| US lowers refugee resettlement cap to 30,000 for 2019 fiscal year. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on Monday that the United States would cap the number of refugees allowed to resettle in the country at 30,000 for the coming fiscal year. The figure is down by a third from this year’s cap of 45,000, although the country is on track to admit only about half that number by the time the fiscal year ends on 30 September. The new ceiling marks a historic low since the US Refugee Act was introduced nearly 40 years ago. The secretary of state said the administration had decided to cut back on refugee resettlement because of the large backlog of asylum requests from asylum-seekers already in the US. Pompeo also cited security concerns. He said the US would focus on meeting the needs of refugees in their home regions and preventing their displacement in the first place. | | |
| Idlib offensive on hold as Russia and Turkey agree to buffer zone. Russia and Turkey have agreed to create a demilitarized buffer zone in Syria’s Idlib province from which “radical” rebel groups will be required to withdraw by the middle of next month. Following talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan on Monday, Putin said the buffer zone would be 15km to 25km wide and would be patrolled by Russian and Turkish troops. Erdogan said it would prevent “a humanitarian tragedy” resulting from military action in Idlib, which is home to nearly 3 million people, including 1.3 million people displaced by fighting in other parts of Syria. An increase in aerial bombardment and shelling in the region since the beginning of September has already caused civilian deaths and displaced over 38,000 people, according to the UN, which has warned that a large-scale offensive would result in a “civilian bloodbath”. | | |
| UN fact-finding mission releases full report on Myanmar. The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar today released its full 440-page report on the situation in Myanmar’s Kachin, Rakhine and Shan states. The main findings of the fact-finding mission were released to the UN Human Rights Council last month. The full report provides further detail of human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law in all three states, including its findings on “the extreme violence” perpetrated against the Rohingya last August. The military’s so-called “clearance operations” led to the killing of thousands of Rohingya and the forced displacement to Bangladesh of more than 700,000 others. | | |
| Deadly mudslide at refugee camp in Thailand. A two-year-old girl has died and seven others are missing after a mudslide at a refugee camp in northern Thailand near the Myanmar border late on Sunday. Heavy monsoon rains in the mountains surrounding Mae La Oon camp, which is home to around 10,000 people from Myanmar’s ethnic Karen group, caused the disaster, police said on Monday. Another 11 people were injured and 12 houses destroyed. | | |
| “Unprecedented health crisis” at Greek island facility. Médecins Sans Frontières is calling for the Greek government to urgently evacuate children and other vulnerable asylum-seekers from the overcrowded Moria Reception and Identification Centre on the island of Lesvos. In a statement on Monday, MSF said that the arrival of more than 1,500 people on Lesvos in the first two weeks of September alone had put additional pressure on the centre, forcing new arrivals to sleep without adequate shelter. The medical charity said its teams were seeing multiple cases each week of teenagers attempting suicide or self-harming and described the environment at Moria as “unsafe and unsanitary”. | | |
| South Sudan’s latest peace deal under pressure. Voice of America reports that South Sudanese President Salva Kiir said on Monday that he had called rebel leader Riek Machar to urge him to pull back his troops after reports of fresh fighting in parts of Yei River state over the weekend. The fighting broke out just days after Kiir and Machar signed a revitalized peace agreement in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. On Monday, UNHCR called on all parties to South Sudan’s five-year conflict to fully implement and uphold the peace deal. Arnauld Akodjenou, UNHCR Special Adviser on the South Sudan situation, said the peace process must include the voices of refugees and displaced people in order to be fully effective. | | |
| Twelve-year-old Abed, a refugee from Syria, is a gifted maths student, but his talent might have gone unnoticed if not for his Lebanese teacher, Abbas Maanna. The two met when Abbas joined Abed’s school in Sarafand, southern Lebanon, two years ago as a fellow with Teach for Lebanon, an NGO that helps support under-resourced schools around the country. | | |
The United States has historically led the world in refugee resettlement. Since 1980, the US has taken in 3 million of the more than 4 million refugees resettled worldwide.
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