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Spotlight

Since late August, Pakistan has been suffering its worst flooding in recorded history, with floodwaters covering ~250.000 square kilometers (roughly the area of the United Kingdom) and affecting ~33 million people (roughly the population of Canada). Between monsoon rains 5-10 times heavier than usual and unusually intense heatwaves accelerating the melting of its ~7.200 glaciers, it’s hard to find words to describe the scale of the damage. Perhaps the only words needed are: that climate change is here, that it’s punishing the most vulnerable and least prepared, and that—courtesy of our collective neglect—it’ll eventually punish us all.

It will punish most harshly those least prepared—and in this regard, the Pakistani people have been served poorly by their government. Over the last decade, Pakistan’s national disaster planning approach has been dominated by the construction of large-scale infrastructure, rather than by working with civil society and communities to make them more resilient. Flood barriers protect downstream communities so long as they hold, but if they breach, the damage borne downstream is that much greater. When that downstream is inhabited by ~140 million rural dwellers, who are poorly served by existing flood-protection infrastructure and facing pre-existing limited access to healthcare, that damage quickly becomes catastrophic. And yet, as both Pakistani and Bangladeshi leaders signaled at this week’s UN General Assembly, it is cruelly unfair to saddle their respective citizenries with the cost of climate change. Pakistan’s ~230 million inhabitants account for 3% of the global population but only 1% of its carbon emissions."

Thus far, most flood-borne displacement in Pakistan has been internal. This is as useful a reminder as any to be cautious when equating disaster as cause to migration as effect. Climate migration is neither as real as free-movement advocates represent it, nor as contrived as xenophobes would wish. Rather, it’s a fluid phenomenon: one of numerous possible strategies that disaster-affected communities might draw on to protect their livelihoods and support their well-being. It isn’t yet clear how permanent the displacement caused by ongoing floods will be. This August may well have seen the birth of new inland seas in Pakistan; potential millions of inhabitants of recently- and permanently-submerged land will need to relocate—permanently.

Not that displaced Pakistanis will have it easy trying to reach exile in the West. Iranian authorities have received Afghan refugees with bitter hostility over the last year, while Turkish authorities, ahead of a general election next year, are deporting asylum seekers at a dizzying rate. And yet, even if displacement remains internal, there are international implications already in play. Pakistan hosts ~1.4 million Afghan refugees, ~420.000 of whom live in flood-affected areas. Including them in reconstruction efforts, and considering their particular needs when planning reconstruction efforts, will be essential to helping flood-affected communities rebuild in a way that builds up their resilience.

If Pakistan’s floods generate significant external migration, aid should be calibrated according to the varying needs of flood-affected people remaining in place, flood-affected people migrating internally, and flood-affected people migrating externally. Those that wish to remain, or that would prefer to migrate but cannot, will need assistance to rebuild their livelihoods and become resilient again. As for those who migrate—whether to another region or another country—it will be in the interest of receiving communities to provide them the assistance they need to become self-sufficient and contribute to host economies. This means facilitating access to public services, education, and the labor market. Those who manage to reach Western countries may rightfully not qualify for asylum under the Refugee Convention. It will be our collective responsibility to advocate for temporary protection to be extended nonetheless.

If you wish to, you can help. Cities for Children is partnering with multiple local organizations to finance emergency relief where it’s needed, and child-friendly programming where it can be offered. They will immensely appreciate your support—and immediately put it to good use.

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On to the news…

Asia

Displacement within, beyond, and into Myanmar
Last Tuesday, ~4.200 Rohingya refugees encamped in neutral soil in Konapara, along the Burmese-Bangladeshi border, issued a letter to UNHCR demanding protection from increasing cross-fire as hostilities between the Tatmadaw and Arakan Army intensify. On the same day, The Times of India revealed that at least 300 people have been lured from India into Myanmar, under false promises of employment, and trafficked into captivity and coerced work as cybercrime operators. | On Friday, local resistance groups revealed that ~10.000 civilians had been displaced from Khin-U Township in Myanmar’s central Sagaing Region over the previous week.

Afghanistan and its neighbors
Last Friday, a bomb attack killed 4 worshipers and injured another 10 in Kabul’s central Wazir Akban Khan neighborhood. | On Sunday, 55 Sikh and Hindu refugees from Afghanistan arrived in New Delhi in a humanitarian resettlement effort that has brought 543 families to India. | This Monday, local authorities reported that ~3.500 IDPs had returned from encampments in Karachi to their communities of origin in flood-affected parts of Pakistan’s southeastern Sindh province.

Natural disaster-borne displacement in southeast Asia
This Sunday, Typhoon Noru struck the northern Philippines, displacing some 20.000 civilians preventively evacuated from high-risk zones ahead of landfall.

Sources: bdnews24, The Times of India, Reuters, Hindustan Times, Dawn, al Jazeera.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Ethiopia’s civil war
Last Monday, the Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia issued a report documenting widespread atrocities committed by Ethiopian forces in Tigray, determining some of these to amount to war crimes and to crimes against humanity (see the CHREE’s full report here). | On Tuesday, TPLF officials signaled that Eritrean forces had launched a large-scale invasion of Tigray. | On Friday, an airstrike in Mekelle killed at least 1 Tigrayan civilian. On the same day, doctors in Tigray’s main Ayer Hospital signaled their alarm at their dwindling supplies of insulin, which the renewed humanitarian blockade prevents them from replenishing. | On Sunday, Sudanese authorities confirmed 3 monkeypox cases in the Tunaydbah camp, which hosts just under 25.000 Ethiopian refugees.

Conflict and displacement in the Sahel and central Africa
Last Tuesday, Nigerian authorities signaled that ~300 civilians have been killed, and over 10.000 displaced, by heavy flooding in 14 states along the Benue and Niger rivers, on the heels of the opening of the upriver Lagdo Dam in Cameroon last weekend. On the same day, regional authorities in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno State disclosed that 43 civilians have been killed since July by a cholera outbreak, with 768 cases reported since July. Also on Tuesday, Congolese authorities disclosed that nearly 12.000 have been displaced by communal fighting in the DRC’s western town of Kwamouth. | This Monday, HumAngle higlighted the difficulties faced by unregistered IDPs in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno State, where subsistence and relocation aid are unavaible to large numbers of displaced persons excluded from state assistance services.

Sources: AFP, Reuters, The New Arab, the Guardian, Sudan Tribune, HumAngle.

Middle East and North Africa

Internal displacement in Syria and Iraq
Last Tuesday, Iraqi authorities signaled that 150 families are set to return from the Al-Hol containment camp in northeastern Syria to Iraq, where they will initially be held in a containment camp in al-Jadaa, to undergo psychological examination and rehabilitation. | On Wednesday, Syria’s cholera outbreak grew to exceed 250 cases and at least 39 fatalities, with an additional burden of just under 2.875 suspected cases. | On Saturday, Middle East Eye highlighted environmental risks faced by IDPs in northern Iraq, including not just water-borne pollution but also respiratory hazards originating from oil refineries. | This Monday, Syrian authorities revised its cholera outbreak tallies to 338 confirmed cases and 29 fatalities (official Syrian tallies count only cases in government-controlled areas).

Asylum seeker (im)mobility in the MENA region
Last Tuesday, Nigerien authorities announced they had received just under 675 asylum seekers pushed back from Algeria on the Saturday prior. On the same day, the Refugee Consultation Forum issued a report tallying ~1.14 million refugees and asylum seekers currently living in Sudan—over 800.000 originally from South Sudan (see the RCF’s full report here). | This Monday, Turkish authorities disclosed they had repatriated just under 85.000 asylum seekers thus far this year, and prevented nearly 220.000 irregular entries into Turkey.

Yemen’s civil war, labor migration to the Persian Gulf
Last Wednesday, Save the Children urged all donors to act on their pledges to fund the salvage of 1.1 million barrels of crude oil held on the decaying FSO Safer off of Yemen’s Red Sea coast, as the overall funding target has been met, but has yet to be disbursed (see StC’s briefing note here). | On Thursday, the Guardian highlighted Qatari authorities’ acceleration of migrant workers expulsions, pursuant to policy intended to reduce he number of foreign workers in Qatar during the upcoming World Cup, leaving workers unable to repay loans incurred to obtain work permits, let alone provide for their families.

Sources: The New Arab, MEE, Reuters, Africanews, Sudan Tribune, Hürriyet, AP, the Guardian.

Maritime Migration Routes to & through the West

Ruta Canaria
Last Tuesday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 161 asylum seekers from 4 vessels in waters off the Canary Islands, as another 32 arrived autonomously in a 5th vessel. | On Thursday, 40 asylum seekers arrived autonomously to Lanzarote, and another 32 were rescued by Salvamento Marítimo in Atlantic waters. | On Sunday, Caminando Fronteras warned that several vessels carrying 147 asylum seekers had set set for the Canary Islands as Cyclone Hermine was bearing down, with Salvamento Marítimo confirming this Monday that they had rescued 81 people, and the Moroccan Coast Guard confirming it had interepted another 46.

Central and western Mediterranean
Last Monday, Cypriot authorities rescued 300 asylum seekers from a wooden boat in distress ~200 kilometers west of Cyprus after 3 days at sea, trying to reach Italy from Lebanon. | On Thursday, a boat carrying ~150 asylum seekers capsized off the coast of Syria after departing from Lebanon, with 20 survivors in treatment in Tartous and 94 confirmed fatalities reported as of Friday.

The English Channel
Last Wednesday, just under 675 asylum seekers reached UK shores irregularly across the English Channel, pushing total arrivals within this year above 30.000. | On Thursday, 1.150 asylum seekers reached UK soil across the English Channel in 21 vessels.

Aegean and Black Seas
Last Friday, Bulgarian authorities reported rescuing 38 Afghan asylum seekers struggling in stormy conditions as they tried to reach Romanian shores from Turkey by boat. | On Thursday, 49 asylum seekers reached the Greek island of Leros autonomously, as Greek authorities searched for 6 missing persons from the vessel they used for the crossing.

Gulf of Mexico
Last Saturday, 7 Cuban asylum seekers arrived autonomously to Key West, where they were apprehended by U.S. authorities

Sources: InfoMigrants, EFE, AP, al Jazeera, BBC, 7 News Miami.

Europe

EU migration policymaking
Last Thursday, the European Court of Justice ruled that Hungarian laws allowing authorities to withhold refugees’ access to their case files if their asylum is revoked due to national security reasons are in violation of European law, ruling that asylum decisions cannot be made solely on the basis of national security authorities’ considerations. | On Friday, Swiss authorities announced an accord with Greek and Cypriot authorities to provide each state $40 million and $10 million, respectively, to help them manage irregular migratory arrivals. | On Sunday, a far-right party with fascist roots won the largest share of parliamentary seats in Italy’s general election, heralding hostile migration policymaking at both domestic and European level.

European migration (mis)management
Last Monday, a Caravan of Light composed of Syrian refugees in Turkey trying to enter EU soil as a group gathered in Edirne but, after being attacked by smugglers near the Greco-Turkish border, announced it was regrouping in Istanbul to prepare a second attempt at crossing. | On Tuesday, the Guardian highlighted increasing arrivals to the northwestern Italian town of Ventimiglia, near the border with France, as irregular migrants try to depart Italy ahead of the likely election of a right-wing bloc in elections taking place this weekend. | On Wednesday, police in Slovenia intercepted just over 100 asylum seekers trying to enter Italy irregularly by train. | On Sunday, Dutch authorities disclosed that the Netherlands’ current asylum backlog had grown to nearly 30.000 cases, within 200 of the peak reached back in 2015.

Displacement within and beyond Ukraine, draft flight from Russia
Last Tuesday, local NGO Fundación Madrina signaled it has observed increasing numbers of Ukrainian families becoming unhoused and approaching charitable food distributions in Madrid, as winter weather threatens to prompt more Ukrainians to flee into EU countries where integration support is waning. | On Thursday, authorities of the Baltic republics announced restrictive border regimes vis-à-vis Russian nationals fleeing military conscription, as Finnish border police committed to continue admitting Russian nationals seeking asylum at the border. | On Friday, German authorities committed to continue offering asylum to Russian conscientious objectors fleeing conscription into the Russian military. | On Sunday, Russian authorities estimated that ~260.000 Russian nationals had left the country over the previous week, on the heels of the announcement of military conscription. | This Monday, regional media revealed that Russian authorities have begun issuing military information leaflets and enrollment forms to Tajik migrant workers.

Dystopia at the Home Office
Last Monday, the Independent revealed severe shortcomings in the Windrush compensation scheme, tallying only 38 successful first-instance appeals out of 3.020 filed in 2021, and only 4 successful final appeals out of 459 filed. | On Friday, the BBC revealed that the UK Inspector of Prisons had criticized the inadequate access to legal assistance and information issued to asylum seekers slated for deportation to Rwanda last June. | On Saturday, UK authorities leaked newly-installed Prime Minister Liz Truss’ intention to expand the official shortage occupation list to facilitate labor migration into the UK and help reduce labor shortages and mitigate a looming recession. | On Sunday, the Guardian highlighted difficulties faced by Indonesian workers aspiring to perform seasonal agricultural labor in the UK, amid bureaucratic inefficiencies and abuse by unscrupulous labor brokers, charging illegal deposits without guaranteeing placement. On the same day, the Observer cautioned that plans to hire Nepali nurses to fill labor shortages in the NHS were lacking in essential safeguards to prevent abuse and exploitation of migrant workers. | This Monday, the Independent revealed that, over the last 3 months, the Home Office has spent £87.000 of a total £100.000 spend on social media advertizing to discourage asylum seekers from attempting irregular crossings of the English Channel, seeing ~20.000 irregular arrivals through the duration of the campaign.

Sources: InfoMigrants, EFE, the Washington Post, the Guardian, AP, NLTimes, Europa Press, EUobserver, Meduza, AKIpress, the Independent, BBC.

The Americas

U.S. migration policymaking
Last Tuesday, the city council Washington, D.C. approved an emergency measure formally establishing an Office of Migrant Services to coordinate service provisions to asylum seekers arriving by bus from the U.S.-Mexico border. On the same day, asylum seekers flown to Martha’s Vineyard in the week prior filed a class-action lawsuit governor of Florida and other facilitators of the flight denouncing the defrauding they experienced—as the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office announced its own probe into the irregularities that led to the flight. Also on Tuesday, The Texas Tribune featured the challenges faced by asylum seekers arriving in El Paso, where shelter capacity has been exhausted and local authorities have begun chartering buses to transfer unhoused arrivals to other parts of the U.S. | On Wednesday, the Miami Herald dissected the preparation and cancellation of an additional flight scheduled to transfer several dozen asylum seekers to U.S. President Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware on that same day. | This Monday, lawyers for the 50 asylum seekers transferred to Martha’s Vineyard in the week prior announced they would seek a nationwide injunction to prevent any further transportation induced by fraudulent means—aside from individual compensation for individual plaintiffs. On the same day, CNN relayed the perplexity of business owners in Florida, struggling to fill jobs due to workforce shortages, with their governor’s use of taxpayer funding to divert legally-present asylum seekers who are eligible for work permits to other states.

Irregular migration in Latin America
Last Tuesday, a group of asylum seekers transiting through central Mexico denounced that they were detained by immigration authorities, despite holding valid 7-day permits allowing them to transit through Mexican soil. | On Friday, Milenio highlighted that 159 asylum seekers have gone missing in Mexico’s northeastern state of Tamaulipas over the last 5 years, of whom only 22 have been found by authorities. On the same day, authorities in Panama disclosed that the number of asylum seekers crossing the Darién Gap had exceeded 134.000 thus far this, thus exceeding the total number of crossings in all of 2021. | On Sunday,Mexican authorities announced they had intercepted over 3.250 asylum seekers from 50 countries across the whole of Mexico. On the same day, Guatemalan authorities announced they had turned back to Honduras a caravan of mainly Venezuelan ~600 asylum seekers trying to reach Mexican soil and ultimately the U.S.-Mexican border.

Sources: the Washington Post, The Texas Tribune, the Miami Herald, the Guardian, CNN, EFE, Milenio, infobae.

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Spotlight

This week, I thought I’d to highlight 2 unrelated stories before we dig into the week’s news. The first is, tentatively, good news: last Friday, Dutch authorities pledged €7.5 to the UN fund to salvage the decaying FSO Safer, a decaying oil tanker moored off the western coast of Yemen, and threatening to break apart or explode and foul the Red Sea with 1.1 million barrels of oil. This pledge tops off the UN’s $80 million appeal to initiate a salvage operation, and ought to allow salvage operations to begin—assuming the international community can get its act together, and that battling factions in Yemen’s 7-year civil war accede to the rescue operation.

The good news is tentative: the salvage operation will neither launch nor finish overnight, and with autumn weather starting to churn the Red Sea in October, the risks to rescue workers and to the whole of the Red Sea will increase exponentially. Let’s also not forget that the UN appeal was launched in April, meaning that the international community has taken 5 months to cough up $80 million to prevent a disaster that would cost at least $20 billion to remediate. Nor that—as we’ve covered before in this space—local advocates have been clamoring for this impending catastrophe to be taken seriously for years.

Changing tracks—this week ill-faithed efforts by conservative ideologues holding power in Texas, Arizona, and now Florida to transport asylum seekers across the U.S. and release them without prior warning in major cities reached new heights—as three buses arrived in Washington, DC, dropping off 150 people over 2 days in front of the Vice President’s residence, while another 53 were flown to Martha’s Vineyard, off the coast of Massachusetts. I’ll have more to say and write about this in the future—for the time being, attorney Rachel Self gets the word:

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On to the news…

Asia

Afghanistan and its neighbors
Last Monday, Pakistani authorities detected the 18th case of polio to surface in Pakistan this year, warning that flood-borne displacement threatens to both accelerate transmission and disrupt containment efforts. | On Tuesday, authorities in Pakistan tallied 1.400 fatalities and 1 million people made homeless by floods in Pakistan, as further rainfall threatens renewed flooding. | On Thursday, Taliban officials signaled that ~500.000 Afghans were repatriated from Iran last month, as ~3.000 are believed to be entering Iran irregularly each day. the U.S. State and Treasury Departments set up an ‘Afghan Fund’ in Switzerland with the $3.5 billion in Afghan Central Bank assets withheld from Taliban Administration, to be used to stabilize the Afghan economy and finance humanitarian aid, while remaining off-limits to Taliban leadership.

Myanmar and its neighbors
Last Tuesday, Myanmar’s exiled National Unity Government tallied 3.010 civilian fatalities at the hands of the Tatmadaw over the 11 months prior, with another ~2.000 injured in just over 6.300 attacks. On the same day, Rohingya refugees newly arriving to Bangladesh indicated there are hundreds more recently displaced by fighting between the Tatmadaw and Arakan Army attempting to cross into Bangladesh. | On Wednesday, Burmese authorities they would require that foreign remittances be routed through specific banks at specific currency exchange rates set artificially low to benefit Myanmar’s foreign exchange reserves. | On Thursday, The Irrawaddy issued a look back at the history of displacement resulting from political turmoil in Myanmar, highlighting the current figures of ~974.000 IDPs, ~919.000 Rohingya refugees, another ~40.000 refugees from other ethnicities, and another ~40.000 economic migrants currently abroad and growing at a rate of ~10.000 per month. | On Friday, the Burmese junta ordered UNHCR and INGOs to cease operations in 6 townships in northern Arakan State, near the border with Bangladesh, as fighting between the Tatmadaw and rebel Arakan Army intensifies. On the same day, 1 Rohingya refugee was killed, and another 6 injured, by a mortar shell fired from Burmese soil that landed that exploded in Bangladesh. Also on Friday, another 4 displaced persons were killed by shelling in Myanmar’s southeastern Shan State, where ~3.000 civilians have been displaced by fighting in recent weeks. | On Sunday, local authorities detained 31 displaced Rohingya in Myanmar’s southeastern Ayeyarwady state, just south of Rakhine. | This Monday, Bangladeshi authorities signaled they would not accept further Rohingya refugee arrivals from Rakhine—as increasing numbers of Rohingya find themselves caught in the crossfire between the Arakan Army and Tatmadaw. On the same day, Bangladeshi authorities offered to relocate ~14.000 civilians living near the border with Myanmar to get respite from cross-border indirect fire.

Sources: al Jazeera, TOLOnews, The Irrawaddy, RFA, Nikkei Asia.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Ethiopia’s civil war
Last Tuesday, local authorities reported an airstrike on Mekelle University in Tigray leading to at least 1 injury, just on the heels of TPLF leadership acceding to peace talks without preconditions with Ethiopian authorities. | On Wednesday, local authorities reported 2 more airstrikes in a residential area of Mekelle, killing at least 10 civilians and wounding at least another 2. | On Thursday, TPLF commanders signaled that a joint Ethiopian-Eritrean force had seized Sheraro, in north-central Tigray, while a joint Ethiopian-Amharan force had seized Adi Arkay in north-central Amhara from TPLF forces. On the same day, Zambian authorities announced they had repatriated 44 irregular migrants to Ethiopia—one of whom perished at the airport before departure—adding up to 107 repatriations since September 8. | On Sunday, local advocates reported that Eritrean authorities are conscripting soldiers to deploy in Tigray in support of the Ethiopian military’s campaign against the TPLF. | This Monday, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission denounced that ~2.800 Tigrayan IDPs living in the Jarre camp in Amhara State were being denied freedom of movement and sufficient humanitarian aid, and that the Commission’s efforts to monitor conditions in the camp had let to forced transfers into police custody.

Displacement in the Sahel, mobility in East Africa
Last Tuesday, HumAngle highlighted that the termination of food assistance in Gubio IDP camp in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno State has caused a collapse in humanitarian conditions, with disease transmission increasing exponentially and women and children turning to begging and survival sex to stay alive. | On Thursday, OCHA issued an assessment tallying just over 622.500 persons affected by unprecedented flooding (see OCHA’s assessment here). | On Friday, the U.S. Embassy in Kenya relaxed regulations for business and tourist visa renewals.

Sources: AFP, AP, BBC, Addis Standard, HumAngle, the EastAfrican.

Middle East and North Africa

Evacuee (im)mobility in the MENA region
Last Monday, CENTCOM Commander General Michael Kurilla called for repatriations from the al-Hol containment camp to be sped up, decrying that at the current pace of ~150 monthly repatriations to Iraq, it would take 4 years to clear the camp’s 54.000 detainees. | On Wednesday, the European Court of Human Rights compelled French authorities to re-examine a request from 2 French mothers to allow their daughters to repatriate from the al-Hol containment camp, along with their Syria-born children. | On Saturday, UNHCR announced it had facilitated evacuation flights for 29 asylums seekers stranded in Libya, to be resettled in Europe and Canada.

Displacement within and beyond Syria and Iraq
Last Tuesday, UN officials warned of the threat of a growing cholera outbreak in Syria, with 936 cases identified between August 25 and September 10, as the poor state of Syria’s hydrological infrastructure and reduced water levels along the Euphrates compound risks to civilians. | On Wednesday, the UN issued a report warning of accelerating conflict dynamics in Syria threatening a potential resumption of all-out war and severe damage to humanitarian access across Syria. | On Saturday, Lebanese authorities announced they would be initiating Syrian refugee repatriations within 10 days, anticipating they could return 200.000 people within a year. | This Monday, 7 NGOs issued Life in the Margins, documenting the plight of ~1 million internally displaced Iraqis who, 5 years onward from the end of the Iraqi civil war, remain without essential civic documents, cutting them off from access to basic services (see the full report here).

Sources: Reuters, AFP, The Libya Update, al Jazeera, IANS, ANSA.

Maritime Migration Routes to & through the West

Ruta Canaria and Mediterranean Route
Last Wednesday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 96 asylum seekers from 2 vessels in waters off of Gran Canaria and Lanzarote. On the same day, the Humanity1 (S.O.S. Humanity) rescued 207 asylum seekers from a large vessel that had been at sea for a week, and adrift in Maltese SAR waters with its fuel, food, and freshwater stocks depleted for several days. On the same day, Tunisian Coast Guard officers intercepted 110 asylum seekers trying to reach Italian waters. | On Thursday, the Sea-Eye disembarked 129 asylum seekers in the southern Italian port of Taranto—some of whom had spent 2 weeks at sea—as the Open Arms Uno rescued 19 asylum seekers from the Central Mediterranean. | On Friday, the Sea-Watch 3 received authorization from Italian authorities to disembark 428 asylum seekers in the port of Reggio Calabria in mainland Italy. | On Sunday, the Open Arms Uno rescued 372 asylum seekers in 3 operations in the Central Mediterranean, and retrieved the lifeless body of a man who died after being shot by smugglers. | This Monday, the Open Arms Uno rescued another 30 asylum seekers, for a total 402 souls on boards.

Aegean Sea
Last Tuesday, Turkish Coast Guard officers rescued 73 asylum seekers, and retrieved 6 lifeless bodies, whom they believe had been pushed back from Greek waters. | On Friday, Turkish coast guard officers rescued 26 asylum seekers, and retrieved 6 lifeless bodies, in 2 separate rescue operations off the coasts of Izmir and Bodrum. | On Sunday, Aegean Boat Report relayed media it had received from one among a group of 35 asylum seekers documenting their ongoing pushback at the hands of Greek Coast Guard officers in waters off of Bodrum.

Sources: La Provincia, EFE, InfoMigrants, Daily Sabah, AP, ABR.

Europe

EU migration policymaking
Last Wednesday, EUobserver laid out the New Pact on Migration and Asylum’s uncertain path forward, as different parliamentary committees move forward on its component pieces while competing priorities emerge and loom at the hand of the current and upcoming EU Council Presidencies. | On Wednesday, Polish authorities disclosed that, out of 1.3 million Ukrainian refugees in Poland, 600.000 have been issued personal ID numbers, and 400.000 have found regular employment in the Polish labor market. | On Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron announced a novel migration law to be debated shortly, providing for the redistribution of asylum seekers across French territory to prevent accumulations in major cities, accelerated repatriations, and giving French authorities new powers to select desired immigrants.

European migration (mis)management
Last Monday, Save the Children issued a report documenting children’s widespread exposure to traumatizing violence along the Balkan Route toward northern Europe—often dispensed by police officers (see StC’s full report here). | On Thursday, authorities detained 142 asylum seekers trying to traverse North Macedonia after irregularly crossing in from Greece.

Sources: EUobserver, PAP, RFI, ANSA, InfoMigrants.

The Americas

U.S. migration policymaking
Last Wednesday, a plane carrying 53 asylum seekers landed in Martha’s Vineyard, just off the coast of Massachusetts, arriving with no prior warning to local authorities or aid groups, directed there by the governor of Florida. | On Thursday, two buses carrying 101 asylum seekers arrived in Washington, DC, to disembark in front of the Vice-President’s residence, directed there without advance warning to local authorities or aid groups by the governor of Texas. | On Friday, the 53 asylum seekers flown to Martha’s Vineyard two days prior were offered transfer to a military facility in mainland Massachusetts, where they would be able to lodge asylum claims and access specialized support. On the same day, local advocates and opposition lawmakers began to scrutinize the source and disbursement of the estimated $600.000 spent to fly asylum seekers from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard. | On Saturday, another 50 asylum seekers arrived by bus from Texas to Washington, DC, where they were dropped off outside the Vice-President’s residence. | This Monday, Popular Information revealed the contents of the misleading flyers produced and distributed by Florida authorities to defraud asylum seekers into traveling to Martha’s Vineyard last week.

Irregular migration in Latin America
Last Tuesday, | NGOs implored Mexican authorities to provide services to ~60.000 asylum seekers stranded near Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala, to dissuade them from forming caravans and departing Tapachula autonomously. | On Wednesday, Mexican security forces intercepted 134 asylum seekers being transported across Mexico’s northeastern Tamaulipas state toward the U.S. border in 3 buses. On the same day, the U.S. Coast Guard repatriated 239 Cuban asylum seekers intercepted at sea in weeks prior, for a total 8.566 repatriations from the U.S., Mexico, and the Bahamas thus far this year. | On Friday, authorities in Guatemala announced they had intercepted 78 asylum seekers irregularly transiting through Guatemalan soil. | On Sunday, a novel caravan of ~200 asylum seekers departed from Tapachula for Oaxaca—the 9th to set off this month alone.

Sources: CNN, the Washington Post, the Texas Tribune, Popular Information, EFE, Milenio, AGN, Diario del Sur.

Oceania

Migration policymaking in Australia
Last Wednesday, on the heels of authorities raising Australia’s 2022-2023 permanent immigration ceiling from 165.000 to 190.000, advocates renewed demands for lawmakers to reform the temporary worker visa system, which leaves guest workers vulnerable to exploitation.

Sources: al Jazeera.

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MMh is freely accessible, and will remain so for as long as I can sustain it. MMh is also 10-15 hours of work per week on my end. If you value MMh and you’d like to help me sustain it, please consider switching to a paid subscription. If you can’t afford to, please take 10-15 seconds to share MMh and help new readers find this space. Thank you for your support.

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Spotlight

Last July saw the 10th anniversary of the formation of the Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan. Though the humanitarian sector has long been trying to move away from encampment and toward community settlement for refugees, this milestone betrays how much work remains to be done in that pursuit.

Za’atari was set up in 2012 to accommodate an initial 450 Syrian refugees. Since then, its population has grown to ~80.000, roughly half of whom are children. Since then, 20.000 children have been born within. Their parents observe that their camp-born children struggle to grasp, at a conceptual level, what Syria is.

Though UNHCR issued a press release on the day of the tenth anniversary, and OXFAM released a report, just one major international media outlet covered this milestone.

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On to the news…

Asia

Afghanistan and its neighbors
Last Tuesday, Russian officials announced, on the heels of a bomb attack on Monday, the temporary closure of the Russian Embassy, including its visa issuance office—one of the few foreign consular missions remaining in Kabul. | On Wednesday, Eurasianet relayed that at least 200 Afghan refugees have been repatriated from Tajikistan in the last 2 weeks, with little to no due process. On the same day, local officials reopened 6 girls’ secondary schools in Afghanistan’s eastern Paktia province. | On Friday, NBC News revealed that there are at least 230 Afghan unaccompanied minors on U.S. soil, awaiting reunification with kin who remain in Afghanistan without near-term evacuation prospects. | On Saturday, secondary school-age girls in Paktia gathered to protest the prompt closure of girls’ schools, shortly after their Wednesday reopening by local authorities. | On Sunday, The New York Times highlighted the depth of flood-borne destruction and disruption in Pakistan, where floodwaters—which continue covering an area roughly the size of Britain—have wiped out roughly half of Pakistan’s cotton harvest, and threaten to derail its wheat planting season.

Conflict and displacement within and beyond Myanmar
Last Tuesday, Thai fishermen rescued 10 Rohingya refugees shipwrecked off the coast of Thailand’s southwestern Satun province, where authorities located another 41 Rohingya on the following day. On the same day, local resistance fighters revealed that ~40.000 people have been displaced by fighting in the last 2 weeks from Kantbalu district, in central Myanmar’s embattled Sagaing region. Also on Tuesday, Rohingya Khobor highlighted the impact of accelerating conflict between the Tatmadaw and the Arakan Army on diplomatic relations between Bangladesh and Myanmar—and on the improbable beginning of refugee returns within 2022. | On Wednesday, The New Humanitarian highlighted efforts by displaced clinicians in Mizoram, overcoming inadequate infrastructure and precarious legal standing, to provide healthcare to Burmese refugees from Chin and Sagaing, and to local communities alike. On the same day, Frontier Myanmar highlighted the increasing difficulties Rohingya refugees are facing in exile in Malaysia, as the sympathy shown them upon initial displacement fades while legal status remains a chimera. | On Sunday, a Bangladeshi court indicted 29 individuals—only 15 of whom are in custody—over the 2021 murder of Rohingya civil society leader Mohib Ullah. | This Monday, local resistance groups reported that ~5.000 civilians were displaced by fighting over the week prior in Myanmar’s southeastern Shan State.

Sources: TOLOnews, Eurasianet, NBC News, The New York Times, Thai PBS World, The Irrawaddy, Rohingya Khobor, The New Humanitarian, Frontier Myanmar, The Financial Express

Sub-Saharan Africa

Drought and civil war in the Horn of Africa
Last Wednesday, the UN assessed 8 regions of Somalia, home to 7.1 million civilians, to be on the verge of an IPC Phase 5 famine determination on the heels of a failed sorghum and maize harvest last July. | On Friday, TPLF leadership announced it had offered a conditional truce to Ethiopian authorities, provided that humanitarian access into Tigray be restored. | On Saturday, TPLF leadership indicated its consent to ceasing hostilities and joining AU-mediated peace talks with Ethiopian authorities without preconditions—dropping a prior demand for the restoration of humanitarian access and basic services before entering into negotiations.

