GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Four bodies were found and other people are known to have drowned, says the UN refugee agency UNHCR in Geneva, after the Moroccan Royal Navy guard rescued 53 people from a boat that sank off the coast near Dar Kabdani.
The vessel was carrying more than 60 people and included several pregnant women and children under age 10. UNHCR staff identified two of the bodies, a Congolese woman and her daughter, both of whom were registered refugees.
The rescue was just one of several in the region last week, reports the UNHCR. “The Libyan coast guard has reported that up to four hundred people were rescued from boats off the Libyan coast in recent days. It now seems that migrants and refugees are once again attempting to use Libya as a transit route to Europe. In years gone past it was rare to see boats attempting to make the perilous crossing during the winter.”
Two sailing boats with about 80 people of different nationalities, mostly Afghans, were rescued by the Italian coastguard on Monday after a week at sea. The boats had left from Greece. The people on board were dehydrated and had no food and water left.
A boat with 44 people, many reportedly Somali, that left from the Libyan coast over the weekend was rescued by the Maltese Armed Forces overnight.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Canton Valais police raided the Visp asylum centre Monday and found 156 grams of cocaine, several hundred grams of marijuana, a fake CHF200 bill and CHF1,500 in cash.
Five people were arrested; a 20-year-old Gambian for drug abuse, a 22year-old from Equatorial Guinea for being in Switzerland illegally, two Nigerians ages 21 and 36 for drug abuse and a fifth person whose nationality was not made public, but who was sent to France for being in Switzerland illegally.
Three individuals who are being housed at other Swiss asylum centres have been banned from the Visp centre.
Monday’s raid, which is designed to limit drugs in canton Valais, comes just as the ODEA (Observatoire romand du droit d’asile et des étrangers) publishes a report on Switzerland’s immigration and asylum policy, suggesting the country may be crossing the line into illegality in its efforts to reduce illegal immigrants.
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – Switzerland, with a foreign population that is 24 percent of the total, is grappling with the extremes they bring: what some consider undesirable foreigners, on the one hand, and on the other hand those who help finance a more comfortable life for their communes. Most, of course, sit somewhere in the middle, attracting less attention.
Initiative “against mass immigration” needs 100,000 signatures to call for a vote
Switzerland has a surprising mix of foreigners (photo: Ellen Wallace)
Issues related to foreigners, which the right-wing UDC/SVP People’s Party have invoked for several public referendums, were in the limelight in July 2011 when the party deposited its next initiative with the federal chancellery, a vote “Against massive immigration”.
The party was widely said outside Switzerland to be heading for a record number of votes in October parliamentary elections, but it in fact lost several key seats and its numbers in parliament have fallen.
It has until January 2013 to collect enough signatures to take the initiative to the polls.
In theory, immigration is an issue covering workers given permits to live in the country, but critics of the UDC have argued that anti-immigration referendums lump together all foreigners and provoke anti-foreigner and racist hysteria. Le Temps in July described the poster linked to the initiative as using “menacing silhouettes” and argued to that is “designed to provoke an anti-foreign paranoia”, which then party-boss Tony Brunner from St Gallen (defeated in a run-off vote in November) disputed.
Foreign, living in Switzerland and rich
Bilan magazine’s 2011 list of Switzerland’s richest people, published this week, shows a hefty percentage of foreigners whose tax residence is Switzerland. Many of them live in communes where they have been granted lump-sum tax arrangements, which can considerably reduce income taxes for the rest of the commune. The list has 300 persons, but the magazine notes that if just the two main criteria (Swiss or tax residence here; assets of at least CHF100 million) are considered, there probably more than 1,000 people who could be included.
The not-entirely Swiss group includes newcomer Jim Ratcliffe, British, who brought his company Ineos to Rolle in canton Vaud (and threw his financial support behind the Lausanne Hockey Club), Glencore executives Daniel Maté, Spanish, Aristotelis Mistakidis, Greek and Tor Peterson, American, as well as their South African CEO, Ivan Glasenberg.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The UN refugee organization, UNHCR, says supplies from several organizations, including its own, are now flowing into the region in Turkey hit by an earthquake 10 days ago. The UNHCR says that government officials now say 600 people died and 4,000 are injured as a result of the earthquake. “The city of Van alone, near the epi-centre, has a population of some 400,000 people and many homes have been reduced to rubble or rendered unusable,” says the Geneva-based group.
The city’s population includes some 2,000 refugees and asylum seekers were living in the area when the quake struck, most of them citizens of Iran or Afghanistan.
Tunisians fleeing Libya early in 2011: the Arab Spring events were not the driving force behind the growing number of asylum seekers in 2011 (photo, UNHCR)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The number of asylum seekers worldwide increased by 17 percent, the UN refugee group UNHCR announced Tuesday. Applications to industrialized countries numbered 198,300 from 1 January to 30 June 2011, with “most claimants coming from countries with longstanding displacement situations.”
The figures are part of report issued 18 October by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees office, “Asylum Levels and Trends in Industrialized Countries, First Half 2011″. The group notes that applications usually peak in the second half of a year and it expects that the final tally may be the highest in eight years: 420,000.
The report does not show how many applications translate into the granting of asylum, in other words refugee status.
The floodgates have not been opened by the Arab Spring events, with neighbouring countries accepting most of the refugees who have fled conflict in northern Africa. Rather,
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR, will be recommending to states that they end Rwandan refugee status as of 31 December, with the change taking effect in July 2012.
The move is one of the clearest signs to date of the normalization of Rwanda’s political and economic situation. A 1990 civil war was followed by the 1994 genocide that killed between half a million and a million people (estimates vary)). Only some 10,000 of the 115,000 refugees from Rwanda have returned home, despite a growing economy with coffee, tea and tourism in particular booming.
