| Judge temporarily blocks new US restrictions on asylum. A federal judge in San Francisco on Wednesday issued a preliminary injunction blocking a policy introduced last week that bars asylum to the majority of people crossing the country’s southern border. The new rule requires individuals to apply for and be denied asylum in the first safe country they arrive in before applying for protection in the United States. US District Judge Jon Tigar said the new rule was “inconsistent with existing asylum rules” and ordered the administration to continue accepting asylum claims at the border. The decision came on the same day that a federal judge in Washington, hearing a separate challenge, let the new rule stand. The government is expected to appeal Tigar’s ruling which prevents the policy being implemented until the matter is resolved in court. | |
| Italy seeks to toughen legislation targeting NGO rescue ships. The Italian government won a confidence vote on Wednesday on an amended version of a security and immigration decree drawn up by Interior Minister Matteo Salvini that, if approved by the upper house, would toughen sanctions on NGO ships seeking to enter Italian ports with rescued refugees and migrants without authorization. The new measures would amend an emergency decree introduced in June, increasing the maximum penalty for ships that enter Italian waters without permission from €50,000 to €1 million and sanctioning the arrest of captains who ignore orders to stay away. Last week, UN human rights experts expressed concern about criminal proceedings in Italy against German charity ship captain Carola Rackete and warned that “rushed legislative measures have the potential to seriously undermine the human rights of migrants”. | | |
| Nightmare in Idlib getting worse, says UN. Commenting on attacks on southern Idlib province in northwest Syria that killed at least 59 civilians on Monday, the UN’s deputy regional humanitarian coordinator for Syria, Mark Cutts, said “the nightmare in Idlib is getting worse”. He said Monday’s attacks were “part of a wave of new attacks on civilian infrastructure” across the region in recent months which have so far resulted in 400 civilian deaths, including 90 children. In a statement on Wednesday, Save the Children said this week had been the deadliest since fighting in northwest Syria started escalating at the end of April. The charity noted that more children had been killed in Idlib in the last four weeks than in all of 2018. | | |
| Colombia’s newly displaced face hunger and criminal gangs in slums. Despite a landmark 2016 peace deal between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), people in Colombia’s rural areas are continuing to flee violence from other armed groups. Some 40,000 people were newly displaced in the first quarter of 2019 alone, according to the UN. The New Humanitarian reports from one of the illegal settlements on the edge of a city where many newly displaced families end up. Soacha Alta is overrun by criminal gangs who recruit vulnerable children to smuggle drugs to neighbouring areas. UNHCR is advocating with the government to redefine such communities as legal residential areas that qualify for the provision of basic services. | | |
| DR Congo violence interrupting return process says UN envoy. Violence and disease have displaced hundreds of thousands of people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and new clashes are stopping displaced civilians from returning home , Leila Zerrougui, the UN Secretary-General’s special representative for the DRC, told the Security Council on Wednesday. Zerrougui, who is also head of MONUSCO, the UN’s peacekeeping force in the country, described “simultaneous emergency situations” including outbreaks of Ebola and measles and the violent clashes between Lendu farmers and Hema herders in northeast Ituri province that have forced more than 350,000 people from their homes since early June. She said the deterioration of the security situation was interrupting the return process that had gradually been taking place since 2018. | | |
| The small US city that has welcomed refugees, and their cooking. Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which is best known for its Amish and Mennonite communities, has become a hub of culinary diversity thanks to an increasing number of restaurants and food businesses run by refugees and immigrants. The New York Times reports that locals have embraced the chance to try Nepalese soup, Vietnamese noodles and other foods that are a far cry from traditional Pennsylvania Dutch cooking. Inclusiveness has a long history in the city of about 60,000 which in 2017 reportedly took in more refugees per capita than any other in the United States. | | |
| The International Olympic Committee is creating another Refugee Olympic Team to compete in the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo and Yonas Kinde, a runner from Ethiopia, is one of 37 refugee athletes hoping to be selected to join a final team of 10 to 15. | | |
The number of people arriving to Italy by sea has dropped from nearly 120,000 in 2017 to 23,000 in 2018 to 3,400 so far this year.
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