Conflict, displacement, and labor mobility in east Africa
Last Wednesday, local officials tallied ~10.000 displaced civilians from the DRC’s western Kwamouth region currently sheltering in Mongata, east of Kinshasa, with limited humanitarian assistance. | On Friday, UNHCR appealed for $68 million to provide humanitarian support to ~96.000 refugees displaced by fighting between EAC forces and the M23 rebel group in northeastern DRC. On the same day, local authorities appealed for help providing for ~4.100 IDPs—including ~2.000 who had been pushed back from Uganda—in the northeastern DRC town of Rutshuru. The EastAfrican highlighted the poor results, thus far, of the East African Community’s common market and its protocol providing for the free movement of labor, observing that the lack of portability of social security and pension benefits make workers reluctant to relocate within the EAC to pursue job opportunities.

Sources: HumAngle, Africanews, CNN, UNHCR, The EastAfrican.

Middle East and North Africa

Internal displacement in Syria and Iraq
Last Tuesday, The New Arab highlighted a continuous increase in femicides in Syria in recent months. | On Wednesday, the Washington Post highlighted the increase in climate-driven internal migration from Iraq’s southwestern countryside to cities such as Basra, where infrastructure and services can hardly keep up with existing residents, let alone new arrivals. | On Thursday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights tallied 7 fatalities and 15 injuries as a result of a Russian airstrike just west of Idlib city in northwestern Syria. | On Saturday, Kurdish authorities announced a cholera outbreak had begun affecting people in Raqqa and Deir Ezzor, which the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights attributed to authorities ceasing chlorination efforts. | This Monday, Syria’s Ministry of Health confirmed 2 dozen cholera cases and 5 fatalities across the country, with the outbreak currently concentrated in Aleppo.

Asylum seeker (im)mobility in the MENA and Sahel regions
Last Wednesday, EUobserver revealed a ‘mini-concept paper’ drafted by the EU external action service proposing to integrate migration management into Common Security and Defence Policy missions in the Sahel and Middle East, enabling diplomatic missions in countries of transit to contribute to interdiction activities conducted by domestic security forces. | On Thursday, authorities in Niger recorded the arrival of 847 asylum seekers—including 74 minors—pushed back from Algeria. | On Friday, local officials and advocates began reporting early signs of a significant number of Syrian refugees in Turkey intending to organize into mutual support convoys to try to migrate onward into the EU, fleeing economic deterioration and an increasingly hostile political climate in Turkey. On the same day, The New Humanitarian highlighted increasing food insecurity in Sudan, where 12 million people are believed to be facing acute hunger at the moment—a figure liable to rise to 18 million within the month. | On Sunday, Moroccan police trying to prevent a maritime departure towards the Canary Islands opened fire on a group of 29 asylum seekers, killing 1 woman. | This Monday, Turkish authorities announced they had deported just under 3.050 asylum seekers between September 2 and 8, including just under 1.450 Afghan and just under 450 Pakistani nationals.

Yemen’s civil war
Last Wednesday, advocates and UN officials issued renewed pleas for the international community to raise the remaining $12 million needed to initiate a salvage operation to transfer 1.1 million barrels of crude oil from the decaying FSO Safer, endangering Yemen’s western coastline and the whole of the Red Sea. | On Sunday, UN officials signaled their confidence in their ability to raise the $12 million still needed to salvage the FSO Safer, despite having received no new pledges in recent weeks, nor the disbursement of all but $10 million of the funding pledged thus far. On the same day, Reuters revealed that Yemen’s divided Political Leadership Council, the internationally-recognized government’s executive, have stalled the formation of committees to monitor corruption and oversee tender issuance, preventing the injection of $3 billion into Yemen’s foundering central bank by Saudi and UAE authorities.

Israeli asylum judicialization
Last Thursday, an Israeli court ruled that, from December 8, nationals of the DRC will lose temporary protected status, facilitating the repatriation of 225 Congolese asylum seekers with pending claims, as well any rejected claimants.

Sources: The New Arab, the Washington Post, AFP, Middle East Eye, AP, EUobserver, Africaews, The Jerusalem Post, The New Humanitarian, InfoMigrants, Middle East Monitor, Deutsche-Welle, Forbes, Reuters, Haaretz.

Maritime Migration Routes to & through the West

Ruta Canaria
Last Monday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 55 asylum seekers, and retrieved 1 lifeless body, from a vessel that ruptured as rescuers were approaching in waters off of Fuerteventura. | On Wednesday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 70 asylum seekers from 2 vessels in waters off of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura. | On Sunday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 55 asylum seekers from a vessel in waters 50 kilometers east of Lanzarote.

Central and western Mediterranean
Last Wednesday, Italian authorities designated Taranto as a safe port of disembarkation for the 267 asylum seekers rescued from the Central Mediterranean by the GeoBarents (MSF-IFRC) over the week prior. | On Thursday, Tunisian authorities rescued 14 asylum seekers, retrieved 8 lifeless bodies, and tallied 15 missing persons from a distressed vessel in waters off of Chebba, on Tunisia’s eastern coast.| On Saturday, the Sea-Watch 3 rescued 34 asylum seekers, bringing the total number of rescued over this past week to 394, as the Humanity 1 (S.O.S. Humanity) rescued another 25 asylum seekers, bringing the total number on board to 208. | On Sunday, Tunisian authorities announced they had recovered an additional 3 lifeless bodies on the heels of the shipwreck that had taken place off of Chebba on Thursday. | This Monday, 26 asylum seekers reached the Sicilian port of Pozzalo autonomously, along with the lifeless bodies of 6 passengers, including 3 children, who perished during the 4-day crossing.

Aegean Sea
Last Wednesday, 61 asylum seekers were disembarked in Crete after spending 10 days on a fishing vessel that had set sail from Lebanon trying to reach Italy, but had suffered engine failure and drifted for several days in Maltese SAR waters—during which time 4 children perished. | On Saturday, Turkish authorities issued drone footage purportedly capturing the interception and pushback of an asylum seeker vessel in waters off of Bodrum—as tensions between the two states, driven largely by populist electioneering in Turkey, continue increasing.

Gulf of Mexico
Last Monday, U.S. authorities apprehended 15 Cuban asylum seekers upon their arrival to Haulover Beach, on Florida’s southeastern coast. | On Saturday, the Red Panamericana y Caribeña de Organizaciones por los Derechos Humanos revealed that 31 Venezuelan asylum seekers trying to reach Curaçao by boat had been intercepted by Dutch colonial authorities on Sunday prior. On the same day, 9 Cuban asylum seekers arrived autonomously in Long Key, where they were promptly apprehended by U.S. officials.

Sources: EFE, Reuters, InfoMigrants, AP, The New Arab, CNN, En Frontera, 7 News Miami.

Europe

EU migration policymaking
Last Tuesday, IOM disclosed that 919 asylum seekers had been refouled to Libya from the Central Mediterranean over the week prior. On the same day, Italy’s Court of Cassation ruled that irregular migrants do not need a permanent work visa to be eligible for a stay of deportation, finding that holding a fixed-term contract and making earnest efforts to learn Italian meet the threshold to demonstrate ‘serious intention’ to integrate into Italian society. | On Wednesday, the European Court of Justice ruled that foreign family members of an EU national residing in the EU on the basis of family unity inhabit the EU as long-term residents, and thus are eligible for long-term residence permits (see the ECJ’s full judgment here). On the same day, the EU Council and European Parliament issued a roadmap to completing negotiations on the New Pact on Migration and Asylum by February 2024. Also on Wednesday, EUobserver revealed a proposal by the Czech Presidency or the EU Council to advance EU legislation allowing affected states to curtail asylum rights and expedite deportations in the event of a sudden increase in arrivals engineered by a bordering state wielding hostile intent. | On Friday, Danish authorities announced the co-signing, alongside Rwandan authorities, of a letter of ‘joint ambition’ to collaborate on migration management, a possible precursor to an offshoring agreement.

European migration (mis)management
Last Monday, Bulgarian authorities reported a substantial increase in irregular arrivals from Turkey this year, with 85.000 arrivals recorded since the new year, against 41.000 in all of 2021. | On Tuesday, Bulgarian authorities announced disciplinary measures against 10 border police officers believed to be facilitating irregular arrivals into Bulgaria. On the same day, advocates blasted German authorities’ dispatching of a deportation flight from Munich to Islamabad, demanding that repatriations be halted while Pakistan remains affected by catastrophic flooding. | On Thursday, Deutsche-Welle described how Greece’s Automated Border Surveillance System ought to have been able to find 39 asylum seekers who became stranded on an islet in the Evros for a week in early August. | On Friday, an asylum seeker was shot and injured at the Loon-Plage informal settlement near Calais, the second shooting in 2 days, on the heels of shootings that injured 9 asylum seekers at the end of August. | On Saturday, an ordinance entered into effect prohibiting asylum seekers not yet registered at the Ter Apel reception center in the Netherlands from entering the center of the town itself. | On Sunday, the Guardian relayed increasing concerns among Ukrainian refugees in Europe facing a looming squeeze, this winter, between lapsing state support and host communities’ ability to continue providing community-based support amid spiking energy prices. | This Monday, NU.nl issued a report finding that 30 major Dutch cities that have hosted asylum seeker reception centers over the last 5 years experienced no relevant disruptions as a result, belying the notion that asylum seeker reception should be contained to Ter Apel.

Dystopia at the Home Office
Last Monday, the Independent signaled growing concern among UK councils about increasing homelessness claims from Ukrainian households losing access to the Homes for Ukraine scheme as their 6-month terms begin expiring this September. | On Wednesday, newly-appointed Home Secretary Suella Braverman began alienating Home Office civil servants with her inaugural speech to her staff, demanding in-office attendance and insisting on an unworkable target of preventing all irregular crossings of the English Channel. | On Friday, documentation submitted to the High Court as part of ongoing litigation over the legality of the UK-Rwanda asylum seeker deportation deal further revealed the Home Office’s dismissals of warnings from the civil service that Rwanda falls short of the criteria to be considered a safe country of deportation for at-risk individuals.

Sources: EFE, ANSA, InfoMigrants, EUobserver, Bloomberg, EURACTIV, Deutsche-Welle, NLTimes, the Guardian, the Independent.

The Americas

U.S. migration policymaking
Last Tuesday, Texas authorities disclosed they had disbursed $12 million to bus recently arrived asylum seekers from the U.S.-Mexico border to Washington, DC, New York, and Chicago over the previous 5 months. | On Thursday, the Biden Administration announced new regulations to enter into effect this December easing requirements for permanent residence applicants to be designated a public charge and rendered ineligible for green cards—restoring access to permanent status restricted by the preceding Administration. On the same day, USCIS indicated it was on track to issue a record 280.000 employment-based green cards this year, drawing criticism from advocates for adjudicating cases not by the order of their filing, but rather by ease of adjudication—leaving complex pending cases in the backlog rather than adjudicating them first, per standard procedure. Also on Thursday, Washington, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser declared a public emergency over continuing asylum seeker arrivals by bus from Texas and Arizona, allowing her Administration to access up $10 million to fund a novel municipal Office of Migrant Services, to coordinate sheltering and service provision. | On Friday, local officials announced plans to open a municipal reception center and charter a bus company in response to this week’s release of nearly 500 asylum seekers into the U.S. border city of El Paso from over-capacity federally-managed reception centers—more of which are expected in coming weeks. On the same day, the Biden Administration also announced it would keep the refugee resettlement ceiling at 125.000 for FY2023, as actual resettlement arrivals within FY2022 remain far short of the current year’s goal.

Irregular migration in Latin America
Last Tuesday, Mexican authorities disclosed they had intercepted 266 asylum seekers being transported irregularly across Mexican soil in concealed truck holds. | On Friday, En Frontera tributed the 17 Venezuelan asylum seekers who have perished, and 9 more who have gone missing, trying to cross the Rio Grande thus far this year, as autumn weather accentuates its flow and currents. On the same day, the Mexican Economy Secretariat signed an agreement with civil society organization Fuerza Migrante to facilitate the integration of recently arrived migrants into educational and labor market opportunities in Mexico. | On Saturday, U.S. authorities repatriated 74 Cuban asylum seekers intercepted mid-sea ~7 miles off of Long Key. | On Sunday, a novel caravan composed of ~1.000 asylum seekers—the 7th thus far in September—departed Tapachula, headed to San Pedro Tapanatepec in Oaxaca to petition for temporary visas whose issuance is severely delayed in Tapachula. On the same day, authorities in Guatemala disclosed they had intercepted 534 asylum seekers irregularly transiting through Guatemalan soil over the week prior. | This Monday, advocates blasted the 2.6 million peso increase to COMAR’s budget, to just under 48.340.000 pesos, projected in the Mexican government’s 2023 budget proposal, arguing COMAR needs at least 3 times as much funding to properly serve the protection needs of arriving asylum seekers.

Sources: ABC News, CBS News, the Washington Post, Bloomberg, El Paso Matters, teleSUR, En Frontera, Milenio, CNW, AGN, el Diario del Sur, La Razón.

Oceania

Migration policymaking in Australia and New Zealand
Last Tuesday ~1.000 asylum seekers demonstrated in Canberra to demand action on the recently-elected Albanese government's electoral promise to provide permanent solutions to some of Australia's ~31.000 temporary visa holders. | On Saturday, The Saturday Paper highlighted the costs, financial and human, of Australia’s draconian offshore asylum seeker detention system and of its slow and secretive refugee resettlement. | This Monday, authorities in New Zealand issued statistics indicating that, following the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, New Zealand is on the cusp of returning to net positive migration.

Sources: al Jazeera, The Saturday Paper, InterestNZ.

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Spotlight

“First of all, the international community should accept their mistakes in Afghanistan.”

This week, I wanted to highlight (with only 2 weeks’ delay…) the latest episode of the Fractured Podcast, a collaboration between this space and ReFocus Media Labs. In this episode, Sonia Nandzik discuses a year of Taliban rule with Afghan journalist and filmmaker Said Reza Hossini Adib. The entire episode is well worth a listen, but I wanted to highlight a few outtakes (condensed and lightly edited for clarity).

Asked if it’s fair to say the Taliban have brought security to Afghanistan (25:33), Reza emphatically responds:
“No! It is not… In the past years, the Taliban were killing the people, and right now, the Taliban are controlling the government and so no one is there to kill the people… When I was in Afghanistan, I was not able to travel to the safe provinces, like from Kabul to Bamyan. If I wanted to go from Kabul to Bamyan I was not able to do it, because the Taliban were controlling the roads… It’s so simple: they were killing and right now they are not killing.
For Afgan people there is no difference between ISIS and the Taliban: we know that they are one people, they have the same attitude, the same perspective… the only difference is the color of their flags. One of them is white and one of them is black. For us, if you go talk to a Talib, you cannot understand easily if he is a member of ISIS or a member of the Taliban, because both are talking in the same way…
How many Hazara people were killed in this year? How many Hindu people were killed in this one year? How many suicide attacks happened within this one year, between the Hazara and Shia minority people? The same thing was happening in the past: nothing changed…”

Asked about the difficulties of leaving Afghanistan (32:34), Reza’s voice drops with a hint of involuntary sadness:
“The chance of crossing the border illegally is so low, maybe 10% of people can be successful to cross the border… When you cross the border, if you are in Pakistan there are millions of people in Pakistan and UNHCR is not able to help them, or even to register them. If you want to register in a Pakistan UNHCR office, you should wait for six months… maybe it takes some years for registration. I’m not talking about resettlement, I’m not talking about interview, just registration.
But if you cross the border and you go into Iran, the story is changed. In Iran there is no UNHCR activity; you should go directly to the Iranian immigration office. If they like you, they check your background and maybe they give you some short-term residency, or maybe they do not even give you that.
Of course, if you are not going to stay in Iran, the problems will increase for you, because crossing the border between Iran and Turkey is impossible in these days. There is a big wall, more than 300 kilometers between the Turkey and Iran border, and if you are lucky maybe one person can cross the border… and if you come into Turkey, again the challenge is increased because Turkish police will arrest you and will deport your back. In these days, each week, more than 600 people are deported from Turkey to Afghanistan. They are not stopping deporting. They are deporting… If you want to leave Afghanistan, at least you have to walk one week in the mountains…”

I can’t recommend this episode enough. Thank you Reza for your thoughts.

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On to the news…

Asia

Afghanistan and its neighbors
Last Monday, UN-OCHA appealed for $770 to assist flood- and earthquake-affected civilians in Afghanistan, at least 8.000 of whom have been displaced by natural disasters since June. | On Thursday, the Biden Administration announced it would shortly cease admitting Afghan evacuees through humanitarian parole, to instead launch Operation Enduring Welcome on October 1, focused on relocating family members of Afghan civilians already residing on U.S. soil, SIV applicants, and highly vulnerable resettlement applicants. | On Friday, a bomb attack at the Guzargah Mosque in Herat killed 18 worshipers and wounded another 23. | On Sunday, TOLOnews highlighted further abuses by Tajik authorities against Afghan refugees, disclosing it had received a video documenting the forced repatriation of ~30 Afghan nationals. | This Monday, Pakistani authorities signaled that the death toll of Pakistan’s massive flooding has surpassed 1.300, with ~33 million people displaced and ~6.4 million in need of urgent humanitarian assistance.

Conflict and displacement in Myanmar
Last Monday, the Burmese Coast Guard intercepted 59 Rohingya asylum seekers, and retrieved 6 lifeless bodies, from a boat that had spent several days adrift adrift at sea. | On Tuesday, a spokesman for a local resistance group in Myanmar’s central Sagaing region denounced that ~27.000 civilians had been displaced by Tatmadaw attacks over the previous week. | On Wednesday, aid workers in Myanmar’s east-central Kayah State denounced that junta troops have been blocking humanitarian access and looting aid stocks feeding ~200.000 internally displaced people. | On Thursday, The Irrawaddy relayed Burmese farmers’ expectations for a poor rice harvest this year, given rising costs of fertilizer and pesticide, and agricultural disruption caused by military clashes.

Sources: al Jazeera, CBS News, TOLOnews, RFA, the Irrawaddy.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Conflict and displacement in the Sahel, central Africa, and the Horn of Africa
Last Monday, local authorities in northeastern Nigeria announced that a bridge connecting Yobe and Borno communities had been destroyed by flash flooding, displacing 7.000 in place local households and killing 4 individuals. | On Wednesday, national authorities announced that 500.000 people had been affected by flooding in Nigeria thus far this year, including just under 73.500 displaced. | On Friday, UN-OCHA’s Protection Sector North-East Nigeria issued a report criticizing Borno State authorities for rushing to close regional IDP camps, releasing just over 103.500 IDPs into an uncertain near future (see the full PSNE report here). | On Saturday, local authorities tallied 120 civilians displaced from embattled Kwamouth, in the western DRC, toward the crossroads town of Mongati east of Kinshasa, as authorities demand of internal migrants to return from Kwamouth to their provinces of origin. | This Monday, UN-OCHA head Martin Griffiths warned that on the heels of a 4th consecutive failed rainy season, famine was all but assured to strike Somalia between October and December, affecting 22 million civilians.

Ethiopia’s civil war
Last Wednesday, the TPLF accused Ethiopian forces of multiple airstrikes against Mekelle, as it also announced an offensive into Western Tigray, held by national troops and Amharan militia. | On Thursday, the TPLF accused Ethiopian and Eritrean forces of launching an attack on Adayabo, in Western Tigray’s northeast. | On Friday, Sudanese authorities announced they had granted asylum to 247 Tigrayan soldiers deployed in Sudan as part of Ethiopia’s contribution to a UN peacekeeping force, and fearful of facing facing repression upon return to Ethiopia. | On Sunday, Sudanese authorities urged aid groups to withdraw from Hamdayet refugee camp, hosting Tigrayan refugees just over the border in Sudan, due to risks engendered by spiraling conflict in Western Tigray.

Sources: HumAngle, Reuters, al Jazeera, Sudan Tribune.

Middle East and North Africa

Displacement within and beyond Syria
Last Monday, the Syrian Network for Human Rights issued a report tallying just over 123.250 civilians detained by the Assad regime since 2011, as well as at least another ~6.250 detentions and ~13.500 disappearances by non-state armed groups (see the SNHR’s full report here). | On Sunday, a 17-year old Syrian medical student was beaten and murdered in Turkey, as xenophobic rhetoric and attacks against refugees and migrants ratchets up ahead of Turkish presidential elections. | This Monday, Al-Monitor highlighted the problems caused by extreme heat and water shortages in IDP camps in northeast Syria, over 590 are facing water rationing an 126 of which have suffered fires since the beginning of the year.

Asylum seeker (im)mobility in the MENA region
Last Wednesday, Amnesty International issued a report documenting mistreatment and human rights abuses by Turkish and Iranian authorities, including arbitrary detention and torture, in the repatriation of Afghan asylum seekers in irregular transit, documenting at least 255 illegal deportations between July 2021 and July 2022 (see AI’s full report here). On the same day, UN OCHA tallied nearly 260.000 Sudanese civilians affected by flooding that destroyed 15.000 homes, and damaged another 39.000 across 15 of Sudan’s 18 provinces. Also on Wednesday, Sözcü reported that the Turkish Foreign Ministry had put the Education Ministry on notice regarding use by Turkey’s 20.000 yearly Erasmus program grantees to travel into the EU and then seek asylum. | On Saturday, Turkish authorities boasted that, thus far this year, they had deported just under 75.700 irregular migrants, and prevented just under 205.000 irregular arrivals.

Yemen’s civil war
Last Wednesday, UN officials lamented that the $80 million FSO Safer rescue operation remains $14 million underfunded months after announcing a rescue plan, revealing that of the $66 pledged so far, only $10 million has actually been disbursed as of early September.

Sources: MEMO, Al-Monitor, InfoMigrants, al Jazeera, duvaR, Daily Sabah, VOA.

Maritime Migration Routes to & through Europe

Mediterranean and Aegean Seas
Last Monday, Libyan authorities announced that they had rescued 6 asylum seekers, retrieved 2 lifeless bodies, and tallied 19 missing persons from a vessel that had set sail from Egypt to try to reach Italy, but sank off the coast of Libya. On the same day, Spanish authorities announced they had retrieved the lifeless bodies of 7 asylum seekers who had perished in an unknown shipwreck. | On Tuesday, Greek authorities rescued 30 asylum seekers from a distressed vessel drifting in waters northwest of Crete. | On Wednesday, Italian authorities announced they had retrieved 5 lifeless bodies off the coast of Sardinia, from a yet unknown shipwreck. | On Friday, Alarm Phone relayed that 80 asylum seekers who had been adrift in the Maltese SAR zone since Wednesday had been rescued and disembarked in Malta. | On Sunday, the Ocean Viking (S.O.S. Méditerranée) disembarked 459 asylum seekers it had rescued over the week prior in the Italian port of Taranto.

Atlantic-adjacent waters: Ruta Canaria and the English Channel
Last Tuesday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 58 asylum seekers from a distressed vessel in waters 55 kilometers off of Fuerteventura. | On Saturday, the UK Ministry of Defence detected 960 asylum seekers crossing the English Channel in 20 vessels. On the same day, French authorities prevented another 190 asylum seekers from crossing the English Channel in 4 operations. | On Sunday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 106 asylum seekers from 2 distressed vessels in waters off of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, as another 47 asylum seekers reached Lanzarote autonomously.

Gulf of Mexico
Last Tuesday, El Espectador revealed that Colombian authorities had intercepted 220 asylum seekers transiting through the coral island of San Andrés, off the eastern coast of Nicaragua, to then land on Nicaraguan shores and thus bypass the Darién Gap. On the same day, Colombian authorities intercepted another 3 vessels off of San Andrés, carrying another 19 asylum seekers. | On Wednesday, U.S. authorities apprehended 8 asylum seekers shortly after they arrived autonomously to Lantana—along Florida’s southeastern coast and far north of usual arrivals. U.S. authorities intercepted a ship carrying ~15 asylum seekers near Hollywood Beach, in southeastern Florida. | On Saturday, U.S. authorities apprehended 42 asylum seekers who had arrived autonomously in Dry Tortugas and Islamorada in the Florida Keys. | On Sunday, Colombian authorities intercepted 58 asylum seekers on 6 vessels trying to bypass the Darién Gap via the island of San Andrés. | This Monday, U.S. authorities apprehended 15 asylum seekers upon their autonomous arrival to Haulover Beach just south of Ft. Lauderdale.

Sources: InfoMigrants, ANSA, Times of Malta, euronews, EFE, AFP, The New Arab, El Espectador, RCN, WBFP, Local10News, NBC Miami.

Europe

EU migration policymaking
Last Wednesday, the Guardian relayed direct testimony of Alaa Hamoudi—plaintiff in a lawsuit against Greek authorities—detailing his personal experience of a maritime pushback in April 2020, as Frontex Fundamental Rights Officer Jonas Grimheden’s suggested he intends to place Greek authorities under closer surveillance. On the same day, 41 asylum seekers resettled from Libya to Norway as part of a UNHCR humanitarian flight funded by Italian authorities. | On Thursday, The Irish Times tallied that just under 102.000 asylum seekers have been returned to Libya since 2017 under the EU facility supporting the Libyan Coast Guard to intercept asylum seeker vessels at sea. | On Friday, al Jazeera highlighted increasing difficulties faced by Turkish nationals to obtain Schengen visas, with rejection rates tallied to have increased from 4% in 2014 to 17% in 2021.

European migration (mis)management
Last Tuesday, Médecins sans Frontières blasted Lithuanian authorities’ mistreatment of non-Western asylum seekers who arrived in the last year from Belarus, denouncing that Nigerian and Indian asylum seekers are being subjected to prolonged, extrajudicial detention, while Belarusian and Russian asylum seekers are allowed access to community processing (see MSF’s full statement here). | On Thursday, BGNES revealed that asylum seeker reception centers in Bulgaria are 20% over-capacity, with both detainees and center staff straining under the pressure. | On Friday, Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner Dunja Mijatovic accused Dutch authorities of running the Ter Apel asylum seeker reception center in violation of the minimum standards set out in the European Convention on Human Rights, as Dutch judicial authorities found no criminal conduct in the perishing of a 3-month old infant in Ter Apel in late August. On the same day, Dutch authorities announced the relocation of 370 asylum seekers from Ter Apel to Albergen, in east-central Netherlands; and to Delft, near The Hague. | On Sunday, Dutch authorities announced they had begun building a 700-bed temporary facility in Het Hogeland, near Ter Apel.

Dystopia at the Home Office
Last Tuesday, UK authorities disclosed they are in discussions with Albanian officials to provide the Border Force access to Albanian biometric databases, and possible secondment by Albanian police, to check Albanian arriving asylum seekers for any potential criminal history. | On Wednesday, opposition lawmakers accused Home Secretary Priti Patel of misleading Parliament by claiming that the majority of cross-Channel arrivals were economic migrants, a claim contradicted by recently issued Home Office data showing that, since 2018, 94% of arrivals claimed asylum and 92% of those claims were found to be admissible. | On Thursday, Medical Justice issued a report tallying unusually high rates of PTSD and suicidal ideation among an admittedly limited sample of 36 asylum seekers slated for deportation to Rwanda (see MJ’s full report here). | On Sunday, litigation resumed in the High Court to adjudicate the legality—or lack thereof—of the UK-Rwanda deportation agreement. This Monday, Home Secretary Priti Patel resigned her position, committing to return to the Parliamentary backbench once incoming Prime Minister Liz Truss appoints a new Home Secretary.

Displacement within and beyond Ukraine
Last Wednesday, Brazilian authorities extended eligibility for 2-year temporary protection permits to Ukrainian refugees arriving through March 2023. | On Thursday, EU officials opened a medavac center in the southeastern Polish city of Rzeszow, to expand on existing capacities that have allowed 1.100 medical evacuations from within Ukraine to hospitals across Europe since last March. | On Sunday, Tribune Magazine highlighted the difficulties facing displaced Ukrainian Roma with Hungarian roots in their efforts toward local settlement and integration in Hungary.

Sources: the Guardian, Libya Update, The Irish Times, al Jazeera, HumAngle, EURACTIV, AP, NLTimes, the Independent, Agência Brasil, Tribune.

The Americas

U.S. migration policymaking
Last Wednesday, CNN revealed that Texas has spent ~$12 million since last May to bus ~8.900 asylum seekers from the U.S.-Mexico border to Washington, D.C. and New York, as its governor announced novel departures to Chicago. On the same day, New Mexico Political Report relayed pleas from legal advocates to close the overcrowded and under-serviced Torrance County asylum seeker detention site—where a youth wrongfully incarcerated perished by suicide the Friday prior. | On Thursday, U.S. and Mexican officials rescued 37 and 39 asylum seekers, respectively and retrieved 9 lifeless bodies in total, along a swollen stage of the Rio Grande. On the same day, authorities in Jamaica announced they would be dispatching a fact-finding team to meet with Jamaican seasonal agricultural workers in Canada, in response to a mid-August appeal to authorities deploring grievous abuse and near-slavery labor conditions in Canadian farms. Also on Thursday, Mexican banking authorities disclosed that remittance inflows had exceeded 5 billion for the 3rd consecutive month this August, exceeding revenues from tourism and oil production. | On Friday, Reuters revealed that Houston Police are trying to locate 57 unaccompanied asylum seeking minors released from HHS custody to non-parent sponsors, who have gone missing from the care of these sponsors. On the same day, The Texas Tribune highlighted ironic dimensions of the Texas governor’s asylum seeker busing plan, including its provision of free transportation from jurisdictions in Texas with high asylum rejection rates, to jurisdictions with high asylum approval rates. Also on Friday, Voice of America relayed the concerns of U.S. resettlement agencies with the fact that less than 16.750 resettlement arrivals have taken place thus far this fiscal year, against a target of 125.000—all while the arrival under humanitarian parole of ~75.000 Afghan and ~60.000 Ukrainian nationals places agencies under parallel strain to facilitate status adjustment at scale.

Irregular migration in Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean
Last Tuesday, Mexican authorities disclosed they had issued 21.000 Tarjetas de Visitante Trabajador Fronterizo (Visiting Border Worker Cards)—which allow circular labor migration across its southern borders—since December 2018. On the same day, an asylum seeker caravan that had departed Tapachula on the Friday prior arrived in Huixtla, where its access to the town’s Centro de Atención Integral al Tránsito Fronterizo was blocked by security forces. | On Wednesday, U.S. and Mexican authorities repatriated 88 and 60 Cuban nationals, respectively. | On Friday, the Associated Press highlighted the difficulties faced by Nicaraguan asylum seekers to access protection in Costa Rica, where a backlog of 200.000 pending asylum claims and 50.000 arrivals awaiting the opportunity to file a claim have strained state resources. On the same day, a novel 400-person strong caravan departed from Tapachula toward Oaxaca. | On Sunday, the U.S. Coast guard repatriated 163 asylum seekers intercepted at sea to Cuba. On the same day, Guatemalan authorities announced that, pursuant to signals from Honduran authorities that a caravan was forming in Honduras, they had prevented 457 irregular entries into Guatemala. Also on Sunday, authorities in Guatemala apprehended 180 asylum seekers irregularly present on Guatemalan soil.

Displacement and integration in South America
Last Monday, Bolivian authorities disclosed that nearly 4.350 foreign nationals without status had obtained one-year residence permits since last year—including just over 1.600 Venezuelan nationals. | On Wednesday, authorities in Ecuador launched a campaign to regularize the ~513.000 Venezuelan nationals irregularly present in Ecuador. On the same day, Universidad del Rosario and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation estimated there are 2.33 million Venezuelan nationals in Colombia—60% of the total displaced population—1.3 million of whom are holders of temporary protected status. | This Monday, Ualá, a major bank in Colombia, announced it would accept Temporary Protection Permits as permissible identification to open a bank account, facilitating access to financial services to displaced Venezuelans in Colombia.

Sources: The Texas Tribune, NMPR, AP, al Jazeera, Border Report, Reuters, VOA, El Universal, El Informador, cibercuba, AP, EFE, AGN, El Nacional, infobae, La República, La Opinión.

Oceania

Labor migration to Australia
On Friday, authorities in Australia announced they would lift the annual long-term immigrant intake from 35.000 to 195.000 to meet the Australian labor market’s hiring needs.

Sources: AP.

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Spotlight

Last Thursday was Genocide Rememberance Day, observed by the Rohingya to commemorate the launch of an ethnic cleansing campaign by the Burmese military, assented and abetted Myanmar’s civilian leadership. The campaign led to the killing of unknown thousands of Rohingya civilians and the displacement of ~750.000 to Bangladesh, where they have remained miserably encamped these last 5 years, in fenced-off sites around Cox’s Bazaar and on an island containment facility in Bhasan Char.

