| EU leaders look to Africa for solutions on migration. EU leaders reportedly made little progress in bridging their differences over migration during Wednesday’s late-night talks in Salzburg but agreed to continue building partnerships with countries outside Europe. AP reports that Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, is urging the EU to enter talks with Egypt about deeper cooperation on migration. Kurz and EU Council President Donald Tusk recently visited Cairo for talks with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in Salzburg that Africa was the EU’s “key relationship”. Politico reports that “sharp differences ” persisted in conversations about the EU’s own migration policies, including long-promised reforms of the Dublin regulation, which determines where asylum requests should be processed. Discussions are set to continue today. | | |
| UN appoints special representative to handle Venezuela’s growing exodus. The UN Refugee Agency and the UN Migration Agency (IOM) on Wednesday announced the appointment of Eduardo Stein as the Joint Special Representative for Venezuelan refugees and migrants in the region. A statement by the two agencies said that Stein, a former vice president of Guatemala, “brings vast professional experience, political leverage and deep knowledge of the region” and will be promoting “a coherent and harmonized regional approach to the Venezuela situation”. The UN estimates that 1.6 million Venezuelans have left their country since 2015, with 90 per cent of them going to countries within South America. | | |
| Majority of Europeans support taking in refugees, survey finds. A majority of adults in eight out of 10 European countries support taking in refugees, according to a Pew Research Center survey released on Wednesday. However, a majority people in all 10 countries disapprove of the way the European Union has dealt with the refugee issue. The survey, conducted between May and July this year, found over 80 per cent of people in Spain, the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden were in favour of accepting refugees. Even in Greece and Italy, the main entry points for asylum-seekers arriving in Europe, there was majority support at 69 per cent and 56 per cent respectively. | | |
| Thousands of displaced Syrians return home following buffer zone deal. The UN estimates that over 4,500 of the 38,000 people who had fled aerial bombing in the rebel-held northwest of the country during the first 12 days of September have spontaneously returned home. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that some 7,000 had returned to their towns and villages since Monday, when Russia and Turkey announced the creation of a demilitarized zone in Idlib. Al Jazeera spoke to Idlib residents who described the agreement as “ a glimpse of hope” but expressed concerns over whether it would last. | | |
| ICC opens preliminary probe into crimes against Rohingya. The International Criminal Court has launched a preliminary examination of the crackdown on the Rohingya in Myanmar that forced hundreds of thousands of them to flee across the border to Bangladesh. “A preliminary examination is not an investigation but a process of examining the information available in order to reach a fully informed determination on whether there is a reasonable basis to proceed with an investigation,” explained ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda in a statement on Tuesday. The ICC authorized Bensouda to open the case earlier this month after its judges ruled that part of the alleged crime of deportation occurred in Bangladesh where it has jurisdiction. | | |
| Five ways to integrate Syrian refugees into Jordan’s workforce. Education for Employment – Jordan, which has been offering training and job placement to Syrian refugees in Jordan since 2016, offers five suggestions for increasing refugee participation in Jordan’s formal labour market. They include helping refugees gain skills that align with private-sector demands; understanding employers’ concerns; making sure that programmes drive employment for refugees and their host communities; and supporting Syrian refugee women’s self-employment by offering more home-based business permits. | | |
| Asim Latic has provided more than 80,000 free meals to refugees and migrants at his restaurant near the Croatian border in Bosnia. He and his team of volunteer staff are all veterans from the Bosnian war. “In Bosnia, we experienced war for four years. We were hungry, thirsty, everything. We sympathize with these people,” he says in this video for Al Jazeera. | | |
Of the 1.6 million Venezuelans estimated to have left their country since 2015, more than half (870,000) have gone to Colombia.
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