Children in Al-Hudaydah at imminent risk as fighting intensifies. Both UNICEF and Save the Children warned on Tuesday that the escalation in fighting around Yemen’s key port city of Al-Hudaydah could put thousands of children in the line of fire and further choke the delivery of food and medicine to a country already on the brink of famine. Save the Children staff in the city reported almost 100 air strikes over the weekend, five times as many as in the whole month of October. UNICEF warned that fighting was now “ dangerously close” to Al Thawra Hospital, putting at risk the lives of the 59 children being treated there as well as those unable to access the facility. The Guardian reports that Houthi fighters raided the city’s May 22 hospital on Tuesday and set up sniper positions on the roof. | | |
| More than 200 mass graves discovered in Iraq. The UN said on Tuesday that more than 200 mass graves have been found in parts of Iraq that were controlled by ISIL. A new report by the UN Human Rights Office and the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq documents the existence of 202 mass grave sites of varying size, mainly in northern Iraq. The largest grave is in a sinkhole south of Mosul and is believed to contain thousands of bodies. Between June 2014 and December 2017, ISIL seized control of large areas of Iraq, displacing millions of Iraqis from their homes and unleashing a widespread campaign of violence that the report states “may amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and possible genocide”. The sites could provide critical forensic material for identifying victims and helping to understand the scale of crimes committed by ISIL. | | |
| UN rights envoy calls for Rohingya repatriation plans to be shelved. The UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar has urged Bangladesh and Myanmar to drop plans to start repatriating Rohingya refugees to Rakhine state this month, warning they would face a “high risk of persecution”. The two countries agreed at the end of last month to begin the return of refugees in mid-November, but UNHCR was not a party to these bilateral discussions and has said that conditions in Myanmar are “not yet conducive for returns”. Yanghee Lee said Myanmar had “failed to provide guarantees they [the Rohingya] would not suffer the same persecution and horrific violence all over again”. She added that refugees in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, "are in deep fear of their names being on the list to be repatriated". | | |
| Facebook admits it was used to incite violence in Myanmar. Facebook failed to prevent its platform from being used to "incite offline violence" in Myanmar, one of its executives said in a post on Monday in response to a human rights report commissioned by the company. The company commissioned the assessment after the UN accused it of being “slow and ineffective ” in its response to the spreading of online hate towards the Myanmar’s Rohingya population in the months preceding last year’s violent crackdown. “We agree that we can and should do more,” wrote Alex Warofka, a Facebook product policy manager. | | |
| African asylum-seeker families battle hunger in Israel. Reuters reports that a 2017 law requiring employers to withhold 20 per cent from the wages of workers with temporary visas who entered Israel irregularly is having a crippling effect on migrants and asylum-seekers, most of them from Eritrea and Sudan. Parents are having to work longer hours, up to 15 a day, to put food on the table, according to Elifelet, an Israeli charity that supports children born to African migrants and asylum-seekers. Many of the children were born in Israel and attend Israeli schools but lack Israeli identity cards. An after-hours school set up by Tel Aviv’s Eritrean community aims to teach children their parents’ language and culture. | | |
| Mothers of missing migrants kick off global search movement. The first-ever Global Summit of Mothers of Missing Migrants took place in Mexico City over the weekend. Over 40 mothers and other family members from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, Senegal, Mauritania, Tunisia and Algeria shared their stories, built ties and exchanged experiences on searching for the whereabouts of their children. The summit was convened by two NGOs that assist mothers and families of missing migrants and refugees in Central America and Italy. By Sunday, participants had agreed on a list of actions, including joint advocacy campaigns, regional initiatives and an online coordination platform. | | |
| Ilhan Omar, a former refugee from Somalia who spent part of her childhood in Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camp, was elected to the US Congress by voters in Minnesota yesterday. She and Rashida Tlaib from Michigan, who is of Palestinian descent, will become the first Muslim women to serve in Congress. Meanwhile, Safiya Wazir, a 27-year-old former refugee from Afghanistan, earned a seat in the New Hampshire House of Representatives. | | |
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