Beyond the nihilistic ferocity of the abuses committed against the Rohingya in the Tatmadaw’s 2017 campaign, their plight is especially tragic as it brings together all the major failures of the contemporary global refugee order. Structurally, Rohingya refugees exist beyond the reach of not just UNHCR’s traditional long-term solutions to displacement, but also the informal solutions employed by refugees facing more favorable economic and geographic landscapes.

UNHCR’s three traditional solutions to long-term displacement are voluntary return, local integration, and resettlement. A safe and dignified return remains the primary demand of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, five years into their exile (as well as the primary demand of Bangladeshi authorities—though for somewhat less exalted reasons). However, so long as the ruling military junta remains in power in Naypyidaw, safe return is simply impossible for the Rohingya. And, though the exiled National Unity Government has voiced its contrition, it’s hard to decipher the degree to which its wish for atonement is genuine, or whether its intent is to send the right signals to the West. In either event, the NUG is a long way from power, with the military junta willing to spill untold amounts of blood to retain. Five years on from their violent expulsion from Myanmar, voluntary return for the Rohingya remains a chimera—in the short and medium term.

Local settlement in countries of first asylum is no more an option. Though the Rohingya do not face direct violent repression in regional countries of asylum, they face another form of violence: a grinding, day-to-day violence, suppressing their right and ability to participate in society, coupled with the threat of coerced return to Myanmar. Refugee camps around Cox’s Bazaar in Bangladesh are fenced-off and receive only limited cell phone service, while Rohingya living therein are formally prohibited from working or accessing public services, such as healthcare and education, in Bangladesh. Last December, authorities closed down informal schools operating in Cox’s Bazaar, depriving ~30.000 children of what little education they could receive, and thousands more teachers of their precious livelihoods. The ~40.000 Rohingya refugees in India are facing increasing repression as the BJP government mainstreams Hindu nationalism and threatens deportation, with increasing numbers of Rohingya crossing infomally from India into Bangladesh to avoid forcible return to Myanmar. Neither India nor Bangldesh—nor Thailand, Malaysia, or Indonesia, for that matter—are state parties to the 1951 Refugee Convention (understandably wary, as of the early 1950s, of august pledges of legal englightement from Western states and institutions). This means they lack not just the obligation under international law to extend protection to arriving refugees, but also the infrastructure in place to receive arriving asylum seekers, register their identity, and adjudicate their asylum claims. The Rohingya inhabit a singularly inhospitable neighborhood, where UNHCR—whose influence is already frustratingly limited in countries that are signatories to the Convention—simply has no leverage.

UNHCR’s third traditional solution to protracted displacement is resettlement—the process where UNHCR creates lists of particulary-vulnerable refugees, whose need to find a place of safety is particularly urgent, and receiving states select refugees from those lists and resettle them from countries of first asylum to their own soil. The U.S. and Canada have long led the world in global resettlement, though the U.S. system was shredded by the prior Administration, and has not been repaired by its successor. Resettlement, in its current shape, is woefully insufficient to offer solutions at scale to the Rohingya—or to any other community in large-scale protracted displacement. Over the last 20 years, less than 1.2 million refugees have been resettled in total, with a record ~126.000 departures in 2016. Resettlement, by design, can only meet the needs of only the most severely needful. Relocating a large numbers of Rohingya would not only be virtually impossible just in terms of logistics, but also largely undesireable: Rohingya community groups themselves have consistently held that their wish is to return, in safety and dignity, to Myanmar; resettlement would not only leave this desire unmet, but reduce pressure on Burmese authorities to accede to and facilitate their return.

Given the failings of UNHCR’s three traditional solutions, two other solutions remain: irregular migration and subsistence under humanitarian care. The same geography that deprives the Rohingya of regional signatories to the 1951 Refugee Convention strands them far from the highly developed economies that normally absorb immigrant communities: while Syrian or Afghan refugees face extreme and growing difficulties reaching Europe, there is a road they can follow. Rohingya refugees lack even that. As for subsistence, it’s one thing to stay alive, another altogether to live one’s life—especially in a context where humanitarian care can be and is often co-opted by national governments.

Unfortunately, the grim panorama the Rohingya have faced over the last five years looks unlikely to change in the next five. The return of civilian governance to Myanmar offers the only possibility of dignified return for the Rohingya—and just a possibility, not a guarantee. In the meantime, their situation invites reflection on how the contemporary international order fails refugees in protracted displacement. Humanitarian aid can keep the Rohingya alive, but it cannot keep them whole. Sanctions and diplomatic adominition have not sufficed to right the course of the Burmese junta, yet foreign intervention would likely just aggravate internal strife. The Rohingya are beyond questions bona fide refugees, yet UNHCR has only the narrowest of mandates in south Asia. Not to suggest that other refugees have it good, but while other refugees suffer becuase some dimensions of the international legal order fail them, the Rohingya suffer because every dimension of the international legal order has failed them. Resolving this situation is a generational project, with as much to draw from the discipline of development as from that of humanitarianism. And though I have to admit I’m finding myself woefully unfamiliar with the local NGO families that any among

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Asia

Afghanistan and its neighbors
Last Monday, Afghan evacuees stranded in temporary accommodation in the UAE—where ~12.000 evacuees have been awaiting long-term solutions since last August—began a 2-day peaceful protest demanding to be resettled to the U.S. or to other receiving countries. | On Thursday, UN officials announced they were assessing the needs of ~8.200 people affected by flooding across Afghanistan in recent weeks. On the same day, Albanian authorities announced a 6-month extension to the residency permits of Afghan civilians evacuated in August 2021 and temporarily hosted in Albania awaiting resettlement to third countries. | On Friday, Pakistani authorities disclosed that as many as 33 million people have been displaced by flooding triggered by heavy rains lashing Pakistan since this June. On the same day, just under 325 resettling Afghan refugees arrived from Pakistan to Canada’s central province in Winnipeg.

Conflict and displacement in Myanmar
Last Wednesday, The Irrawaddy disclosed that ~7.000 civilians had been displaced from Myanmar’s central Sagaing region by Tatmadaw attacks over the week prior. On the same day, the Chin Human Rights Organization disclosed that just under 51.000 Chin refugees had entered India’s eastern Mizoram State over the 18 months prior, where they were in dire need to humanitarian assistance. | On Saturday, Bangladeshi authorities detained 18 Rohingya refugees who had absconded from Bhasan Char and returned to mainland Bangladesh.

Sources: Reuters, TOLOnews, Exit News, the Guardian, CBC, The Irrawaddy, bdnews24

Sub-Saharan Africa

Conflict resumption and disaster-borne displacement in Ethiopia
Last Tuesday, Tigrayan authorities revealed that they had participated in 2 rounds of direct talks with Ethiopian negotiators, but rejected what they considered unreasonable conditions for peace. | On Wednesday, Tigrayan authorities and local civilians signaled renewed fighting between TPLF and Ethiopian forces around the Amharan town of Kobo, just beyond Tigray’s southeastern tip. WFP officials blasted the TPLF’s apparent theft of 570.000 liters of fuel, intended for aid delivery but diverted to support the renewed fighting off of southeastern Tigray. | On Thursday, local officials signaled that more than 74.000 civilians have been displaced by flooding in Ethiopia’s southeastern Gambella State. the World Meteorological Organization forecast a 5th consecutive failed rainy season in the Horn of Africa starting this October, aggravating already dire drought conditions (see the WMO’s full report here). | On Friday, local media reported that an airstrike had destroyed a kindergarten in Mekelle, killing 4 civilians and injuring at least another dozen. | This Monday, the TPLF denied having seized the strategic Amharan town of Weldiya, south of the hereto now reported fighting around Kobo.

Conflict and displacement in central Africa and the Sahel
Last Wednesday, UNHCR announced the repatriation of 300 refugees from Zambia to their home communities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. On Thursday, local authorities signaled that ~5.000 civilians had been displaced from the DRC’s western Kwamouth province, on the heels of long-running tensions that erupted into open fighting this August. On the same day, Nigerien officials signaled that ~76.000 people have been displaced by flooding that has struck multiple regions across southern Niger since this July. | On Friday, UNHCR announced that 105 refugees from the CAR had voluntarily returned from exile in the Republic of Congo over the few weeks prior. | This Monday, al Jazeera highlighted the benefits derived from the ongoing issuance of biometric ID cards by Cameroonian authorities to refugees from the CAR, allowing them to better access livelihoods and services.

Sources: AP, the Washington Post, Devex, Addis Standard, VOA, UNHCR, HumAngle, al Jazeera.

Middle East and North Africa

Yemen’s civil war
Last Monday, HSA Group, Yemen’s largest private-sector company, pledged $1.2 million toward the salvage of the FSO Safer, rotting off the Red Sea coast of Yemen with 1.1 million barrels of crude oil on board threatening environmental catastrophe, as the UN salvage effort remains $15 million short of its $80 million target months after launching its appeal. | This Monday, Yemen authorities announced renewed fighting around Taiz, accessible only via a limited number of dangerous mountain roads since Ansar Allah seized the city in 2015, as 16 advocacy organizations pleaded for the main roads into Taiz to be reopened to end the city’s isolation (see the multi-author open letter here).

Internal displacement in Syria
Last Tuesday, the Guardian profiled Turkey’s rapprochement with the Assad regime and analyzed its implications for internally and externally displaced Syrians, revealing that Turkish authorities appear to have abandoned a planned invasion of northern Syria feared by Kurdish military and civil society groups. | This Monday, Middle East Eye highlighted a pilot project providing 5 daily hours of education to 71 children confined in the al-Hol detention site, as their countries of origin continue refusing to repatriate their own nationals confined in northeast Syria.

Asylum seeker (im)mobility in the MENA region and labor migration to the Persian Gulf
Last Tuesday, Tunisian authorities announced they had intercepted ~16.000 asylum seekers attempting irregular crossings of the Mediterranean toward southern Europe thus far this year. | On Wednesday, MEMO revealed that Qatari authorities have deported ~60 migrant workers detained earlier this month as they demonstrated to protest unpaid labor building Qatar’s World Cup infrastructure. Alarmephone Sahara charged that Algerian authorities had pushed back over 1.560 asylum seekers in 2 operations on August 14 and 16 of this year.

Sources: Splash247, AFP, the Guardian, Middle East Eye, ANSA, Middle East Monitor, Alarmephone Sahara.

Maritime Migration Routes to & through Europe

The English Channel
Last Monday, just under 1.300 hundred asylum seekers reached UK soil across the English Channel, setting a new 1-day arrivals record. | On Thursday, just over 800 asylum seekers reached UK soil in 16 vessels. | On Saturday, 915 asylum seekers reached UK soil in 19 crossings, for a total of just over 3.730 arrivals this week alone.

Central and western Mediterranean
Last Tuesday, Italian authorities rescued ~1.100 asylum seekers in 3 operations in waters off of Sicily and southern Italy, as the Ocean Viking (S.O.S. Méditerranée) rescued another 41 asylum seekers from the central Mediterranean. | On Friday, Cypriot authorities rescued 37 asylum seekers from the eastern Mediterranean, promptly detaining 5 on suspicion of smuggling. the Open Arms Uno received authorization to disembark 101 asylum seekers it had rescued over a week prior in the Italian port of Messina. | On Sunday, Italian authorities reported ~1.000 asylum seeker arrivals over the weekend, with vessels reaching the islands of Lampedusa and Pantelleria, and the coasts of Calabria and Puglia. On the same day, the Ocean Viking (S.O.S. Meditérannée-IFRC) announced it had rescued 466 asylum seekers in 10 operations in the Central Mediterranean over the previous 3 days.

Aegean and Ionian Seas
Last Friday, Aegean Boat Report relayed media sent by 85 Palestinian asylum seekers adrift off the southwestern Greek island of Zakynthos after the boat in which they had meant to sail from Turkey to Italy broke down, tracking their 24-hour wait to be rescued by a passing tanker that disembarked them in Kalamata on the following day. | This Monday, Turkish authorities rescued 96 asylum seekers off the coast of Izmir, whom they believe had been left adrift after being pushed back from Greek waters.

Gulf of Mexico
Last Tuesday, Bahamanian authorities intercepted 111 Haitian asylum seekers in waters off of Guichos Cay, a small island about halfway between Cuba and the Bahamas. | On Saturday, U.S. authorities rescued several dozen Haitian asylum seekers from a vessel in waters ~30 miles south of the Bahamanian island of Cay Salt Bay, roughly halfway between southern Florida and northern Cuba. On the same day, U.S. authorities also apprehended 27 Cuban asylum seekers who had arrived autonomously to the Florida Keys. Also on Saturday, U.S. authorities announced they had repatriated 90 Cuban asylum seekers intercepted off the coast of Florida on the preceding Wednesday and Thursday.

Sources: Deutsche-Welle, BBC, InfoMigrants, Reuters, AP, S.O.S. Meditérannée, ABR, Daily Sabah, Local10News.

Europe

EU migration policymaking
Last Monday, German media disclosed that just over 8.000 failed asylum seekers had been deported from Germany thus far this year, with ~6.200 repatriated to their country of origin and ~1.800 intra-EU transfers under the Dublin Regulation. | On Thursday, French authorities relocated 38 asylum seekers from Italy, the first of 3.000 to be thus relocated under the EU’s novel solidarity mechanism. | On Friday, Dutch authorities announced they were temporarily withdrawing from the relocation mechanism provided for under the 2016 EU-Turkey Statement, which calls for 1.000 Syrian refugees to be relocated to the Netherlands each year. | On Sunday, EU officials leaked they will likely repeal visa facilitation for Russian nationals at an EU JHA Council this coming week, falling short of an outright visa ban demanded by some EU governments but still significantly reducing Russian nationals’ access to EU soil.

Border control in southeastern Europe
Last Tuesday, Greek authorities re-announced a series of previously announced measures to extend the existing 40-kilometer border fence along the Evros River by another 220 kilometers, hire additional border guards, and invest in surveillance technology to deter irregular arrivals across the Evros. | On Wednesday, Philenews reported that nearly 14.000 irregular asylum seeker arrivals had taken place thus far this year, doubling figures for the same period last year and overwhelming reception and processing capacity. Also on Wednesday, IOM disclosed it had assisted 8.000 asylum seekers return from Greece to their countries of origin since 2019 via assisted voluntary return. | On Sunday, Bulgarian authorities announced they had intercepted just over 140 Afghan asylum seekers near Burgas, awaiting further irregular travel toward the Schengen Zone.

Refugee reception in Benelux
Last Tuesday, a 3-month old child perished at the overcrowded Ter Apel reception center in the Netherlands’ northwestern Gronigen province, prompting authorities to open an investigation into accommodation conditions as MSF’s Dutch chapter launched its first-ever domestic intervention to improve sanitation in Ter Apel. | On Wednesday, local authorities reported that ~700 asylum seekers were sleeping rough outside of Ter Apel, as Dutch authorities remain unable to resolve a weeks-long reception crisis. | On Thursday, Belgian NGO Orbit revealed there are ~1.600 recognized refugees stranded in reception centers in Belgium due to housing shortages, obstructing their settlement and integration into Beglian society. | On Friday, Dutch authorities relocated 400 asylum seekers from Ter Apel to reception centers across the Netherlands—one day after transferring away another 150.

Displacement within and beyond Ukraine
Last Tuesday, IOM issued a report tallying ~13.2 million displaced since the Russian invasion of Ukraine last Feburary, including ~303.000 third-country nationals displaced into EU countries where their rights-guarantees are, at best, precarious (see the full IOM report here). | On Wednesday, Spanish authorities confirmed they had granted temporary protection to 138.000 Ukrainian refugees since Russian forces invaded Ukraine last February. | On Sunday, advocates again signaled alarm at the possibility that 15.000-21.000 Ukrainian refugees could become homeless by winter, rising to 50.000 by mid-2023, as Homes for Ukraine placements expire in coming months.

Dystopia at the Home Office
Last Wednesday, advocacy groups blasted the Home Office’s response to recent reports of child abuse in asylum seeker hotels, charging that halving the time unaccompanied asylum seeking minors spend in hotel accommodation among unfamiliar adults would not solve the risk of exploitation faced by these children. | On Thursday, the Home Office revealed that its refugee status recognition rate between June 2021 and June 2022 stood at 76%, a record high, as its asylum claims backlog also reached a record high of 118.000 pending cases. On the same day, the Home Office announced plans to fast-track the review of asylum claims from Albanian nationals, so as to promptly repatriate all failed applicants. | This Monday, the Home Office revealed it has disbursed ~£2.5 million to contract 4 rescue vessels from 2 offshore wind utilities to augment Border Force resources providing maritime search-and-rescue in the Central Mediterranean.

Sources: InfoMigrants, NL Times, the Guardian, Philenews, EFE, RFE, DutchNews, The Brussels Times, ANSA, Europa Press, AP.

The Americas

U.S. migration policymaking
Last Monday, asylum seeker arrivals by bus from Texas and Arizona to New York and Washington, DC reached ~8.000, straining resources and fueling toxic political score-settling across U.S. politics. | On Tuesday, Border Report revealed that U.S. authorities at the San Diego port of entry are allowing 120 daily admissions of asylum seekers with disabilities, chronic illnesses, or fear of identity-based persecution, granting humanitarian parole to those admitted. | On Wednesday, the Biden Administration issued a rule codifying the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program into administrative law, putting the legal status of ~825.000 dreamers on firmer footing than DACA’s former status as a Presidential order gave them. | On Thursday, immigration advocates welcomed the DACA rule issuance, but demanded Congressional action to grant dreamers a path to citizenship, and to make children who arrived irregularly to the U.S. after 2007 eligible from protection for deportation and labor market access as well.

Irregular migration in Latin America
Last Monday, a novel caravan composed of 500 asylum seekers departed Tapachula, where they felt neglected by immigration authorities, to try to reach Huixtla and obtain travel documents there—as authorities note a novel phenomenon of asylum seekers leaving Tapachula in mini-caravans, of 50 to 500 participants, rather than the larger groups formerly assembled. | On Tuesday, 400 caravan participants declined invitations from Mexican authorities to turn back and return to Tapachula, fearing deportation to Guatemala if they neared its border again. On the same day, Mexican authorities rescued 72 asylum seekers confined in a warehouse in the central Mexican town of Aguascalientes. Also on Tuesday, authorities in Guatemala apprehended just under 100 asylum seekers irregularly present on Guatemalan soil. | On Wednesday, Guatemalan authorities announced they had expelled just over 9.000 asylum seekers thus far this year to Honduras, despite the vast majority being nationals of Venezuela. | On Friday, analysts noted that Mexico’s introduction of travel visas earlier this year has not reduced irregular arrivals to the U.S.-Mexico border, while it has dramatically increased irregular entry into Panama and dangerous crossings of the Darién Gap. On the same day, Honduran authorities announced that nearly 80.000 asylum seekers had irregularly entered Honduras thus far this year, the majority of them nationals of Venezuela. | On Sunday, a novel caravan composed to ~1.000 asylum seekers departed Tapachula to demand humanitarian visas from Mexican authorities.

Sources: AP, Border Report, ABC News, NBC News, Milenio, EFE, AGN.

Oceania

Refugee resettlement to Australia
On Friday, Voice of America highlighted a novel Community Refugee Integration and Settlement Pilot program, intended to provide 12 months of community support to arriving refugees who lack existing family links in Australia. |

Sources: VOA.

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Spotlight

Last week, as I was writing a Spotlight on the Kenyan presidential election, another weeklong standoff between Greek and Turkish border forces took place in the Evros—Groundhog Day again, with 38 Syrian refugees (initially 39) made to pay an unspeakable cost for the EU’s unwillingness to respond to the policy challenge of irregular migration with pragmatism, let alone humanity.

The facts:

• Syrian refugees in Turkey are increasingly at risk of harm and deportation;

• refugees fleeing persecution—or fleeing refoulement to a place where they will be persecuted—have an unambiguous right, under international and European law, to cross an international border into a safe country and request asylum;

• last July, a group of ~50 Syrian refugees crossed the Evros River, marking the border between Turkey and Greece, to seek safety;

• instead of being offered a chance to claim asylum, they were caught up in “what amounts to a geopolitical ping-pong game, being pushed back and forth across the land border by Greek and Turkish authorities for weeks,” and ended up stranded on islet in the middle of the river;

• on July 14, the European Court of Human Rights issued a Rule 39 interim decision, ordering Greek authorities to retrieve that group of refugees from that islet and offer them access to asylum proceedings;

• Greek authorities claimed they tried but were unable to find the group, which ended up back in Turkey instead, where they accuse “Turkish authorities of holding them in military barracks, and later bringing them back across to the river and ordering them—at gunpoint—to cross again into Greek territory,” ending up stranded an islet in the Evros again;

• on August 9, the European Court of Human Rights issued another Rule 39 interim decision, again ordering Greek authorities to retrieve the group of refugees stranded on the islet, reduced to 39;

• on August 9, a scorpion stung a 5-year old girl and her 9-year-old sister, killing the former and gravely harming the latter;

• on August 11, Greek authorities claimed they could not rescue the group, as they believed them to be on Turkish territory;

• on August 15, the group managed to cross from the islet to the western bank of the Evros, using a boat passed on by another group of crossing refugees, where they were finally admitted under Greece’s sovereignty and protection—despite having been present on Greek soil for over a week.

This standoff took not just the life of a 5-year old girl in August, but also of 3 other asylum seekers in mid-July. These 4 lives are just the tip of the iceberg as regards the human cost of how the EU controls its external borders.

There is no shortage of bad faith—on either side of the Evros—when it comes to scoring geopolitical points at the expense of asylum seekers’ well-being. Turkish authorities have deported over 150.000 Syrians since 2019, and over 32.000 Afghans just this year. Greek authorities have, in turn, illegally pushed back thousands to Turkey, pushing the disingenuous line that refugees are safe in Turkey, and that its border policing practices are above board—despite mountains of evidence to the contrary.

There is no shortage of injustice, either, in each country’s predicament. Turkey has been the world’s top refugee-hosting country for over a decade, bearing a disproportionate weight as a result of conflicts it did not initiate (though its footprint in northern Syria is far from innocent). Greece, in turn, has little say in how EU leaders in Brussels negotiate migration management and other bilateral issues with Ankara.

There is no shortage of bad faith, finally, in the EU one day blessing Greece’s violent border policing methods, and the next day covering up Greece’s misdeeds, all while preaching and feigning adherence to European values. It remains evident that, in sustaining the delicate balancing act between managing external borders and upholding asylum seekers’ rights, the EU remains willing to dispense not just with asylum seekers’ rights, but also their lives. This should come as no surprise: exclusionary ethno-nationalism is easier to package into effective politcal messaging than inclusion—than the art of carefully balancing the interests of every individual and group to advance their collective well-being. When it comes to EU migration policy, forget the European Convention on Human Rights—the far right remains very much in command of messaging. Horrific outcomes remain (and will remain) par for the course for months (years) to come—along the Evros and in the Aegean, Central Mediterranean and Atlantic routes.

I wish I had a solution to offer to those among us who still believe in the liberal state. I started this newsletter over a year ago with the intention of compiling credible, properly-sourced journalism and research about human mobility and migration policymaking, that might one day serve as a basis for healthy, reality-based discussion. I had few illusions back then, and retain few now, of this newsletter’s ability to lead us to that outcome—though I still hope it might contribute in some small way to leading us toward a solution to the thorny issue of reconciling sovereign border control with organic human mobility.

If you’re keen, however, for a way to make a more direct contribution to the specific problem highlighted above, there are two organizations working tirelessly on behalf of arriving asylum seekers, raising legal challenges in Greek and European courts to protect their rights and their lives. Human Rights 360 and the Greek Council for Refugees are essential actors in the shrinking space of NGOs and CSOs upholding human rights at the Evros. I couldn’t possibly credit them enough for the work they’ve done to ensure the 38 asylum seekers whose story this Spotlight told were eventually admitted into the custody of Greek authorities. You will not solve the issue of the liberal state’s difficulty balancing the politics and policy of crafting functional, rights-respecting migration policy with a single donation—but you can make a huge difference in the lives of asylum seekers braving the Evros by supporting either of these organizations.

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On to the news…

Asia

Post-occupation Afghanistan
Last Wednesday, a bomb attack targeting a mosque in Kabul’s northwestern district of Khair Khana killed at least 21 worshipers, and wounded another 33. | On Friday, Eurasianet highlighted the difficulties faced by the ~8.500 Afghan refugees in Tajikistan, where they are not allowed to reside in the 2 largest cities, and where many can only obtain access state services by way of hefty bribes. | On Sunday, Afghan authorities signaled that recent flooding has killed ~165 civilians, and injured another ~300, with thousands of acres of farmland flooded across the country and hundreds of roads and highways damaged. | This Monday, Biden Administration officials leaked that they intend to continue discussions with Taliban leadership on releasing frozen reserves belonging to the Afghan Central Bank, despite rising tensions on the heels of the recent U.S. drone strike that killed al-Qaeda commander Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul.

Myanmar and its neighbors
Last Wednesday, India’s Home Ministry announced that the ~1.100 Rohingya living in New Delhi should be held in detention centers pending repatriation—reversing commitments made earlier on the same day that the same population would be allocated housing, basic services, and police protection. | On Thursday, The Irrawaddy highlighted a growing brain drain as Burmese youth pursue work opportunities across southeast Asia’s recovering economies while political freedoms and dignified livelihoods remain on hold in Myanmar. On the same day, the Malaysian Labor Ministry acknowledged the pressing need for foreign labor in Malaysia, but announced it would let the Home Office decide whether to allow Rohingya refugees to access the labor market, based on internal security considerations.

Asylum in east Asia
Last Thursday, Middle East Eye highlighted a weeks-long protest by ~40 Egyptian asylum seekers in Seoul, aggrieved by South Korea’s slow asylum adjudication process and limited financial support and labor market access for asylum seekers. | On Friday, Japanese authorities granted asylum to 98 Afghan refugees from 18 households, with another ~700 Afghan civilians evacuated to Japan in August 2021 awaiting a durable solution.

Sources: al Jazeera, Eurasianet, TOLOnews, Reuters, The Irrawaddy, Free Malaysia Today, Middle East Eye, the Asahi Shimbun.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Civil war and natural disaster in Ethiopia
Last Tuesday, OCHA began returning ~8.550 IDPs encamped in the Afar State capital of Semera to their communities of origin in the Ab’ala district, bordering Tigray. | On Thursday, officials in Somali State reported that armed clashes in Sitti zone, along its border with Afar State, have displaced thousands of civilians in urgent need of humanitarian assistance. | On Friday, the WFP assessed that half of the population of Tigray is food-insecure, with half of lactating mothers malnourished, as humanitarian aid deliveries remain grievously insufficient to meet needs. On the same day, the Guardian highlighted the financial difficulties, caused by the longstanding banking shutoff in Tigray, and by more recent cash flow controls, pushing women and girls into sex work to sustain themselves and their families. Also on Friday, 72 domestic civil society organizations operating in Tigray demanded an end to the blockading of essential services in the embattled region, to enable the resumption of unimpeded humanitarian aid. | On Saturday, The EastAfrican highlighted that despite Ethiopian authorities’ profession of a wish to conduct peace talks with the TPLF, their insistence on the signing of a formal ceasefire before restoring basic services to Tigray is prolonging hostility. | This Monday, regional authorities signaled that nearly 4.150 households had been displaced by flooding in Ethiopia’s southwestern Gambella State.

Conflict and displacement in the Sahel
Last Tuesday, MSF announced it was expanding its child care facilities in northwestern Nigeria to deal with dramatic increases in child malnutrition, in the hope of treating 100.000 at-need children through the rest of the year. On the same day, HumAngle revealed the miserly results of a ₦133.1 million (~$313,000) investment in housing for IDPs returning to Guzamala, in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno State, where few buildings have been finished since 2019, and those completed are already coming apart. | On Wednesday, just under 300 refugees returned to the CAR from exile in Cameroon. | On Thursday, al Jazeera highlighted a recent OCHA report tallying ~14.500 homes destroyed by flooding in Sudan and ~136.000 civilians affected (see the full OCHA report here). | On Friday, HumAngle revealed the difficulties faced by returned IDPs in Nigera’s northeastern border town of Kiwara, where resource-scarcity is forcing returnees to cross over to Cameroon to obtain water, facing risks unique to border crossing to meet his most basic of needs.

Sources: Addis Standard, The EastAfrican, Reuters, the Guardian, HumAngle.

Middle East and North Africa

Displacement within and beyond Syria
Last Monday, the WFP announced it would have to cut food stipends by one-third to ~353.000 mostly Syrian refugees in Jordan—from $32 per month to $21 per month, or $21 to $14, depending on vulnerability—due to competing needs provoked by displacement out of Ukraine and to dramatic increases in food prices. | On Tuesday, Lebanese authorities announced their intention to shortly begin repatriating 15.000 Syrian refugees per month, with assent and collaboration from the Assad regime. | On Wednesday, Canadian Minister of International Development Harjit Sajjan signaled his opposition to Lebanon’s emerging Syrian refugee repatriation plan during a visit to Beirut, admonishing that Syria is not a safe country of return. | On Thursday, OCHA warned of rising violence and water scarcity in the al-Hol detention camp in northeastern Syria, which hosts ~55.000 suspected former ISIS fighters of numerous nationalities as well as their family members. | On Friday, an artillery attack on a market in al-Bab, in opposition-controlled Idlib, killed 15 civilians and injured at least 28.

Asylum seeker (im)mobility in north Africa and Turkey
Last Monday, Libyan authorities announced they had found the lifeless bodies of 15 asylum seekers who became stranded in the desert near the border with Sudan. On the same day, Libyan authorities detained several dozen asylum seekers living in Tripoli. | On Wednesday, Turkish authorities announced they had repatriated just under 70.000 asylum seekers thus far this year, with another ~17.000 asylum seekers in pre-removal detention across Turkey. On the same day, a Moroccan court sentenced 13 asylum seekers to 32 months’ imprisonment and a 10.000 dhirams (~€95) for their role in the June 24 deadly mass attempted crossing of the Melilla border fence. | On Thursday, 103 asylum seekers arrived to Rwanda from Libya on a UNHCR-sponsored humanitarian evacuation flight. | On Friday, Middle East Monitor tallied 11.111 asylum seekers rescued in the Aegean thus far this year, just under 9.800 of which they attribute to pushbacks from Greek waters, and just under 1.150 of which they attribute to departure prevention.

Sources: the National, ANSA, AP, Anadolu, InfoMigrants, Hürriyet, The News Times, Middle East Monitor.

Maritime Migration Routes to & through the West

Ruta Canaria
Last Thursday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 43 asylum seekers, including 8 minors, from a distressed vessel off the coast of Lanzarote. | On Sunday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 61 asylum seekers, including 4 minors, off the coast of Fuerteventura.

Central and western Mediterranean
Last Tuesday, Tunisian authorities announced they had intercepted 80 asylum seekers trying to reach European waters in 5 vessels, and also prevented the departure of another 11 before they had set sail. | On Wednesday, the Open Arms Uno rescued 101 asylum seekers in its inaugural mission in the Central Mediterranean. On the same day, Italian authorities rescued 20 asylum seekers from a vessel in waters just off of Lampedusa, as Tunisian authorities intercepted 127 asylum seekers trying to cross the Mediterranean in 2 boats, and prevented another 24 from departing. | On Sunday, the Geo Barents (MSF) rescued 106 asylum seekers in a rescue operation coordinated by Italian authorities. | This Monday, IOM disclosed that 140 asylum seekers had been returned to Libya from the Central Mediterranean this week, where they face indefinite detention and virtually certain abuse. On the same day, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 22 asylum seekers from a distressed vessel off the coast of southern Spain.

Aegean Sea
Last Tuesday, Aegean Boat Report relayed the testimony of a group of 9 asylum seekers who documented their arrival on the Greek island of Leros on Monday, and were found adrift off the coast of Didim by Turkish Coast Guard vessels on the following day. On Wednesday, 2 sailboats carrying ~150 asylum seekers ran aground near the southern Aegean island of Kythera, with no reported casualties. | On Thursday, another 67 asylum seekes reached Kythera autonomously, believed, alongside preceding arrivals, to have been trying to reach Italy from Turkey. | On Friday, 51 asylum seekers arrived autonomously in Lesvos, where they were allowed to access reeption facilities and attempt asylum claims. | On Sunday, Aegean Boat Report relayed media from 26 asylum seekers stranded on a distressed vessel in Turkish waters, who relayed they had been pushed back from Greek waters and had their vessel’s engine removed by Greek Coast Guard officers.

The English Channel
Last Wednesday, UK Defence officials disclosed that just over 600 asylum seekers had been rescued from 12 vessels over the day. | On Thursday, French authorities announced they had prevented just over 250 asylum seekers from crossing the English Channel in 5 operations over the previous 4 days.

