Refugees

Myanmar Votes in a Sea of Troubles at Home and Abroad

October 20, 2020

A decade after the first democratic reforms began taking shape after long years of harsh military rule in Myanmar, its citizens are preparing to vote in a national election on Nov. 8. It will be an important test for the country and its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. Her once-shining image as she swept …

Asia, Governance, Refugees

Leave a Comment

THIS WEEK @UN

India’s Reliance on Fossil Fuels, Casting Light on UN Counterterrorism Ops, US Asylum Seekers Stuck in Mexico

August 29, 2020

by Allison Lecce

US asylum seekers pushed back into Mexico in unprecedented numbers amid Covid-19; an investigation into the mysterious work of the richly financed UN counterterrorism operations; chastising India for its support of fossil fuels; and a UN envoy’s assessment of the new United Arab Emirates-Israeli pact. Greetings from This Week @UN, our summary highlighting the most …

Climate and Environment, Middle East, Refugees, Terrorism, This Week @UN, US Foreign Relations

Leave a Comment

COVID-19

In Mexico, the UN Refugee Agency Alleviates a Crisis Created by the Trump Administration

August 26, 2020

by Maurizio Guerrero

“Yes, there’s always the fear of being kidnapped,” said Óscar, a 30-year old asylum seeker who fled political persecution in Cuba in May 2019 and landed in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez, where violent crime and gang activity are common. Óscar, who used a pseudonym to protect his privacy, knew of asylum …

Covid-19, Human Rights, Refugees, US Foreign Relations

One Comment

For Census-Takers Worldwide, 2020 Could Be a Rough Year

December 21, 2019

by Barbara Crossette

For more than a week, protesters of all faiths have been marching by the hundreds of thousands on the streets of many Indian cities and towns to condemn a divisive new citizenship law targeting Muslims across the South Asian region. The trouble had been brewing for months, after the Hindu nationalist government of Prime …

Development, Refugees, Sustainable Development Goals

Leave a Comment

WORLDVIEWS

Myanmar’s Neighbors Must Build Trust Among Rohingya Refugees

November 10, 2019

by Noeleen Heyzer

At the 33d summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Singapore last year, the issue of Myanmar’s Rakhine/Rohingya crisis was high on the agenda. The chairman’s closing statement expressed the group’s readiness to support Myanmar in repatriating refugees by conducting a needs-assessment overview in Rakhine State. The Muslim Rohingya had fled ethnic …

Asia, Refugees, WORLDVIEWS

Leave a Comment

Migration and Technology: Lessons From the Brazil-Venezuela Border

July 25, 2019

by Adriana Erthal Abdenur and Lycia Brasil

RIO DE JANEIRO — DoNotPay, an app dubbed “the world’s first robot lawyer” by its developer, Joshua Browder, has been helping refugees in the United States and Canada to complete immigration applications. There’s also the International Organization for Migration’s MigApp, which fills in the blanks on topics ranging from money transfer to visa rules …

Migration, Refugees

Leave a Comment

How Many Immigrant Children Is the US Detaining? Nobody Knows

January 22, 2019

by Barbara Crossette

Sloppy or nonexistent identification systems at the United States-Mexican border, no organized tracking of children snatched from their parents — some often too young to say who they are — and the withholding of important information by Trump officials, frequently defying a federal court order and a presidential decree six months ago, have come …

Human Rights, Migration, Refugees

Leave a Comment

Where Refugee Scholars, Artists and Activists Find Safety and Thrive

November 25, 2018

by Barbara Crossette

Ahmad Sadiddin was an agronomist in a region that history books call the Fertile Crescent, an arc around the eastern Mediterranean where settled farming began in ancient times. Iraq and Syria were once part of that productive land before it was torn apart by the horrors of dictatorship, civil wars and the reductionism and …

Refugees

Leave a Comment

GEOPOLITICS

Europe and Others Help Fund the UN Palestinian Agency, Filling US Void

September 27, 2018

by Stéphanie Fillion

The European Union, Germany, Norway, Ireland and Kuwait stepped in this week to donate a total of $118 million in financing to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (Unrwa), after the United States cut $304 million of its annual support to the agency for this year. …

Climate and Environment, Geopolitics, Middle East, Refugees, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations

Leave a Comment

TAKE A LOOK

Two Health Alerts: Resurgent Polio and Antibiotic Resistance

August 23, 2018

by Barbara Crossette

Recent research reports published by The Lancet could make a lot of people rethink the assumption that once a disease has been declared eradicated, that’s it. Done. A recent resurge in cases of polio in several countries and concern in Europe that antibiotic resistance is being bought there by refugees and migrants are becoming …

Health and Population, Refugees, Take a Look

Leave a Comment

GEOPOLITICS

Rohingya Refugees Look to Washington and Find a Vacuum

July 30, 2018

by Tino Calabia

This August marks a year since a military crackdown forced at least 700,000 Rohingya to flee Myanmar for Bangladesh, joining hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who had already taken refuge there, totaling 1.1 million people encamped in Cox’s Bazar, according to a Bangladesh count done this July. But you would never know from the …

Asia, Geopolitics, Refugees, US Foreign Relations

Leave a Comment

UN to Rohingya: You Can’t Go Home Safely Any Time Soon

July 15, 2018

by Barbara Crossette

Among refugee advocates there has been a growing concern that recent agreements among regional governments and the United Nations on a framework for mitigating the Rohingya crisis could prompt at least some of the million-plus people who have fled the deadly military pogrom in Myanmar to consider risking a return to try to rebuild …

Asia, Gender-Based Violence, Human Rights, Refugees

Leave a Comment

GEOPOLITICS

Washington to UN Refugee Agency: If You Want Our Money, Put Our Name on It

July 10, 2018

by Stéphanie Fillion

The United States is the biggest donor to the UN Refugee Agency, and the Trump administration wants the world to know it. A new framework, or agreement, signed by the State Department and the refugee agency (UNHCR) requires it to acknowledge US contributions in most — and eventually all — of its public-information materials. …

Geopolitics, Humanitarian Aid, Refugees, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations

One Comment

TAKE A LOOK

As Refugees Await Their Futures, NGOs Offer New Ways to Help Them Prepare

June 22, 2018

by Barbara Crossette

As the school year ends in many countries and children turn with joy to vacation time ahead, millions of other school-age children will have nothing to look forward to but more long days in overcrowded refugee camps. The situation gets worse as they grow into adulthood. Recent studies show that, thanks to United Nations …

Migration, Refugees, Take a Look

Leave a Comment

WORLDVIEWS

Brazil Can Lead the Way on Managing the World’s Refugee Crisis

June 5, 2018

by Adriana Erthal Abdenur and Maiara Folly

RIO DE JANEIRO — Only weeks from the start of the 2018 World Cup, soccer teams of refugees from Mali, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Syria, Angola, Burkina Faso and Gambia who had migrated to Brazil became the protagonists in a recent soccer competition: the Multicultural Cup, organized by Instituto Adus, a nongovernmental …