The UNHCR made the announcement jointly with the Rwanda government 7 October, with the two noting that they have “agreed that a meeting of all relevant States and other actors will be organized in December this year with a view to achieving increased voluntary repatriation and securing greater opportunities for local integration or alternative legal status for Rwandan refugees in countries of asylum. The cessation of refugee status is one of the components of this strategy.”
Special envoy Joli can help draw attention to “some of the world’s most difficult refugee situations”
UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie at the annual meeting of the refugee agency's governing body.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Actress Angelina Jolie was asked Tuesday 4 October by the head of the UN refugee organization UNHCR to take on a new role as special envoy, in the wake of several new emergency refugee situations this year.
The invitation was extended by High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres, who recognized her 10 years of service with the agency by asking her to take on an expanded role in some of the world’s most difficult refugee situations.
His request came just as news reports began to flow in of a bomb blast in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. Seventy people were reportedly killed and 150 injured, according to Somalia’s President Sharif Sheikh Ahmedhe.
Al-Shabab, which is fighting the government, took responsibility for the suicide bomb. The news is the latest evidence of the rising level of violence in the country, from which people are fleeing in growing numbers.
The Dabaad camps in Kenya, across the border from Somalia, now have nearly half a million people, with 1,000 arriving daily. Some 200,000 Somalis have fled to these camps in the past four months.
UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie at the annual meeting of the refugee agency's governing body.
Jolie is in Geneva for the annual meeting of UNHCR’s executive committee, which oversees funding for the organization and its projects.
She has become one of the best-known goodwill ambassadors for a UN agency, through her regular and frequent visits, on average four a year, to refugee camps around the world, including some in very remote regions. She took on the ambassadorial role in August 2001.
“Today, three-quarters of a million people are at risk of death in the next four months in the Horn of Africa,” she told the executive committee. “The work we are doing needs to scale up to meet the needs of these individuals. How we continue to respond to this period of malnutrition and famine is going to define the work of those NGOs, governments, and international organizations working in the Horn of Africa. It will, quite starkly, determine whether a huge number of people live or die.”
Monday Jolie shared the spotlight with Nasser Salim Ali Al-Hamairy, founder of Yemen’s Society for Humanitarian Solidarity: she co-presented with Guterres the 2011 Nansen Refugee Award, given to the SHS. The prize, widely considered the refugee world’s highest honour, was awarded to the founder and the 290 staff of SHS, a non-governmental organization, for their life-saving work in helping thousands of refugees and migrants who arrive on Yemen’s shores each year.
The staff comb the Yemeni coastline year round, pulling people from the sea and helping them find safety and assistance.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The Ikea Foundation has donated $62 million to the UN refugee camp in Dadaab, Kenya, working with the UNHCR. The camp, which is a focal point for Somalians fleeing fighting, drought and famine, now hosts 440,000 refugees from Somalia, 152,000 of whom have arrived this year.
“The donation, which will be staggered over three years, is the largest private donation that the UN refugee agency has received in its 60-year history, and the first time that a private body has chosen to directly support a major refugee complex. UNHCR is working with the staff of the Foundation on the development of a detailed submission for how these funds will be used, but in the short-term the immediate focus will be helping the needs of up to recently arrived 120,000 refugees, with a particular focus on refugee families and children,” the UNHCR says.
Europe, with only 29 percent of world’s refugee applications, called on to do more
Update 11:30, latest Somalia figures GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – UNHCR, the Geneva-based refugee organization, barely has time to observe its own birthday, which is in itself a comment on the state of refugee affairs in the world today.The UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees is an international treaty created after the second world war to resolve Europe’s refugee problem. It was adopted 28 July 1951.
“This global treaty provides a definition of who qualifies as a refugee – a person with a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion – and spells out the rights and obligations between host countries and refugees. As the legal foundation on which UNHCR’s work is based, it has enabled the agency to help millions of uprooted people to restart their lives in the last 60 years,” the group notes in an anniversary statement issued Thursday.
Libya’s million, Somalia’s 800,000
Africa has seen a surge in refugees in 2011, with the fighting linked to the demise of several dictatorships. Libya alone has created one million refugees. Somalia is the latest crisis-riddled country to create a massive outflow, with years-long fighting now couple with the worst drought in half a century that has now created a severe famine. More than 800,000 Somali refugees now live outside their country, with the vast majority in the region:
| COUNTRY OF ASYLUM | TOTAL NUMBER |
| Kenya |
351,773 |
| Ethiopia |
81,247 |
| Djibouti |
14,216 |
| Yemen |
180,341 |
| Others |
17,306 |
| Total |
644,883 |
Nearly 1.5 million more Somalis are internally displaced, mostly in the south-central region of the country. More than 100,000 of them have been displaced inside Somalia so far this year.
80% of world’s refugees flee to neighbouring developing countries
Somalia refugees were already fleeing their country in July 2009, before fighting was coupled with famine (photo ©2011 UNHCR / E Hockstein)
Somalia’s refugees now number some 450,000 in neighbouring countries Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti, and the numbers are growing daily, says the UNHCR. Tunisia and Egypt have “received the bulk of the exodus from Libya” says the organization, which underscores that four-fifths of the world’s refugees are in developing countries.
Europe, by contrast, received 243,000 refugee applications in 2010, 29 percent of the world’s total. Antonio Guterres, the High Commissioner for Refugees, says that “at present, a truly common system remains elusive, as significant differences persist among Member States in their reception and treatment of asylum-seekers. The 60th anniversary of the Refugee Convention, we hope, will give impetus to the establishment of a true Common European Asylum System. Europe could also do more to resettle refugees,” referring to the process through which refugees in one country, usually in the developing world, are permanently relocated to new countries, usually in the developed world.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The gap is widening, between the number of refugees in the world who need somewhere to go and the number of places countries are offering them, the UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) in Geneva says. The Geneva-based organization presented more than 108,000 refugees for settlement in 2010 and some 73,000 were resettled with UNHCR assistance.