Gulf of Mexico and U.S.-Pacific maritime borders
Last Friday, a cruise ship rescued 6 Cuban asylum seekers from a makeshift raft drifting in waters off the coast of Mexico, eventually disembarking them in Cozumel for reception by Mexican authorities. On Saturday, the U.S. Coast Guard rescued 19 asylum seekers from a boat adrift off the coast of Los Angeles. | On Sunday, Mexican authorities rescued 6 Cuban asylum seekers from a homemade vessel adrift off the coast of the Yucatán Peninsula. | This Monday, the U.S. Coast Guard announced it had identified 41 asylum seekers autonomously arrived to the Florida Keys, on the heels of 27 arrivals and 200 returns on the Saturday prior.

Sources: EFE, AFP, ANSA, BBC, euronews, InfoMigrants, Europa Press, Aegean Boat Report, CNN, CBS News, Imagen de Veracruz, Local10News.

Europe

EU migration policymaking
Last Monday, Italian authorities disclosed that, over the last 12 months, just under 6.000 Afghan nationals had obtained asylum in Italy, alongside just under 150.000 people fleeing Ukraine obtaining temporary protection, and just under 130.000 third-country nationals acquiring Italian citizenship. On the same day, German Chancellor Olaf Scholtz contested calls from Baltic EU states to restrict tourist visa issuance to Russian nationals, arguing that doing so would impede the flight of Russian opposition members. | On Wednesday, Denmark announced it would resettle 200 refugees from Rwanda in the coming year, while keeping admission firmly closed to irregular asylum seeker arrivals.

European migration (mis)management
Last Wednesday, the Dutch Refugee Council sued national authorities over the months-old asylum seeker reception crisis, leading to overcrowding at the Ter Apel reception center and to the long-term accommodation of asylum seekers in unsuitable conditions. On the same day, the European Court of Human Rights issued a Rule 39 interim measure demanding that Greek authorities rescue a group of 49 asylum seekers stranded on an islet in the Evros River. | On Thursday, Greek authorities announced they had prevented 1.500 irregular crossings of the Evros, and detained 60 smugglers. On the same day, Greek police clashed with residents apprehensive of removal from Eleonas camp, in an industrial area near the center of Athens, which authorities intend to decommission—with camp residents fearing precariousness and dislocation.

Dystopia at the Home Office
Last Monday, the Migration Observatory issued a report finding that low-skilled labor migration to the UK has plummeted post-Brexit, as barriers to labor migrant arrivals from EU states have gone up—all while post-Brexit labor migration rules prioritize high-skilled migration and labor-scarce sectors take time to adjust to this new reality (see MO’s full report here). | On Tuesday, the Royal Navy suggested it may cease collaborating with the Border Force on maritime migration control at the end of this year. On the same day, ongoing High Court litigation revealed that the Home Office received and ignored advice from the Foreign Office making it clear that Rwanda’s human rights record made it an unsuitable destination for removed asylum seekers—with advocacy and media organizations now petitioning for the full disclosure of this advice, and UK authorities trying to prevent its release. | On Wednesday, UK authorities disclosed they are considering increasing support payments to families hosting Ukrainian refugees from £350 to £700 to encourage the renewal of Homes for Ukraine placements—amid 1.300 recently-arrived Ukrainians assessed to in or near homelessness, and a quarter of the nearly 80.000 existing placements set to not be renewed. On the same day, the High Court issued a ruling allowing the Foreign Office to retain 4 redactions to its advisory report, and denying the remaining 6 demanded redactions. Also on Wednesday, UK authorities announced a steep reduction in trade barriers with developing countries, controversially including Syria among the 8 states to be included in an ‘enhanced preferences’ scheme allowing an 85% cut in export tariffs.

Sources: Deutsche-Welle, ANSA, InfoMigrants, Border Violence Monitoring Network, EURACTIV, the Guardian, BBC, the Independent, iNews.

The Americas

Migration policymaking in North America
Last Monday, U.S. authorities reported just under 200.000 asylum seeker encounters in July at the U.S.-Mexico border, a ~4% decline from June. On the same day, seasonal farm workers from Jamaican working in Canada issued an open letter to Jamaican Labour Minister Karl Samuda complaining of rampant abuse, including low wages, long hours, and mistreatment from employers, directed at them as well as at seasonal workers of other origins. | On Thursday, CBP director Chris Magnus delivered rare criticism from within U.S. border enforcement against Title 42, to which he attributed both harm visited unto asylum seekers returned to Mexico, and for operational difficulties faced by Border Patrol agents intercepting repeat arrivals. | On Sunday, the Refugee Advocacy Lab issued an open letter to U.S. President Joe Biden, signed by public officials from all 50 states, urging him to uphold his campaign commitment to resettling 125.000 refugees per fiscal year—noting that 2021’s 11.411 arrivals were the lowest number on record since the resettlement program began in 1980 (see RAL’s full letter here). | This Monday, The National relayed U.S. officials’ intention to increase Syrian refugee resettlement in coming years, noting that nearly 3.800 arrivals have taken place thus far this fiscal year, a 300% increase from FY 2021 and the highest number since FY 2017.

Irregular migration in Latin America
Last Wednesday, Colombia’s national ombudsman revealed a proposal under review by the governments of Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, and Costa Rica to establish a humanitarian corridor to minimize risks at border crossings and circumvent irregular routes across the Darién Gap. On Thursday, Mexican authorities intercepted a truck carrying 47 asylum seekers in its trailer, detaining the driver and retaining the passengers for processing. | On Sunday, human rights defender Itsmania Platero revealed over 70.000 Honduran asylum seekers have been repatriated from Mexico thus far this year, exceeding official figures released by Mexican authorities, which Platero charges do not include informal returns conducted between official ports of entry. On the same day, authorities in Guatemala disclosed they had intercepted 5.900 asylum seekers transiting irregularly through Guatemalan soil thus far this year, nearly three quarters of them nationals of Venezuela. Also on Sunday, Guatemalan authorities disclosed that 815 asylum seekers had been repatriated from the U.S. and Mexico over the week prior.

Sources: AP, CBS News, VOA, The National, en Frontera, Milenio, EFE, Tiempo, AGN, la Hora

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Spotlight

Last week, Kenyans went to the polls to elect a new president. This was a hugely consequential election for east Africa, and one that bears on questions of both internal displacement and regional refugee politics, so I thought it would be worth reflecting a bit on it here.

Outgoing Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta is a larger-than-life figure in East Africa, both because of how he was elected and for how he has conducted himself in office since then. Kenya’s 2007 election had been violently contested, leaving ~1.300 fatalities and ~650.000 displaced, with Mr. Kenyatta a prime suspect of stoking the post-election violence. From an embattled candidate in Kenya’s 2013 election, which he ran under the shadow of an ICC investigation for potential crimes against humanity, Kenyatta soon consolidated his role as an indispensble player in East African politics.

This election also matters because Kenya hosts, in Kakuma and Dadaab, some of the largest and longest-lasting refugee camps in the world. As Nhial Deng explains in an essential backgrounder, President Kenyatta has been, at times, both a constructive and a bad-faith actor toward the 400.000 refugees living in these camps—threatening to close them time and again, and most recently in March 2021 (though the June 2022 deadline came and went); signing the Refugee Act into law in late 2021 easing refugees’ access to the education system and labor market (though then moving slowly to implement it).

This election catches Kenya, and the whole of East Africa, in perhaps the greatest economic stress in a generation, with food security squeezed between severe drought in the Horn of Africa and shortages of grain, fertilizer, and fuel due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Kenyan Ambassador to the UN Martin Kimani delivered a memorable speech at the UN Security Council as hostilities broke out, reminding the world of the cynically ill-conceived borders contemporary Africa inherited from its former colonizers, and of the essential morality of eroding the injustices that borders create by way of policy, rather than conquest. In a recent episode of Global Dispatches, Ambassador Kimani further details Kenya’s precarious position in the face of economic hardship that could easily degenerate into humanitarian catastrophe.

Between the memory of Kenya’s 650.000 internally displaced on the heels of the 2007 election, the present needs of the 400.000 refugees in Kakuma and Dadaab, and the potential needs of millions facing climate breakdown and devastation in neighboring Somalia, it is essential that Kenya’s electoral count and presidential transition proceed calmly and peacefully.

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On to the news…

Asia

Post-occupation Afghanistan
Last Wednesday, Save the Children issued a report documenting pervasive child malnourishment in Afghanistan, tallying that 97% of Afghan families struggle to feed their children, with 45% of girls no longer attending school (see StC’s full report here). On the same day, 71 globally prominent economists issued a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden appealing to him to release ~$9 billion in reserves nominally belonging to the Afghan central bank, but frozen since the August 2021 Taliban takeover. Also on Wednesday, Afghan educators lamented that over 400 private schools had closed over the year prior due to economic hardship, depriving ~10.000 students of an education and thousands of teachers of a livelihood. | On Thursday, ~300 Afghan civilians arrived in Spain from Pakistan, having been evacuated as former collaborators of Spain’s civilian and military presence in Afghanistan.

Myanmar and its neighbors
On Tuesday, the United Nations’ Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar announced it had accumulated—despite never having been allowed in-country—3 million items of information, including evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity amid Myanmar’s multiple ongoing armed conflicts. | On Thursday, al Jazeera highlighted concerns among refugees and advocates in Malaysia with the potential dual use of its novel Tracking Refugees Information System, inaugurated in late July and potentially usable for service coordination or for surveillance and control.

Sources: TOLOnews, Reuters, AFP, al Jazeera

Sub-Saharan Africa

Ethiopia’s civil war
On Tuesday, the WFP, UNHCR, and Ethiopia’s Government Refugees and Returnees Service issued a joint $73 million appeal to extend food assistance to 750.000 civilians—with WFP aid stocks set to run out by October despite 2 aid basket reductions since November 2021.

Conflict and displacement in the Sahel
Last Monday, Chad’s transitional government signed a peace deal with over 30 rebel groups, paving the way for forthcoming reconciliation talks. | On Tuesday, HumAngle tallied at least 840 civilian deaths due to conflict in Nigeria over the whole of July. | On Wednesday, IOM assessed that ~20.000 IDPs had departed the Dalori displacement camp complex since late July. On Thursday, IOM tallied nearly 7.000 people affected by flooding on the heels of heavy rains in Chad.

Conflict and displacement in east Africa
Last Monday, HumAngle tallied 60 fatalities, including 20 civilians, in fighting between national military and armed rebel forces in eastern DRC.

Sources: Addis Standard, HumAngle

Middle East and North Africa

Displacement within and beyond Syria
Last Wednesday, the White Helmets announced they had tallied 75 regime attacks on civilians last July, resulting in 20 fatalities and 34 injuries. On the same day, the Iraqi Ministry of Migration and Displacement announced it would repatriate 500 families from the al-Hol containment camp in northeastern Syria by the end of 2022. | On Thursday, Kurdish forcesannounced they had found the bodies of 3 murdered men in the al-Hol containment camp.

Asylum seeker (im)mobility in the MENA region

Yemen’s civil war
Last Tuesday, Middle East Eye relayed the distress visited upon IDPs by flooding in Marib, where 54 displacement sites have been damaged, affecting 10.000 people. On Wednesday, Reuters revealed an assessment by Yemen’s internationally-recognized government estimating that its current stockpile and pending deliveries of wheat are enough for just 10 weeks’ autonomy, as external supply shocks and internal currency mismanagement decimate Yemen’s food security.

Sources: Middle East Monitor, Kurdistan24, Middle East Eye, Reuters,

Maritime Migration Routes to the West

Ruta Canaria
Last Tuesday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 61 asylum seekers and retrieved 1 lifeless body from a distressed vessel in waters off the Canary Islands. | On Wednesday, Senegalese authorities announced they had arrested 143 asylum seekers in 2 groups preparing to set sail toward the Canary Islands.

Central and western Mediterranean
Last Tuesday, Tunisian authorities rescued 20 asylum seekers, retrieved 6 lifeless bodies, and tallied 4 missing persons after the vessel in which they were hoping to reach European waters capsized off of the Kerkennah islands.

The English Channel

Aegean Sea
Last Tuesday, a group of asylum seekers relayed to Aegean Boat Report that, after making landfall on the Greek island of Chios, they had been pushed back into Turkish waters and thrown into the sea—some in handcuffs—leading to the drowning of 3 people. | On Wednesday, Greek authorities rescued 29 asylum seekers, and tallied between 30 and 50 missing persons, on the heels of a shipwreck off the southeastern Aegean island of Karpathos. | On Thursday, 18 asylum seekers documented their arrival near the small port of Limani Kipis on the northern shore of Lesvos.

Gulf of Mexico
Last Tuesday, the U.S. Coast Guard called off the search for 5 missing persons on the heels of a shipwreck off of Sugar Loaf Key on the Friday prior, at which time it had rescued 8 asylum seekers and retrieved 2 lifeless bodies.

Sources: EFE, AFP, TAP, AP, Reuters,

Europe

EU migration policymaking
Last Wednesday, German authorities announced they would soon begin relocating asylum seekers from Italy, under the novel solidarity mechanism approved by the EU Council last June. On the same day, Latvian authorities extended a state of emergency along the border with Belarus, in place since August of last year, to November 10. | On Thursday, Swiss authorities announced they would begin means-testing livelihood assistance to Ukranian refugees with temporary protected status. | On Friday, Cypriot authorities clarified that rejected asylum seekers appealing a negative first-instance decision retain the right to work during their appeal proceedings.

European migration (mis)management
Last Monday, Belgian authorities opened a new asylum seeker reception center in a repurposed military barracks in Berlaar, northeast of Brussels, with current capacity for 100, intended to expand to 750. | On Wednesday, Dutch authorities announced they had identified 2 state-owned facilities suitable for repurposing as asylum seeker housing, to alleviate pressure on the Ter Apel reception center, threatening to force municipalities to accept the siting if they continued refusing to adapt suitable buildings. | On Thursday, Dutch media revealed that authorities are considering suspending family reunification arrivals until the asylum seeker housing crisis is resolved. On the same day, a truck carrying 49 asylum seekers overturned in North Macedonia, likely after having entered irregularly from Greece, leading to 35 injuries. | On Friday, German authorities revealed that the issuance of family reunification visas, which Chancellor Scholz had committed to accelerate in his electoral campaign, has actually slowed down since the Germany’s early 2022 government transition.

Morbidity and mortality in the Evros
Last Tuesday, the European Court of Human Rights urged Greek authorities to rescue a group of 32 asylum seekers stranded on an islet in the Evros after successive pushbacks from both Greek and Turkish soil, where a 5-year old child perished, and another in distress, after they had been stung by a scorpion. | On Thursday, Greek authorities formally requested that Turkish authorities rescue 40 asylum seekers stranded on an islet in the Evros River, claiming the islet to be beyond Greece’s sovereignty despite clear evidence of it being Greek.

Dystopia at the Home Office
On Tuesday, UK authorities terminated plans to repurpose a decommissioned RAF barracks in Linton-on-Ouse into asylum seeker detention facilities.

Displacement within and beyond Ukraine
On Wednesday, German authorities introduced a rule, to enter into effect on September 1, allowing Ukrainian refugees to remin in Germany for up to 6 months—up from the current 3 months—before needing to apply for temporary protection.

Sources: InfoMigrants, EFE, Philenews, The Brussels Times, DutchNews, AP, al Jazeera, the Guardian, Kyiv Post,

The Americas

U.S. migration policymaking
Last Monday, the Biden Administration finally terminated the Migration Protection Protocols (colloquially known as Remain in Mexico), after an unusual delay in multiple courts’ implementation of the Supreme Court decision ruling the in favor of the program’s termination. | On Tuesday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced an Afghan Adjustment Act proposal, which would create a pathway to permanent residence and eventual naturalization for Afghan evacuees admitted to U.S. soil under humanitarian parole, and create an inter-agency task force to facilitate the evacuation of ~100.000 local collaborators who remain at risk in Afghanistan.

Migration and its drivers in Latin America
Last Tuesday, Criterio issued an investigation into the levying of administrative fines on asylum seekers transiting through Honduras, tallying ~$22.5 million in resulting revenues for the Honduran treasury since 2015.

Sources: CBS News, The New Republic, Criterio

Oceania

Sources:

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Spotlight

I’ve been on the move this week and facing a deadline, and I found neither the time nor the inspiration to write up a Spotlight. So instead I’m passing the word on to Begüm Başdaş and Lydia Emmanouilidou, two scholar-journalists doing essential work on bordering, securitization, and migrant rights in Europe. If you have a loose 40 minutes now, don’t miss their discussion. If you don’t… find 40 minutes!

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On to the news…

Asia

Post-occupation Afghanistan
Last Thursday, NBC News highlighted the difficulties faced by Afghan civilians trying to obtain visas to flee, with 70% of pending applicants for humanitarian parole remaining in Afghanistan, from where they cannot complete the process as there is no U.S. Embassy to hold an interview. | On Friday, an IS-claimed bombing in Kabul’s Hazara-majority neighborhood claimed at least 8 lives and injured another 18. | On Saturday, another bombing in Kabul’s southwestern Pol-e-Sukhta area claimed 8 lives and injured another 22. | On Sunday, another bombing took place in central Kabul, bringing the weekend’s casualty toll to ~120. On the same day, authorities in Germany disclosed they had revised downward their intention to evacuate 7.700 former staffers of German institutions between July and September, after they were barely able to evacuate more than 1.000 in July due to Taliban obstruction of departures to Pakistan necessary to relocate onward to Germany.

Myanmar and its neighbors
Last Monday, health authorities in Cox’s Bazaar tallied just under 7.700 dengue fever infections thus far this year, and 4 fatalities, among encamped Rohingya refugees. | On Wednesday, authorities in Thailand detained 43 Burmese asylum seekers and 2 smugglers in the western Sangkhla Buri district. | On Thursday, the Commission for International Justice and Accountability issued a report identifying 31 senior military and civilian Burmese officers holding command responsibility for crimes of genocide against the Rohingya people (see the CIJA’s full report here). On the same day, Bangladeshi authorities announced they had received pledges from U.S. and Canadian authorities to support Rohingya refugees contained in Bhasan Char. | On Friday, aid workers in Myanmar’s east-central Kayah State signaled alarm over dwindling food and medicine supplies in local IDP camps, amid a military blockade of humanitarian suplies into the region.

Sources: NBC News, Hasht-e Subh, Reuters, UNAMA, Deutsche-Welle, New Age Bangladesh, Bangkok Post, bdnews24, JURIST, RFA.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Conflict and displacement in the Sahel
Last Monday, heavy flooding in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno State displaced nearly 7.400 people living in just under 350 damaged structures in Banki IDP camp. | On Wednesday, regional authorities in Nigeria’s northwestern Zamfara State announced they had reached a ceasefire agreement with local armed groups, and ordered all IDPs in the region to return to their homes within the next 2 weeks to resume their normal lives. | On Saturday, Daily Trust highlighted the deteriorating conditions faced by IDPs in Nigeria’s east-central and west-central Niger and Benue States amid heavy rains.

Ethiopia’s civil war
Last Tuesday, the EU and U.S. Special Envoys for the Horn of Africa traveled to Mekelle to meet TPLF leadership, obtaining a letter guaranteeing safe passage to workers entering Tigray to restore essential services interrupted by the war. | On Wednesday, Ethiopian Reporter revealed that just over 8.750 civilians were displaced by fighting in south-central Ethiopia’s Bale Zone over the last month, the latest of ~53.000 displaced in the region since 2017. | On Thursday, Ethiopian authorities chastised the U.S. and EU envoys on the heels of their Tuesday visit, accusing them of partiality and appeasement. On the same day, UN-OCHA released its April-June 2022 Ethiopia Education quarterly report, finding that ~2.93 million children in Ethiopia—roughly 17% of Ethiopia’s school-age children—are entering their 3rd year out of school as of mid-2022, with ~2.5 million children and ~2.500 schools affected nationwide by conflict, and another ~1.6 million children and ~1.500 schools affected nationwide by drought (see OCHA’s quarterly report here).

Conflict and mobility in east Africa
Last Tuesday, UNHCR issued an urgent appeal for contributions to its response in the DRC, warning its $225 million operation was only 19% funded, leaving it ill-equipped to assist the DRC’s 5.6 million IDPs. On the same day, The EastAfrican highlighted the launch of a labor migration scheme that will see Zimbabwean educators, unable to find work domestically, recruited to fill skill-shortages in Rwanda, with 491 candidates included in the initial recruitment pool.

Sources: HumAngle, Daily Trust, Addis Standard, AFP, VOA, The EastAfrican.

Middle East and North Africa

Yemen’s civil war
Last Tuesday, UN officials announced that Yemen’s warring parties had all agreed to extend the 4-month old ongoing truce for a further 2 months. | On Thursday, U.S. authorities urged Ansar Allah to release 12 detained current and former staffers of the U.S. Embassy in Sana’a and of the UN-HRC and UNESCO missions to Yemen.

Displacement within and beyond in Syria
Last Wednesday, Kurdish forces guarding the al-Hol detention camp announced they had thwarted an attempt to break out 56 IS-linked detainees. | On Friday, Lebanese authorities formally requested support from EU leadership for the repatriation of Syrian refugees from Lebanon. | On Saturday, Turkish authorities announced they had built just over 62.000 homes to shelter Syrian refugees returned to Turkish-controlled areas of northern Syria, intending to build 100.000 homes by the end of this year. On the same day, U.S. authorities announced a $27.8 million commitment to support Syrian refugees and Iraqi IDPs living in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Asylum seeker (im)mobility in the MENA region
Last Thursday, a Court of First Instance in Nador, Morocco, sentenced 14 asylum seekers to 8 years’ imprisonment and to a 2.000-dhiram (~$195) fine in relation to their attempt to irregularly cross the border fence into Melilla late last June, as part of the tragic mass attempted crossing that claimed dozens of lives. | On Sunday, IOM tallied Egypt’s migrant population at ~9 million, 80% of whom originate from Sudan, Syria, Yemen, and Libya.

Sources: AP, Reuters, The New Arab, Daily Sabah, K24, Egypt Independent.

Maritime Migration Routes to & through the West

Central and western Mediterranean
Last Monday, IOM disclosed that, over the week prior, just under 980 asylum seekers had been intercepted at sea and returned to Libya, 13 lifeless bodies retrieved, and 35 missing persons tallied. | On Tuesday, Greek authorities intercepted a vessel in distress near the southeastern Aegean island of Karpathos which had set sail from Lebanon intending to reach Italy, arresting 5 suspected smugglers and bringing 96 asylum seekers to Greek soil. | On Wednesday, Spanish authorities announced they had rescued 61 asylum seekers from 3 distressed vessels off the coast of Mallorca over the 24 hours prior. | On Thursday, Tunisian authorities announced they had prevented the departure of 2 vessels carrying asylum seekers toward Italian waters over the weekend prior, and rescued 73 asylum seekers from multiple distressed vessels in separate operations. On the same day, the GeoBarents (MSF) was authorized to disembark the 659 asylum seekers it had rescued in weeks prior in Taranto, after a 9-day wait for the assignment of a safe port. | On Friday, Alarm Phone signaled the urgent need to rescue 35 asylum seeker in a distressed vessel in Malta’s SAR zone, deploring Maltese authorities’ unwillingness to intervene through the weekend. | On Sunday, authorities in Tunisia announced they had prevented another 17 departures, returning 255 asylum seekers to Tunisian shores. | This Monday, Algerian authorities rescued 6 asylum seekers and retrieved 6 lifeless bodies after a vessel sank off the coast of Algiers. On the same day, the Sea Eye 4 blasted Maltese authorities for denying her a safe port of disembarkation for a full week following its rescue last Monday of 87 asylum seekers in Maltese rescue waters, as it set course for Sicily.

The English Channel
Last Monday, UK authorities tallied just under 700 asylum seeker arrivals in 14 vessels across the English Channel. | On Tuesday, 386 asylum seekers in 8 vessels were intercepted by the Royal Navy in the English Channel. | On Saturday, 337 asylum seekers reached UK shores, bringing the total arrivals thus far this year to over 18.000.

Gulf of Mexico
Last Tuesday, U.S. authorities repatriated 58 Cuban asylum seekers intercepted mid-sea in 6 operations over the previous few days. | On Wednesday, 23 Cuban asylum seekers reached Key West in a makeshift boat, with another smaller group arriving in Key Largo, both of which were promptly apprehended by the Border Patrol. | On Thursday, 108 Cuban asylum seekers reached the Florida Keys in 12 crossings. | On Saturday, over 300 Haitian asylum seekers reached the shores of Key Largo autonomously, running aground on Ocean Reef where they were intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard. On the same day, U.S. authorities returned 53 asylum seekers to Cuba. | On Sunday, Coast Guard officers rescued 8 asylum seekers, retrieved 2 lifeless bodies, and tallied 5 missing persons from a vessel that capsized off the coast of Florida.

Sources: EFE, AP, Majorca Daily Bulletin, ANSA, InfoMigrants, Libya Update, AFP, The New Arab, the Guardian, Local10News, NBC 6

Europe

EU migration policymaking
Last Monday, the European Court of Justice ruled that German authorities must complete family reunification proceedings even if minors abroad become adults while proceedings are pending. | On Thursday, the European Commission announced it had awarded €171 million to 4 of the Med5 states (excluding Malta) and to Poland to expand their asylum seeker reception capacity and improve registration and claims processing. On the same day, Italy’s Constitutional Court ruled that naturalization proceedings launched via marriage to an Italian national cannot be halted if the Italian spouse passes away while proceedings remain pending. Also on Thursday, Portuguese authorities signed into effect a new immigration law facilitating labor migration and offering residency rights to digital nomads. | On Friday, Italian authorities welcomed the first visits from French officials, and a forthcoming German visit, to its reception centers in the first concrete steps toward fulfilling this summer’s EU Council initiative to relocate 10.000 asylum seekers per year from Med5 states to Europe’s interior.

European migration (mis)management
Last Monday, Greek authorities highlighted increasing criminality near the border of Greece and North Macedonia, where criminal gangs extorting asylum seekers murdered Pakistani man and provoked a Lebanese woman to miscarry on the Sunday prior. | On Thursday, authorities on the Italian island of Panetelleria demanded national support to build and operate proper reception infrastructure for arriving asylum seekers, appealing to similar problems—if smaller in scale—to those on display in nearby Lampedusa. | On Saturday, Alarm Phone reported that a several dozen asylum seekers had become stranded on an islet in the Evros river, with Greek and Turkish forces repeatedly pushing them back from their soil onto the islet rather than taking responsibility for their arrival. | On Sunday, authorities in Lithuania tallied just over 200 irregular entry attempts from Belarus.

Displacement within and beyond Ukraine
Last Monday, PAQ Research issued a report finding dismal reception outcomes amid the 5.000 Romani Ukrainian refugees in Czechia, with one third reporting they have experienced discrimination, with nearly 80% of school-age children not yet enrolled in local schools. | On Tuesday, EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson clarified that Ukrainian refugees returning to Ukraine from EU soil could de-register from temporary protection and re-register at any point if they chose to leave Ukraine again and re-enter the EU. On the same day, authorities in Germany reported that just over 150.000 Ukrainian children had enrolled in German schools. | On Wednesday, IOM released survey findings revealing that 60% of IDPs in Ukraine have lost their job since becoming displaced, leaving 9% with no income since the late-February Russian invasion and 35% earning below the poverty level (see IOM’s full survey findings here). | On Thursday, Polish authorities reported they had detected just over 900 irregular arrivals from Belarus this July, noting a sizable increase in arrivals from sub-Saharan Africa via Russia. On the same day, Finnish authorities disclosed they had received ~37.000 applications for temporary protection since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, of which they have processed nearly 33.500 and approved all but just under 250. | On Friday, Lithuanian authorities announced the imminent relocation of 2.000 Ukrainian refugees from Moldova. | On Sunday, CNN highlighted the discriminatory treatment suffered by Roma Ukrainian refugees pursuing temporary protection in the EU.

A normal Friday at the Home Office
Last Tuesday, the BBC leaked a July 27 appeal from UK authorities to local councils demanding assistance finding ~2.000 dwellings for ~10.500 Afghan evacuees struggling to get by hotel accommodation in the UK, at a daily cost of £1 million to UK taxpayers. | On Friday, UNHCR and the British Red Cross issued a report detailing the risks of exploitation faced by asylum seekers with cases pending for more than 6 months, imploring the Home Office to allow them to access the labor market and legally support their livelihoods (see the full UNHCR-BRC report here). On the same day, the Guardian revealed Home Office plans to begin monitoring immigrants convicted of criminal offenses by issuing them smartwatches, with which they would be required to submit multiple facial photographs per day to UK authorities. Also on Friday, the Home Office revealed it has spent just under £70 million in 2020-2021 in compensation to Windrush victims and wrongfully detained migrants, and in adverse legal costs tied to over 2.100 legal challenges it lost over the year, with such legal expenses tripling since current Home Secretary Priti Patel’s ascension to the post. | On Sunday, iNews relayed a warning from the Association for Family Mediation of Ukraine on the looming expiration of thousands of 6-month Homes for Ukraine placements, which threaten to leave numerous Ukrainian families bereft of housing before they have become self-sufficient.

Sources: InfoMigrants, ANSA, Alarm Phone, Delfi, Romea.cz, Interfax, AP, TVP, CNN, BBC, the Independent, the Guardian, iNews,

The Americas

U.S. migration policymaking
Last Tuesday, the Biden Administration’s Family Reunification Task Force announced it had reunited another 400 children separated from their families upon arrival at the U.S.-Mexico border under the preceding Administration’s zero-tolerance policy, leaving ~1.000 families yet to be reunited of the ~5.000 thus broken. On the same day, the American Civil Liberties Union issued a letter to CBP denouncing its confiscation and trashing of turbans worn by Sikh asylum seekers, in violation of CBP guidelines protecting the religious identity of arrivals, documenting 64 such cases thus far this year (see the ACLU’s letter here). | On Thursday, Border Report revealed that, in spite on ongoing water restrictions due to drought in South Texas, construction crews in the Rio Grande Valley have continued pumping water from local canals for use building border barriers in the area. | On Friday, the Department of Defense formally declined Washington, DC mayor Muriel Bowser’s request for assistance from the National Guard to shelter and support asylum seekers bussed from Texas and Arizona to east coast cities in a bid to inflame immigration politics.

Irregular migration in Latin America
Last Monday, Mexican authorities extracted 45 asylum seekers from a hidden compartment built into a truck trailer. | On Wednesday, authorities in Mexico issued novel visa rules for Brazilians to access Mexican soil, requiring a paper visa stamped into the traveler’s passport to ensure admission. | On Thursday, Colombian authorities issued a rule allowing displaced Venezuelans holding temporary protection permits to obtain driver licenses. On the same day, authorities in Guatemala arrested 4 human smugglers, pursuant to an indictment issued by the U.S. Justice Department, in relation to the perishing of an asylum seeker in a Texas desert smuggled by their organization and then abandoned as she succumbed to dehydration. | On Friday, Milenio documented nearly 600 sexual assaults over the last 6 years against asylum seeking women in ICE custody. On the same day, Chilean authorities disclosed they had repatriated just under 600 migrants in the first hal fof 2022, with nearly 460 returned to Bolivia. | On Sunday, Mexican authorities announced they had issued 62.000 humanitarian visas thus far this year.

Sources: the Independent, Arizona Luminaria, Border Report, CNN, infobae, EFE, En Frontera, Border Report, Milenio, emol, El Capitalino.

Oceania

Australia’s offshore asylum seeker detention system
Last Monday, Australia’s Home Affairs Department released a transition memo to incoming Immigration Minister Andrew Giles revealing that Australian authorities currently hold 1.414 migrant detainees, 80% of whom have been assessed to present a security risk, and 41% of whom have been in detention for more than 2 years. | On Wednesday, the Kaldor Centre released data finding an only 14% success rate in asylum rejection appeals in Australia, with reversal rates varying by judge from a low of 0% to a high of 89% (see the Kaldor Centre’s full data here).

Sources: the Guardian, ABC.

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Spotlight

Greece. Frontex. Groundhog Day. Again.

I don’t have the wherewithal to write about this again. Neither is it necessary: every nauseating detail has been detailed ad nauseam. There was never any doubt that Greek authorities were pushing back asylum seekers to Turkey. There was never any doubt that EU officials knew and tacitly approved. There remains no doubt that the European Union, nominally committed to practicing accountability and to protecting human rights, has long dispensed with both at its external borders.

Neither can I do justice to how important Lighthouse Reports’ work has been, over the last half-decade, in restoring accountability to the human rights black hole that the EU’s external borders have become. It’s unlikely that OLAF, the EU anti-fraud agency, would have been stirred to investigate Frontex’ wrongdoing lies in the Aegean and Central Mediterranean, had Lighthouse not been exposing Frontex’s lies with forensic precision, for years. Now that it has, it’s high time for OLAF’s investigation to be released to the public.

