| ‘Results’ needed from Myanmar over Rohingya refugee return: UNHCR chief. Myanmar must “show results” to convince Rohingya refugees to return, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said Friday at the end of his first visit to Myanmar since the crackdown against Rohingya Muslims in 2017. More than 741,000 Rohingya refugees crossed into Bangladesh, where nearly one million now are now living in sprawling refugee settlements following successive waves of displacement. During his five-day visit Grandi spoke with both Rohingya and ethnic Rakhine Buddhist communities in Maungdaw and Buthidaung in northern Rakhine State, the epicentre of the crisis. He also held discussions with officials, including State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, describing all talks as “constructive.” “My message is: ‘please accelerate’, because it has been very slow in the implementation in this first year. We need to show results,” he told AFP in an interview in Yangon. “This is not enough to convince people to come back,” he said. Grandi visited the settlements in Bangladesh in April in a joint visit with the heads of the UN humanitarian coordination and migration agencies. Bangladesh and Myanmar have signed a repatriation agreement, but so far virtually no refugees have returned, fearing for their safety and unconvinced they will be granted citizenship. | |
| Malta rescues more than 200 people amid surge of Mediterranean crossings. A Maltese armed forces patrol boat picked up more than 200 people from two dinghies in the Mediterranean Sea and took them to Malta on Saturday. At least one pregnant woman and a number of children were believed to be among the 216 rescued, Reuters reported , noting that their nationality was not known. An armed forces spokesman said a patrol boat had been deployed to a sinking dinghy south of Malta on Friday. After picking up the passengers, it was diverted to a second dinghy while on its way to Malta, picking up its passengers as well. The armed forces said that with good weather conditions prevailing, departures of refugees and migrants from Libya, Tunisia and Algeria had increased in the past two days, resulting in 12 boats arriving in Sicily, Sardinia and Lampedusa. The Libyan coast guard said on Friday it had rescued 290 people from inflatable rafts near the capital, Tripoli, during two operations carried out the previous day. UNHCR has repeatedly called for refugees and migrants rescued at sea not to be returned to Libya, where clashes in the capital have worsened already dire conditions for those held in detention centres. | | |
| Lebanon denies forcing Syrian refugees back home. Lebanese security officials on Saturday denied allegations by human rights groups that they have forced Syrian refugees to sign documents saying they agreed to return to their home country, according to a report by Al Jazeera. Human Rights Watch and four other groups alleged in a report on Friday that staff at Lebanon’s General Security Directorate summarily deported at least 16 Syrians after forcing them to sign “voluntarily repatriation forms.” At least five of the 16 were registered refugees, and at least 13 “expressed their fears of torture or persecution if returned to Syria,” the rights groups said in a statement. The Directorate said it “categorically denies it forced any Syrian to sign any form,” in a statement carried by the official NNA news agency. “Any Syrian who arrives in Lebanon and does not meet entry requirements and ... wants to go to Syria because they do not wish to remain in their country of residence for a number of reasons, signs a declaration of responsibility for choosing to return voluntarily,” it said. The report comes amid an escalation of fighting for control of Idlib, in north-western Syria. On Friday, more than 40 Syrian and international NGOs called for an immediate end to attacks on civilians and hospitals in the city. | | |
| Myanmar soldiers jailed for Rohingya killings freed after less than a year. Myanmar has granted early release to seven soldiers jailed for the killing of 10 Rohingya Muslim men and boys during a 2017 military crackdown in the northern part of Rakhine State, two prison officials, two former fellow inmates and one of the soldiers told Reuters . The soldiers were freed in November last year, meaning they served less than one year of their 10-year prison terms for the killings at Inn Din village. They also served less jail time than two Reuters reporters who uncovered the killings. The journalists, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, spent more than 16 months behind bars on charges of obtaining state secrets. The two were released in an amnesty on May 6. | | |
| Ethiopian ethnic violence has forced almost 3 million to flee homes. Inter-ethnic violence in the Horn of Africa country has driven more people from their homes than any place in the world, the Financial Times reports. It said 2.9 million people had been displaced by December 2018, more than those dislodged last year in Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan combined. Those uprooted included About 700,000 people who have been displaced by the Gedeo-Guji dispute. | | |
| Attacks kill at least 12 in Yemen’s Taiz governorate. At least a dozen civilians, including seven children, were reported killed on Friday when a strike hit a fuel station in a district east of Taiz city in Yemen. Two other injured people were being treated in a local hospital, the Office of the Resident Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen said in a statement, noting that the real toll was almost certainly higher. It is the second such attack during the holy month of Ramadan. Nine days earlier, dozens of people, including children and health workers, were injured and killed when strikes hit Sana’a. Yemen is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis by many measures. Nearly 80 per cent of the total population, 24.1 million people, require some form of humanitarian assistance and protection. During the first quarter of the year, more than 900 civilian casualties have been reported. | | |
| Before war drove him to flee Syria, Ibrahim Kweich was a national obstacle course racing champion. After seeking safety in Libya, he won the tough 2017 Hannibal Race – an exhausting six-kilometre mud-filled course which sees competitors run, climb, swim and crawl through various obstacles to the finish line. This year he placed second in the event. “This race is important to me, because it makes me and every other Syrian refugee in Lebanon visible,” he said. “It proves that we are not marginalized, and that we can make our mark.” | | | | UNHCR is seeking US$307.6 million to fund its refugee response this year in Bangladesh. As of May 11, it had received US$61.8 million, or 20 per cent of the total needed. | | |
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