US accepts far more refugees than any other country
Government figures show 22 countries admitting 98,000 people in total, with or without UNHCR assistance, of which the US accepted the largest number by far, more than 71,000 people.
Wei-Meng Lim-Kabaa, head of UNHCR’s resettlement service, told a group Monday 4 July at the opening of the Annual Tripartite Consultations on Resettlement that “if states do not come forward with more places, almost 100,000 vulnerable refugees in need of resettlement will remain without any solution this year. It is of paramount importance to understand that these people have no alternative solution and failure to resettle them means these people remain in an agonizing limbo.”
The UNHCR estimates that “currently, 80,000 resettlement places are available each year.It is estimated that 780,000 refugees will be in need of resettlement as a solution over the next three to five years, of whom, 172,000 will be prioritized for 2012.”
The shortage is worsened by problems with a drop in departures for those accepted for resettlement “due to stringent security checks and
various challenges resettlement countries face in managing their resettlement pipelines.”
Middle East massive displacements call for countries to look beyond their quotas
The massive displacements caused by violence in the Middle East, particularly the exodus of over one million people from Libya, calls for a special effort, the Geneva group says, asking that countries accept more than their quotas to help ease the emergency.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Muammar Qadaffi is back in the headlines, with the International Criminal Court in the Hague issuing an arrest warrant for him on charges of crimes against humanity, Monday 27 June, and US Senator Mike Turner sparking debate by telling Foreign Policy magazine that Nato is trying to kill the Libyan leader. South African leader Jacob Zuma has objected strongly, reports allAfrica: “The intention of the United Nations Security Council authorizing military action against Libya was ‘to protect the Libyan people’ and ‘not to authorize a campaign for regime change or political assassination,’ President Jacob Zuma of South Africa has told fellow members of an African Union panel on Libya.”
Geneva-based IOM (International Organization for Migration) reports that while 44,000 Chadians have managed to flee Libya since the fighting began, scores are currently stranded in the desert after six weeks, with little access to food or water and an emergency effort to try to get supplies to them got underway Tuesday 28 June.
“Thousands of stranded migrants, including large numbers of women and children, are in desperate need of immediate food, water, shelter and medical assistance after having spent many weeks living in the open in the southern Libyan desert, an IOM assessment team has found as the Organization looks into ways to evacuate them to safety. So far, more than 2,000 Chadian migrants have been discovered by IOM in Gatroun and Sebha, though these figures could grow as the team continues with its assessment in the area.”
The head of the assessment team says that conditions for the group “are brutal in the desert heat with no protection from the sun, wind or sand and no access to water, food or sanitation.”
Unusually large numbers of women and children, elderly signals long-time labourers fleeing
An ailing 85-year-old surrounded by her family in a camp for people displaced by floods in Balochistan, Pakistan. The elderly are especially vulnerable to water-borne diseases associated with flooding (photo, ©2011 UNHCR / D Khan, September 2010)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The numbers alone are daunting: 43.7 million displaced persons worldwide, of which 15.4m are refugees, 27.5m are internally displaced refugees and nearly 850,000 are asylum seekers, with one-fifth of asylum seekers in South Africa alone.
The world’s 49 least developed countries hosted some 2 million refugees last year.
Just under 100,000 refugees were admitted for resettlement in 2010, by 22 countries. The United States accounted for 71,000 of these.
The figures are part of the “UNHCR Global Trends 2010″ (2.7 MB pdf) published 20 June to mark World Refugees Day.
The numbers don’t yet include refugees from 2011 conflicts in Cote d’Ivoire, Syria and Libya, among others.
The imbalance in how the world supports refugees, or people who are forcibly displaced, is equally stark and marks this year’s report, says the UN High Commissioner for Refugees agency, based in Geneva: “Pakistan, Iran, and Syria have the largest refugee populations at 1.9 million, 1.1 million, and 1 million respectively. Pakistan also has the biggest economic impact with 710 refugees for each dollar of its per capita GDP (PPP) followed by Democratic Republic of the Congo and Kenya with 475 and 247 refugees respectively. By comparison Germany, the industrialized country with the largest refugee population (594,000 people), has 17 refugees for each dollar of per capita GDP.”
Click on charts to view larger
Drawn-out wars taking their toll
Roughly one-quarter of the 15.4m refugees are registered with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. The UNHCR says that of those under its care, 7.2m or about one-third, have been stuck in a refugee situation for more than five years, mainly due to drawn-out wars.
Within view of the Itombwe Massif, a convoy of UNHCR trucks carries Burundian refugees home after years of exile in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (photo, ©2011 UNHCR / M Hofer, December 2010)
The figure is the highest since 2001 and at the same time the lowest number since 1990 have been able to return home, fewer than 200,000.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, comments bluntly that “Fears about supposed floods of refugees in industrialized countries are being vastly overblown or mistakenly conflated with issues of migration. Meanwhile it’s poorer countries that are left having to pick up the burden.”
Some people have been refugees for up to 30 years, with Afghanistan a notable case in point. Afghans were one-third of the world’s refugees in 2001, as they were a decade later, at the start of 2011.