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Asia

Post-occupation Afghanistan
Last Tuesday, Reuters revealed that U.S. and Taliban negotiators had been discussing proposals to unfreeze $3.5 billion in U.S. held reserves of the Afghan Central Bank, which U.S. officials refuse to release if the bank remains under Taliban control, proposing instead its deposit into a multilaterally administered reconstruction trust fund. | On Wednesday, Afghanistan’s Ministry of Repatriation and Refugees disclosed that ~6.000 Afghans had returned from Iran over the week prior, ~5.600 of whom had been deported by Iranian authorities. On the same day, the MIRR announced that 228 displaced families, comprising 2.000 people in total, had returned from Kabul to their home provinces. | On Thursday, TOLOnews relayed the continuing frustration of Afghan civilians facing stubborn delays to obtain passports, with provincial offices not functioning and the existing centralized system not allowing joint family applications. | On Friday, the UK Foreign Office signaled it may not consider Afghan civilians who collaborated with UK-facilitated aid and development efforts as sufficiently at risk to qualify for evacuation visas, which it largely intends to reserve for those who collaborated with UK military operations.

Myanmar and its neighbors
Last Tuesday, ~5.000 civilians were displaced by Tatmadaw raids on 5 villages in Myanmar’s central Sagaing province. | On Thursday, another ~1.000 civilians, recently returned to their villages from prior displacement, were displaced again by Tatmadaw raids on 2 villages in Sagaing. | This Monday, authorities in Bangladesh tallied nearly 7.700 dengue fever cases in Rohingya refugee camps near Cox’s Bazaar thus far this year, over 1.000 of which were detected in the second half of July alone. On the same day, the ruling junta in Yangon announced a 6-month extension to the ongoing state of emergency in Myanmar.

Labor and asylum-seeking mobility in southeast Asia
Last Wednesday, Malaysian authorities revealed that their Indonesian counterparts had agreed to allow a resumption in labor migrant departures to Malaysia starting August 1, pursuant to a bilateral agreement on laborer protections. | On Thursday, authorities in the Philippines announced the raising of the minimum age for domestic workers to travel abroad from 23 to 24, to reduce risks of labor trafficking. | On Saturday, the Central News Agency disclosed that Taiwanese authorities had recently approved measures allowing refugees from Hong Kong to apply for Taiwanese citizenship after 5 years’ asylum and residence in Taiwan.

Sources: Reuters, TOLOnews, the Guardian, The Irrawaddy, EFE, Gulf News, CNA.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Ethiopia’s civil war
Last Wednesday, the WFP conducted the first aid delivery in over a year to Wag Hemra, a region in northeastern Ahmara State contested between the TPLF and Amharan forces and currently hosting ~90.000 IDPs. On the same day, USAID announced an additional $488 million commitment to deliver emergency aid to 8.1 million people in southeastern Ethiopia facing acute food insecurity on the heels of 4 consecutive failed rainy seasons. | On Thursday, the Guardian relayed the testimony of Eritrean refugees and dual nationals arbitrarily detained in Ethiopia and rendered to detention camps. | On Saturday, the UN International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia concluded a 5-day preliminary visit, ahead of further fact-finding missions, demanding of national authorities that they facilitate full access to relevant areas of investigation.

Conflict and displacement in the Sahel and West Africa
Last Wednesday, the Red Cross reported that 15 civilians had been killed, and 1.300 households displaced, by widespread flooding across the CAR. On the same day, Mongabay highlighted the conversion of biomass into charcoal briquettes in the Minawao refugee camp in Cameroon, helping—in tandem with a reforestation initiative—reduce the environmental impact of the camp. | On Thursday, local authorities began relocating ~66.000 IDPs from camps in in northeastern Nigeria’s Borno State to their communities of origin. | On Saturday, heavy rains caused sudden flooding in eastern Uganda, killing at least 21 civilians and displacing thousands, with at least 1.000 households affected. | This Monday, heavy flooding killed 95 at least civilians and destroyed at least 360 homes in Nigeria’s northeastern state of Yobe. On the same day, authorities in Monrovia announced they are finalizing preparations to repatriate Liberians remaining in exile in Ghana on the heels of the civil wars that wracked Liberia from 1989 to 2003.

Sources: Addis Standard, the Guardian, HumAngle, Mongabay, Liberian Daily Observer, AFP.

Middle East and North Africa

Displacement within and beyond Syria
Last Wednesday, Turkish authorities signaled that renewed military operations against Kurdish militia in northeast Syria could begin within a week. | On Thursday, the first aid convoy reached Idlib through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing, under the renewed mandate approved on July 11 by the UN Security Council. On the same day, the Syrian Response Coordination Group released findings from a survey tallying that 92% of IDPs in Syria are concerned that access to clean water is insufficient in the IDP camps they inhabit. | On Friday, UNHCR signaled its concern with increasing violence and discrimination against Syrian refugees in Lebanon, amid increasingly dire food price increases and supply shortages. | On Sunday, local TV reports revealed that 12.000 refugees in Jordan had been denied cash benefits in July due to UNHCR funding shortfalls.

Asylum seeker (im)mobility in the MENA region
Last Wednesday, Italian authorities voted to renew financial support for the Libyan Coast Guard through December of 2022. On the same day, IOM facilitated the repatriation of 175 Nigerian asylum seekers from Libya. | On Thursday, iNews relayed the testimony of asylum seekers rescued by the Ocean Viking regarding the abuses they suffered while in detention in Libya. On the same day, Germany’s human rights commissioner denounced Libyan authorities over their mistreatment of asylum seekers. | On Sunday, Turkish authorities disclosed that they had repatriated just over 59.000 asylum seekers thus far this year, and denied entry to just under 84.000 in the same span of time. On the same day, Turkish authorities further diclosed that they had repatriated 301 Haitian asylum seekers, in their first-ever transtrantic deportation flight.

Yemen’s civil war
On Friday, officials of Yemen’s UAE-aligned Southern Transitional Council leaked that they are confident the ongoing humanitarian ceasefire in Yemen will be extended past its current expiration date next Tuesday, but added that they expect an eventual resumption of hostilities rather than progress toward a durable peace. | This Monday, al Jazeera relayed the testimonials of Yemeni civilians in the wake of ongoing ceasefire negotiations, unsure whether hostilities will resume but realistic about continued hardship ahead.

Sources: Bloomberg, The New Arab, AP, The Libya Update, iNews, the National, Daily Sabah, Middle East Monitor, al Jazeera.

Maritime Migration Routes to & through the West

Ruta Canaria & the English Channel
Last Monday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 42 asylum seekers from a distressed vessel in waters off of Lanzarote. On the same day, Moroccan authorities rescued 18 asylum seekers at sea, and retrieved 8 lifeless bodies, after the vessel in which they had hoped to reach the Canary Islands sank off the coast of Tarfaya. | On Sunday, UK authorities diclosed that over 1.000 asylum seekers had irregularly crossed the English Channel over the week prior.

Mediterranean and Aegean Seas
Last Tuesday, Cypriot authorities reported they had intercepted 120 asylum seekers attempting to reach Cyprus by sea, from Turkey or from Lebanon, over the previous 48 hours. | On Wednesday, the Civil Fleet reported that, following the rescue of ~500 asylum seekers by the GeoBarents (MSF), there were 1.400 asylum seekers on 3 rescue ships awaiting safe ports of disembarkation in the Central Mediterranean. | On Thursday, Italian authorities reported that despite its efforts to relocate asylum seekers overcrowded reception center in Lampedusa, concomitant arrivals had kept the 350-capacity facility’s population around 2.000 residents through the week. On the same day, Greek authorities intercepted an overloaded ship carrying 166 asylum seekers, which had set sail from Lebanon intending to reach Italy, but broke down near the southeast Aegean island of Karpathos, detaining 5 smugglers and bringing the remaining passengers ashore for processing in Greece. | On Saturday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 26 asylum seekers off the coast of Alicante, for a total of 5 rescue operations retrieving 79 asylum seekers off the southeastern Spanish coast this week. On the same day, Turkish authorities reported they had rescued several dozen asylum seekers on 2 vessels they believe had been pushed back from Greek waters. | On Sunday, the Ocean Viking (S.O.S. Méditerannée) received authorization to disembark 380 asylum seekers in Salerno, one day after the Sea-Watch 3 disembarked 438 asylum seekers in Taranto and as the GeoBarents (MSF) awaited authorization to disembark 660 asylum seekers.

Gulf of Mexico
Last Wednesday, 16 Cuban asylum seekers reached Florida autonomously, making landfall near Key West. | On Thursday, U.S. Coast Guard officers rescued 68 asylum seekers stranded by smugglers on Mona Island, an uninhabited landmass between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, retrieving the lifeless bodies of 5 asylum seekers who did not manage to safely reach shore. | On Friday, a passing cruise ship rescued 12 asylum seekers adrift on a distressed vessel in waters off of Florida. | On Saturday, U.S. Coast Guard officers rescued 15 asylum seekers stranded on Marquesas Key, an uninhabited island west of Key West. | On Saturday, a sailboat carrying 141 Haitian asylum seekers hoping to reach U.S. soil ran aground on the Cuban coast after 8 days at sea.

Sources: EFE, InfoMigrants, BBC, ANSA, el Español, Daily Sabah, Local10 News, AP.

Europe

EU migration policymaking
Last Thursday, Lighthouse Reports revealed part of the contents of the EU anti-fraud agency’s investigation into wrongdoing at Frontex, including covering up the conduct of asylum seeker pushbacks in the Aegean Sea, and undermining Frontex’s own Fundamental Rights Officer corps. On the same day, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, on a previously planned visit to Athens, admonished Greek leaders to launch a credible formal investigation into the conduct of pushbacks. | On Sunday, Irish authorities concluded a 6-month status regularization exercise that has seen ~7.200 irregular migrants apply, and over 1.450 obtain status thus far, out of an estimated 15.000-17.000 irregular migrants estimated in Ireland upon the launch of the scheme. | This Monday, the European Court of Justice issued a ruling preventing national authorities from impounding maritime search-and-rescue ships due to returning over capacity from rescue missions.

European migration (mis)management
Last Monday, Austrian authorities disclosed that one quarter of all Austrians have a migrant background, further revealing that, were it not for immigration, Austria would currently be facing a decline in its population. | On Thursday, UN Special Rapporteur Human Rights of Migrants Felipe González denounced the double standards he observed, over a 2-week visit to Poland, between its facilitation of services and support to displaced Ukrainians and the barriers raised before third-country nationals displaced from Ukraine. On the same day, authorities in Estonia announced they would be ceasing the right of Russian and Belarusian nationals to obtain temporary residency and student visas. | On Friday, Finnish authorities disclosed they are considering blocking access to tourist visas for Russian nationals, which would close a loophole that has allowed Russians to enter the Schengen Zone and transit from Finland to other EU countries no longer admitting visa requests from Russian applicants. | On Saturday, Italian police arrested the perpetrator of the deadly assault of Alika Ogorchukwu, a disabled migrant street vendor, whose assassination was captured in a video that spread across Italian media. | On Sunday, Bosnian authorities deported 2 Pakistani asylum seekers, as a pilot for a broader repatriation agreement recently signed between Bosnia and Pakistan.

Displacement within and beyond Ukraine
Last Wednesday, the Polish Economic Institute issued an estimate tallying that authorities and private citizens in Poland are set to spend ~25 billion zloty (~€5.3 million), or ~1% of Poland’s GDP on providing support to Ukrainian refugees this year. | On Thursday, UK authorities disclosed that ~104.000 refugees had arrived to the UK since the February 24 Russian invasion of Ukraine, with an additional ~62.000 visas issued to refugees who have yet to travel, and another ~32.000 visa applications awaiting adjudication. On the same day, advocates in Scotland called for the urgent relocation of Ukrainian refugees temporarily housed on a cruise ship docked in Edinburgh, as part of a stopgap solution to an accommodation shortage across Scotland. | On Friday, U.S. authorities disclosed that Ukrainian refugee arrivals to the U.S. had exceeded 100.000, pledging to continue admitting Ukrainians past this mark.

Sources: der Spiegel, Deutsche-Welle, RTE, AP, InfoMigrants, Baltic Times, the Guardian, Balkan Insight, Bloomberg, the Independent, CBS News.

The Americas

U.S. border control
Last Wednesday, advocates celebrated the rescinding of several border wall construction contracts near Laredo, while continuing to lament planned construction in the Rio Grande Valley and in San Diego. | On Thursday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and the Texas Civil Rights Project filed a formal complaint with the Justice Department alleging that Texas troopers patrolling in south Texas as part of Operation Lone Star are discriminatorily targeting Latino drivers for identity checks, and that resulting car chases have led to 30 fatalities since last March (see the full complaint here). On the same day, ICE revealed it had raided 6 stash houses where 73 asylum seekers were confined in the suburbs of Washington, DC. Also on Thursday, The Dallas Morning News revealed a disturbing practice by some CBP agents found to have falsified asylum seekers’ responses to reasonable fear interviews in order to channel them into expedited removal, with few legal remedies to challenge express repatriation. | On Friday, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse issued a report tallying that ~17% of deportation cases going before U.S. immigration courts are being dismissed due to CBP officials negleting to file standard paperwork with courts, leading to over 47.000 dismissals thus far this year, sparing the subjects of litigation from being deported, but landing them in an uncertain limbo after dismissal.

Irregular migration in Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean
Last Monday, the Inter-American Dialogue issued a report linking democratic deficits and poor human rights protection in Latin America with emigration aspirations, noting that, over 2021, the proportion of Nicaraguans wishing to emigrate increased from 15% to 65% (see IAD’s full report here). | On Tuesday, members of the novel caravan that had departed from Tapachula to Huixtla over the weekend prior demonstrated in front of the local Instituto Nacional de Migración offices, and at the main highway entrance into Huixtla, to demand the issuance of travel documents. | On Wednesday, INM officials raided a house being used by smugglers in Tapachula, releasing 100 asylum seekers from potential harm. | On Thursday, 94 asylum seekers managed to force their way out—thus avoiding suffocation—of a trailer in which they were transiting irregularly across Mexico, after it was abandoned on a roadside in Veracruz. | On Friday, authorities in Honduras disclosed they had intercepted 54.275 irregular migrants trying to transit across Honduran soil thus far this year. On the same day, the Inter-American Dialogue issued a study finding that the arrival of about half a million labor migrants from Latin America to the U.S. thus far this year has driven a 14% increase in remittances to the region, with person-to-person remittance links growing to 5 million in Central America alone (see the IAD’s full report here). | On Saturday, Mexican authorities repatriated 126 Venezuelan asylum seekers intercepted transiting across Mexico without proper authorization. On the same day, Guatemalan authorities disclosed they had expelled 27 Cuban asylum seekers over the previous 3 days. | On Sunday, authorities in Honduras tallied nearly 64.000 asylum seeker crossings thus far this year through Honduran soil toward the U.S.-Mexico border.

Sources: Border Report, NBC News, The Dallas Morning News, TRAC, 100% Noticias, infobae, el Diario del Sur, AP, EFE, cibercuba, La Prensa.

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Spotlight

This week, Tajikistan accepted the return of 42 spouses and 104 children of suspected ISIS fighters being held in the Kurdish-administered detention camps of al Hol and Roj in northeastern Syria.

The al-Hol camp was first set up in 1991 to accommodate refugees displaced by the Gulf War, and was used again on the heels of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. In 2015, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces captured the camp and the surrounding area from the Islamic State. As ISIS fighters retreated toward Baghuz, a small town on the Euphrates near the Iraqi border where they would fight their last stand, thousands of their wives and children retreated with them; when Baghuz fell in in 2019, tens of thousands of surrendering fighters were herded into al-Hol—with their families in tow. As of mid-2022, ~56.000 remain in al-Hol—the majority of them Syrian and Iraqi nationals, and the remaining ~12.000 from third countries, including numerous EU nationals. Humanitarian conditions were already dire back in 2019 and have worsened since then; security has all but evaporated, with over 100 murders having taken place in the last 18 months.

Unsurprisingly, the Western-allied Kurdish forces managing the camp have been begging, for years, for Western states to repatriate their nationals among the detained, soundly arguing that high-income states are better equipped to imprison radicalized fighters and to reintegrate family members wishing to leave this dark part of their lives behind. Iraq’s repatriation efforts are halting, but earnest. Unsurprisingly, Western states have done as little as possible to do right by their nationals—let alone their allies in the ground war against the Islamic state.

At-scale repatriations from al-Hol, especially of of non-combattants, are long overdue. If Tajikistan can step up, so can Europe.

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On to the news…

Asia

Post-occupation Afghanistan
Last Monday, 2 earthquakes struck in Afghanistan’s southeastern Paktika province, injuring 31 civilians and destroying 600 homes. On the same day, Dawn relayed the irregular settlement of ~700 Hazara Afghan refugees in a children’s park in Islamabad, on the heels of the dispersal of previous informal settlements near the National Press Club and Parliament House. Also on Monday, U.S. authorities announced a simplification in the Special Immigrant Visa application process, streamlining the filing into 1 form and reducing processing times. | On Tuesday, the WFP appealed for $172 million to enable it to store 150.000 tons of food assistance in remote Afghan provinces, for eventual distribution to at-need families. | On Wednesday, the United Nations mission in Afghanistan issued a report finding Taliban authorities responsible for systematic human rights violations—including at least 160 extrajudicial killings, 300 arbitrary arrests, and 56 instances of torture or ill-treatment—directed at civilians associated with the previous government, human rights defenders, and journalists (see the full report here). | This Monday, Afghan authorities celebrated the return of 272 Afghan IDPs from Kabul to their home provinces, the latest of ~6.000 displaced families to have returned from Kabul in recent months.

Myanmar and its neighbors
Last Monday, Bangladeshi authorities announced they had apprehended a high-level ARSA commander who had evaded capture by blending in amid the Rohingya refugee population encamped near Cox’s Bazaar. | On Thursday, the World Bank assessed Myanmar’s poverty rate has doubled in the 18 months since the military coup, with ~22 million Burmese, roughly 40% of the population, living below the poverty line. | On Friday, the International Court of Justice issued its ruling on the admissibility of the 2019 genocide case brought forth by the Gambia, finding against Burmese filings, and assuming competent jurisdiction to adjudicate allegations of genocide against the Tatmadaw. On the same day, Malaysian authorities announced the launch of a novel and nationwide Tracking Refugees Information System.

Sources: TOLOnews, Dawn, Reuters, IANS, RFA, the Irrawaddy, AFP, al Jazeera.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Ethiopia’s civil war
Last Monday, the TPLF named its negotiating team to join complex but urgent peace talks across a delegation from Addis Ababa. On the same day, conflict in Ethiopia’s central Bale Zone led to the killing of 20 civilians and the displacement of thousands from a wholly evacuated village. Also on Monday, TPLF officials admonished the recent reconstruction deal signed by the Ethiopian government and UNOPS, which they charge was made unilaterally by Addis Ababa with no input from Tigrayan stakeholders, and which they fear will deprive Tigray of reconstruction assistance in favor of less severely at-need regions. | On Tuesday, USAID announced a $55 million commitment to provide food assistance to ~2 million Ethiopian civilians who have seen their food security undermined by grain and fertilizer shortages caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. On the same day, Somalian authorities denied any dometic troop presence in Tigray fighting alongside Eritrean forces, claiming to have found 5.000 trainees who had evidently gone missing in Eritrea and pledging to return them promptly to Somalia. | On Wednesday, the UAE announced a $60 million commitment to the WFP’s programming in northern Ethiopia, helping it provide food assistance to 1.6 million civilians in Tigray, Afar, and Amahara. | On Thursday, border crossings resumed at the Metema-Gallabat dry port connecting Ethiopia and Sudan, pursuing to its announced re-opening on the Sunday prior. On the same day, Addis Standard issued a thorough investigation into a flare-up of violence in the North Shewa Zone, along the borders of Oromia and Amhara, that saw at least 17 civilians and 28 security forces killed, and another 30 civilians injured, between July 10 and 12 of this year.

Conflict and displacement in the Sahel and in central Africa
Last Tuesday, the African Center for Strategic Studies tallied ~36 million displaced persons in Africa, representing 44% of the global total, attributing the bulk of this displacement to protracted conflict across the continent (see ACSS’s full report here). | On Thursday, the REACH Resource Center issued a report finding that 90% of households in the Western Sahel can no longer satisfy basic needs, driving increasing northbound irregular migration. | On Sunday, over 3.200 people were displaced by attacks by local armed groups in Nigeria’s northwestern Zamfara State. | This Monday, HumAngle highlighted the experience of homelessness in Lagos experienced by Nigerians in long-term displacement with no other settlement options.

The DRC and its neighbors
Last Tuesday, 88 refugees returned from exile in Angola to their communities of origin in the DRC’s Kasai province, from where ~35.000 civilians fled in 2017, of whom ~7.000 remain abroad—with voluntary returns suspended in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and resumed this last week. | On Thursday , Save the Children lamented the separation of at least 100 children from their families due to novel displacement in recent weeks in the DRC’s northeastern Rutshuru region, where over 10.000 families have been displaced by clashes between state forces and the M23 rebel group in recent months (see StC’s full report here). On the same day, negotiators from the DRC and Rwanda agreed to demand a rapid deployment of regional peacekeepers in the northeastern DRC to reduce regional tensions.

Sources: AFP, Addis Standard, the EastAfrican, Middle East Monitor, ANSA, HumAngle.

Middle East and North Africa

Conflict and displacement in Syria
Last Tuesday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan reaffirmed his intention to invade northern Syria and establish a 30-kilometer buffer zone between the Turkish border and YPG-controlled parts of Syria. | On Friday, a Russian airstrike killed 7 people, including 4 children, in Idlib province. | This Monday, Kurdish authorities in northeastern Syria repatriatd 146 women and children, relatives of imprisoned ISIS fighters until recently detained in the Al-Hol and Roj contaiment camps, to Tajikistan.

Asylum seeker (im)mobility in the MENA region
Last Monday, TOLOnews relayed testimony from Afghan refugees repatriated from Turkey, attesting to mistreatment by Turkish authorities and poor conditions in pre-departure containment centers, all while accusing the Afghan Embassy in Ankara of complicity with the ~300 daily repatriation departures. | On Tuesday, Turkish authorities issued a novel regulation compelling taxi drivers to check the documentation of foreign drivers before initiating inter-city trips, such that tourists would need to show their passports, and refugees would need to show their international protection document, as well as a separate travel permit authorizing this travel. On the same day, a Moroccan court ruled on pending charges against 33 asylum seekers detained in Melilla during the June 24 deadly mass attempted crossing, finding them guilty of illegal entry into Morocco, and of disorderly and violent conduct, and sentencing them to 11 months’ incarceration and fining 4.000 dhirams (~€400). | On Wednesday, the Moroccan Association for Human Rights issued the findings of it investigation into the June 24 tragedy, tallying 27 fatalities and 64 missing persons, and finding causes of death to be a mix of chemical asphyxiation due to tear gas used by Moroccan and Spanish border police, and physical asphyxiation caused by the human crush against the border fence. | On Friday, the AP issued a detailed profile of the Stabilization Support Authority, a novel Libyan militia that appears to have consolidated control over maritime migration policing, operating with even greater brutality and lesser accountability than its predecessors. On the same day, 27 asylum seekers were transferred from Libya to Italy via a humanitarian corridor targeting the most vulnerable detainees in Libya’s asylum seeker detention centers. | On Sunday, Turkish authorities announced they had repatriated 215 Afghan asylum seekers, and were preparing to deport another 327, the latest of nearly 25.500 Afghans to be repatirated from Turkey thus far this year.

Yemen’s civil war
Last Tuesday, AFP highlighted the fragility of Yemen’s ongoing ceasefire as its August 2 expiration date (if not renewed) approaches, singling out the ongoing issue of road closures around Taiz, which continues vexing parties to the conflict, negotiatiors, and—most importantly—civilians in the frontline city. | On Thursday, UN Special Envoy to Yemen Hans Grundberg pleaded for the extension of the ceasefire in Yemen, highlighting a 60% decrease in novel civilian casualties and a nearly 50% decrease in novel displacement since it entered into effect. | On Saturday, artillery shelling in a residential neighborhood of Taiz killed 1 child and injured another 10 children.

Sources: al Jazeera, the Guardian, The New Arab, TOLOnews, Hürriyet, InfoMigrants, AP, InfoMigrants, Daily Sabah, AFP, UN News.

Maritime Migration Routes to & through the West

Central and western Mediterranean
Last Monday, Tunisian Coast Guard officers rescued 455 asylum seekers in 37 rescue operations across Tunisian waters. | On Wednesday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 2 asylum seeking youth trying to cross the Straits of Gibraltar on surfboards, and another trying to cross by swimming, bringing them ashore in Algeciras for registration and medical care. On the same day, the Rise Above (Mission Lifeline) announced it had rescued just under 70 asylum seekers in 3 operations over the previous 4 days. | On Saturday, Italian authorities rescued 674 asylum seekers from a single fishing vessel adrift in waters 124 nautical miles south of the coast of Calabria, and retrieved the lifeless bodies of 5 passengers who had succumbed to dehydration. | On Sunday, the Sea-Watch 3 rescued 444 asylum seekers in five operations in the Central Mediterranean, and Ocean Viking (SOS Méditerrannée) rescued another 195 in a further 2 operations.

Atlantic-adjacent routes: the English Channel and Ruta Canaria
Last Monday, 330 asylum seekers reached UK soil across the English Channel, adding up to a total of over 15.000 arrivals thus far this year. | On Wednesday, Caminando Fronteras issued its monitoring report for the first half of 2022, tallying just under 1.000 asylum seeker fatalities at Spain’s borders in the last 6 months, ~800 of them perishing or going missing while trying to reach the Canary Islands (see CF’s full report here). | On Saturday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 53 asylum seekers in waters off of Gran Canaria.

Gulf of Mexico
Last Wednesday, 8 Cuban asylum seekers made landfall in Key West, where they were promptly apprehended by U.S. authorities. | On Thursday, the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted a wooden sailboat arrying at least 150 Haitian asylum seekers that had run aground in waters off of Boca Chita Key. | On Friday, 14 Cuban asylum seekers arrived autonomously to Long Key, where they were promptly apprehended by U.S. authorities. | On Sunday, authorities in the Bahamas rescued 25 Haitian asylum seekers, retrieved 17 lifeless bodies, and tallied as many as two dozen missing persons, from a vessel that capsized off the coast of New Providence island.

Sources: InfoMigrants, EuropaSur, infobae, EFE, 112 Canarias, Local10 News, AP.

Europe

EU migration policymaking
Last Monday, Irish authorities announced a 1-year suspension of visa-free travel for refugees who already have refugee status in one of 20 other EU countries, in response to an increase in asylum claims filed by people already grated refugee status in another EU country—to 479 such claims through 2021. | On Wednesday, German officials disclosed details of intended labor migration reforms—proposing to speed up the recognition of foreign professional qualifications, and allow migrants to travel while recognition is ongoing; to allow job seekers to immigrate to Germany to look for work, and not just with a work contract in hand; to increase the labor migration from non-EU Balkan states, currently set at 25.000 per year; and to reduce the income threshold for Blue Card eligibility in Germany. | On Thursday, Senegalese and Spanish officials met in Dakar, on the sidelines of an AU Summit, to discuss opening regular pathways for labor and circular migration between the 2 countries. On the same day, Statewatch issued a report revealing Frontex plans to set up an operations centers in Mauritania, and deepen collaboration with Senegal, to deter irregular migration toward the Canary Islands (see Statewatch’s full report here). Also on Thursday, negotiations toward a settlement broke down between Cypriot authorities and 2 Syrian asylum seekers pushed back to Lebanon from Cyprus’ shores, paving the way for litigation at the European Court of Human Rights. | This Monday, 9 Afghan refugees reached Italy from Tehran, part of a 300-strong first tranche of a humanitarian corridor intended to bring 1.200 Afghan refugees from southwest Asia directly to Italy over the next few months.

European migration (mis)management
On Tuesday, Spain’s Council of State approved a measure which, pending approval by the Council of Ministers within the next 2 weeks, would allow foreign workers to apply for jobs and Spanish work visas from abroad, and irregular migrants to regularize their status by obtaining job training in labor-scarce sectors of the economy. On the same day, the first 41 Azeri families returned to the rebuilt village of Aghali, part of the territory recaptured by Azerbaijan after 2 decades under contested Armenian occupation. Also on Tuesday, Italian authorities tallied ~10.000 migrant laborers living in penury in makeshift camps with limited access to rights or to basic services as they sustain Italy’s agricultural and food processing sectors. | On Wednesday, Dutch authorities disclosed they are considering using cruise ships as temporary accommodation for asylum seekers to alleviate pressure on the overcrowded Ter Apel reception center. | On Thursday, authorities in Cyprus disclosed that since October, they have terminated cash benefits for ~3.000 asylum seekers found to be working while drawing benefits, and announced plans to digitize cash assistance and restrict beneficiaries’ ability to use it to send remittances or to spend it on vices.

Baltic & Balkan border brinkmanship
Last Monday, asylum seekers and advocacy groups signaled that Lithuanian authorities appear to be releasing undeportable rejected asylum claimants from reception centers, permitting them to live on their own recognizance in Lithuania with limited rights and resources. On the same day, authorities in Latvia proposed extending the state of emergency along the Latvian-Belarussian border, in place since August, to November 10. Also on Monday, Europol announced it had broken a racket charging €10.000-€13.000 to smuggle asylum seekers from Iraq into the EU via Belarus, for an estimated €7 million in total earnings, arresting 10 individuals in Poland and another in the UK. | On Wednesday, a group of 50 asylum seekers filed an emergency appeal with the ECtHR, demanding to be rescued from an islet in the Evros where they became stranded on July 14, when they first crossed the river and were intercepted by local police, leading to the death of 1 asylum seeker violently beaten by officers, and the drowning of another 2 when pushed back to the islet. On the same day, Serbian authorities tallied ~3.000 asylum seekers living near the northern city of Subotica, trying to irregularly enter Hungary, where new police deployments an a restriction to 30 admissions per day have led to greater accumulations in the transit zones buffering to Serbo-Hungarian border. | On Sunday, police in North Macedonia intercepted a truck irregularly carrying 86 asylum seekers in its rear compartment, arresting the truck driver while detaining the asylum seekers for prompt return to Greece.

Displacement within and beyond Ukraine
Last Monday, authorities in Iceland announced they have received 2.200 refugees thus far this year, among them 1.300 from Ukraine, and expect a total 4.000 arrivals by the end of the year. | On Thursday, Israeli authorities issued a measure restricting the employment rights of the nearly 14.000 Ukrainian refugees in 17 Israeli cities, allowing them to only in certain sectors, including construction, agriculture, institutional nursing and hotel industries. On the same day, Balkan Insight highlighted the challenges faced by the nearly 10.000 Ukrainian refugees currently living in Montenegro and trying to build livelihoods in its relatively small economy. | On Friday, Ukraine and Russia signed a UN-brokered deal that will allow Ukraine to begin exporting ~20 million tons of grain through its Black Sea ports, while allowing Russia to ramp up fertilizer exports, a first step toward alleviating a worsening global food security crisis. | This Monday, the AP highlighted the economic difficulties prompting internally displaced Ukrainians to return to their home communities near the front lines, or preventing those at risk from evacuating in the first place, as the cost of lodging in cities in the reach rises to accommodate surging demand while livelihoods evaporate under the impact of the Russian invasion. On the same day, Dutch authorities opened centers for the estimated 65.000 Ukrainian refugees to get registration certificates inserted into their passports, which they will be required to possess by September 1.

Dystopia at the Home Office
Last Tuesday, High Court litigation revealed that the Home Office had received, and deliberately obfuscated, extensive documentation from UK government sources advising against the UK-Rwanda deportation deal, admonishing that Rwanda’s reception and human rights standards were insufficient to permit its proper operation. | On Wednesday, ongoing litigation revealed that several asylum seekers slated for deportation to Rwanda in last June’s intended flight have been recognized, since their near-deportation, by UK authorities as likely trafficking victims in need of a full assessment. | On Saturday, Rwandan authorities revealed that the UK-Rwanda deportation deal was intended to provide for the removal of 1.000 asylum seekers to Rwanda, but that until further notice there was capacity to receive only 200.

Sources: InfoMigrants, EFE, The New Arab, AP, el País, Open Caucasus Media, ANSA, DutchNews.nl, Cyprus Mail, LRT, LETA, efsyn, SchengenVisaInfo, The Reykjavík Grapevine, Haaretz, Balkan Insight, the Guardian, the Independent, PA.

