The Refugee Brief, 23 October 2019
| | Over 300,000 displaced this year by drought and conflict in Somalia. A total of 302,000 Somalis were forced from their homes between January and September this year, according to a UNHCR-led project that monitors displacements in the country. Conflict and insecurity accounted for more than half of the displacements (158,000), while drought pushed another 126,000 people to move. According to the Norwegian Refugee Council, insecurity has made it virtually impossible for aid groups to reach rural areas, forcing people to move to overcrowded camps in urban areas to get assistance. The highest number of displacements were recorded in July, at the end of a poor harvest season. UNHCR warned recently that conflict and climate-change are combining to drive displacement in many parts of the world, including Somalia. |
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Schools become shelters for fleeing families in north-east Syria. Two weeks of fighting in north-east Syria have displaced over 176,000 people, according to the UN, which on Tuesday said that "humanitarian needs continue to grow". While around 7,100 people have crossed into Iraq, most of the displaced have fled to towns in Al-Hassekeh and Ar-Raqqa governorates, where schools have been converted into collective shelters. Many of the families staying in crowded classrooms have been displaced multiple times during Syria's eight-year-old conflict. With temperatures expected to drop sharply by next month and shelters already full, aid workers are worried about what will happen if the violence resumes as a five-day ceasefire was due to end on Tuesday night. |
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Child killed in collision with Greek coast guard vessel. The body of a three-year-old Syrian boy has been recovered following a collision in the early hours of this morning between a rubber dinghy carrying 34 people and a Greek coastguard vessel near the Aegean island of Kos. The dinghy capsized, throwing all its passengers into the water. Thirty-two people have been rescued, and search-and-rescue efforts are underway to find one man who is still missing. Six people who were injured in the incident were transferred to hospital in Kos. |
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High-level conference to call for action on Venezuela's displacement crisis. A high-level conference will be held in Brussels next week to mobilize more international support for Venezuelan refugees and migrants and the Latin American countries hosting most of them. Nearly 80 per cent of the approximately 4.5 million Venezuelans who have left their country remain in Latin America or the Caribbean, where the capacity and resources of national authorities and local communities are now reaching breaking point, according to UNHCR. The European Union is co-hosting the conference together with UNHCR and IOM. |
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Age disputes have "devastating impact" on unaccompanied children in UK. Disputes over the age of separated or unaccompanied asylum-seeking children arriving in the UK are having a "devastating impact", UNHCR has warned. A new assessment by the UN refugee agency found that children whose ages were in dispute faced delays accessing services, including education, and were liable to be placed in accommodation with adults, at a risk to their safety. The assessment identified numerous cases where asylum-seekers initially judged to be adults were later found to be children as young as 15. The report was one of three released by UNHCR this week aimed at assessing systems for receiving and supporting unaccompanied child refugees and asylum-seekers in the UK. |
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At the age of 15, Farouk fled Afghanistan and travelled overland through 10 countries before winding up in Italy. He was sleeping rough near Italy's border with France when UNHCR staff found him and helped him reunite with his brother and sister in the UK, where he's now training to be a plumber. |
So far this year, over 28 per cent of those arriving in Europe via the Mediterranean have been children. Many of them travelled without other family members. |
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