| Syria offers amnesty to army deserters. Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has granted a general amnesty to men who deserted the army or have avoided military conscription. A decree published by state media on Tuesday said that men inside Syria will have four months to take advantage of the amnesty, while those outside the country will have six months. Al Jazeera reports that the move could boost the return of refugees , some of whom have not been able to go home because they faced years of prison for desertion or avoiding military service. But the Washington Post notes that similar decrees in the past have failed to prevent arrests of draft dodgers and spoke to refugees in Turkey and Lebanon who viewed the decree with mistrust . International organizations and researchers monitoring conditions in Syria said the decree’s potential to encourage safe returns remained difficult to assess. Speaking in Beirut in August, UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi said refugees had a number of concerns about returning besides fear of retribution for army desertion or military conscription. | | |
| Refugee team to take part in Tokyo 2020 Olympics. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced the decision to create a Refugee Olympic Team that will compete at the 2020 Tokyo Games at its session in Buenos Aires on Tuesday, following a vote by its members. IOC President Thomas Bach said a pool of more than 50 refugee athletes had already been identified. The first Refugee Olympic Team, comprising of 10 refugee athletes, took part in the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro. “In an ideal world, we would not need to have a refugee team at the Olympic Games. But, unfortunately, the reasons why we first created a Refugee Olympic Team before the Rio 2016 Olympic Games continue to persist,” said Bach. | | |
| Four dead, 30 missing after boat sinks off western Turkey. Turkey’s state-run news agency reports that the boat sank off the coast of Izmir province on Monday night with 35 people on board. An Iraqi woman who made it to shore alerted the authorities who dispatched search and rescue teams. A statement by the coast guard said search and rescue activities are ongoing to find nearly 30 people who are considered missing. About 24,000 refugees and migrants have crossed the Aegean Sea from Turkey to reach Greece since the beginning of this year. | | |
| Guinea-Bissau offers citizenship to Senegalese refugees. The Guardian reports from the village of Pelundo in Guinea-Bissau, where Senegalese refugees were welcomed when they arrived four decades ago, fleeing armed rebels fighting for the independence of Senegal’s southern strip. Now they are looking forward to becoming citizens of the country that took them in. The government announced last December that 7,000 Senegalese refugees would be naturalized and since then has been working with UNHCR to produce and distribute ID cards and naturalization and birth certificates for the refugees and their children, who, prior to the new policy, risked being stateless. | | |
| Myanmar responds to Rohingya abuse allegations with denial and defiance. The Washington Post joined a group of foreign journalists on a recent government-led trip around Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State, but reports that the Rohingya men they met were unwilling to talk. Later, during a phone call, one of the men said the narrative presented by the Myanmar authorities that the Rohingya were free to live peacefully was false. He said homes in villages near his had been torched as recently as this week. The UN’s resident coordinator in Myanmar, Knut Ostby, told the Post there had been no progress in addressing the rights of Rohingya and that the focus has been on building physical structures to house returning Rohingya refugees. UNHCR, which has begun to access some parts of northern Rakhine, said on Friday that communities there are isolated, fearful and restricted in accessing education or health services. | | |
| Life in Italy’s informal camps for migrants and asylum-seekers. Photographer Sean Smith met some of the migrants and asylum-seekers living in two makeshift camps in southern Italy. The almost 1,000 residents of San Ferdinando camp live in shacks cobbled together from salvaged metal, wood and plastic and work for little more than €2 an hour picking olives and tomatoes. According to The Guardian, Italian authorities have razed more than a dozen informal camps over the past three years, citing public health concerns, but Italy’s agricultural sector has become dependent on the migrants’ labour and new camps continue to spring up. Many of the residents are asylum-seekers waiting for a decision on their asylum applications. | | |
| The 10 refugee athletes who competed in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games were reunited this week at the Olympism in Action forum organized by the International Olympic Committee in Buenos Aires. “It felt like seeing family again,” said Yusra Mardini, a swimmer from Syria who was part of the team and now serves as a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador. | | |
The top three nationalities arriving by sea to Greece are Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis. Together, they make up 67 per cent of all sea arrivals.
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