The Americas

U.S. migration policymaking
Last Monday, Mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington, DC pleaded with federal authorities for a policy-based solution to the increasing number of asylum seeker arrivals bused from Texas and Arizona to DC—part of a political pressure campaign by those states’ right-wing populist governors—which are exhausting local reception capacity. | On Tuesday, Bloomberg highlighted that USCIS is projected to see 6.200 writs of mandamus filed against it by the end of this year—compelling it to act in response to delays in completing travel authorization and green card proceedings—triple the rate from just 2 years ago. | On Wednesday, 100 advocacy group issued an open letter to the Biden Administration pleading for it to cease returns under the Migrant Protection Protocols, whose termination was sanctioned by the Supreme Court earlier in July, but not yet implemented pending the Court’s issuance of a certified judgment (see the full letter here). | On Thursday, the Biden Administration leaked it is looking into issuing new guidance to ensure that asylum seeking minors who arrive or become pregnant in the U.S. immigration system retain access to reproductive care, including abortion. On the same day, federal grand juries returned indictments including charges of conspiracy and illegal transport leading to injury and death against the 4 men arrested on the heels of the late June smuggling tragedy in San Antonio where 53 asylum seekers perished in the unventilated container of a truck. Also on Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court accepted a case involving a dispute between ICE’s ability to set its own detention priorities, and individual states’ ability to challenge those priorities in court, refusing to stay an adverse district judgment pending litigation, effectively allowing a single judge to upend DHS enforcement priorities. | On Friday, the Biden Administration disclosed it its developing a Secure Docket Card, intended to serve as a single-issuance ID card for all arriving irregular migrants, providing access to biometric and immigration data, and allowing usage as identification while within U.S. soil.

Irregular migration in Latin America
Last Monday, Migración Colombia issued a report tallying just over 2.475.000 Venezuelan nationals living in Colombia, ~1.8 million of them holding Temporary Protection (see the unveiling of the report here). On the same day, Colombia’s public and private sector launched a financial identity platform accessible to foreigners, allowing immigrants to access financial services on the same footing as Colombian nationals. | Last Tuesday, a northbound van carrying 15 asylum seekers crashed into another moving car on in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo León, killing 3 asylum seekers and injuring the remaining 12, and also killing 2 passengers of the other car. | On Wednesday, several hundred asylum seekers staged demonstrations in Tapachula, demanding that the Instituto Nacional de Migración issue them humanitarian visas allowing them to transit beyond Chiapas. | On Thursday, authorities in Panama tallied 48.300 irregular arrivals via the Darién Gap thus far this year, nearly 7.300 conducted by minors. | On Friday, 96 emigrants were repatriated to Cuba, evenly split between returnees from the U.S. and Mexico. | On Sunday, Mexican authorities detained 225 asylum seekers being kept in a warehouse near Mexico City. | This Monday, a novel caravan composed of ~2.000 asylum seekers departed from Tapachula toward Huixtla, complaining that migration authorities in Tapachula were too slow to issue registration documents. On the same day, the Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos formally demanded that regional and national authorities guarantee the protection, humanitarian support, and access to basic rights of this novel caravan. Also on Monday, Guatemalan authorities disclosed that 939 asylum seekers had been repatriated to Guatemala from U.S. soil in the first half of the preceding week.

Sources: the Washington Post, Bloomberg, Border Report, CNN, Slate, infobae, En Frontera, AP, EFE, UN News, ACN, Reuters, Milenio.

Oceania

Investor migration to New Zealand, asylum seeker detention in Australia
Last Wednesday, authorities in New Zealand announced a novel Active Investor Plus visa, which would allow settlement to investors committing NZ$5 million (~€3.1 million) to develop domestic companies. | On Friday, ongoing litigation in Australia revealed that domestic taxpayers are financing a monthly bill of ~$3AUD million (~€2 million) for asylum seeker containment in Austarlian hotels.

Sources: Reuters, the Sydney Morning Herald.

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Spotlight

There’s really not that much new to say here—pushbacks, the Aegean, the EU: Groundhog Day. Last week, Forensic Architecture and Forensis launched a new portal documenting, with millimetric precision, over a thousand drift-back operations carried out over the last 2+ years, unlawfully expelling nearly 27.500 asylum seekers from Greek waters to Turkey, in blatant violations of Greek, EU, and international law.

This on the heels of a unanimous ruling from the European Court of Human Rights finding Greek authorities responsible for a 2014 pushback that led to the deaths of 11 asylum seekers, and for the degrading treatment of 12 survivors. On the heels of that ruling, Greek authorities have tasked the National Transparency Authority with investigating the conduct of pushbacks again—just 3 months after completing an investigation on the conduct of pushbacks pushed by the European commission, its results falling far below reasonable expectations for a state body issuing an official report.

Brussels seems to be running out of patience with the pushbacks it has tacitly demanded of Greece over the last half-decade—actively participating in their conduct all while shielding Greek authorities from accountability. But so far, though it has thrown former Frontex director Fabrice Leggeri under the bus, it has shown neither introspection nor regret over Commission President von der Leyen’s condoning of border violence in March 2020, or over Vice-President Schinas’ obfuscation less than 2 months ago. Though Frontex has a new director, it’s far from clear if its modus operandi of the last few years will transition from facilitating and covering up pushbacks, to more law-abiding form of border enforcement, in the months and years to come. Likewise, it remains to be seen quite what will happen if and when Greek authorities join their EU counterparts on this particular road to Damascus.

Firing an official or two, or even a cabinet minister, would certainly occupy headlines and might even satisfy EU demands for a symbolic gesture to allay criticism of the grim human rights situation at EU external borders. But, seeing the incentive structures as they remain aligned, it would not likely lead to a shift in practice or in culture. The balance between security and legal imperatives at EU external borders remains decisively tilted security’s way—namely, toward border control, its moral cost be what it may. So long as this remains the case, the archives of documented pushbacks compiled not just by Forensic Architecture and Forensis, but also by Lighthouse Reports, the Border Violence Monitoring Network, Aegean Boat Report, and others, will only continue to grow.

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On to the news…

Asia

Afghanistan and its neighbors
Last Wednesday, physicians in Kabul signaled alarm as they observed a spike in diarrheal disease, with intakes growing to ~100 per day with the arrival of warm weather, and with the Ministry of Health reporting 15 recent fatalities due to cholera in Helmand province along. On the same day, German officials disclosed that out of ~23.300 local staff to Germany’s mission to Afghanistan, ~17.200 have been relocated to Germany, with new departures—from neighboring countries—numbering ~200 per week. | On Friday, the World Bank and UNDP signed an agreement to offer $20 million in funding for NGOs and CSOs conducting humanitarian and development projects in Afghanistan. On the same day, the Huffington Post highlighted that at least 27.000 Hazara civilians have been displaced due to recent fighting in Afghanistan’s central Balkhab province, with local officials estimating much higher displacement figures than the official count. | On Sunday, Iranian authorities repatriated 140 Pakistani nationals, having apprehended them attempting to reach Europe via Iran.

Conflict and displacement in Myanmar and India
Last Monday, the ICJ announced it would issue a response next week, on July 22, to Burmese objections to litigation filed by the Gambia accusing Myanmar of committing genocide against the Rohingya. | On Tuesday, the Thai Chamber of Commerce issued an assessment tallying that 3 to 4 million migrant workers are needed in labor-intensive sectors of its economy, including agriculture, construction, and food processing, to achieve its post-pandemic economic recovery. | On Thursday, Tatmadaw strikes in Myanmar’s central Sagaing province displaced ~10.000 civilians from 12 villages. On the same day, Indian authorities went public with the results of a year-long public investigation into human trafficking networks luring Rohingya girls from encampments in Bangladesh into India, detaining 6 traffickers and detailing an elaborate network of safe houses and document forgery facilitating this criminality. | On Sunday, local authorities tallied just over 30.000 Burmese refugee arrivals to India’s northeastern Mizoram State since this Februrary—including 14 lawmakers—living in 156 encampments across the state. | This Monday, India’s National Medical Commission announced it had formed a committee to draft a framework for a qualifications exam allowing Pakistani clinicians holding asylum in India to practice medicine, allowing then to work at their competence level and regularizing irregular medical practices, while filling skills gaps in India’s healthcare system.

Japan’s peculiar asylum system
Last Tuesday, the Japan Lawyers Network for Refugees disclosed that Japanese authorities were readying to issue asylum, for the first time, to a Turkish Kurd, who had been struggling to obtain asylum in Japan since 2014.

Sources: TOLOnews, the Huffington Post, Dawn, InfoMigrants, The Diplomat, Reuters, the Irrawaddy, EastMojo, PTI, Kyodo.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Civil conflict and displacement within and beyond Ethiopia
Last Wednesday, Ethiopian authorities signed a provisional agreement with UNOPS to begin rebuilding infrastructure in Tigray, using a $300 million grant from the World Bank. | On Thursday, Ethiopia’s foreign ministry announced the launch of an operation to repatriate 12.000 Ethiopians from half a dozen eastern and southern African countries, as well as from Yemen and Oman, with returns from Saudi Arabia having just exceeded 100.000 in the last few months. | On Friday, Addis Standard highlighted that ~24.000 Amhara civilians have been recently displaced from Oromia on the heels of mass attacks against Amhara communities, creating new acutely at-risk and at-need communities in central Ethiopia. | On Sunday, Refugees International signaled alarm at the recent forcible transfer of ~100 Eritrean refugees from Addis Ababa to refugee camps along the border of Amhara and Tigray, where they will be at immense risk. On the same day, Sudanese authorities reopened the Gallabat crossing on the border with Ethiopia, closed since an armed clash in late April led to the killing of 7 Sudanese troops and 1 civilian.

Conflict and displacement in the Sahel
Last Tuesday, HumAngle relayed the concerns of IDPs living in Gubio camp, in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno State, who, on the heels of the camp’s designation as a site to be closed, are running dangerously low on food and water, and facing dire hygiene outcomes as sanitation infrastructure falls into disrepair. | On Friday, MSF announced it would close 2 bases it maintains in Cameroon’s Southwest provinces by August 1, worn down by hostility from national authorities, extending to the detention of 4 MSF field responders last January, 2 of whom remain in detention facing trial.

Sources: the EastAfrican, Addis Standard, Refugees International, HumAngle.

Middle East and North Africa

Internal displacement in Syria and Yemen
Last Tuesday, the UN Security Council approved a resolution allowing humanitarian aid to continue entering Idlib province, home to 4.1 million internally displaced Syrians, for the coming 6 months. | On Thursday, the Action Group for the Palestinians of Syria revealed that, in 2021, just under 1.800 Palestinians had been held in detention in Syria. | On Friday, U.S. authorities admonished their Turkish counterparts to desist from an intended assault on Kurdish militia in northeast Syria, warning that the humanitarian impact of a strike, coupled with the potential for breakouts from detention camps containing former ISIS fighters, could severely destabilize the region.

Asylum seeker (im)mobility in the MENA region
Last Wednesday, Morocco’s National Human Rights Council of Morrocco, currently probing last month’s mass tragedy at the Melilla border fence, issued a finding that most of the deceased had succumbed to mechanical asphyxiation, becoming unable to breathe as a result of the physical pressure exerted on their bodies by the collective push away from police forces and into the barrier. | On Thursday, IOM disclosed that, on July 6, it had rescued 44 asylum seekers who had become stranded in the northern Nigerien desert, after the truck in which they had been trying to reach Libya had broken down. | On Saturday, the EU announced a renewed partnership with Niger to deter asylum seeker departures toward Libya and disrupt human smuggling across the Sahara.

Yemen’s civil war
Last Wednesday, heavy rains began lashing Yemen’s contested Marib province, affecting over 13.500 displaced families living in 197 IDP camps. | On Sunday, Ansar Allah threatened to refuse to renew the nearly 4-month ceasefire that has drastically reduced violence across Yemen’s frontlines, reacting to U.S. President Joe Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia.

Sources: AFP, Middle East Monitor, al-Monitor, al Jazeera, InfoMigrants, Libya Observer, the New Arab, Bloomberg.

Maritime Migration Routes to & through the West

Ruta Canaria
Last Monday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 213 asylum seekers, and tallied 2 missing persons, from 4 rescues in waters off of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura. | On Tuesday, Moroccan authorities announced they had intercepted and turned back 257 asylum seekers trying to reach the Canary Islands over the 3 days prior. | On Thursday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 55 asylum seekers from a distressed vessel in waters off of Lanzarote. | On Friday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 78 asylum seekers, and retrieved 2 lifeless bodies, from 2 distressed vessels in waters off of Lanzarote. On the same day, 20 asylum seekers reached autonomously the shores of Lanzarote. | On Saturday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 52 asylum seekers from a vessel that has lost power and adrift in waters off of Lanzarote.

Mediterranean and Aegean Seas
Last Monday, the GeoBarents (MSF) was assigned a safe port of arrival in Taranto, allowing it to disembark the 314 asylum seekers rescued from the Central Mediterranean over the week prior. | On Tuesday, IOM disclosed that it had tallied the return of 299 asylum seekers, between July 3 and 9 of this year, from the Central Mediterranean to Libyan shores. | On Friday, Aegean Boat Report relayed the testimony of 32 asylum seekers who made landfall in Kos late last June, where they were apprehended by local police, detained informally and abused—physically and psychologically—before being turned back to see and left adrift in unnavigable rafts. | On Sunday, Turkish officials claimed to have recorded drone footage capturing 2 pushbacks from Greek into Turkish waters near Samos.

The English Channel
Last Monday, 442 asylum seekers were rescued from 15 vessels in British waters and brought to UK soil. | On Friday, the BBC tallied 815 refugee arrivals through the week prior.

U.S. maritime borders
Last Monday, the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted 18 asylum seekers trying to reach U.S. soil by sea, crossing from Tijuana to San Diego—the 3rd such crossing attempt in as many days, with 52 asylum seekers detained in total. | On Tuesday, 25 Cuban asylum seekers arrived autonomously to Key Biscayne in Florida, 2 days after another 25 Cuban asylum seekers had arrived to Marquesias Key and Grassy Key. | On Wednesday, U.S. Coast Guard officers repatriated 77 Cuban asylum seekers across the Gulf of Mexico, intercepted mid-sea in 8 separate operations over the week prior. On the same day, U.S. Coast Guard officers repatriated 14 Dominican asylum seekers intercepted in Puerto Rican waters. | On Thursday, 6 Cuban asylum seekers arrived autonomously to mainland Florida on a makeshift vessel, where they were promptly apprehended by U.S. authorities. | On Sunday, U.S. authorities announced they had apprehended 41 Cuban asylum seekers in the Florida Keys over the weekend. This Monday, the parliamentary home affairs committee issued a report blasting the Home Office for pursuing performative but ineffective migration management policies while the asylum backlog exceeds 125.000 claims, with asylum case workers battling overwork and antiquated software to try to sustain an unsustainable system.

Sources: EFE, InfoMigrants, ABR, Middle East Monitor, BBC, Border Report, the Miami Herald, EFE, Palm Beach Post.

Europe

EU migration policymaking
Last Tuesday, Frontex announced the termination of its border surveillance operation in Lithuania, denying the decision resulted from the week prior’s ECJ ruling faulting Lithuania for violating the rights of asylum seekers, while claiming Frontex’s Fundamental Rights Office had flagged ill-behavior in months prior; as Frontex suggested it may switch its policy from withdrawing from countries found to severely violate the rights of asylum seekers to increasing its presence to such countries in order to ensure better compliance. On Wednesday, EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson announced that, at an EU Council summit on Monday, 13 member states committed to receiving ~80.000 asylum seekers from frontline states, on the basis of voluntary relocation, with other states committing financial support. | On Friday, Forensic Architecture released the findings of a 2-year, open-source intelligence investigation documenting over 1.000 drift-backs affecting nearly 27.500 asylum seekers unlawfully expelled from EU waters into Turkish waters since March 2020.

Dystopia at the Home Office
Last Monday, the Divisional Court hearing a challenge against the UK-Rwanda asylum seeker deportation agreement adjourned litigation until September, giving appelants time to prepare their legal challenges and a degree of recourse to challenge future deportation flights scheduled before litigation is completed. | On Tuesday, UK Armed Forces Minister James Heappey revealed the Royal Navy’s methodology in considering whether and how to implement Home Office guidance demanding it turn back asylum seeker vessels mid-sea, explaining its assessment that any such turnbacks would be both fatally dangerous and unlawful. | On Friday, chief prisons inspector Charlie Taylor denounced reception conditions for asylum seekers brought ashore after mid-sea interception, describing families waiting overnight for transfer to proper facilities, still wet and suffering burns inflicted by their crossing, detailing grievous safeguarding shortcomings. | On Sunday, human rights advocates chastised the Home Office for its boldly untrue descriptions of the states of mind of asylum seekers slated for deportation to Rwanda. On the same day, UNHCR again admonished the Home Office for misrepresenting its position with regard to the UK-Rwanda deportation deal, which UNHCR continues to forcefully oppose (find the full report here).

Displacement within and beyond Ukraine
On Wednesday, UNHCR issued a report tallying that 65% of Ukrainian refugees intend to remain in their host countries until their region of origin stabilizes, and that 9% intended to move onward to a further host country in the next month (see the full report here). | On Friday, German authorities announced they had set aside €2.4 billion this year to provide integration support to the ~800.000 Ukrainian refugees who have arrived and settled in Germany since the late February Russian invasion. | On Saturday, the Guardian highlighted the economic difficulties driving displaced Ukrainians back to communities of origin that are not safe for return, as state- and solidarity-driven support for IDPs fall short of immense manifest needs. | On Sunday, Dutch authorities revealed that ~24.000 Ukrainian refugees have joined the domestic labor force since April, roughly half of them taking up jobs in labor-scarce fields.

European migration (mis)management
Last Thursday, authorities in Serbia detained 85 asylum seekers in the northern city of Subotica, claiming to have found a substantial cache of weapons belonging to smugglers in the sweep. On the same day, Cyprus’ Attorney General filed charges against 4 individuals, including a former President of the Parliament, for alleged corruption in their administration of the Cypriot ‘golden passport’ scheme allowing investors to obtain regular status and intra-EU mobility via Cyprus. | On Friday, Slovenian authorities began removing razor-wire fence installed in 2015 along the border with Croatia, expecting it to take 5 months to remove all 200 kilometers of fencing. On the same day, several dozen asylum seekers staged a peaceful protest outside of the Netherlands’ main reception center of Ter Apel, protesting weeks-long delays in obtaining proper accommodation or being allowed to lodge an asylum claim.

Sources: EUobserver, ANSA, Forensic Architecture, Sky News, Morning Star, BBC, the Guardian, al Jazeera, Reuters, ANP, AP, Middle East Eye.

The Americas

U.S. migration policymaking
Last Monday, the Biden Administration extended temporary protected status through March 10, 2024, for Venezuelan nationals in the U.S. as of March 8, 2021, through March 10, 2024. On the same day, Immigration Impact highlighted a July 1 rule change allowing TPS beneficiaries to obtain travel documents allowing them to validate their entry into the U.S., and thus eventually become eligible for green cards. Also on Monday, Canadian authorities announced a proposal to streamline the pathway from temporary to permanent residence for immigrants to Canada, building on an accelerated pathway introduced in 2019 as border closures reduced immigration flows, increasing reliance on immigrants already in Canada and pressure to offer them permanent status. | On Wednesday, The Intercept revealed systematic sexual abuse by clinical staff against detained women at the Stewart migrant detention center in Georgia, covered up by a complaints processing system designed to protect abusive staff rather than abused asylum seekers. On the same day, amid COVID-19 restrictions and the accumulation of prior arrivals, service providers in Washington, DC began signaling they were running low on capacity to shelter asylum seekers being bused from Texas and Arizona to the district by local governors keen to stir divisive politicking with unilateral relocations. | On Friday, U.S. authorities tallied nearly 207.500 encounters with asylum seekers along the U.S.-Mexico border, 26% of whom were known to be repeating an attempted crossing after having been summarily expelled under Title 42.

Irregular migration in Latin America
Last Monday, U.S. border forces intercepted 313 asylum seekers, including 79 unaccompanied minors, just north of the U.S.-Mexico border in the Rio Grande Valley. | On Thursday, a novel caravan composed of 200 Venezuelan asylum seekers departed from Tapachula try to reach Huixtla and petition for 30-day residence permits allowing them to transit across Mexico and attempt to enter U.S. soil. On the same day, advisors to current Colombian President Iván Duque criticized proposals by incoming President-elect Gustavo Petro to improve relations with Venezuela and encourage the voluntary return of displaced Venezuelans currently in Colombia, admonishing that state resources should be directed at facilitating integration rather than return. | On Friday, Mexican authorities intercepted 251 asylum seekers transiting through the central state of Puebla in 2 northbound buses. On the same day, Guatemalan authorities intercepted 70 asylum seekers transiting irregularly through Guatemalan soil. Also on Friday, Colombian and Panamanian authorities disclosed they intend to hold discussions this August on implementing a safe route bypassing the Darién Gap, to spare asylum seekers the immense risks they face along its hostile terrain. | On Saturday, Guatemalan authorities revealed that just under 56.350 nationals have been repatriated from the U.S. or Mexico thus far this year.

Sources: al Jazeera, Immigration Impact, CBC, The Intercept, the Washington Post, Bloomberg, Border Report, EFE, infobae, AGN, En Frontera, la Jornada.

Oceania

Australian migration policymaking
Last Thursday, Australian authorities abruptly terminated a facility that had issued 8.500 humanitarian visas to displaced Ukrainians, leading to 4.100 departures to Australia. | On Friday, Australian Prime Minister Antony Albanese announced his intention to expand the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility program, which currently offers visas for Pacific Islanders to join Australia’s agricultural and meatpacking sectors, for it to also include the service sector, including elder care, tourism, and hospitality.

Sources: the Conversation, the Epoch Times.

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Spotlight

Between BoJo’s long overdue resignation and the criminally under-reported Bab al-Hawa closure, there’s enough to go around for multiple spotlights this week—but I had a long week as well, and will be discussing the former in this week’s Fractured podcast—so I’m reserving my reflections until then. In the meantime, I leave you with Begüm Başdaş and Giorgos Christides, two of the best-informed people out there on the issue of irregular migration from Turkey to Greece (and back).

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On to the news…

Asia

Post-occupation Afghanistan
Last Monday, Afghanistan’s Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation disclosed that over 4.550 Afghan civilians had been repatriated from Iran over the prior 3 days. On the same day, authorities signaled that Afghan civilians were allowed to use their ID cards to enter Pakistan via the Torkham crossing east of Kabul and Jalalabad—on the heels of disruptions at the crossing that led to the accumulation of 3.000 Afghans stranded on the Pakistani side of the border. | On Tuesday, civilians in southwestern Afghanistan began complaining that a 3-day closure of the Abrisham border crossing point was disrupting commerce and regular travel into and back from Iran. | On Friday, UN-OCHA tallied the novel displacement of 27.000 people from Balkhab district in central Afghanistan.

Myanmar and its neighbors
Last Monday, Tatmadaw raids in Myanmar’s central Sagaing province displaced ~5.000 civilians from 10 villages, contributing to a total displaced population of ~340.000 in Sagaing alone. | On Tuesday, The Irrawaddy disclosed that heavy fighting in Myanmar’s southeastern Karen State had Waw Lay. | On Wednesday, 8 Sri Lankan asylum seekers reached India, bringing the total number of irregular arrivals across the Palk Strait since Sri Lanka’s economic meltdown to 100. | On Friday, ~2.000 civilians were displaced from 6 villages in Myanmar’s central Magwe region, fleeing arson attacks by the Tatmadaw.

Sources: TOLOnews, The Irrawaddy, the Times of India.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Ethiopia’s civil war
Last Monday, a large number of Amhara civilians were attacked and killed in 2 villages west of Addis Ababa, with Ethiopian authorities and the OLA trading blame for the attack. | On Thursday, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed admitted that spiraling conflict in Oromia is killing soldiers and police officers on a daily basis, vowing to destroy the OLA as negotiators seek out peace in Tigray. | On Friday, health administrators signaled dire outcomes in Wag Hemra, a TPLF-occupied region just beyond southern Tigray, where ~90.000 IDPs face starvation and deadly disease as humanitarian access remains blocked. | On Sunday, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission issued its first annual report since its constitution in 2019, documenting systematic physical abuse against civilians by both state and non-state armed groups across Ethiopia, pervasive due process violations, and the widespread detention of journalists and press workers covering internal conflict.

Conflict and displacement in the Sahel and Great Lakes region
Last Wednesday, leaders of the DRC and Rwanda committed to a cessation of hostilities in North Kivu, on the heels of mediation in Luanda facilitated by Angolan authorities. On the same day, 103 Rwandan refugees returned from the DRC after a 28 years in exiles. | On Thursday, M23 leadership signaled they did not consider themselves subject to the ceasefire between the DRC and Rwanda, and resumed hostilities against DRC forces in North Kivu.

Civil conflict and internal displacement in Nigeria
Last Thursday, ISWAP-affiliated fighters attacked a humanitarian convoy and looted 40 trucks’ worth of food aid destined to IDPs living in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno Stat. On the same day, HumAngle relayed the narratives of survivors of the 2014 Gwoza Massacre in northeastern Nigeria, where Boko Haram fighters killed ~400 civilians after facing stiff local resistance trying to seize the area, eventually displacing several thousand civilians. | On Friday, Nigerian Federal Commissioner for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons disclosed that national authorities have registered less than 85.000, (about 2%) of Nigeria’s ~3.2 million IDPs, about half of whom life in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno State. On the same day, the Nigeria Security Tracker recorded a significant increase in insecurity within Nigeria, with just over 430 civilians killed this June. | On Sunday, regional authorities approved a framework to enable IDPs in Nigeria’s western Niger State to cast votes in local and national elections from their place of displacement, in time for national elections in 2023.

Sources: the Guardian, AP, Addis Standard, the EastAfrican, The New Times, HumAngle, Daily Trust, Punch, Daily Post.

Middle East and North Africa

Asylum seeker (im)mobility in the MENA region
Last Monday, Lebanese authorities indicated their wish to repatriate 1.5 million Syrian refugees in coming years, at a rate of 15.000 Syrian refugees per month, pledging to go head regardless of the potential response from UNHCR or from the international community. On the same day, Moroccan authorities initiated litigation against 65 asylum seekers detained in the June 24 Melilla border fence tragedy, accusing of illegally entering Morocco, assaulting border security, and facilitating irregular migration. | On Tuesday, French authorities announced they had repatriated 51 children from the al-Hol detention camp in northeastern Syria, where ~56.000 people, including former ISIS fighters and non-combatant family members, live in containment. | On Wednesday, Turkish authorities disclosed they had detained just under 33.500 asylum seekers over the whole of June, and repatriated just over 16.700. | On Friday, Russian delegates vetoed a UN Security Council resolution which would have kept open the Bab al-Hawa crossing, a key lifeline to deliver humanitarian aid do the 2.4 million Syrian IDPs stranded in Idlib province, plunging a long-suffering population into near-certain abjection. | On Sunday, local officials and aid workers predicted famine and immiseration in Idlib as the Bab al-Hawa crossing point closed indefinitely, having seen 4.600 aid trucks pass through thus far this year. | On Monday, The New Humanitarian predicted that the closure of the Bab al-Hawa crossing would affect 4 million IDPs, cutting off food and medical aid to 2.4 million direct recipients while subjecting all to a sudden and severe economic dislocation.

Yemen’s civil war
Last Tuesday, warring parties in Yemen committed to consolidating the ongoing ceasefire, which has held since April 2, through Eid al-Adha. | On Wednesday, Ansar Allah announced they would reopen a secondary road to the besieged city of Taiz, easing conditions therein and upholding a pending commitment as part of the fragile but ongoing ceasefire in Yemen’s civil war, though they held fast to their refusal to open the main road to Taiz unless government forces withdraw from the city. | On Thursday, WFP Director David Gressly signaled that an oil spill in the Red Sea caused by the breaking of the decaying FSO Safer would crater the livelihoods of 200.000 families living off of fishing in coastal Yemen.

Sources: AP, InfoMigrants, al Jazeera, Middle East Eye, TNH, IANS, the New Arab, The Energy Mix.

Maritime Migration Routes to & through Europe

Ruta Canaria
Last Monday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 39 asylum seekers from a vessel found adrift in waters off of Gran Canaria, rushing 19 to hospital for urgent treatment. | On Sunday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 54 asylum seekers from a damaged vessel in waters off of Lanzarote. | This Monday, rescued 167 asylum seekers and tallied 2 missing persons in waters off the Canary Islands.

Mediterranean and Aegean Seas
Last Monday, the Ocean Viking (SOS Meditérannée) rescued 15 asylum seekers from the Central Mediterranean, bringing their total on-board numbers to 306. | On Tuesday, authorities in Mali disclosed that 22 Malian nationals perished on a vessel carrying 83 asylum seekers that drifted for over a week of the coast of Libya before it was intercepted. | On Thursday, the GeoBarents (MSF) rescued 315 asylum seekers in 6 rescue operations in the Maltese search-and-rescue zone of the Central Mediterranean, blasting Maltese authorities for absconding from their duty of rescue under international law. On the same day, Greek authorities announced they had turned back 4 vessels carrying 155 asylum seekers toward Lesvos. Also on Thursday, Aegean Boat Report documented the arrival of 45 asylum seekers to Lesvos, of whom only 9 were registered by the asylum service. | On Friday, Aegean Boat Report documented the arrival of 9 asylum seekers to Lesvos, none of whom were registered by the asylum service. On the same day, local authorities found the lifeless body of an asylum seeking women in Chios, believed to have succumbed to dehydration and starvation, in likely fear of being pushed back to Turkey.

The English Channel
Last Monday, French authorities rescued 48 asylum seekers from a vessel that had broken down in waters off of Dunkirk, and detained another 7 preparing to attempt an irregular maritime crossing near Boulogne-sur-Mer. | On Wednesday, French authorities rescued another 166 asylum seekers in waters just off the coast of northern France. | On Friday, 23 asylum seekers reached UK soil after being intercepted at sea and brought ashore, with the threat of deportation to Rwanda reiterated from Whitehall shortly after their arrival.

Sources: EFE, InfoMigrants, al Jazeera, ERT, Aegean Boat Report, ChiosPress, the Indepenent.

Europe

EU migration policymaking
Last Monday, lawmakers disclosed that, next Wednesday, the European Parliament’s budgetary control committee would be reviewing the findings of the OLAF investigation into wrongdoing at Frontex that had led to former director Fabrice Leggeri (who requested to be allowed to attend the hearing, and was rebuffed by the committee). | On Wednesday, the ECCHR filed a complaint against Slovenia and Croatia before the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child alleging border guards from both countries conducted the chain pushback of an 8-year old unaccompanied Rohingya child, returning him to Bosnia rather than taking responsibility for his well-being or best interest. On the same day, the German government approved a measure easing access to long-term residence for migrants without regular status who have been in Germany for at least 5 years and can demonstrate financial autonomy and proficiency in German. | On Thursday, the European Court of Human Rights found that Greek Coast Guard officers had caused a deadly 2014 shipwreck off the Aegean island of Farmakosi by maneuvering dangerously near an asylum seeker vessel they were trying to repel, upholding the vacation of a prior conviction against a Syrian refugee piloting the dinghy and ordering reparations paid to bereaved families. On the same day, IOM, UNHCR, and UNICEF issued an advocacy brief imploring EU states to cease detaining migrant children, detailing the harms of detention on developmental health and proposing more protective and cost-effective alternatives (see the full brief here). | On Friday, Interior Minister Agne Bilotaite defended Lithuania’s forceful response to asylum seeker arrivals from via Belarus against the previous week’s unfavorable European Court of Justice ruling, arguing that Lithuanian authorities faced an unprecedented attack and had no choice but to adapt their policies—which she now wishes the EU will converge toward, rather than draw her back from.

European migration (mis)management
Last Tuesday, police in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK carried out joint raids targeting smuggling groups helping asylum seekers cross the English Channel irregularly, arresting 130 suspected smugglers. | On Wednesday, the lifeless body of an asylum seeker youth, who had likely hoped to irregularly enter Italy, was found in a truck container in Greece’s Adriatic port of Igoumenitsa. On the same day, local authorities signaled that Berlin is desperately low on asylum seeker accommodation, with less than 900 remaining spaces out of a total of nearly 26.000. | On Thursday, French and UK officials leaked that they were nearing agreement on a £50 million renewal package to continue collaborating on deterring irregular maritime migration across the English Channel, believing their current collaboration has allowed French police to interdict ~50% of attempted crossings, and that interdicting ~75% would make smuggling unecononomical and drastically reduce crossings. On the same day, community organization Vlucteligenwerk Nederland issued an ultimatum to Dutch authorities, compelling it to resolve the Netherlands’ ongoing crisis of asylum seeker accommodation by August 1 or face litigation. Also on Thursday, Belgian authorities announced that the national military would adapt barracks to create 750 accommodation places for asylum seekers currently sleeping rough in the streets of Brussels due to shortages in reception capacity. | On Saturday, Italian authorities relocated 600 asylum seekers to Sicily to alleviate overcrowding in Lampedusa—which was hosting ~2.100 people in a reception center with capacity for only 200. On the same day, police in North Macedonia intercepted a truck carrying 87 asylum seekers in its container hold just north of the border with Greece.

