Experts see promise and potential in Global Compact on Refugees

The Refugee Brief, 18 February

By Kate Bond | 18 February, 2019 WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW Experts see promise and potential in Global Compact on Refugees. Volker Türk, UNHCR’s Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, opens a special issue of the International Journal of Refugee Law with some reflections on the compact’s potential to shape collective approaches to refugee situations around the world. The answer to the challenges posed by high numbers of refugees can, Türk argues, can be found in “a more robust, comprehensive, and good-faith application of the tenets of protection.” In the same issue, which includes 19 articles on different facets of the separate global compacts on refugees and migration, professor and migration expert Guy Goodwin-Gill asserts that both have a future in the Asia-Pacific region. The Global Compact on Refugees aims to strengthen the international response to large movements of refugees and protracted refugee situations. Europe responds to new funding appeal for Rohingya crisis. The European Commission has released an additional €24 million in humanitarian aid for vulnerable Rohingya refugees and host communities living in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Part of the funding will also cover disaster-preparedness initiatives in the low-lying country. On Friday, UN aid agencies and NGO partners launched a new US$920 million funding plan to meet the ‘dire needs’ of more than 900,000 Rohingya refugees and 330,000 members of the local host community. The 2019 Joint Response Plan for the Rohingya addresses basic needs such as food, water, sanitation and shelter, which account for more than half of this year’s appeal. Other key areas include health, education, nutrition and social cohesion. WHAT’S ON OUR RADAR Two towns in Iceland to welcome 50 Syrian refugees. Local media have reported that 50 Syrian refugees who have been living in informal settlements in Lebanon will be resettled in Iceland by the end of April. Mayors in the towns of Blönduós and Hvammstangi are preparing for the new arrivals and say “there is no doubt that they will be welcomed in their new home.” "Baker of Kos" who helped refugees dies at 77. A baker who distributed 100 kilograms of bread each day to refugees arriving on the island of Kos in 2015 has died at the age of 77. Dionissis Arvanitakis grew up poor in a family of 10 and emigrated to Australia in 1957. “I know what it feels like to have nothing,” he told reporters in 2015. Asylum-seekers use visa-free travel rights to enter EU legally. According to a report by the European Union asylum agency, increasing numbers of refugees and migrants are coming into the EU via regular channels, utilizing their right to visa-free travel to enter and apply for asylum. Many of them are thought to be from Latin American and West Balkan countries. GET INSPIRED A small falafel shop in Tennessee, USA, which was opened by a family of Syrian refugees, has been named the 'nicest place in America' by Readers Digest. DID YOU KNOW? Last year’s US$950 million Joint Response Plan for the Rohingya was only 69 per cent funded.

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