60th anniversary for UNHCR shows dramatic changes
A woman returns to the ruins of her home after violence strikes southern Kyrgyzstan (photo, ©2011 UNHCR / S Schulman, June 2010)
The UNHCR will celebrate the 60th anniversary of its founding in July 2011 and the report notes that the picture today is “of a dratically changed protection environment”. The organization’s early “caseload was 2.1 million Europeans, uprooted by World War Two. Today, UNHCR’s work extends to more than 120 countries and encompasses people forced to flee across borders as well as those in flight within their own countries.”
Two relatively recent developments have been the huge growth in numbers of internally displaced persons and the growing number of stateless persons, or “people lacking the basic safety-net of a nationality”, says the Geneva group, which plans to highlight this group during 2011.
“The number of countries reporting stateless populations has increased steadily since 2004, but differences in definitions and methodologies still prevent reliable measurement of the problem. In 2010, the reported number of stateless people (3.5 million) was nearly half of that in 2009, but mainly due to methodological changes in some countries that supply data. Unofficial estimates put the global number closer to 12 million.”
Actress Angelina Jolie to help tell individual stories for 60th anniversary
The UNHCR’s Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie is helping draw attention to refugees’ stories in a series of videos, including one released 18 June of her visit to Syrian refugees in Turkey. The videos are part of the organization’s efforts to draw attention to refugees by recounting individuals’ stories.
Details of drama gradually coming to light, Europe may see more refugees
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - A boat carrying 600 people fleeing Libya foundered shortly after leaving the country’s capital Friday 6 May and the number of people lost is still unknown, according to UNHCR‘s (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) chief spokesperson, Melissa Fleming. Almost 2,400 people, including many women and children, arrived on five boats at the Italian islands of Lampedusa and Linosa the weekend of 7-8 May. The IOM (International Organization for Migration) has also been monitoring the situation closely, and the two Geneva-based humanitarian agencies say details remain murky for now.
Survivors and family members reported to UNHCR before Friday’s disaster that other vessels fleeing Libya have been running into problems, and there are as many as 800 people unaccounted for.
Europe is new goal for those desperate enough to escape by sea
Since the Libyan crisis started, Europe has received fewer than 2 percent of those escaping the conflict, with most people escaping to Egypt and Tunisia, but this latest in the long string of unsafe sea crossings highlights a shift – an increasing number of people risking the dangerous journey by sea.
More than 11,000 migrants of various nationalities have arrived in Italy from Libya since the crisis started in mid-February.
“All five boats needed rescuing by the Italian coastguard and maritime police, with one boat running aground close to the Lampedusa shore. Yesterday three bodies washed ashore, thought to have been passengers from the boat that ran aground,” says Fleming.
Migrants who witnessed the accident Friday and who were waiting on land changed their minds about getting to Italy by sea, but Libyan soldiers and officials fired their guns indirectly to force them onto a waiting boat, the IOM reports.
The vessels used by people fleeing Libya are often not seaworthy and overloaded. UNHCR first appealed in early April to European countries to establish more reliable and effective mechanisms for sea rescue.
“We reiterate that call today,” Fleming says. The UNHCR is also calling for all Mediterranean shipmasters to provide aid to people in distress. “UNHCR urges states, commercial shipping companies and others present in the Mediterranean to consider that all boats leaving Libya for Europe are likely to require assistance.”
The IOM hopes to continue evacuating migrants from Misrata to help prevent more disasters. With funding from the Australian, British, German, Irish and US governments, and the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid and Civilian Protection Office, the IOM says it has already evacuated more than 6,000 people from Misrata to Benghazi.
ICRC has started clearing unexploded munitions around Libyan cities; reports of children injured
Misrata, Libya evacuations led by the IOM: six shiploads have carried out civilians, but refugees are also fleeing overland, across the desert (©2011 IOM)
Update 14:55 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A disturbing new picture is emerging of the desperate straits of those fleeing Libya overland to Chad, says the IOM (International Organization for Migration).
The Geneva-based organization in its latest media update, 6 May, on efforts to evacuate civilians from the strife-torn country, says that five people have died after arriving in Faya, in northern Chad and some 100 are hospitalized.
“The temperature here in the Sahara is above 50 degrees centigrade. Those who manage to arrive are extremely dehydrated and physically exhausted by such a demanding journey. They have just made a two week trip across the desert without food and water on an open and crammed vehicle in the full sun. There are no towns along the route to stop at and get supplies. There are no roads here, just desert sand,” says IOM’s chief of mission in Chad, Qasim Sufi.
The IOM reports that the journey “has been too much for some, with”more than 100 migrants including children . . . currently hospitalized in Faya with severe dehydration, respiratory, gastro-intestinal infections and injuries.”
The number of people fleeing overland, across the desert, appears to be rising dramatically, with 14 trucks, arriving in Faya this week and another 14 said to be en route. The IOM estimates, based in part on reports from those arriving, that “40,000 Chadians in the southern Libyan town of Gatroun, mostly women and children [are] reported to be in a desperate and pitiful condition. ‘People are telling us that these migrants have no food, water, shelter or sanitation. After many weeks like this, and in these temperatures, they cannot survive for much longer,” says Sufi. ‘We have to be able to access them to help them otherwise they could just die.’”
The IOM has to date taken more than 6,000 people from Faya to final destinations in Chad, but 3,700 await transport, in a transit camp designed for 900 people.
International Red Cross working closely with Libyan Red Crescent Society to find unexploded munitions
The ICRC in Geneva says it began 3 May to clear unexploded munitions in areas in Libya where the fighting has been heavy, notably around Ajdabiya, Misrata and Benghazi. Several children have reportedly been injured and the ICRC is working with the Libyan Red Crescent Society both to identify likely contaminated areas and to education the population to the danger.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Some 250 people are feared dead, 40km off the Italian island of Lampedusa, after rough seas sank a badly overloaded boat filled with refugees fleeing Libya, reports Geneva-based IOM (International Organization for Migration). The accident occurred in the early hours of Wednesday 6 April.