Displacement within and beyond Ukraine
Last Tuesday, provincial governor Pavlo Kyrylenko urged the ~350.000 inhabitants of Ukrainian-controlled Donestk to evacuate in anticipation of likely Russian advances, to facilitate defensive operations and minimize risk to civilians. | On Friday, deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk urged civilians living in occupied provinces of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia to evacuate ahead of an imminent Ukrainian counteroffensive to retake occupied soil. | This Monday, Latvian authorities announced that, amid a shortfall in state funding, they could no long receive Ukrainian refugees newly arriving in Latvia’s cities, and would be curtailing support offered to those already arrived. On the same day, Estonian authorities disclosed they expect to receive no more than €9 million in EU funding to support its reception and provision for Ukrainian refugees, against the €243 million it has allocated to this end. Also on Monday, Scottish authorities announced a 3-month pause in its Ukrainian refugee sponsorship scheme, amid concerns that, once all ~22.600 sponsored refugees are all settled, suitable housing would be scarce and refugees would need to be hosted in temporary accommodation.

Dystopia at the Home Office
Last Tuesday, Women for Refugee Women revealed that an asylum seeking woman and victim of trafficking has been issued a notice of intent indicating she was being considered for deportation to Rwanda—which had hereto then only been issued to single men. | On Wednesday, the UK Supreme Court ruled that foreign diplomats were not covered by the principle of diplomatic immunity when facing litigation by domestic workers alleging and demanding compensation for modern enslavement. | On Saturday, the Observer revealed increasing dissatisfaction among high command with the Home Office’s delegation of immigration enforcement in the English Channel to the Royal Navy, signaling that the deployment is mismatched to needs and motivated solely by Whitehall’s desire to appear tough, with defense officials privately voicing their desire to terminate the deployment.

Sources: euobserver, ECCHR, AP, Balkan Insight, InfoMigrants, Defli, deutsche-welle, eKathimerini, the Telegraph, NL Times, al Jazeera, the Guardian, News.am, ERR.

The Americas

U.S. migration policymaking
Last Tuesday, the Biden Administration released new monthly refugee resettlement figures, revealing that thus far this fiscal year, ~15.000 refugees have been resettled to U.S. soil, with officials predicting ~25.000 arrivals by the end of the fiscal year—far short of the Administration’s ceiling of 125.000 resettlement arrivals. | On Wednesday, The Texas Tribune revealed that the Department of Justice has opened civil rights investigations into Operation Lone Star, Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s year-old deployment of Texas National Guard to perform legally questionable immigration enforcement tasks along the Texas-Mexico border. | On Thursday, Governor Abbott issued an order authorizing state officials and National Guard officers to detain irregular migrants and return them to border crossings, challenging the Biden Administration yet again by seizing on immigration control powers reserved to federal authorities. | On Friday, CBP issued an internal investigation into the use of force by horse-mounded agents against Haitian asylum seekers in Del Rio last September, admonishing inappropriate use of force by individual agents and poor command and control leading to an unnecessary and counterproductive deployment (see the full report here).

Irregular migration in Latin America
Last Monday, al Jazeera highlighted severe gaps in access to education facing displaced Venezuelan children in Perú, where more than a quarter are not enrolled in school, and eslewhere across Latin America. On the same day, Guatemalan police apprehended 20 asylum seekers who had crossed irregularly into Guatemala. | On Wednesday, Cuban authorities repatriated 178 Haitian asylum seekers who had arrived autonomously over the preceding few days to Cuba’s north-central province of Villa Clara. On the same day, authorities in the Dominican Republic detained ~450 Haitian nationals in the far western coastal province of Bávaro. Also on Wednesday, Guatemalan police apprehended 15 asylum seekers who had crossed irregularly into Guatemala. | On Thursday, authorities in the Dominican Republic disclosed they had detained another 213 Haitian asylum seekers in the northern and northwestern provinces of La Vega, Valverde, Montecristi, and Dajabón. | On Friday, Cuban authorities received 98 returning asylum seekers, 24 of whom had been repatriated from Mexico, and another 74 from the U.S. | On Saturday, Guatemalan authorities announced they had intercepted 49 asylum seekers in the southeastern region of Chiquimila, detaining them after verifying their unauthorized entry into Guatemala. On Sunday, the U.S. Coast Guard repatriated another 64 asylum seekers, intercepted in 4 operations off the coast of Florida over the week prior, to Cuba.

Sources: Axios, The Texas Tribune, CBS News, al Jazeera, AGN, deutsche-welle, Diario Libre, elCaribe, Cubadebate, CiberCuba.

Oceania

Flood-borne displacement and migration management in Australia’s
Last Tuesday, torrential rains continued falling over New South Wales, causing extensive flooding in Sydney’s suburbs prompting evacuation orders or warnings to be issued to ~50.000 people. | On Wednesday, the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre revealed that, since last week, it has been urging Australian authorities to evacuate the 112 asylum seekers remaining in offshore detention in Nauru—some of whom have been in detention for upwards of a decade—as COVID-19 infections spike in Nauru, cutting detained asylum seekers off from basic services and provisioning. | This Monday, newly-elected Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese deplored the backlog in visa applications he inherited upon taking power, and called for an enlarged issuance of permanent immigration visas to better meet Australia’s labor needs.

Sources: Reuters, Sydney Morning Herald, SBS.

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Spotlight

Last week, NATO issued a new Strategic Concept at its Madrid summit, including irregular mass migration among potential hybrid threats to be monitored and countered in coming years. That this happened just a few days after NATO member Greece was credibly exposed, yet again, to be conducting horrendously violent illegal pushbacks on the Greco-Turkish land border; that this happened just a few days after several dozen asylum seekers were killed at the border of NATO member Spain; reflects how unaware, or how uncaring, (or both,) Western leaders have become to the consequences of managing migration exclusively as a security issue.

Short of doing away with state sovereignty altogether, borders will always be a part of our lives, and it’s unlikely that borders will ever evolve to operate in a way that leaves no one dissatisfied. Just because borders are entrenched into our geopolitics, however, doesn’t make it necessary—or justifiable—for states to operate their borders with such violence. We’re long past the point of needing further study to understand the complexity of migration, as a phenomenon that brings together human rights and development economics, the pursuit of political asylum and the free flow of labor, statesmanship and group psychology. No amount of fencing can reverse the reality that half of Africa’s youth wish to migrate from their countries of residence in the next 3 years. Border securitization, in a world as grotesquely unequal as the one we inhabit, addresses only (and poorly) the symptoms of the mass irregular migration designated by NATO as a threat—all while criminally neglecting its underlying causes.

This toxic feedback loop, where the West treats the consequences of immiseration beyond its borders not by addressing the immiseration, but rather by fortifying its borders, visits only further misery on those trying to flee it. It makes situations like those at the Greco-Turkish and Moroccan-Spanish borders inevitable. If your only tool is hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Lawlessness along the Evros River, lawlessness at the Melilla border fence are inevitable when migration policymaking begins and ends with bordering—all while remaining willfully ignorant to all the remaining complexities of what migration actually is, and how migration actually works.

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On to the news…

Asia

Post-occupation Afghanistan
Last Tuesday, U.S. officials leaked that they are discussing possible mechanisms with Taliban leadership to provide funding to the Afghan Central Bank, while erecting mechanisms around any disbursements to ensure they are only used by technocrats to alleviate poverty among Afghan civilians, rather than misused by Taliban leadership to buttress its power. | On Wednesday, German authorities disclosed that, out of just over 33.250 Afghan civilians whom it granted evacuation visas, just under 21.400 had arrived on German soil as of early June, with just over 12.850 still awaiting transfer. | On Thursday, USAID pledged to disburse $55 million to assist victims of last week’s earthquake in Khost and Paktika provinces. | On Friday, the Guardian revealed that UK authorities have yet to evacuate over 170 former embassy staff, all eligible for the Arap evacuation scheme, who remain at risk in Afghanistan 10 months after the initial evacuation despite promises of prompt evacuation last August. On the same day, CBS News revealed that, following critical reporting on the low approval rate for humanitarian parole claims filed by Afghan civilians, USCIS had loosened standards in the spring to expand eligibility beyond those at invidual risk of physical violence. | On Sunday, TOLOnews revealed the displacement of at least 30 families from Afghanistan’s central Sar-e-Pul to Bamiyan provinces following disturbances, relaying their call for humanitarian assistance from officials and NGOs. | This Monday, UK authorities disclosed they had launched a new scheme to allow former employees of the British Council to submit visa applications immediately—though it is yet unclear how they would leave Afghanistan once visas are awarded—and that only 2.000 more Afghan nationals would be resettled to the UK this year.

Myanmar and its neighbors
Last Tuesday, youth in a Rohingya refugee camp near Cox’s Bazaar assaulted an NGO-employed woman teaching in a community center, leading to her hospitalization in critical condition. On the same day, UN-OCHA released its latest humanitarian report on Myanmar, tallying over 758.000 IDPs, ~55.700 of whom were displaced within June (see OCHA’s full report here). | On Thursday, Burmese authorities grounded all maritime transport in and out of Sittwe, in response to the abduction of 2 naval officers by the Arakan Army a week prior, severely restricting human mobility and commercial activity in Rakhine State. | On Friday, another ~7.500 civilians were displaced from Yinmabin Township in Myanmar’s central Sagaing Province as Tatmadaw troops, known to abuse civilians, deployed to the area. | On Saturday, over 250 refugees fled into Thailand from Myawaddy, a border town in Myanmar’s southeastern Kayin State, following deadly airstrikes by Burmese air forces. | On Sunday, between 10.000 and 15.000 civilians were displaced by heavy fighting between the Tatmadaw and resistance groups in Myanmar’s central Sagaing province.

Displacement within and toward India
Last Tuesday, al Jazeera highlighted the displacement of 30 families—some of them for the 3rd time in 65 years—to make way for a coal mine in Sambalpur, in India’s eastern Odisha State. | On Thursday, 4 Sri Lankan asylum seekers arrived in India’s southeastern state of Tamil Nadu, adding up to 96 total arrivals on the heels of Sri Lanka’s economic meltdown.

Sources: The Washington Post, InfoMigrants, TOLOnews, the Guardian, CBS News, New Age Bangladesh, the Irrawaddy, the Nation Thainland, al Jazeera, SNS.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Ethiopia’s wars
Last Monday, Ethiopian authorities announced their 7-man negotiating team to open peace talks with the TPLF in Kenya. On the same day, officials in Ethiopia and Sudane traded accusations of bloodletting in the contested al-Fashqa region, with Sudanese officials claiming 7 of their soldiers had been lured across the border and then executed, as Ethiopian officials claimed the fatalities were the result of an armed clash. | On Wednesday, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission denounced the illegal detention of over 8.550 Tigrayan civilians in squalid conditions in Afar State, demanding their immediate release. On the same day, the World Bank announced it had approved $180 million in development funding to provide services and livelihood opportunities to ~2.5 million displaced people, in complement to existing short-term humanitarian programming. | This Monday, UNICEF disclosed that aid delivery into Tigray has accelerated since the ceasefire agreed to in March, with April’s 170 truck deliveries expected to grow to 1.000 per month in coming months—still far short of the 3.000 monthly deliveries needed.

Displacement and labor mobility in the Great Lakes region
Last Tuesday, provincial health authorities tallied just over 330.000 IDPs in the DRC’s southeastern Tanganyika province, nearly 300.000 of whom are sheltered by host families, nearly half of whom were displaced in the 18 months. On the same day, authorities in Kenya saw off the first 19 Kenyan nurses recruited into the UK’s NHS pursuant to a year-old agreement, a first cohort to be followed by a second 80-strong cohort later this year. | On Wednesday, DRC troops attacked M23 guerillas in North Kivu province, displacing ~5.000 civilians, most of whom fled into Uganda. | On Friday, Save the Children issued a report tallying the displacement of 50.000 civilians, including 30.000 children, from Mozambique’s embattled Cabo Delgado region last June (see StC’s full report here).

Conflict and displacement in the Sahel and Gulf of Guinea
Last Tuesday, community leaders denounced that food supplies were dangerously insufficient at the Katsina IDP camp in northern Nigeria, lamenting 15 fatalities of disease and starvation in recent weeks as a result. | On Wednesday, local officials signaled that increasing fighting in Nigeria’s southeastern Cross River has displaced ~10.000 from the state’s western town of Nko, appealing for humanitarian organizations to urgently deploy. On the same day, authorities in Cameroon completed a 1-week exercise to issue national ID cards to ~6.000 refugees from the CAR, allowing them full mobility across Cameroonian soil and access to the labor market, as the pilot phase for Cameroon’s adoption of responsibility for registering refugees present on its soil—hereto now held by UNHCR.

Sources: AP, Reuters, Addis Standard, Sudan Tribune, VOA, HumAngle, the EastAfrican, Business Day, Daily Post.

Middle East and North Africa

IDP care and maintenance in Syria
Last Monday, the UN Security Council began discussing the renewal of UNSC Resolution 2585, which provides for cross-border aid provision from Turkey into Idlib—90% of whose 4.4 million inhabitants need humanitarian assistance, and 2.8 million of whom are internally displaced—with the Assad regime, patronized by Russia in the Security Council, pushing for the closure of aid corridors as dramatic increases in food prices limit aid effectiveness. | On Tuesday, UN-OHCHR tallied just under 307.000 civilian fatalities over the first 10 years of Syria’s ongoing civil war (see the full UN report here). On the same day, UN Resident Coordinator in Syria Imran Riza disclosed that 106 people have been murdered since January 2021 in the al-Hawl detention camp in northeast Syria, which holds ~56.000 people with suspected ISIS ties—including ~12.000 Europeans whom their home countries have refused to repatriate.

Asylum seeker mobility and morbidity in the MENA region
Last Monday, a coalition of human rights advocates, politicians, and multilateral officials condemned Moroccan authorities’ conduct toward asylum seekers trying to cross the Melilla border fence irregularly on the Friday prior, denouncing not just the violent conduct of border guards, but also national authorities’ fatality undercount and their haste to bury victims without conducting forensic examinations or even identifying them. | On Tuesday, Spanish Justice Minister Dolores Delgado announced an investigation into the fatal incident at the Melilla border fence, as the UN-OHCHR condemned the use of excessive force by Moroccan border guards. On the same day, IOM field teams rescued over 100 migrants stranded in Obock, near Djibouti’s Red Sea coast, after smugglers desisted from helping them cross into Yemen, and from there into Saudi Arabia, abandoning them in life-threatening conditions in Djibouti’s northern desert. Also on Tuesday, Libyan authorities announced they had found the lifeless bodies of 20 asylum seekers who appear to have gotten along the desert border of Libya and Chad, perishing some 2 weeks prior to being found. | On Wednesday, the UN Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Libya released its latest report on asylum seeker treatment in Libyan detention, describing systematic horrific abuse, up to and including the coercion of detained women into sexual assault in exchange for food rations (see the UN mission’s full report here). On the same day, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez pledged full collaboration with Spanish and Moroccan investigators probing the prior week’s deadly Melilla border fence incident, voicing his regret over the lives lost—on the heels of prior statements hailing security forces’ defense of Spanish sovereignty in the face of invasion. | On Thursday, Nigeren authorities announced they had found the lifeless bodies of 10 asylum seekers in northeastern Niger, whom they assume perished of thirst while trying to reach the Libyan border. On the same day, UNHCR relocated 95 asylum seekers from Libya to Italy via a humanitarian corridor supported by Italian authorities and civil society. Also on Thursday, IOM facilitated the return of 131 asylum seekers from Libya to Nigeria via assisted voluntary return. | On Friday, the escape of 35-55 Afghan asylum seekers from a detention center in Turkey’s south-central Osmaniye province triggered a wave of popular violence, as locals joined security forces trying to apprehend the escapees, meting out mob violence unto those they caught. | On Sunday, security forces in Turkey’s southeastern Van province opened fire on a truck trying to evade its control, which turned to be smuggling 40 asylum seekers toward northwestern Turkey—1 of whom was killed, and 12 injured, by the gunfire.

Yemen’s civil war
Last Tuesday, al Jazeera highlighted continued economic hardship in Yemen, as a $3 million deposit from Saudi Arabia, whose announcement alone had stabilized the value of the Yemeni riyal, has yet to be deposited in Yemen’s central bank, leading confidence in the currency to evaporate and its value to resume its decline. On the same day, civilian residents of the Socotra archipelago island of Abd al-Kuri denounced repeat civilian evictions by occupying Emirati security forces intending to build a military base on the island. | On Wednesday, a bomb attack targeting a local official killed 4 soldiers and 3 civilians in Aden. On Friday, TradeWinds highlighted that the UN crowdfunding campaign launched to raise $5 million to contribute to the $80 million fund to salvage the FSO Safer had stalled at just $100.000 collected, as the stricken ship continues decaying and as inclement weather approaches.

Sources: TNH, al Jazeera, the Guardian, InfoMigrants, IOM, AFP, the Libya Update, The Voice for African Migrants, Ahval, Anadolu Angency, Middle East Monitor, the New Arab, TradeWinds.

Maritime Migration Routes to & through the West

Ruta Canaria
Last Monday, the Senegalese Red Cross rescued 91 asylum seekers, retrieved 13 lifeless bodies, and tallied over 40 missing persons after a boat carrying ~150 asylum seekers toward the Canary Islands caught fire and capsized off the coast of Senegal. | On Friday, the Spanish Interior Ministry signaled that 5 vessels had arrived bringing 159 asylum seekers to the Canary Islands in the second half of June, for a total of just under 8.750 arrivals thus far this year, a ~25% increase compared to mid-year 2021. | This Monday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 106 asylum seekers, and tallied 1 fatality, from 2 vessels in waters off of Fuerteventura.

Central Mediterranean and Aegean Seas
Last Monday, the GeoBarents (MSF) rescued 71 asylum seekers—1 of whom shortly perished—and tallied 22 missing persons from a distressed vessel in the Central Mediterranean. | On Thursday, Turkish Coast Guard officers rescued 32 asylum seekers from a distressed vessel Turkish waters, whom they believe had been returned there from European waters. | On Friday, the Ocean Viking (SOS Meditérannée) rescued 22 asylum seekers in 2 operations, bringing the total number of people on board and needing disembarkation to 228. | On Sunday, the Ocean Viking rescued another 63 asylum seekers in its 7th rescue operation in 10 days.

The English Channel
This Monday, Press Association analysis of Ministry of Defense data revealed that 3.136 asylum seekers had reached UK soil across the English Channel this June, the highest monthly total yet this year.

Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico
On Saturday, 18 Cuban asylum seekers arrived autonomously to Key West, where they were promptly apprehended by the Border Patrol. On the same day, a vessel carrying ~100 asylum seekers toward the southern entrance to the Darién Gap capsized, though naval authorities were able to rescue all passengers and bring them ashore to Panamá.

Sources: AP, EFE, InfoMigrants, Europa Press, PA, CBS Miami, el Pitazo.

Europe

EU migration policymaking
Last Monday, Greek Migration Minister Notis Mitakaris testified before the European Parliament’s Justice and Home Affairs Committee, refusing to address accumulating evidence of wrongdoing by Greek and Frontex border guards along Greece’s borders with Turkey, and accusing NGOs of colluding with smugglers to facilitate irregular migration into Europe. | On Tuesday, Lighthouse Report released yet another investigation documenting violent pushbacks across the Evros River, attesting to the use of coerced labor from asylum seekers dragooned into working as boat conductors to ferry pushback victims back into Turkey (see Lighthouse’s full report here). Also on Tuesday, the French Presidency of the EU Council previewed that it would announce next week the total relocation pledges it has mustered as part of the solidarity mechanism it announced last week to alleviate pressure from EU states facing large-scale irregular arrivals. | On Wednesday, the EUAA signaled that asylum applications in the EU have recovered from pandemic-era lows, reaching ~648.000 in 2021, with the top nationalities remaining Syria and Afghanistan, accounting for over 100.000 claims each. | On Thursday, EU Home Affairs Commission Ylva Johansson admonished Greek officials to cease asylum seeker pushbacks or lose access to EU migration funding, as Greek officials announced a fundamental rights monitoring mechanism to be streamlined into their border security operations starting this September. On the same day, the EU Court of Justice ruled that Lithuanian laws approved last summer, providing for the summary detention of all asylum seekers arriving irregularly and denying them access to asylum proceedings, violated EU law—which will increase pressure on the Lithuanian government to reverse the policies, and could pave the way for EU infringement proceedings. | On Sunday, German authorities indicated they have received just over 48.750 secondary asylum applications from refugees already granted asylum in Greece, and that BAMF has approved 90% of the ~8.000 secondary claims processed thus far.

European migration (mis)management
Last Monday, a fire broke out at a makeshift camp hosting migrant agricultural workers near Regnano Garganico, in southern Italy, killing a 35-year old man. On the same day, an Austrian court convicted a Latvian smuggler, after 2 of 30 asylum seekers he had been transporting last October in the sealed rear compartment of a van suffocated from oxygen depletion, to 7 years’ imprisonment for bodily harm leading to death. | On Tuesday, Cypriot health authorities disclosed to Parliament that, over the past 2 years, nearly 1.100 asylum seekers have been diagnosed with serious transmissible illnesses at the Pournara reception center, including nearly 700 cases of hepatitis B, and 185 cases of HIV. On Wednesday, 2 asylum seekers perished when they were struck by a train near the border town of Miravci, in southern North Macedonia, where they had lain down to sleep near the railroad tracks they were following toward northern Europe. On the same day, local prosecutors filed charges against the administrators of a UAM accommodation center in the Canary Islands, alleging overcrowding and verbal and physical abuse of minors. | On Thursday, authorities in Poland announced they had completed a barrier along 186 kilometers of the Polish-Belarussian border intended to deter further irregular migration into EU soil from Belarus. | On Friday, German authorities announced that a 3-year old pilot program for privately-sponsored refugee resettlement would be made permanent, and expanded to provide for the arrival of 200 refugees in 2023. | On Saturday, violent clashes between asylum seekers and possibly smugglers trying to cross into Hungary led to 1 fatality and 7 injuries in northern Serbia. | This Monday, Reuters relayed the testimonials of aid workers and asylum seekers who continue arriving irregularly from Belarus into Poland, crossing the newly built border barrier with basic tools—with aid workers tallying 132 calls in just 1 week in mid-June, and authorities noting that most new arrivals appear to have transited via Russia before reaching Belarus.

Displacement within and beyond Ukraine
Last Tuesday, municipal authorities in Riga announced that, ahead of a drastic reduction in state funding for Ukrainian refugee accommodation, the municipality would do its best to patch budget shortfalls but that it would be forced to cease welcoming new arrivals into the city and to sunset all reception financing at the end of 2022. | On Thursday, The New Humanitarian highlighted the continuing gap between the coverage of refugee flows from Ukraine and that of internal displacement within Ukraine, signaling the importance of better supporting Ukrainian IDPs ahead of what, otherwise, can only be a difficult winter. On the same day, the Guardian highlighted urgent demands from UK language academies and local charities for government funding to help them expand capacity and meet overwhelming demand for language lessons from recently arrived Ukrainian refugees. | On Sunday, News 24/7’s The Magazine revealed that, in the absence of concrete planning by authorities, the vast majority of the nearly 46.000 Ukrainian refugees in Greece remain hosted by family and friends, with no access to public housing or to public welfare payments.

Dystopia at the Home Office
Last Tuesday, the Nationality and Borders Act entered into effect, increasing the penalty for irregular entry or visa overstay from up to 6 months’ detention to up to 4 years’, and threatening asylum seekers piloting irregular maritime arrivals with life imprisonment. On the same day, the Home Office announced its intention to re-open the Campsfield House asylum seeker detention center, decommissioned 4 years ago after 20 years of local agitation for its closure, to support the current government’s containment- and removal-based migration policies. | On Thursday, a UK-chartered flight deported 21 rejected asylum seekers to Nigeria and Ghana. On the same day, the Home Office announced a new migration management deal with Nigeria to facilitate criminal migrant deportations. | On Friday, Every Child Protected Against Trafficking UK revealed that 45 unaccompanied minors went missing between June 2021 and March of this year out of ~1.500 improperly placed in adult accommodation, while another 692 went missing in 2020 out of 5,263 placed in age-appropriate accommodation (see ECPAT UK’s full report here). | On Saturday, the Independent revealed that statements by the Home Office whereby future irregularly crossing asylum seeker boat pilots would be jailed for life are misleading, as Crown Prosecution Service guidance calling for 2-3 years’ detention remains in place.

Sources: euobserver, the Guardian, The Brussels Times, Reuters, LRT, InfoMigrants, ANSA, Nigeria Abroad, AP, EFE, LETA, TNH, News 24/7, KentOnline, the Independent, InfoMigrants, Forbes, the Telegraph.

The Americas

U.S. migration policymaking
Last Monday, police in the southern U.S. city of San Antonio rescued 16 asylum seekers, and retrieved 53 lifeless bodies, from a truck container lacking refrigeration equipment or water in 40°C heat. | On Tuesday, local police arrested 2 Mexican nationals, living at the registered address for the container in which 53 asylum seekers had perished the day before, finding multiple illegal weapons in their home and that the 2 men had entered the U.S. on temporary visas which had since then expired—on the heels of also arresting the driver of the truck, also suspected of human smuggling. | On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Biden Administration has the prerogative to terminate Migrant Protection Protocols, which compel asylum seekers to await adjudication of their claims in Mexico rather than on U.S. soil. On the same day, federal prosecutors arraigned the driver of the truck hauling the container abandoned in San Antonio with the lifeless bodies of 51 asylum seekers within, who evidently did not realize the container’s refrigeration system had stopped working as he drove north from Laredo. On Sunday, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas signaled that, though the Supreme Court had cleared the way for the end of MPP, the policy itself can only be terminated when a Texas court vacates its injunction that brought the program back to life in the first place—a process that could take another several weeks.

Irregular migration in Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean
Last Thursday, officials in Costa Rica disclosed they were considering granting amnesty to arriving Nicaraguan refugees, over 40.000 of whom have arrived thus far this year, in addition to just under 60.000 arrivals in 2021, overwhelming the Costa Rican asylum service’s capacity to process and adjudicate claims. | On Friday, a novel caravan composed of ~3.500 asylum seekers began marching north from Tapachula, reaching Huixtla by Sunday to receive 30-day humanitarian permits allowing them free movement within Mexico to regularize their migratory status. | On Sunday, Mexican authorities released 110 asylum seekers from the container of a smuggler’s truck, which had been stopped in Mexico’s northern state of Nuevo León due to a minor accident.

Sources: CNN, the Guardian, the Washington Post, Mother Jones, Semanario Universidad, Milenio, Reforma.

Oceania

Australia’s evolving demographics and climate stressors
Last Tuesday, the Australian Bureau of Statistics released its 2021 census, finding that just over half of Australia’s population are first- or second-generation migrants, with over one quarter of the total population born abroad. | On Friday, heavy rains began falling over southeastern Australia, leading to widespread flooding and the evacuation of 32.000 people from at-risk zones as of this Monday.

Sources: SBS, the Guardian.

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Spotlight

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that made access to abortion a constitutionally protected right. A few days prior, the UK introduced a bill to overturn the 1998 Human Rights Act, which codified the European Convention on Human Rights into British Law, to replace it with a domestic bill of rights.

Both moves culminate generational far-right political projects. The campaign against reproductive rights in the U.S. is coterminal with movements to reduce immigration into, and repress immigrants within, U.S. soil. The UK’s intended repeal of the Human Rights Act, for its part, is a direct reaction to the European Court of Human Rights’ intervention to enjoin its inaugural deportation flight to Rwanda two weeks ago, pending the completion of litigation in UK courts on behalf of potential deportees.

Global migration is complex and should never be explained in binary terms. At risk of committing malpractice, I would like to propose that—generally—labor migrants tend to (try to) move from places of lesser opportunity to places of greater opportunity, and that asylum seekers tend to (try to) move from places of lesser political freedom to places of greater political freedom. The U.S. and UK did not become two of the world’s most attractive destinations for migrants by chance. Flawed as they are, they remain remarkably successful nations in offering opportunity and political freedom; flawed as they are, the U.S. and UK remain host to vibrant debates and to brilliant civil society initiatives to smooth out their respective flaws. These initiatives exist apposite from far-right movements—claiming to represent a majority of people, actually representing just a minority of voters—that, by taking advantage of anachronisms in each country’s electoral mechanisms and political institutions, have seized outsized power and are using it to keep politics firmly in the hands of declining white majorities.

Grievance politics, turbo-charged by social media, delivered self-destructive nihilism in electoral form in the 2016 Brexit referendum and U.S. Presidential election. Six years on, rights-protection was grievously wounded, this last week, in two of the world’s most inviting countries (again, flaws notwithstanding) to be an immigrant. Make no mistake: the rights of migrants are inextricably bound up with the broader civic and human rights of every person in the U.S. and UK. Protecting migrant rights and reproductive rights are coterminal projects—and desperately important ones at that.

Last week could represent the high-water mark for the U.S. and UK’s toxic far-right. It could also represent just a waystation in a prolonged descent—from inclusive societies capable of acknowledging and correcting their flaws, however slowly, to exclusive societies committed to preventing the many from accessing the rights of the few. Civil society has a gargantuan task ahead—its first step the toppling of the present UK government, its second a convincing defeat of the far right in this November’s U.S. Congressional elections.

At the moment, neither outcome feels any likelier than a coin toss to me—and yet we have no choice. The promise of rights, reproductive or migratory, is a genie that will not go back into its bottle. The choice is not between resistance and submission to the status quo as of July 2022, but rather between resistance and further rights-repression—which can only lead us from (small-d) democratic decline to democratic atrophy, and in the long run to conflict. No matter how disadvantaged our political position, the present moment is our last best chance to protect our rights—and to preserve our democracy.

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On to the news…

Asia

Post-occupation Afghanistan
Last Monday, a bomb attack targeted the town of Shirgar in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar Province, killing 2 civilians and wounding 28. | On Tuesday, The New Humanitarian highlighted alarming increases in measles transmission across Afghanistan, with NGOs struggling to keep up as malnutrition weakens infected individuals’ ability to combat the virus. On the same day, border dwellers near Qandahar reported problems crossing into Pakistan at the Spin Boldak and Chaman border crossings, complaining of Pakistani border police turning back those holding valid documents. | On Wednesday, a 6.1 magnitude earthquake struck Afghanistan’s eastern Paktika province, killing ~1.000 people and injuring another ~600. On the same day, Afghan authorities reported that flooding across 19 central and eastern provinces had killed ~400 civilians and displaced unknown numbers. | On Thursday, authorities revised upwards the casualty toll of the prior day’s earthquake to 1.100 fatalities and 1.600 injured. On the same day, German authorities announced a deal with Pakistan to relocate ~10.000 Afghan refugees who had formerly collaborated with Germany’s mission to Afghanistan, and have since then fled across the Durand Line. | On Friday, authorities tallied 3.000 destroyed homes in Afghanistan’s eastern Pakitka and Khost provinces. | This Monday, UN-OCHA head Martin Griffiths announced the release of $10 million in support for earthquake victims in Afghanistan. On the same day, educational authorities in Afghanistan’s eastern Nuristan province tallied that just 60 of its 214 schools had functional buildings, leaving the majority of the province’s children to study outdoors or in temporary structures.

Myanmar and its neighbors
Last Monday, several thousand civilians were displaced by artillery strikes on their villages from Yinmabin township in Myanmar’s central Sagaing province. | On Tuesday, local authorities issued updated reports on the scale of flooding in India’s northeastern Assam State and in northern Bangladesh, with 100 fatalities, 9.5 people stranded by floodwaters, and 4.7 million displaced in Assam State alone. | This Monday, local resistance forces reported that ~7.000 civilians had fled army attacks and the torching of their villages in Myanmar’s southern Mon State.

Shifts (perhaps) in asylum practices in Japan, migrant worker confinement in Singapore
Last Tuesday, the Washington Post highlighted that Japanese authorities have admitted 1.316 Ukrainian evacuees thus far this year—in contrast to 74 refugees from around the world in 2021—with public opinion and political leaders suggesting a tentative interest in shifting from Japan’s historical inaccessibility to refugees. | On Friday, authorities in Singapore lifted strict lockdown requirements on migrant workers, kept in place long past after being lifted for Singaporean nationals, maintaining only the requirement to obtain a permit to visit certain high-footfall areas on Sundays and public holidays.

