29 Syrian children die during freezing escape from fighting in north east. More than 10,000 people have fled fierce fighting in northeast Syria’s Deir-ez-Zor governorate in the past week while many remain trapped in ISIL-held areas of Hajin enclave where food and medicine are in short supply and the civilian death toll is mounting. In a briefing in Geneva today, UNHCR spokesperson Andrej Mahecic said families fleeing Hajin to Al Hol camp had described harrowing journeys in freezing weather, with little or no assistance available. At least 29 children have died, mainly from hypothermia or malnutrition, during the journey or soon after arriving at Al-Hol, including 11 infants in the past two days alone. Aid agencies, including UNHCR, are calling for unhindered humanitarian access and the designation of a transit site en route to Al Hol, where displaced people can receive life-saving aid. The World Health Organisation warned on Thursday that the health situation in Al Hol camp was also “ critical” and that authorities are overwhelmed. | | |
| EU needs system for dealing with rescued refugees and migrants, say NGOs. More than 50 NGOs published an open letter to the European Union on Friday accusing EU leaders of being “complicit in the tragedy unfolding before their eyes” in the Mediterranean. According to figures released by UNHCR this week, an estimated 2,275 people died attempting to cross the Mediterranean last year. Meanwhile NGO search and rescue vessels have been prevented from leaving ports and EU States have failed to agree on a predictable system for allowing survivors to disembark safely. The letter calls on the EU to support search and rescue operations, adopt “timely and predictable” arrangements for disembarking and distributing rescued persons among Member States, and put an end to returns to Libya where refugees and migrants are detained in “horrific conditions”. The letter comes as Italian media reported that the Sea-Watch 3 has been barred from leaving the port of Catania in Sicily, where it disembarked 47 rescued refugees and migrants yesterday, due to safety and environmental concerns. | | |
| Half a million children displaced by fighting in Yemen’s Al-Hudaydah. According to a report by Save the Children released on Thursday, at least one in 10 children across Yemen have been forced to flee their homes because of the four-year long conflict, exposing them to serious risks including hunger, disease and violence. More than half a million children have been displaced by fighting in Al-Hudaydah governorate in just the past six months, according to the aid agency. UNICEF’s Yemen director told Reuters that a generation of children faced a “bleak” future with little access to education and many on the verge of starvation. The Independent reports that hungry residents of Al-Hudaydah have been reduced to searching through rubbish tips for food. | | |
| An asylum-seeker’s quest to get her toddler back. This long read by The New Yorker tells the story of Sindy and Kevin, an asylum-seeking couple from Honduras who became separated during the long trek to the US border, and were then separated from their 17-month-old daughter . The child was taken from her father on 28 December after he was charged for illegal entry because of prior deportations some years earlier. When Sindy, the child’s mother, tried to get her back, she was told she would have to pay $3,000 to fly the toddler and a government guardian from Texas, where she was in the care of a foster mother. Unable to work, Sindy says she doesn’t have the money. A Texas-based NGO organization that advocates for migrants said they had been dealing with similar cases for the past few months. | | |
| Italians rally to limit fallout from asylum centre closure. Since it was announced that the Catelnuovo di Porto reception centre, where 535 asylum-seekers are housed outside Rome, would close by the end of January, most residents have been transported to other centres across the country. But a makeshift taskforce comprising of town council members and the local health authority are reportedly working around the clock to place some of the asylum-seekers with local residents so their children can see out the school year. The taskforce has also found temporary accommodation in private homes for 16 former residents of the centre with humanitarian protection status who are no longer entitled to government-provided shelter under a new immigration law. | | |
| Biggest waste treatment facility ever built for refugees opens in Bangladesh. The facility, which opened in Kutupalong refugee settlement in Cox’s Bazar this week, can process human waste from 150,000 people a day . Sanitation and hygiene have been a challenge in the complex of settlements in Cox’s Bazar that rapidly became home to more than 630,000 Rohingya refugees in a matter of months starting in August 2017. With most of the refugees still reliant on latrine pits, cases of acute diarrhoea are common. UNHCR, which funded the facility, described the ability to treat large volumes of waste on site as “a critical step”. UNHCR and Oxfam engineers, with help from refugees, built the new facility in just over seven months. | | |
| Refugee Behrouz Boochani accepted the $125,000 Victorian Literary Award for his book, No Friend But the Mountains, by video link from Manus Island yesterday. He has been confined there for the past six years by Australia’s offshore asylum system. Have a listen to his moving acceptance speech made available by The Guardian. | | |
Since fighting escalated in northeast Syria in early December, more than 23,000 people have fled to Al Hol camp, effectively tripling its population.
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