The boat was carrying about 300 people. The Italian Coast Guard rescued 47 people and a fishing boat three. Only two of the 40 women on board survived. Five children were also on board, but their fate is unclear.
IOM officers working on Lampedusa say those rescued told them that “when rescuers arrived, the boat was already sinking. Survivors managed to swim towards the approaching Coast Guard ship. Many drowned because they couldn’t swim or were dragged down by desperate fellow passengers.”
Lampedusa has taken in 20,000 refugees from Libya since the start of February, causing severe problems of overcrowding. More than 2,000 arrived in the past week alone.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Geneva-based refugee and migration officials say the conflict in Cote d’Ivoire, which has been building for weeks, has suddenly heated up and some 20,000 people have been sealed off by fighting in the west.
“A major military offensive launched in Western Cote d’Ivoire by forces loyal to president-elect Alassane Ouattara has effectively sealed off tens of thousands of vulnerable displaced persons, preventing them from receiving adequate humanitarian assistance and protection,” the IOM (International Migration Organization) said in a statement issued late Tuesday afternoon 29 March.
Fighting near the western town of Duékoué has sealed off some 20,000 Ivoirians and migrant workers from neighbouring countries. They have taken refuge in a Catholic mission, with little in the way of supplies.
In the east, the city of Abidjan is reportedly by IOM to be the scene of violence, but the extent of it is difficult to gauge, and people are fleeing to Ghana. Some 800 people at the Takoradi border crossing are housed in a shelter designed for 200-300 and new arrivals say they have been victims of violence. Many of them saying they had to sell their possessions to find transport out of Cote d’Ivoire.
UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, says that some 3,000 Ivoirians have now fled to Ghana, but there are reports that many more are on their way and the agency is rushing to establish more refugee centres to handle them.
An estimated 116,000 Ivoirians have fled the country for eight other West African nations since November’s presidential election, reports UNHCR, and thousands of migrant workers have also escaped. Liberia, the neighbour to the west, has the largest number, more than 24,000 Ivoirians, with 10,000 crossing the border in the past seven days.
UNHCR reports that it has received $24 million of the estimated $96m needed to care for the refugees.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Geneva warned Tuesday 22 March that refugee numbers are swelling as fighting in Abidjan, the largest city in Cote d’Ivoire, spreads across the city.
People “are rapidly using any means they can to flee the growing violence. IOM staff in Abidjan say people are leaving on public buses, cars and taxis to reach home villages as fighting spreads across the city.”
Many of those fleeing the fighting are migrant workers from Mali, Liberia, Mauritius and Burkina.
The situation is growing increasingly tense in the country, as deposed president Laurent Gbagbo holds onto power and former rebel troops, loyal to Alassane Ouattara move into the capital. Ouattara is the internationally recognized winner of the country’s November 2010 presidential election.
The UN’s Ban Ki-Moon last week strongly condemned shelling of a market by Gbagbo forces 17 March, which killed at least 25 people.
Links to other sites: Economist, background paper, The Norwegian Council for Africa/allAfrica, allAfrica/UN News service
Thousands of migrants are waiting at Ras Djir in Tunisia after fleeing the violence in Libya. The UNHCR is working with authorities to prepare a transit camp for 12,000 people to house those waiting to move on (photo, ©2011 UNHCR/A Duclos)
Update 19:05 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Governments are responding to the urgent appeal from the joint IOM/UNHCR project to evacuate thousands of refugees who have made it out of Libya or are trying to leave, the Geneva migration and refugee organizations said Wednesday 2 March.
New arrivals in the transit camp of Choucha Ras Djir, situated eight kilometers from the Tunisian border with Libya. More than 55,000 new arrivals have been registered over the past ten days. Most are foreign nationals working in Libya and so the majority will travel on to their home country (photo, ©2011 UNHCR/A Duclos)
In the past 36 hours the US has pledged $2 million in emergency funding, Great Britain has supplied charter planes and half a million pounds to help pay for staffing and processing costs related to the operation, and the Swiss government has donated an initial emergency fund of CHF500,000.
The British government’s Department for International Development (DFID) and UNHCR have provided chartered planes that will allow the IOM to evacuate up to 8,800 Egyptian migrants from Djerba in Tunisia to the Egyptian capital, Cairo, the IOM says.
New arrivals in the transit camp of Choucha Ras Djir, 8km from the Tunisian-Libyan border (photo, ©2011 UNHCR/A Duclos)
The first flights were scheduled to leave Wednesday.
UNHCR is providing IOM 16 charter flights.
“The in-kind assistance will help to ease some of the enormous pressure at the Tunisian-Libyan border where in nine days more than 75,000 migrants had fled across the border from Libya and many tens of thousands more are stranded on the Libyan side,” the IOM said in a statement.
The US ambassador to the UN and international organizations in Geneva, Betty King, told the joint IOM/UNHCR funding appeal meeting Tuesday that “We particularly appreciate the cooperation and commitment demonstrated by both Tunisia and Egypt in maintaining open borders and providing safe haven to refugees, returning nationals, and third-country nationals. In this 60th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Status of Refugees, Egypt and Tunisia have reminded us all of the importance of providing protection and asylum to those in need.”
Photos, 27-28 February (click on images to view larger)
Update 2 March Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Libyan government Tuesday 1 March sent troops to the remote southern border crossing of Dehiba, reports Reuters, ignoring the warships massing around the country. Humanitarian agencies in Geneva meanwhile report that Monday saw the heaviest outpouring of refugees from Libya to date, 14,000 people, with another 10-12,000 expected Tuesday.
