The Refugee Brief, 29 January 2020
| | Rohingya refugee children to get formal education in Bangladesh. The government of Bangladesh announced on Tuesday that Rohingya children living in refugee camps will be allowed to receive a formal education up to the age of 14 using the Myanmar curriculum. Older children are to receive skills training. Previously, refugee children have been barred from using either the Bangladesh or Myanmar curriculums and received only informal education at temporary learning centres. "We don't want a lost generation of Rohingya. We want them to have an education," Foreign Minister A K Abdul Momen told AFP. A pilot programme involving 10,000 children is to launch soon, led by UNICEF and the government. The move has been widely welcomed by the UN and rights groups, which have been warning of the risks of a "lost generation" and campaigning for the rights of Rohingya children to a quality education.
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Dozens believed dead after militant attack in Burkina Faso. Thirty-nine people were killed on Saturday in an attack on a village market in northern Burkina Faso, according to the government. The latest violence in the village of Silgadji, in Soum province, followed less than a week after militants killed 36 civilians in a neighbouring province. During Saturday's attack, militants reportedly surrounded the village market before executing the men and ordering the women to leave. The number of people displaced by Burkina Faso's worsening violence increased tenfold last year to over 560,000. The number could rise to 900,000 by April, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council, whose Secretary General, Jan Egeland, is visiting the country this week. In a statement on Tuesday, he said military engagement alone was failing to protect vulnerable communities and that more donor support is urgently needed to prevent a growing hunger crisis. Reuters reports from the town of Pissila, which used to be a quiet farming town but is now sheltering 30,000 displaced people, straining resources and leaving authorities struggling to cope. |
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Rescue boats dock in Italy and Malta. The Ocean Viking rescue ship, which was carrying over 400 people rescued in the Central Mediterranean over the weekend, was allowed to dock in Taranto, Italy, this morning. An Italian interior ministry source told Reuters that Germany and France would take in some of the Ocean Viking's passengers, who include 149 minors. Another NGO rescue vessel, the Alan Kurdi, was told it could disembark its 77 rescued passengers in Malta. Meanwhile, the Open Arms, reportedly the only NGO boat left in the area, rescued 237 people from three boats on Tuesday. The UN has repeatedly called on EU States to develop a predictable system for quickly disembarking people rescued from the Mediterranean. |
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Hungary border patrol fires warning shots to stop crossings. Hungarian border guards on Tuesday fired warning shots to deter a group of about 60 people who were trying to force their way through a checkpoint on the border with Serbia. No one was wounded in the incident, which took place at the Roszke/Horgos border crossing. Five among the group who managed to enter Hungary were intercepted by police. A government official said there had been a sharp rise in attempts to cross Hungary's southern borders, with 3,400 attempts made so far this month, compared to several hundred a month last year. Some refugees and migrants have alleged being beaten by Hungarian police during attempts to cross the border before being sent back to Serbia. |
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UN envoy calls for de-escalation as Yemen fighting surges. The UN Special Envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, told an emergency session of the Security Council on Tuesday that a recent escalation in violence following weeks of relative calm had to end "before it's too late". The renewed violence has reportedly caused hundreds of casualties since it erupted almost two weeks ago. Clashes between the warring factions are focused in three main areas: Nehm, close to Sana'a; Jawf, a mountainous district in the north; and the western province of Marib. Griffiths warned that the escalation threatened to jeopardize progress that had been made on a fragile peace process. |
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The plants that make refugee camps feel more like home. The New Yorker profiles Dutch photographer Henk Wildschut, who has visited refugee camps and settlements around the world and documented the green spaces that many refugees cultivate, even in the most unpromising patches of land, and regardless of how long they expect to stay. "The gardens allow these people to quite literally put down roots," said Wildschut. "They are a symbol that says, 'I belong here, at least for a short while.'" Most of the refugee gardeners he met grew plants, not for food, but for pleasure and as a way of demarcating the perimeters of the small yards in front of their shelters. Some refugees make a living selling plants while others pass cuttings from neighbour to neighbour. |
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This poignant stop-animation video was created by the Families Together Coalition, which UNHCR co-chairs, to raise awareness about the impact of the UK's restrictive rules on refugee reunion that prevent child refugees who arrive in the UK alone from bringing any relatives to join them, including parents. |
Of nearly half a million Rohingya children living in Bangladesh's refugee camps, some 192,000 aged between 4 and 14 attend informal learning centres. Meanwhile, 97 per cent of children aged 15 to 18 currently have no access to education. |
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