Search Results

Sort by
News

Detention of Refugee Shows Need for Policy Change

A federal judge in California ruled on April 21 that the Iraqi extradition case against Omar Ameen, a resettled refugee in the U.S., was based on an alleged series of events that is "simply not plausible." The evidence the government presented,…
202004us_detention_immigration
News

About the Mediterranean, Start with Saving Lives

Following his meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel last week, French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted that he wanted “to make the Mediterranean a chance and not a fear.” But does he mean Europeans’ fears of foreigners,…
Migrants are seen onboard the charity ship Lifeline at Boiler Wharf in Senglea, in Valletta's Grand Harbour, Malta June 27, 2018.
News

Italy’s Dangerous Direction on Migration

After almost three months of jumping up and down in place, the newly invested Italian interior minister, Matteo Salvini, has hit the ground running in the worst possible direction. The head of the anti-immigrant party, the League, Salvini has…
Italy's Interior Minister Matteo Salvini arrives at the Republic Day military parade in Rome, Italy, June 2, 2018.
News

Proactiva’s Release Does Not Spell End of Italy’s War on Rescue Groups

Italian judge’s releases rescue ship but upholds legal fiction of Libyan search and rescue zone. Judith Sunderland from Human Rights Watch explains why the contradiction matters.

WE MAY NEED to curb our enthusiasm over an Italian judge’s April 16 decision to release the rescue ship Open Arms, operated by the Spanish group Proactiva, which Italy impounded a month ago. Although the Open Arms may soon sail again and…
A rigid hulled inflatable boat (RHIB) approaches the MV Open Arms, the search and rescue ship of Proactiva Open Arms, in the central Mediterranean off the coast of Libya, December 16, 2017
News

Xenophobia in Italy’s Election Campaign

  Italian politics are never boring, and election campaigns are always times of particularly strident debate. But the tenor of the campaign leading up to Italy’s national elections on March 4 on immigration issues is profoundly alarming. In…
Demonstrators stand on a balcony during an anti-racism rally in Macerata, Italy, February 10, 2018. REUTERS/Yara Nardi
News

“We Escaped from Prison, Just to be Put in Another Prison”

The 16-year-old boy had been following us last week as we made our way through Nargizlia. It is one of the most recent additions to the camps housing the 160,000 people who have fled the fighting as the Iraqi government tries to retake Mosul, its second…
Civilians, who fled from clashes, walk in the street during a battle with Islamic State militants, in Sukar neighborhood east of Mosul, Iraq, January 11, 2017. REUTERS/Ahmed Saad
News

For Iraq's Sunni Arabs, You Can't Go Home Again

The battle between Iraqi forces and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) over the city of Mosul has already displaced over 35,000 civilians from inside the city and surrounding villages. Many of those fleeing the city are Sunni Arabs,…
MENA-Iraq-Qutan-Kirkuk-destroyed-homes-Nov-2016
News

Mosul's Displaced are Still Cut Off from the World

For months, the humanitarian community in Iraq has been planning the Mosul response, which included efforts to accommodate possibly as many as 1.2 million civilians fleeing the fighting. Over the last two weeks, I have visited five camps housing the…
MENA-Iraq-Mosul-Khazir-camp-nov-2016
News

Iraq Blames the Islamic State’s Victims

Civilians are Fleeing the So-called "Caliphate" – Only to be Detained By Iraqi Security Forces

As the Mosul operation approached, the Iraqi security forces were concerned not only with the Islamic State fighters they would face on the battlefield, but the people trying to escape the extremist group’s grasp. The Nineveh Operations Command, the…
Displaced Iraqi civilians hold white flags as they flee a battle with the Islamic State in Kokjali village near Mosul, November 03, 2016.
News

Syrian migrants face Kafkaesque nightmare in search for safety

The Aksaray neighborhood of Istanbul is a veritable smugglers’ den, where you can watch asylum seekers and migrants huddling and planning their next moves. But when I spoke with people there several days ago, I also saw many people with blank stares, the…
News

Europe's Refugee Crisis Isn't Only About Syria

Amid an influx of Iraqis and Syrians into Europe, the West is neglecting another group of refugees also in desperate need of help.

TOVARNIK, Croatia — Rajab Ali, a 16-year-old Hazara boy from Afghanistan’s Bamyan province, was silently weeping when we found him standing at the last remaining opening in the 12-foot-high razor-wire border fence Hungary has constructed on its…
Afghan Refugees
News

Why do People Risk Their Lives to Cross the Mediterranean?

Questions and Answers

The European Union (EU) is facing unprecedented numbers of refugees and migrants arriving by boat. In 2014, 220,000 people arrived, almost double the combined total of 121,000 from 2011 through 2013. During just the first six…
Un buque de la Armada irlandesa Le Eithne, participa en una operación de rescate como parte del operativo Frontex Tritón, el 6 de junio de 2015
News

Protecting Refugees in Protracted Emergencies in the Middle East

Um Ghassan was eleven in 1948 when her family fled Haifa. They joined the Palestinian exodus to Jordan, and later moved to Syria. “They welcomed us like we were their relatives,” she said. Decades later, when fighting broke out in Syria in 2011, Um…
A man walks on debris in the Palestinian Yarmouk refugee camp, on the southern outskirts of Damascus, June 3, 2015.
News

Brussels’ Personae Non Gratae

The EU is responsible for correcting the irrational, irresponsible debate about migration to Europe. So far, it’s failed.

Imagine the Hollywood blockbuster about one boat’s perilous journey in the Mediterranean. The Eritrean mother with her five-year-old son, the 16-year-old Afghan boy traveling on his own, and the Syrian patriarch with his entire family — they would be the…
News

The EU Stands By as Thousands of Migrants Drown in the Mediterranean

On the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa stands a graveyard filled with simple wooden crosses. We don’t know the names and stories of those buried there, except that they perished at sea trying to reach Europe, fleeing conflict in Syria, human-rights…
News

How Many More Must Die at Sea before Europe Acts?

“Aman.” a 29-year-old Eritrean, had just described his arduous journey to Europe when I heard the news about hundreds of deaths in the Mediterranean. He, like many others I spoke with last week in Dresden, risked their lives last summer crossing from war-…

Refine Search

Filter by Country
Filter by Topic
Filter by Type
Filter by News Category