The Tunisian border has seen more than 75,000 people cross the border from Libya since 19 February, the vast majority of them Egyptian, and another 40,000 are waiting to cross the border. The massive exodus is putting an enormous strain on local resources in Tunisia, report the IOM and UNHCR in Geneva.
Joint project to speed up evacuations to avoid humanitarian disaster on Libyan border
UNHCR and IOM joined forces late Tuesday, working in partnership with the Egyptian and Tunisian governments, to put in place plans for handling the massive evacuation from Libya on the Tunisian border. Thousands of Egyptians, but also citizens of several other countries, need to be moved rapidly beyond the border areas to avoid a humanitarian disaster. The two Geneva UN organizations are appealing to governments to fund the joint effort and to send experts and supplies as well as to provide boats and planes urgently.
Updates from international organizations in Geneva that are heavily involved in helping the refugees:
UNHCR: UN High Commissioner for Refugees staff at border points Tuesday said the situation is quickly reaching a crisis point, with transport to move those who have just arrived on to their final destinations. Thousands have waited three days on the Libyan side of the Tunisian border, with no shelter at night and bitterly cold temperatures. Self-appointed border guards are refusing to let sub-Saharan Africans cross into Tunisian. Some 1,000 tents that will hold 6-8 persons are being erected Tuesday, and UNHCR is appealing to Unicef and ICRC for more assistance in supplying precariously scarce drinking water and food to the refugees.
ICRC: Medical staff from the International Red Cross are waiting with supplies, ambulances and equipment to enter the western part of Libya to, but conditions are as yet too unstable and the ICRC is calling on Libya to allow it to help the wounded and those in need of medical care.
IOM: Sea and air evacuations organized by the International Organization for Migration are picking up speed, with about 900 Egyptians being flown from the island of Djerba on five planes carrying about 900 people and another 1,450 Egyptians heading for the sea port of Sfax where they will pick up a chartered sea vessel. Bangladeshi refugees are also being helped to move on from Libyan border points and the IOM is working with their government to get them home.
Tunisia, Egypt keep borders open as their citizens rush to provide aid
International funds needed to ease pressure on Libya’s neighbours
Update 08:40 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Humanitarian agencies based in Geneva are reporting massive numbers of refugees fleeing Libya over the weekend as they step up emergency aid. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other world leaders flew into Geneva Sunday for a special session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) Monday.
Switzerland has sent two of its Rapid Intervention teams to the Tunisian and Egyptian borders with Libya to assess the situation. “The humanitarian situation in Libya and the border areas is precarious,” the Swiss federal government said late Sunday in a statement. “It is difficult at the moment, however, to evaluate the extent of the problem.”
Tunisia Saturday told United Nations’ HCR, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, that 100,000 people had crossed the border from 20-26 February and another 10,000 were expected Saturday: 18,000 are Tunisian, 15,000 Egyptian, 2,500 Libyan and 2,000 Chinese, according to UNHCR.
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ICRC deliveries, video
Egypt has had 55,000 people cross its border with Libya since 19 February: 46,000 Egyptians, 2,100 Libyans and 6,900 third country nationals, mainly from Asian countries.
The two nations, which have both deposed their rulers in recent weeks, are desperately in need of emergency aid to cope with the influxes, say the organizations, which are appealing for generous help from other countries.
Red Cross and Red Crescent funds appeal launched
The International Red Cross, ICRC, launched an emergency funds appeal Friday night, “launched a preliminary emergency appeal for 6 million Swiss francs ($6.4 million/€4.7 million) to meet the emergency needs of people affected by the violent unrest in Libya.”
African refugees treated with distrust in Libya because of mercenary rumours
UNHCR reports that its staff have “met with Libyan police and military who said that they had defected from Government forces and were now working directly with local committees of tribal leaders. The police arranged for UNHCR to meet with tribal leaders, who highlighted the need for humanitarian assistance, with a critical shortage of food throughout the eastern region, as well as shortages of some medical supplies.
“According to the tribal leaders, Africans are being treated with suspicion in eastern Libya, due to rumours about the Government employing mercenaries from sub-Saharan Africa. During the meeting UNHCR staff highlighted the fact that thousands of refugees from sub-Saharan Africa are in Libya, and are very vulnerable at this time. The tribal leaders promised to pass this information on to their communities.”
Tunisians, Egyptians: “ordinary citizens” respond to the crisis
Ayman Gharabeih, a senior emergency specialist with UNHCR at the Ras Adjir border with Libya, is working closely with the Tunisian Red Crescent. “It is impressive to see how quickly the government, the Red Crescent and ordinary citizens have responded to this crisis,” he says, noting that according to the Tunisian Red Crescent “Tunisians are driving from far and wide to bring food, blankets and to offer people a safe place to stay.”
ICRC’s Georgios Georgantas, is in charge of coordinating International Red Cross relief efforts in Libya and neighbouring countries at the organization’s headquarters in Geneva, says “our colleagues in Tunisia tell us that the arrival of tens of thousands of displaced people along the border is putting a strain on local infrastructure and that the need for basic services, such as sanitation facilities, is likely to increase as the numbers continue to rise.”
Sunday afternoon, ICRC staff in Egypt were reporting that the situation along the border there was calm, according to Georgantas, in an ICRC statement.
The BBC early Monday qualified the border situation as a “crisis” but, while the numbers leaving Libya are dramatic, reports of numbers of people stranded vary the UNHCR’s Sunday 27 February figure of 75 sent in a statement Sunday 27 February to the BBC’s quote from an unnamed source at a UN refugee agency that “20,000 Egyptians were stranded and needed food and shelter.”
