The EU and its member states must do more to prevent migrant deaths at sea if they are to deliver on their humanitarian ethos – writes Judith Sunderland.
After years of seemingly never-ending conflict and repression, Myanmar's neighbours and the world are watching the changes there with interest and cautious optimism. And for the 140,000 Myanmar refugees in Thailand, many stuck in camps on the border for decades, there is now some hope that they might be able to go home.
“I realized it is so easy to die here. We came from so far away and it is so easy to get killed here,” Ali Rahimi, an Afghan asylum seeker, told us after he was stabbed five times in the torso in September 2011.
A Senegalese asylum-seeker attacked in Athens by a gang of thugs spoke for many when he told me: “We take Europe as an example for democracy and solidarity. Now, if we, who live here among you, if we get killed on the street like chickens ...I think it's a pity for the Europeans.” I had to agree.
To commemorate World Refugee Day, Think Africa Press asked a panel of experts: "What remains the biggest gap in the international protection of refugees?"
When the Friends of Yemen group meets Wednesday in Riyadh, representatives from the US, the EU and Gulf states are likely to focus on this week’s suicide bombing in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, that killed nearly 100 soldiers and shook the fledging transition government. But international attention should not only be focused on al Qaeda and its affiliates—the need to hold human rights violators to account and a deepening humanitarian crisis should also be high on their agenda.
With violence raging in Syria, thousands of people are fleeing to neighboring countries to escape the bloodshed. Although the flow of refugees to Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey has been covered extensively, the Syrians who have fled to Iraq, most of them Kurds, have received less attention.
With the eyes of the world on the Oslo district court, there are stark contrasts on display. The twisted and hate-filled logic of Anders Breivik contrasts with the calm, dignified and above all fair criminal process against him.
After years of seemingly never-ending conflict and repression, Myanmar's neighbours and the world are watching the changes there with interest and cautious optimism. And for the 140,000 Myanmar refugees in Thailand, many stuck in camps on the border for decades, there is now some hope that they might be able to go home.