Cameroonians fleeing separatist unrest struggle to get aid. Cameroon’s government this week said it was assisting more than 60,000 people displaced by conflict in the country’s northwest and southwest regions. But authorities said they were unable to reach most of those in need because they had fled to remote areas where they were trapped by ongoing fighting . The UN estimates that more than 430,000 people have been internally displaced by the fighting between government forces and anglophone separatists, while another 32,000 have fled to neighbouring Nigeria. At the launch of their 2019 humanitarian response plan for Cameroon on Thursday, UN officials warned that the conflict had driven a dramatic increase in humanitarian needs in the country. “Attacks against civilians have increased and many conflict-affected people are surviving in harsh conditions without humanitarian assistance due to the dramatic underfunding of the response,” said Allegra Baiocchi, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Cameroon. | | |
| Little hope among Venezuelans arriving at Colombian border. Amid escalating political turmoil in Venezuela, Reuters reports from Cúcuta, where an average of 40,000 Venezuelans cross into Colombia every day. Most shop for food before returning home, but an estimated 5,000 aim to start new lives in Colombia or elsewhere in the region. Marianne Menijvar, Colombia country director for the International Rescue Committee, said staff at the border have noticed an increase in the number of people arriving from Venezuela in recent days, with more coming on foot, often in urgent need of food, shelter and medical care. Some of the new arrivals told Al Jazeera they had little hope that opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who swore himself in as interim head of state on Wednesday, would be able to quickly reverse the food shortages, spiralling hyper-inflation and violence that pushed them to leave. | | |
| UK starts returning cross-Channel asylum-seekers to France. On Thursday, a small number of failed asylum-seekers who landed on UK shores in October were returned to France . The Home Office said it wanted to provide “a strong deterrent against the dangerous crossings”. Home Secretary Sajid Javid announced the move as part of an agreement with France that will see the UK funding additional security equipment and surveillance along the French coast. The Independent reports that the return policy will affect people who crossed the Channel from 1 October, including those who applied for asylum in Britain . During 2018, 276 of just over 500 people who attempted to cross the Channel in small boats reached British waters, most of them in the final two months of the year. | | |
| Fleeing the last ISIS-controlled area in north-east Syria. IRIN reports from Syria’s Deir-ez-Zor governorate, where thousands of civilians have been fleeing ISIS-held territory in recent weeks. Earlier this month, UNHCR said some 25,000 people had been displaced by fighting in Deir-ez-Zor in the past six months. According to IRIN, another 4,900 people fled a small enclave north of the Euphrates River on Monday and Tuesday. Convoys of cars, trucks and tractors carried exhausted, hungry and sometimes injured civilians who had negotiated long routes through the desert to avoid landmines and fighting. Some said they had fled extreme hunger in besieged ISIS-held areas, while others said they left home because of air strikes. | | |
| Efforts to bring education to Rohingya refugees ramp up. As a new school year gets under way in Bangladesh, UNICEF said on Thursday that more than 145,000 Rohingya children living in refugee settlements in Cox’s Bazar are now attending “learning centres” supported by the agency. Aid workers have constructed about 1,600 such centres throughout the settlements, but thousands of children are still missing out on schooling. UNICEF is aiming to reach 260,000 children with education this year by building another 900 learning centres. With no secondary school education currently available in the settlements, the agency is also increasing efforts to provide vocational and other training to adolescents. | | |
| Returning to Dadaab. Somali journalist Moulid Hujale spent most of his childhood in Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camp. He left in 2013 to take up a job in Somalia but returned recently to train young refugee journalists in digital storytelling. He writes for IRIN about the changes he saw , many of which have made life harder for the more than 200,000 refugees who remain there, unable to work or live outside the camps. Shrinking humanitarian funding has reduced food rations, while restrictions on resettlement to the United States and previous threats by the Kenyan government to close the camp have affected local businesses. “Refugees here need freedom and dignity to earn a decent living, but most feel abandoned and forgotten,” writes Hujale. | | |
| Fifteen years after arriving in Britain as a refugee, Noor Husin became the first Afghan player to appear in the English Football League in 2016. He talked to the BBC about his early years on the front lines of the conflict in Afghanistan and adjusting to a new life in South London. “I felt British straight away,” he says. “I was surrounded by kind people who made me feel welcome”. Noor now dreams of helping Afghanistan qualify for the World Cup. | | |
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