
| First 100 asylum-seekers transferred from Lesvos to mainland. The asylum-seekers were transferred by boat to the Greek mainland on Friday morning as part of the government’s efforts to decongest the overcrowded reception and identification centre in Moria. A total of 2,000 asylum-seekers are expected to be transferred to the mainland by the end of September. Also on Friday, UNICEF said that the number of refugee and migrant children arriving on the Greek islands so far this year had risen by 32 per cent compared to the same period last year. UNICEF’s Country Coordinator for the Refugee and Migrant Response in Greece, Lucio Melandri, reiterated recent calls by NGOs to transfer children and other vulnerable people from the islands to the mainland “without further delay”. | | |
| Refugee children face long delays accessing education in UK. Research conducted by the Refugee Support Network for UNICEF finds that refugee and asylum-seeking children often face long delays accessing education after arriving in the UK. No region in the country had met a 20-day target for finding school places for unaccompanied asylum-seeker children in their care. At the secondary and further-education levels, up to a quarter of young asylum-seekers had to wait over three months for a school or college place. Delaying factors include complex online applications, schools’ concerns about negatively influencing their results profiles and a lack of places for children with special educational needs. | | |
| Colombian peace deal under strain as cocaine production surges. New figures from the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) show that coca cultivation in Colombia reached its highest recorded level in 2017, with around 171,000 hectares of land used to grow the plant used to make cocaine. A peace deal between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the government in 2016 aimed to end five decades of conflict that have left millions of Colombians internally displaced, but UNODC warned that the lucrative proceeds of cocaine production could undermine peacebuilding efforts and strengthen armed groups that have stepped into the vacuum left by the FARC. | | |
| World Bank, Bangladesh sign $50 million agreement to strengthen Rohingya healthcare. The government of Bangladesh on Thursday signed a US$50 million grant agreement with the World Bank to help strengthen its health-care services for Rohingya refugees and local people in Cox’s Bazar. It’s the first in a series of projects financed by the World Bank to support Bangladesh in dealing with the influx of refugees from Myanmar. A statement from the World Bank said the grant would be used to help the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to scale up and strengthen existing health facilities within and adjacent to the refugee camps. | | |
| Mayor Andreas Hollstein and his dedicated community of volunteers have worked tirelessly to make sure that newcomers are welcome in their town of Altena in western Germany. With the local population dwindling, Hollstein has highlighted the benefits that refugees can bring if they’re successfully integrated. “It’s about taking small steps and sending out small signals,” he says. | | |
Over 7,000 children – on average more than 850 every month – have arrived by sea to the Greek islands between January and August this year.
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