| Aquarius passengers land in Malta after long wait at sea. A patrol boat brought 58 refugees and migrants to Malta on Sunday after days of waiting for the seas to calm so they could be transferred from an NGO rescue ship, the Aquarius. The group, who were rescued more than a week ago off the coast of Libya, includes seven families and 18 children as well as a dog. France, Germany, Portugal and Spain said last Tuesday that they would each take in some of the refugees. In a statement on Sunday, UNHCR said it was grateful to the four countries, as well as Malta, for showing “leadership and solidarity”, but urged EU member states to quickly establish more predictable arrangements for disembarking people rescued at sea and warned that the dramatic reduction in search-and-rescue capacity in the Central Mediterranean was putting lives at risk. | | |
| NGOs in Jordan call for greater responsibility-sharing for refugees. Sixty-one international NGOs belonging to the Jordan INGO Forum (JIF) issued a statement today calling on both the international community and the Jordanian government to follow through on commitments made to refugees through the Jordan Compact. Three years after the Compact was signed, “the promise to invest in refugees to boost economic development and opportunities in Jordan has not been met,” said Stef Deutekom, a JIF representative at the UN General Assembly. JIF is calling on the Jordanian government to open more sectors of the labour market to Syrian refugees and for donors to shoulder their responsibilities towards host countries like Jordan. On Friday, Germany announced a donation of US$135 million to UNHCR to help plug a shortfall in funds to support refugees in Jordan and Lebanon. In a speech to the UN General Assembly, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said other countries also needed to step up. Last month, UNHCR said US$270 million was urgently needed to continue supporting vulnerable Syrian refugees and internally displaced people until the end of this year. | | |
| UNHCR chief calls for non-political approach to refugee crises. In his opening statement to the annual meeting of UNHCR’s Executive Committee, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi commended neighbouring countries that have kept their borders open to refugees and called on other, mainly richer, countries to reverse the trend of rolling back the right to asylum. “Today, when I engage with the leaders of countries neighbouring those in crisis, how am I to tell them to take more people, when some in richer countries are discussing how to close their doors?” he said. Highlighting new and continuing displacement crises originating in Syria, Libya, Myanmar and Venezuela, Grandi emphasized “the crucial importance of international cooperation” and described the soon-to-be-adopted global compact on refugees as “a powerful expression of multilateralism in today’s fragmented world”. | | |
| Five people die in shipwreck off Turkish coast. Turkey’s state-run news agency reports that a boat carrying refugees and migrants capsized off Turkey’s northern Aegean coast during a powerful storm on Sunday, killing at least five people. It was not immediately clear how many people were on the vessel. The storm also brought torrential rain to parts of Greece, including the island of Lesvos, where hundreds of women and children were temporarily moved from tents in and around Moria reception centre to an indoor playground, according to Médecins Sans Frontières. | | |
| Conflict pushes more than six million South Sudanese into hunger. “Relentless conflict” in South Sudan pushed 6.1 million people – nearly 60 per cent of the population – into extreme hunger at the peak of this year’s lean season in July and August. Only the large-scale delivery of aid prevented an even more devastating outcome, according to a report released on Friday. In response to the report’s findings, the World Food Programme, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) called for a sustainable peace across the country and unhindered access for aid workers. | | |
| Teaching refugees about sex and consent in Sweden. In this video for the New York Times, David Saleh, who arrived in Sweden from Iraq 20 years ago, is filmed teaching a class of refugee men and women how to navigate gender politics and sexual relationships in their new country. The classes are designed to help refugees integrate into Swedish society. David covers topics that, as one Syrian woman put it, are “kind of mysterious in our country” such as sexual harassment, sexual consent, gay marriage and Swedish divorce law. “Especially Muslim women, they will be happy when they see me – I’m a man, I’m from the Middle East, but I’m speaking about women’s rights,” says Saleh. | | |
| A partnership between UNHCR, the IKEA Foundation and Ethiopian authorities has brought a system of irrigation canals to a remote community in eastern Ethiopia, enabling thousands of Somali refugees and local residents to turn parched desert into valuable agricultural land. | | |
In 2017, NGO ships rescued over 46,000 people in the Central Mediterranean, according to the Italian Coast Guard.
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From 2012 to 2016, 44% of all people killed in motor vehicle crashes on Halloween night (6 p.m. October 31 – 5:59 a.m. November 1) were in crashes involving a drunk driver.
