| Attack on Ebola burial team in DR Congo wounds three volunteers. Reuters reports that an ambulance transporting the body of an Ebola victim to a cemetery in North Kivu province’s Beni region was attacked by villagers , wounding three volunteers with the International Committee of the Red Cross. The ICRC responded by suspending burials in the area, where efforts to control the outbreak have been complicated by a recent increase in attacks by armed groups and the displacement of local populations. Last week, the World Health Organization warned of a build-up of mistrust toward Ebola response efforts in parts of eastern Congo due to rumours and misinformation. Meanwhile, UNHCR warned on Friday that rising attacks on civilians in North Kivu had displaced an estimated half million people this year alone. So far, no cases of Ebola have been detected among refugees fleeing across the border into Uganda. | | |
| UNHCR’s Volker Türk urges respect for human dignity in “watershed moment” for refugee debate. In a key address to UNHCR’s annual Executive Committee meeting in Geneva today, Assistant High Commissioner for Protection Volker Türk called for a return to a “more empathic and humane dialogue ”, focusing on human dignity, to counter the polarization of public debate around refugees. He welcomed the multilateral approach that led 193 UN member states to develop the global compact on refugees this year, while lamenting the way that refugees have been miscast to “foment fear and justify counterproductive measures that pay no heed to principles of protection”. Citing the grounding of NGO rescue ships, the deportations of refugees and the mistreatment of young asylum-seekers in processing centres, Türk said “something fundamental to basic human decency is being lost”. He listed five areas to focus on bringing about change, including confronting xenophobia, the necessity of multilateralism and addressing the factors fuelling conflict. | | |
| UK’s rejection of child refugees unlawful, court rules. A Court of Appeal judge said on Wednesday that unaccompanied child refugees had been given “patently inadequate ” reasons for being refused entry to the UK under the so-called Dubs Amendment. The act required the government to relocate a number of unaccompanied children to the UK from Calais, France. The Home Office had set a limit of 480 children, a figure that was challenged by the charity, Help Refugees. But the court upheld the cap after rejecting an argument the government had not properly justified the limit. Children refused entry will now have the right to appeal those decisions. | | |
| Desperate border crossings as Venezuela runs short of HIV drugs. Reuters reports that among the more than a million Venezuelans to cross into Colombia in the past 18 months are people living with HIV who can no longer reliably access antiretroviral treatment back home. But activists say that growing numbers of HIV-positive Venezuelans are dying after crossing into Colombia, where they are eligible only for emergency treatment and must pay for antiretroviral medicines. Medical experts warn that irregular treatment on both sides of the border could lead to rising levels of drug-resistance. | | |
| Aid agencies struggle to reach internally displaced people in Yemen. Al Jazeera reports from northern Yemen, where some one million people are living in makeshift camps for the internally displaced in a Houthi-controlled area that aid groups are struggling to reach . A combination of armed groups, air strikes, checkpoints and bureaucracy are preventing the delivery of desperately needed food, and families in the camps are living on one meal a day of boiled rice. Meanwhile, in Hudaydah and Ibb governorates, a four-day vaccination campaign is underway in response to a surge in suspected cholera cases. More than 154,500 cases of cholera have been reported so far in 2018, according to the World Health Organization. | | |
| UN extends mandate to fight people trafficking off Libya’s coast. The UN Security Council on Wednesday renewed a programme, known as Operation Sophia, that allows EU naval forces to search and seize vessels off the coast of Libya that they believe are being used for smuggling migrants and refugees. All 15 members of the UNSC voted in favour of the 12-month extension. The resolution “condemns all acts of migrant smuggling and human trafficking into, through and from the Libyan territory and off the coast of Libya, which undermine further the process of stabilization of Libya and endanger the lives of hundreds of thousands of people”. | | |
| Refugee children in Chile had the chance to become professional footballers for the day with a trip to the San Carlos de Aponquindo football stadium, where they got kitted out and learned some skills from professional coaches and former players. The activity was organized by Chile’s Catholic University football team with help from UNHCR. | | |
The population of internally displaced people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo doubled in 2017 to 4.4 million. This year, another half a million people have been forced from their homes in North Kivu alone.
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