The Refugee Brief, 28 February 2020
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Battle rages over strategic Syrian town as "humanitarian catastrophe" unfolds. Renewed air strikes hit residential areas of Idlib city on Thursday, according to witnesses, while fighting raged in the crossroads town of Saraqeb. The UN Special Envoy for Syria, Najat Rochdi, said the military escalation in north-west Syria was having "catastrophic" humanitarian consequences with air strikes and shelling killing at least 134 civilians, including 44 children, in February alone. Briefing the Security Council on Thursday, the UN's deputy relief chief, Ursula Mueller, said a group of Syrian women humanitarian workers in Idlib and northern Aleppo she spoke to last week told her the situation was "beyond imagination" with some children too traumatized to speak and pregnant women requesting caesarean deliveries out of fear of giving birth while on the move. Mueller noted that hospitals, schools and camps where displaced families are sheltering have not escaped the violence. UNICEF executive director Henrietta Fore reiterated calls for a cessation of hostilities, adding that "regular humanitarian pauses" were needed in the meantime to allow civilians to move to safely and aid workers to reach them.
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"Massive humanitarian needs" as more people forced to flee DR Congo's Ituri. Fighting between the military and armed groups in addition to intercommunal violence has forced more than 100,000 people to flee their homes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's eastern Ituri province since the start of the year. The Norwegian Refugee Council said on Thursday that displaced people now make up more than half the population in some villages, while at displacement sites people are collecting palm branches to use for shelter and there have been reports of children dying from malnutrition. Dozens of schools and hospitals have also come under attack. The UN estimates that over a third of Ituri's population is now dependent on humanitarian aid, while more than half a million are internally displaced and tens of thousands more have taken refuge in neighbouring Uganda. Earlier this month, UNHCR warned that only four per cent of US$150 million needed to respond to the needs of refugees and internally displaced people in DRC this year had so far been received.
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Colombia committed to helping Venezuelan refugees, but can't do it alone. In an op-ed for the Washington Post, Colombian President Iván Duque writes that Colombia is on the frontlines of "a migrant and refugee crisis as great as any other in the world today". Some 1.7 million Venezuelans are now living in Colombia, and more arrive every day. The cost of providing them with humanitarian support has put considerable strain on Colombian resources, said Duque who called for greater support from the international community. Vice News reports from one of the makeshift settlements on the outskirts of the border city of Cucuta, where destitute Venezuelans have built their own shacks on steep hillsides. While food vouchers from the World Food Programme and local soup kitchens have provided a means of survival, life in such settlements remains a daily struggle. |
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Displaced children in Iraq "deprived of education and opportunities", says UN rights expert. The UN special rapporteur on the rights of internally displaced people (IDPs) on Thursday urged Iraq to redouble its efforts to assist the country's remaining 1.5 million IDPs, particularly children who were missing out on education. At the end of a visit to the country, Cecilia Jimenez-Damary said there were numerous obstacles to the government's plans to return all IDPs home by the end of the year, including destroyed housing, land mines and the lack of livelihood opportunities. "IDPs have the right to decide whether they will return home," she said. Jimenez-Damary also expressed concern about the difficulties IDPs face obtaining the documentation they need to access schools, health care and other social services and the discrimination faced by families perceived as affiliated to ISIL. |
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Asylum-seekers in UK waiting longer for decisions. The Independent reports that the number of asylum-seekers in the UK waiting longer than six months for their claims to be decided rose by 76 per cent last year. Government figures released this week showed that more than half of asylum-seekers now wait longer six months for a decision. While waiting, they're barred from working and are reliant on £5.39 (US$6.93) a day in asylum support. Under a bill brought forward in parliament earlier this month, asylum-seekers who have waited more than six months for a decision would be given the right to work. The government figures also showed that more than half of people who applied for asylum in the UK last year were granted protection, up from a third the year before. |
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Refugees and locals come together to build a school in Uganda. The East African reports from Adjumani district in Uganda's west Nile region, which is home to 18 refugee settlements hosting over 200,000 refugees from South Sudan. Until late 2017, local and refugee children were forced to end their education after completing primary school because of the lack of secondary schools in the area. The host and refugee communities agreed to work together to start their own secondary school, at first running a few classes at a church and eventually building a school on donated land with UNHCR paying teachers' salaries. The Ugandan government is now covering the cost of additional buildings as enrolment reaches 1,000 students this year. |
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Yonas Kinde, a refugee from Ethiopia, is preparing to take part in the Tokyo Marathon on Sunday after being invited by organizers to run in the elite division of the race. Kinde participated in the Olympic Games Rio 2016 as a member of the first-ever Refugee Olympic Team and he's hoping to return to Japan this summer as a member of the 2020 Refugee Olympic Team. |
Nearly a quarter of the population of north-west Syria have been displaced in the last three months. |
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