Simon Brooks, the ICRC’s team leader in Benghazi, said Sunday, “We hear that surgeons and orthopaedic specialists are needed in Benghazi’s hospitals, as well as medicine for patients suffering from chronic illnesses. Our initial assessment is that there is no urgent need for food supplies. It’s difficult to know, however, what the needs are outside the city.”
©2011 Chappatte, distributed by Globe Cartoon. More cartoons on Chappatte’s web site. Geneva-based Patrick Chappatte works for the International Herald Tribune, for Geneva newspaper Le Temps, and for NZZ am Sonntag. All cartoons reproduced with permission.
First 4,600 of 30,000 Chinese evacuated, citing threats and violence towards them
Libyan rights group in Geneva reports wounded in hospitals have been executed
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Tunisians have been streaming over the border from Libya as violence there continues, joined by growing numbers of people from other countries, reports the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration (IOM) Thursday 24 February. The group has voiced concerns about the very few sub-Saharan Africans or Asians leaving Libya, despite the large number employed there, saying it fears for their safety.
The UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) says Tunisia and Egypt have both agreed to keep their borders open to people fleeing the violence in Libya. It is working with the Ministry of Defense in Tunisia to set up a camp for the 10,000 people expected to cross the border this weekend.
China announced Thursday evening that 4,600 Chinese have been evacuated from Libya, the largest evacuation ever by Chinese authorities, and the start of efforts to get some 30,000 Chinese nationals “out of the riot-torn country”. Xinhua, the government news agency, quotes one of the first workers who arrived Thursday morning in Shanghai, Xie Guangfu, as saying “‘The situation is very critical there. People broke into houses, threatening and robbing us with knives and guns.’”
The IOM in Geneva says that 6,700 Tunisians have fled across the Ras Adjir border point in three days and large numbers of Egyptian and Chinese migrant workers arrived at the border Tuesday night. “Some 850 Egyptians are today travelling onwards to Djerba airport accompanied by IOM staff and Red Crescent volunteers. Two planes sent by the Egyptian government will transport them home,” the IOM said in a statement.
Some 830 Chinese workers arrived on buses rented by the Chinese consulate in Tripoli, and from there they were taken to Tunis.
“IOM staff say that those arriving at the border are mainly coming from Tripoli. They include embassy staff and the ambassadors of various countries, who have decided to quit the capital. But they are concerned that there is no evidence of large numbers of migrant workers from Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia leaving Libya for either Tunisia or Egypt.
“Large numbers of Sub-Saharan irregular migrants in Libya work informally in the service sector or as manual labour. Poorly paid and in irregular work, it is unlikely they have the resources to rent vehicles to get to border areas and reach safety. ‘Of the tens of thousands of Sub-Saharan Africans and South Asians working in Libya, only a handful have managed to reach the border so far. This is probably because they do not have the resources to pay for transport,’ says Laurence Hart, IOM’s Chief of Mission for Libya.”
Hospital executions in Tripoli, says human rights group
Geneva newspaper Le Temps reports Thursday evening that the Libyan Human Rights League, based in Geneva because of a ban on independent organizations, has received information that protesters who were taken to hospitals in Libya with injuries have been executed and doctors who object are being threatened.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Geneva-based international organizations that work with refugees say that people fleeing the violence in Libya are now starting to appear across the border in Tunisia’s Medenine Governorate. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) reports that while most of those escaping across the border are Tunisians, “Red Crescent officials reported to [an IOM staff person] and a UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) official on Tuesday that in addition to several thousand returning Tunisians, there were some Lebanese, Turkish, Syrian and three German nationals who had arrived asking for onward travel assistance.”
The IOM is sending extra staff to the border area to handle what is expected to be an influx of people fleeing Libya, noting that the country has an estimated 1.5 “irregular migrants”. Several countries have asked the IOM for help in evacuating their citizens and the organization is exploring a number of options as evacuation routes.
Tunisian refugees continue to arrive in Italy
The IOM also reports that Tunisians are continuing to arrive in Lampedusa, an island off the coast of Italy, with 235 people arriving on two fishing boats “despite appalling weather and sea conditions”. It is becoming clearer that the most recent arrivals are seeking family reunions in the wake of Tunisia’s violence earlier this year.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The numbers of refugees fleeing to five neighbouring countries from Côte d’Ivoire continue to swell as the unresolved political crisis drags on following the December presidential election standoff. The International Organization for Migration reports that “nearly 82,000 people have either been displaced within or outside of Côte d’Ivoire since the crisis began though it is very likely that the true figure is higher.”
Refugees from Cote d'Ivoire registering 3 January 2011 with UNHCR in Liberia (©2011 UNHCR / F. Lejeune-Kaba )
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Refugees continue to cross into Liberia from troubled Côte d’Ivoire at the rate of 600 a day. Liberia is now hosting some 25,000 refugees, according to Geneva-based UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees), which announced 11 January that it is building a new camp in the eastern Liberian town of Bahn. The new camp will house 18,000 people and will provide health, sanitation, water and schooling to ease pressue on 23 border villages currently taking in thd refugees.
UNHCR is clearing 80 hectares of jungle provided by the Liberian government, for the new camp.
The Côte d’Ivoirians are fleeing in the face of unrest and an uncertain future, with the two main candidates in the December 2010 presidential election, Alassane Ouattara and Laurent Gbagbo. each continuing to claim victory.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The question of UNHCR help for what Russia refers to as Georgian refugees in Abkhazia, the break-away Georgian republic, is on the agenda in Geneva 16 December, with the 14th round of talks on security in the Georgia-South Ossettia region underway. Ria Novosti reports that “The former Georgian republic of Abkhazia will press for the UN to register Georgian refugees on its territory at security talks in Geneva, the delegation’s chief Vyacheslav Chirikba said on Wednesday,” noting that Georgia has repeatedly blocked attempts by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to register up to 60,000 refugees in Abkhazia.”
Geneva-based UNHCR in June 2010 published a report on the precarious situation in Abkhazia two years after the war ended. The area was the focus of a new approach to aid and fundraising by UNHCR in 2008, with UNHCR providing basic aid for 45,000 refugees at the time, and seeking to provide more aid.
6oth birthday for UNHCR says stateless, displaced are 21st c challenges
The UNHCR has offered the world a magnificent gift as part of its 6oth anniversary: a collection of some of its finest photos showing refugees from around the world, 1950-2010. The complete collection can be viewed on GenevaLunch
Refugees from Kosovo in F.Y.R Macedonia, 1999 (photo ©2010, UNHCR / R LeMoyne)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Sixty years ago today, 14 December 1950, the United Nations General Assembly voted into being a refugee agency, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, to deal with the refugee situation in Europe in the aftermath of the second world war. It opened its doors in Geneva in January 1951.
Its first major international emergency, taking it beyond the original mandate, came in 1956, as thousands fled when Soviet forces crushed the Hungarian Revolution.
Vietnamese boat people, 1978 (photo ©2010, UNHCR / K Gaugler)
The work of the organization has changed to keep pace with the times: in the 1960s, the decolonization of Africa produced “the first of that continent’s numerous refugee crises needing UNHCR intervention,” the Geneva-based group notes in a statement issued for the anniversary. “Over the following two decades, UNHCR had to help with displacement crises in Asia and Latin America. Today it deals with major displacement situations around the world. The global population of refugees, internally displaced people, and asylum seekers stands at 43 million people, most of them under UNHCR’s duty of care.” The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded twice to the UNHCR, in 1954 and 1981.
Largest-ever single pledge session as refugee group increases internally displaced and stateless refugees work
UNHCR said in July 2010 that 16 people had died trying to cross the Evros River, with the border between Greece and Turkey a popular but treacherous transit spot (photo, ©2010 UNHCR)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, celebrates its 60th anniversary 14 December 2010, with words of thanks from High Commissioner Guterres, who recently told a group of donors, mainly governments, that “taking into account the global economic and financial situation [this] is I believe a very clear demonstration of your support and your commitment.” He also called on them to redress the balance, with poor countries bearing too much of the burden of helping refugees, and many countries not doing enough to deal with statelessness problems.
Europe, in particular, was warned Friday 10 December not to make asylum more difficult in its efforts to stop illegal migration: UNHCR figures show a 72.5 percent drop in arrivals by sea in the Mediterranean during the first 10 months of 2010, compared to the same period in 2009, down from 32,000 to 8,800, with Italy, Greece, Cyprus, and Malta all seeing sharp drops.
“Our concern is that in its efforts to stem illegal migration, Europe should not forget that among those seeking to enter the EU are people who need international protection and are at risk of their lives,” spokesperson Andrej Mahecic says. “Europe is a destination for both migrants and asylum seekers. The two have different goals and needs. Migrants may be seeking employment or other economic opportunities, refugees are people fleeing persecution or violence. They cannot return home if things don’t work out.”
$3.32 billion needed to meet 2011 needs, says refugee agency
The appeal to Europeans follows news from UNHCR 7 December that it had received pledges of $576.5 million, the highest amount contributed through a single pledging session, which represents 17.3 percent of UNHCR’s $3.32 billion projected requirement for 2011.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Two Geneva-based UN organizations, the International Organization for Migration and the UNHCR (High Commissioner for Refugees) say that refugees from Myanmar/Burma have been pouring into Thailand in the wake of Myanmar elections Sunday 7 November. The elections have been widely denounced by other countries as fraudulent, with citizens not having the freedom to vote correctly. Fighting has broken out in some areas.
The IOM says that “the fighting between the Myanmar military and an ethnic minority armed group, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), following the Myanmar elections on Sunday, resulted in an estimated 12,000 people fleeing into Thailand at the Mae Sot and Three Pagoda Pass border crossing points. In Mae Sot [the IOM Monday] transported some 5,000 people from the Thai side of the Moei River to a safe former military compound designated by the Thai authorities. All the refugees came from the town of Miwaddy on the Myanmar side of the river.”
The Mae Sot refugee camp is designed to hold a maximum of 2,000 people.
The UNHCR says in addition to the Mae Sot area people it worked early this week with some 3,000 refugees in Kanchanaburi province, west of Bangkok, at a school at Three Pagodas Pass.
UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie visited Myanmar refugees in Thailand in March 2009 to draw attention to their plight: some have been living in refugee camps for over 20 years. New fighting in Myanmar is straining the existing camps (video link below)
UNHCR provides a first-hand description of the scramble by international organizations, working together Monday, to cope with the sudden influx of refugees in Thailand:
“Refugees started pouring across the border early in the morning on foot and on inner tubes across the Moei River. Some told our staff they felt their lives were at risk after their houses were attacked, while others said they fled the sound of fighting.
“Local people have been pitching in as well, and we have asked that they co-ordinate their efforts with us to make sure that those who are most in need get helped first. One man delivered 1,000 blankets to the new site, which we plan to distribute today to the most vulnerable.”
“Many collected their children from school and fled to Thailand with only the clothes on their back, some even barefoot.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - A fight broke out about 10:30 Sunday morning 7 November between Georgians and Africans at the Lagnon refugee residential centre on the route des Blanchards in Onex.
The two groups battled with scissors, knives and metal bars, injuring 11 people, 7 of whom were sent to hospital emergency rooms for treatment. At least one is reported to be in serious condition.
Police in Geneva say the cause of the fight is not yet known. Nine police patrols, a medical unit of 16 people and six ambulances were called to end the fight and treat the injured.