Flooding-borne displacement in China and India
Last Wednesday, Chinese authorities reported major flooding in southern Jiangxi province, forcing ~500.000 people from their homes, as greater flooding is expected in coming weeks. | On Sunday, authorities reported that ~200.000 people had been displaced to over 564 IDP camps by floods affecting over 2.500 villages across India’s northeastern state of Assam. | This Monday, authorities reported heavy flooding and disruptions in China’s eastern Shandong province, home to 100 million people.

Sources: TOLOnews, TNH, the Guardian, InfoMigrants, the Irrawaddy, al Jazeera, the Washington Post, AFP, AP, Reuters.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Pan-African student mobility
Last Wednesday, the African Union announced the African Credit Transfer system, allowing university students across Africa to transfer credits from one university to another to better integrate university study and improve degree recognition across the continent.

Ethiopia’s civil war
Last Tuesday, former head of UN-OCHA Mark Lowcock accused the Chinese and Russian missions to the UN of delaying discussions of the Tigray conflict in the UN Security Council, deflecting attention from the fighting and its humanitarian impact. | On Thursday, Afar State reported that 8.000 IDPs had returned from Dubti camp through June, as a combination of conflict reduction and poor living conditions in camps induce IDPs in northern Ethiopia to chance returning to their home communities. On the same day, on the heels of an EU appeal for fuel deliveries to facilitate humanitarian access in Tigray, Ethiopian authorities dismissed representations of a fuel shortage as a myth propagated by the TPLF to garner international sympathy while rearming itself.

Drought and food insecurity in the Horn of Africa
Last Tuesday, IOM tallied 8 million acutely food insecure people in Ethiopia, the displacement of 300.000, and the death of 1.5 million head of livestock as a result of Ethiopia’s ongoing drought (see IOM’s full report here). | On Wednesday, the WFP made an urgent appeal for a dramatic increase in humanitarian funding for its Horn of Africa response, warning there were 89 million acutely food insecure people across the region—a 90% increase from last year—with 213.000 people in Somalia expected to face famine in September unless aid is immediately scaled up. | On Thursday, the FAO called for the urgent deployment of $96 million in aid to farmers in Tigray, ahead of a promising rainy season, to ensure they do not miss the July-August planting season. | On Friday, the World Bank announced a $715 million deal to provide food security financing to Ethiopia.

Conflict and repatriation in the Great Lakes area
Last Monday, the East African Community approved a troop deployment to North Kivu in the eastern DRC to combat M23 rebels and reduce tensions between Congolese and Rwandan forces. On the same day, authorities in South Kivu tallied the returns of ~1.000 Burundian and 182 Rwandan refugees to their respective countries of origin, with another ~80.000 refugees, mainly from Burundi, remaining in the region. | On Thursday, regional authorities tallied that the first 40 of 80 first-phase households had been relocated from Loliondo to Msmomera in northeastern Tanzania, as part of a controversial plan to remove Maasai pastoralists from a game-controlled area on ancestral Maasai land. | On Saturday, Ugandan authorities disclosed that ~800 children had been separated from their families as a result of fighting in the DRC’s cross-border Rutshuru district. | On Sunday, the Association of Rwandan Refugees in Mozambique appealed for Mozambican authorities to commit to upholding the 1951 Refugee Convention, on the heels of the signing of an extradition agreement between Rwanda and Mozambique earlier this month, which opponents of the Kagame regime exiled in Mozambique fear will be used to target and forcibly return them. | This Monday, health authorities rang the alarm over spiking COVID-19 transmission in Uganda, coinciding with an increase in refugee arrivals from the DRC amid low regional vaccination rates.

Displacement in the Sahel
Last Monday, authorities in Burkina Faso ordered civilians to evacuate two regions, in northern Soum province near the border with Mali, and in a southern nature preserve near the border with Benin, ahead of military operations against sectarian insurgents. | On Friday, Nigeria’s Committee on the Repatriation, Returns and Resettlement of Displaced Persons in the North-East ordered preparations for the return to northeastern Borno State of ~20.000 refugees currently exiled in Cameroon. | On Saturday, Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency distributed food aid to 26.000 households encamped in Madinatu, intending to expand assistance to further IDP camps in northeastern Borno State.

Sources: the EastAfrican, Devex, VOA, Addis Standard, the Guardian, HumAngle, Mail & Guardian, Reuters, BusinessDay, Vanguard.

Middle East and North Africa

Asylum seeker (im)mobility in the MENA region
Last Monday, Médecins San Frontières issued a report tallying barely over 1.650 humanitarian from Libya’s ghastly asylum seeker detention centers last year, out of a total population of ~40.000, imploring host states to step up and dramatically increase evacuations (see MSF’s full report here). | On Tuesday, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Turkey’s 2014 forcible repatriation of Muhammad Fawzi Akkad, a Syrian refugee holding a valid Turkish residency permit, violated domestic and European law (see the full ECHR ruling here). On the same day, authorities operated the 94th deportation flight to depart Turkish soil thus far this year, having repatriated over 42.500 asylum seekers since January, including just under 24.350 Afghans and just over 6.000 Pakistanis. | On Thursday, Deutsche-Welle relayed the testimonials of 2 of the 38.000 Ethiopians detained in abusive conditions over the last 2 years in Saudi Arabia, and repatriated in the last 3 months following an agreement between Riyadh and Addis Ababa. | On Friday, a disturbance broke out at the border of Morocco and the Spanish enclave of Melilla as 2.000 asylum seekers tried to rush the fence, killing at least 23 asylum seekers and injuring another 76, as well as 140 Moroccan border police. | On Saturday, Spanish NGOs denounced the gratuitous violence employed by security forces at the border of Morocco and Melilla on the day prior, attributing to it an updated estimate of 37 fatalities.

Sources: HumAngle, Reuters, Daily Sabah, DW, AFP, eldiario.

Maritime Migration Routes to & through the West

Ruta Canaria
Last Monday, Moroccan authorities announced they had intercepted 105 asylum seekers in the Atlantic, attempting to reach the Canary Islands, returning them to Moroccan soil for processing by national gendarmes. | On Wednesday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 44 asylum seekers from a distressed vessel in waters ~110 nautical miles south of Gran Canaria. | On Saturday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 54 asylum seekers, including a pregnant woman, from a distressed vessel in waters off of Lanzarote.

Central and western Mediterranean
Last Monday, IOM disclosed that, over the week prior, Libyan Coast Guard vessels had pulled back 590 asylum seekers and retrieved 6 lifeless bodies from at least 8 interceptions. | On Thursday, the Sea-Eye 4 and the Aita Mari (Maydayterraneo) disembarked 470 and 112 asylum seekers, respectively, in Sicily. | This Monday, the Civil Fleet announced that the Sea-Watch 4, the Ocean Viking (SOS Méditerranée), and the Louise Michel had rescued 519 asylum seekers over the previous week, as the Nadir (RESQSHIP) disembarked 19 asylum seekers in Lampedusa.

Aegean Sea
Last Monday, Greek authorities announced they had arrested 6 asylum seekers from the 108 rescued from a distressed vessel near the Aegean island of Mykonos in the weekend prior, charging them with human trafficking, endangerment, and forming part of a criminal organization. | On Wednesday, Alarm Phone signaled that a group of 29 asylum seekers had reached the uninhabited islet of Barbarias just off the coast of Lesvos on the night before, urging their quick rescue and registration with the asylum service. | This Monday, the lifeless bodies of 2 asylum seekers washed up on a beach in Lesvos, as Greek authorities claimed to have prevented the maritime arrivals of 1.130 asylum seekers over the weekend.

Gulf of Mexico
Last Thursday, the U.S. Coast Guard repatriated 190 Cuban and Haitian asylum seekers, intercepted at sea in operations off of Haiti and the Florida Keys, and reported they had retrieved 2 lifeless bodies from the sea. | On Saturday, 22 Cuban asylum seekers arrived autonomously in Key West, where they were apprehended by the Border Patrol.

Sources: Morocco World News, Europa Press, EFE, InfoMigrants, GreekReporter, the Miami Herald, 7 News Miami.

Europe

EUropean migration policymaking
Last Monday, Italian National Ombudsman for Detainee Rights Mauro Palma testified before Parliament that irregular arrivals to Italy are back to pre-pandemic levels and likely to remain there for years to come, urging parliamentarians to reform Italy’s hotspot-driven and repatriation-oriented approach. On the same day, Coldiretti tallied just under 360.000 foreign workers in Italy’s agricultural sector—comprising just under 30% of the workforce—and demanded faster and more flexible visa issuance for migrant farmworkers. | On Wednesday, 18 EU member states signed a solidarity mechanism providing for the automatic yearly relocation of ~10.000 asylum seekers from Med5 states. On the same day, Finnish authorities introduced a measure in Parliament to establish a border procedure, allowing expedited review of asylum claims in the event of sudden mass arrivals. | On Friday, 6 Greek CSOs comprising the Informal Forced Returns Recording Mechanism delivered to the European Parliament LIBE committee a report documenting systemic breaches of European migration law at Greece’s external borders (read the full report here). On the same day, Frontex fell under scrutiny, again, for refusing to disclose details of it continuing collaboration with Hungary to conduct rejected asylum seeker repatriations, despite Hungarian authorities’ well-documented and sanctioned violations of European immigration law.

Dystopia at the Home Office
Last Monday, High Court Judge Swift denied temporary relief to 3 Sudanese victims of trafficking demanding to be released from immigration detention pending adjudication of their asylum petitions. | On Tuesday, UK authorities leaked they will announce measures this week authorizing Ukrainian children with valid entry visas and willing host families under the Homes for Ukraine scheme, but intending to travel alone, to enter UK soil with written parental authorization. | On Wednesday, the Oxford Migration Observatory revealed that, of the 3.632 people denied asylum in the UK in 2020, only 314 had been removed from UK soil, with only 113 removals taking place in 2021, suggesting the Home Office may be relying on its hostile environment to impel rejected asylum seekers to move, rather than use its enforcement capacity to compel repatriation. On the same day, the Independent revealed that UK authorities have detained at least 18 newly arrived asylum seekers despite uncertainty as to whether its detention-to-deportation policies will hold up in court. | On Thursday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson admitted it was possible that irregularly arriving Ukrainian refugees could be deported to Rwanda under the Home Office’s relocation plan, though he qualified it was a highly unlikely outcome. | On Friday, inews revealed that in late May, the UK Coast Guard ordered the confinement in port of a decommissioned RNLI search-and-rescue boat formerly sold to Search and Rescue Relief and redeployed to the Mediterranean—presumably beyond the range of its UK-issued search-and-rescue certification. | On Saturday, the Observer and Liberty Investigates revealed that 107 asylum seekers have perished in Home Office accommodation between April 2016 and May 2022—including 17 suicides—a far higher number than previously disclosed. | On Sunday, advocacy organization Refugees for Justice announced the launch of an independent inquiry into the treatment of asylum seekers housed in hotels in Scotland by Home Office contractors during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Displacement within and beyond Ukraine
Last Wednesday, euobserver highlighted frustrating bureaucratic barriers to receiving and providing for Ukrainian refugees in Brussels, where authorities are slow to turn over residency permits, landlords accustomed to issuing multi-year leases are reluctant to rent to families with 1-year residency permits, with an increasing number of Ukrainians facing homelessness. | On Thursday, municipal authorities in Brno announced they had canceled a plan to build an encampment to host Romani refugees from Ukraine, with city officials and the Czech Human Rights Commission working to identify and stand up suitable long-term accommodation. | On Friday, U.S. authorities issued new data tallying 71.000 Ukrainian refugee arrivals since March, including 22.000 who arrived via the U.S.-Mexico border, 15.000 who arrived through the Uniting for Ukraine visa sponsorship scheme (with another 23.000 approved and awaiting travel), and most of the remainder having used other visa pathways to reach U.S. soil. | This Monday, Europol reported it had conducted an action day in late May and identified 9 traffickers preying on Ukrainian refugees across 42 disingenuous refugee support platforms.

Border control and migration enforcement across Europe
Last Wednesday, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders Mary Lawlor issued a preliminary report following her visit to Greece, where she documented the increasing criminalization of human rights monitors and of asylum seekers themselves (read her statement here). On the same day, Serbian authorities disclosed there are currently ~7.000 asylum seekers and refugees in Serbia, a 55% increase from June 2021, attributing most of that change to the arrival of refugees from Ukraine. | Also on Wednesday, Paris police cleared an informal encampment hosting ~360 asylum seekers in northeastern Paris, returning the following morning to clear another camp hosting another 30. | On Thursday, authorities in Iraq announced they would form a crisis cell to investigate allegations of abuse by Polish security forces against Iraqi asylum seekers trying to enter Poland via Belarus. | On Friday, a Belgian court concluded a criminal probe into Migration Minister Sammy Mahdi’s response to asylum seeker housing shortages, which led to substantial homelessness among displaced youth, finding no criminal wrongdoing. | This Monday, Amnesty International issued a report documenting deterrence methods used against asylum seekers irregularly arriving in Lithuania from Belarus over year prior, detailing arbitrary detention in squalid conditions and violent pushbacks by Lithuanian security forces (see Amnesty’s full report here).

Sources: ANSA, SchengenVisaInfo, RSA, euobserver, the Guardian, the Independent, the Standard, inews, Romea.cz, NBC News, InfoMigrants, the New Arab, The Brussels Times, DW.

The Americas

U.S. migration policymaking
Last Tuesday, Reuters revealed the abduction of 3 asylum seekers awaiting adjudication of their U.S. claims in Mexico, under the renewed Migrant Protection Protocols, while under the provision of municipal official in Nuevo Laredo. | On Wednesday, CBP reported just under 239.500 encounters with asylum seekers in May, the 4th consecutive monthly increase, adding that ~ 25% of those intercepted last May had attempted to irregularly enters the U.S. at least once before, before being summarily expelled under Title 42. | On Thursday, the Associated Press highlighted a substantial acceleration in the release of asylum seekers from confinement on parole—offering 1-year of deportation protection, within which parolees are expected to petition for asylum on their own initiative—with ~207.000 between August 2021 and this May, 51.132 of whom were released this May. | On Friday, a medical examiner’s report into the death of an asylum seeker in Border Patrol custody indicated he had perished of stab wounds, strongly suggesting foul play.

Migration and its drivers in Latin America
Last Tuesday, authorities in Costa Rica signaled that the 60.000 asylum petitions filed by Nicaraguan claimants in 2021 represents a level of flight unseen since Nicaragua’s 1980s civil war, with asylum authorities straining under a backlog of ~130.000 pending claims. On the same day, the leading 500 asylum seekers of the northbound caravan reached the town of Monclova in the border state of Coahuila, with another 5.000 caravan members believed to be approaching the regional capital of Monterrey. | On Wednesday, Mexican authorities disclosed there are ~116.000 asylum seekers in Mexico with pending claims in the U.S. immigration system, as well as another 224.000 in Mexico holding humanitarian set to expire within June 2022. On the same day, Mexican authorities announced a U.S. commitment to disincentivize irregular migration by issuing 150.000 guest worker visas to Mexican and third-country nationals currently in Mexico. Also on Wednesday, Panamanian authorities disclosed that just under 46.500 asylum seekers had crossed Panama thus far this year, nearly doubling the figure for the first half of 2021. | On Friday, a novel caravan composed of ~3.000 asylum seekers set off from Tapachula, mobilizing after its members tried and failed to regularize their status in the southern Mexican city. | On Sunday, authorities disclosed that just under 48.000 Honduran asylum seekers have been repatriated thus far this year, the majority to San Pedro Sula. On the same day, advocates denounced that, despite its illegality, Mexican immigration authorities detained asylum seeking children just under 75.600 times in 2021. Also on Sunday, authorities in Panama announced the launch of construction of a reception center in San Vicente, on the northern side of the Darién Gap, to be completed this July and offer capacity to host 544 asylum seekers. | This Monday, Mexican authorities announced they had dispersed the latest asylum seeker caravan to depart from Tapachula over the weekend, issuing humanitarian visas to its ~3.000 participants. On the same day, Guatemalan authorities announced they expect 15 repatriation flights to return rejected asylum seekers from the U.S. and Mexico over the coming week.

Sources: Reuters, AP, infobae, VOA, La Razón, Expansión, EFE, La Prensa, ZonaDocs, eco, elPeriódico.

Oceania

Australia’s offshore asylum processing system—and its harms
Last Thursday, asylum seekers in offshore containment appealed for help as Nauru’s strict lockdown, reacting to the recent arrival of COVID-19 to the island, has left refugees without access to banking or to the retail outlets they need to obtain food and medication, and meet other basic needs. | On Saturday, the Guardian highlighted the dilemmas facing marginalized Sri Lankans, amid the island’s economic meltdown, as smugglers dangle false promises of asylum and opportunity in Australia, and as Australian authorities double down on shipboard processing of asylum claims and expedited return to countries of origin.

Sources: The Sydney Morning Herald, the Guardian.

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Spotlight

Last week, UNHCR released its 2022 Global Displacement Report, tallying ~100 million displaced people worldwide.

Notwithstanding that just one displaced person is one too many, the last decade’s worth of steady growth in UNHCR’s tally obscures some problematic methodological issues. Yes, the number of displaced people worldwide is growing. But so are the datasets that UNHCR and IOM can access as more states adopt international migration management standards. (In other words: part of each year’s growth doesn’t represent newly displaced people, but rather already displaced but newly counted people.)

Highlighting the numerical scale of displacement can offer the public a sense of the scale of the problem—but it also erases individual stories, blurs distinctions between different displaced communities, and can nourish alarmist narratives from populists and xenophobes. It oversimplifies complex issues—definitions matter. I realize, as I’m writing these words, that I’m as guitly as the next person over: I include every tally I come across in each weekly report, as you already know if you’re a regular reader. I do my best to include local context and to verify definitions, but am open to feedback if you think I can do better.

Articulating and implementing solutions to the displacement of 100 million people is a gargantuan task. It’s one we set ourselves up to fail if the way we communicate about it misinforms the public.

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On to the news…

Asia

Post-occupation Afghanistan
Last Monday, U.S. Air Force officials concluded that pilots had acted appropriately in the chaotic first day of last August’s Kabul airport evacuation, taking off despite crowding around the C17 they were piloting and leading to the deaths of multiple individuals who had tried to cling to the airplane’s wheels—claiming the pilots had no alternative, as the plane would have eventually been overwhelmed had it not taken off when it did. | On Tuesday, the World Bank channeled $150 million through the Food and Agriculture Organization to help Afghan farmers build infrastructure to better irrigate crops. | On Wednesday, a bomb attack on the Hazarat Zarkaria mosque in Kabul killed 5 and wounded 22, as 3 further bomb attacks went off in Mazar-e-Sharif. On the same day, Taliban officials insisted they had a plentiful supply of passport booklets, attributing delays in passport issuance to corruption amid the bureaucracy managing applications and issuing passports. | On Friday, the U.S. Special Inspector for Afghanistan issued an estimate that, by mid-2022, the Afghan labor market would see between 700.000 and 900.000 job losses since August 2021. | On Saturday, an attempted bombing of a Sikh temple in Kabul lead to 2 fatalities, including an attacker, and a yet-unknown number of injuries.

Myanmar and its neighbors
Last Monday, civilians in Myanmar’s central Sagaing province accused junta troops of burning over 200 homes across 3 villages over the previous 2 days. On the same day, Radio Free Asia disclosed that ~600 Rohingya refugees had been detained while attempting to flee into Malaysia over the prior 6 months. | On Wednesday, the UNHCR Global Displacement report tallied the world’s 3 largest internal displacement situations in near states to Myanmar, counting ~6 million IDPs in China, ~5.7 million in the Philippines, and another ~4.9 million in India. | On Thursday, 500 IDPs were again displaced by fighting in Myanmar’s nottheastern Shan State and artillery strikes targeted the Kongyan and Zutaun camps. On the same day, Bangladeshi police announced they had recovered 5 firearms, including an assault rifle, from 2 raids in Rohingya refugee camps near Cox’s Bazaar. | On Friday, authorities in India’s northeastern state of Mizoram announced they had issued 30.000 identification cards to Burmese refugees recently arrived from Chin State. | On Saturday, large-scale flooding struck Bangladesh and northeastern India, killing at least 41 and stranding millions. | On Sunday, tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees held simultaneous peaceful demonstrations across 23 refugee camps in mainland Bangladesh, demanding to be able to return in security and dignity to their ancestral homes in Myanmar’s Rakhine State. | This Monday, Pakistani Foreign Minister Asim Iftikhar disclosed that there are currently ~400.000 Rohingya refugees in Pakistan, in addition to ~3 million refugees from Afghanistan.

Sources: AP, TOLOnews, al Jazeera, the Irrawaddy, BenarNews, PTI, Eleven Myanmar, bdnews24, Aaj News.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Conflict and drought in the Horn of Africa
Last Tuesday, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced the formation of a committee to negotiate a peace deal with the TPLF, giving it a 10-15 day mandate to define scope of imminent negotiations. On the same day, TPLF leadership stated it was prepared to dispatch a high-level delegation to Kenya to begin negotiations with Ethiopian authorities. | On Thursday, Save the Children issued a statement tallying 185.000 children across southeastern Ethiopia facing advanced malnutrition, with drought so severe wild animals have been observed engaging in unusual behavior—such as monkeys attacking children and livestock (see StC’s full statement here). | On Friday, Reuters tallied 9.000 Tigrayans remaining in detention across Ethiopia since a state of emergency was declared in November 2021, and at least 17 fatalities in detention in the interval. | On Saturday, survivors denounced the massacre of ~230 ethnic Amharan civilians in Gimbi, in northern Oromoia, with Ethiopian authorities and the Oromia Liberation Army accusing one another of the atrocity.

Displacement in the Great Lakes area
Last Monday, UNODC announced it had identified, and was working to dismantle, a human trafficking ring run out of the Dzaleka refugee camp in Malawi, having rescued 90 Ethiopian men and an undisclosed number of women and girls from across East Africa thus far. | On Wednesday, authorities in the DRC demanded that Rwanda withdraw 500 troops presumably deployed to the DRC’s eastern North Kivu province, believed to be supporting a local uprising by Tutsi-majority M23 rebels. | On Friday, DRC authorities ordered border crossings with Rwanda closed each day at 15:00, hours earlier than usual, after a gunfire exchange between a lone Congolese soldier and 2 Rwandan border police that killed the former and injured the latter, amid rising cross-border tensions. On the same day, Congolese authorities welcomed a Kenyan proposal to deploy the East African Standby Force to embattled North Kivu, so long as the contingent did not include Rwandan troops.

Conflict and displacement in the Sahel
Last Tuesday, the WFP announced that, due to funding shortages, it would have to suspend its humanitarian programming in South Sudan, appealing for $426 million in contributions to reach 6 million at-risk people through the rest of this year. On the same day, UNHCR issued a report tallying ~80.900 refugee flights from northern Nigeria’s Sokoto State into Niger, and just over 72.250 novel internal displacements, over the last 3 months (see UNHCR’s full report here). | On Wednesday, UN-OCHA signaled that renewed fighting in West Darfur has seen 25 villages destroyed in recent weeks, displacing ~50.000 civilians since hostilities broke out on June 6. On the same day, UNHCR tallied ~800.000 Sudanese refugees displaced to neighboring countries, with the largest contingent comprising nearly 390.000 Darfuris exiled in Chad and just under 312.000 civilians of southern Sudan exiled in South Sudan. | On Thursday, IDPs living in Gubio camp in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno State received food assistance for the first time in 6 months, as authorities relented on a prohibition against provisioning camps aimed to incentivize IDPs to return to their regions of origin. | On Friday, UNHCR appealed for urgent assistance for ~16.000 newly displaced people fleeing fighting in Burkina Faso’s northern Seno province. | On Sunday, local officials disclosed there are currently ~1.5 million IDPs in eastern Nigeria’s Benue State.

Sources: VOA, the EastAfrican, the Independent, Reuters, AP, HumAngle, Sudan Tribune, Vanguard.

Middle East and North Africa

Yemen’s civil war
Last Monday, the UN announced its appeal to remediate the SFO Safer situation had reached $60 million of its $80 million target, calling for donations from the general public to contribute another $5 million. | On Tuesday, anonymous sources revealed that Ansar Allah and Saudi authorities have resumed direct negotiations with an eye to ending Yemen’s 8-year running civil war. | On Wednesday, the GAO revealed that U.S. military and diplomatic authorities had both failed to investigate whether U.S.-sourced weapons systems had been used by the Saudi-led coalition backing Yemen’s internationally-recognized government to target Yemeni civilians.

Asylum seeker (im)mobility in the MENA region
Last Wednesday, Turkish authorities accused Greek security forces of having pushed back just over 41.500 asylum seekers from March 2020 to early June of this year. | On Thursday, Turkish authorities and IOM disclosed that, since the resumption of direct flights from Turkey to Afghanistan in January, ~18.000 Afghan asylum seekers have been repatriated on 79 chartered flights to Kabul. On the same day, InfoMigrants highlighted the stall in Morocco’s once-promising migration policy reforms, with increasing numbers of the ~40.000 irregular migrants granted status in 2014 and 2016 amnesties slipping back into irregularity, with no novel reforms or additional amnesties to secure their status or well-being.| On Saturday, Algerian authorities conducted a mass expulsion of 235 asylum seekers to Assamaka in northwestern Niger. On the same day, a 2-month-long and 213-strong asylum seeker protest outside of UNHCR offices in Tunis ended abruptly—after security forces took protesters to an undisclosed location according to local NGOs, or pursuant to a relocation according to UNHCR. | This Monday, Lebanese President Najib Mikati demanded that the international community secure facilities for the safe repatriation of Syrian refugees—reserving the possibility of conducting repatriations unilaterally if external support fell short—as he appealed for $3.2 billion in financial support to address the impact of the Syrian crisis.

Sources: The Washington Post, VOA, AP, Hürriyet, InfoMigrants, Alarme Phone Sahara, The New Arab

Maritime Migration Routes to & through the West

Central and western Mediterranean
Last Tuesday, Tunisian naval authorities intercepted 72 asylum seekers off the coast of Zarzis, who had set off from Zuwara the night prior, as Tunisian police detained another 30 asylum seekers on Kerkennah Island, off Tunisia’s east-central coast, presumably preparing an irregular crossing toward European waters. | On Wednesday, the Aita Mari (Maydayterraneo) rescued 17 asylum seekers who had jumped into the water from a vessel carrying 103 that had just been intercepted by the Libyan Coast Guard—one day after rescuing another 11 asylum seekers from another vessel, and after the Sea-Eye 4 (Sea-Eye) had rescued another 64 asylum seekers from yet another vessel. On the same day, the Nadir (RESQSHIP) located and provided first aid to 30 asylum seekers adrift in Italian waters, who were shortly rescued by the Italian Coast Guard and taken to Lampedusa. Also on Wednesday, the Sea-Eye 4 rescued another 492 asylum seekers in 4 separate operations—as 12 vessels carrying 481 asylum seekers reached Lampedusa autonomously, to be followed by 17 vessels carrying another 698 asylum seekers on Thursday. On Saturday, the Sea Watch 4 took onboard 96 asylum seekers rescued by a cargo ship, and shortly thereafter took onboard another 165 asylum seekers rescued by the smaller Louise Michel for care and eventual disembarkation in safe port. | On Sunday, Tunisian Coast guard officers retrieved the bodies of 4 asylum seekers whose physical state suggested they had perished several days, perhaps weeks, prior to retrieval.

Aegean Sea
Last Tuesday, Turkish Coast Guard vessels rescued 58 asylum seekers in waters off if Izmir province. | On Thursday, Turkish Coast Guard vessels rescued 94 asylum seekers from 2 vessels in waters off if Izmir and Muğla provinces. | On Sunday, Greek Coast Guard vessels rescued 108 asylum seekers and tallied 4 missing persons from a stricken vessel near Mykonos in the central Aegean, presumably trying to reach Italy from Turkey, as another 56 asylum seekers arrived autonomously in Rhodes.

Gulf of Mexico
Last Tuesday, U.S. authorities detained 20 Cuban asylum seekers who had arrived autonomously on several uninhabited islands west of the Florida Keys over the previous 2 days—on the heels of intercepting a fishing vessel carrying 67 Haitian asylum seekers toward the U.S. coast on Monday. | On Sunday, the U.S. Coast Guard repatriated to Cuba 45 asylum seekers whom it had intercepted in waters off of Florida between Wednesday and Friday prior.

The English Channel
Last Wednesday, 146 asylum seekers were brought ashore in Dover after mid-sea rescue, on the heels of 444 autonomous arrivals to Dungeness, Dover and Ramsgate on in 11 vessels on Tuesday. On the same day, 12 asylum seekers arrived autonomously to the UK’s Devon coast, where they were promptly located by authorities. | On Saturday, the Ministry of Defense announced that 321 asylum seekers had reached UK soil across the English Channel through the day.

Sources: IANS, InfoMigrants, RESQSHIP, Reuters, Ilkha, Local 10 News, the Miami Herald, BBC, Daily Express.

Europe

EU migration policymaking
Last Monday, EU officials revealed that, as of mid-June, yearly asylum seeker relocation pledges from Med5 to other EU countries stood between 7.000 and 8.000 places, just short of negotiators’ target of 10.000 desired to restore solidarity to the core of European asylum policy. | On Wednesday the European Commission pledged €50 million to support healthcare and protection programming targeting at-need refugees living in Turkey. | On Thursday, euobserver unveiled an EU internal paper detailing plans to disburse $80 million over 2 years to help Egyptian authorities deter and interdict irregular maritime crossings toward Italy. On the same day, the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs issued a letter to the European Commission demanding it investigate renewed evidence of pushbacks raised in recent weeks along the Greco-Turkish land border—in defiance of Rule 39 judgments from the European Court of Human Rights—and ensure EU and international law is upheld at external EU borders.

European migration (mis)management
Last Monday, CNN Türk and AFP documented the fatal shooting of an asylum seeker attempting to cross the Evros River from Turkey into Greece—the second such incident in less than 2 months. On the same day, the Council of Europe’s Group of Experts on Human Trafficking issued a report documenting 1.150 incidents of human trafficking in Portugal between 2016 and 2020, and urging Portuguese authorities to step up efforts against the abuse of asylum seekers and labor migrants (see GRETA’s full report here). Also on Monday, Trento’s Assamblea antirazzista denounced that 60 asylum seekers have endured homelessness for several months as they await a place in oversubscribed municipal reception centers. | On Tuesday, Belgium’s judiciary admonished national authorities for under-resourcing asylum seeker reception, leading to systemic homelessness among asylum seekers deemed less vulnerable. | On Wednesday, Austrian police announced they were investigating a labor trafficker accused of exploiting over 230 Iraqi asylum seekers, overworking and underpaying them, all while claimig undue COVID-19 public support. On the same day, a fire at Eleonas camp, hosting ~1.200 asylum seekers in Athens, destroyed 5 shelters and injured 2 residents. | On Friday, al Jazeera relayed the testimonials of asylum seekers pushed back at the Greco-Turkish land border, attesting to security forces’ evident recruitment of people-on-the-move to carry out pushbacks, in exchange for offers of an eventual granting of asylum and the right to keep items stolen from pushback victims. On the same day, two Spanish courts ruled that authorities cannot turn back stateless individuals at ports of entry, and must rather admit them into Spanish soil while their claim to statelessness, and subsequent protection claim, are adjudicated.

Dystopia at the Home Office
Last Tuesday, UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss affirmed that the inaugural deportation flight to Rwanda would take off with 7 or 8 asylum seekers on board—pending the outcome of a final legal challenge—committing that the remaining 130 initially slated for deportation, but removed from the flight due to legal challenges, would be deported at a later date. On the same day, the European Court of Human Rights issued a Rule 39 judgment blocking UK authorities from deporting K.N., one of the passengers slated for removal to Rwanda, until his and other deportees’ litigation was complete, temporarily halting the planned deportation flight (see the ECHR’s full ruling here). Also on Tuesday, the Home Office announced its a long-delayed plan to launch the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme, reducing its commitment to resettle 5.000 at-risk Afghans within its first year to only 2.000. | On Wednesday, the Independent reported dreadful morale in the Home Office on the heels of the previous day’s spectacle, with civil servants reporting being sidelined from the elaboration and implementation of a purely ministerial initiative nonetheless conducted in their name. On the same day, local authorities in Linton-on-Ouse signaled that, following the Home Office’s failure to respond to its pre-action protocol letter by its June 14 deadline, they would be shortly moving forward with legislation to halt the conversion of disused RAF facilities into an asylum seeker detention center. Also on Wednesday, climate researchers issued a study predicting that ~200.000 coastal residences across the UK will become uninhabitable by 2050 due to climate change-induced coastal erosion, with resources insufficient to save every community, demanding prompt discussion on selecting communities to be preserved and others to be relocated. | On Thursday, the Independent relayed the testimony of multiple asylum seekers forced onto Tuesday’s ultimately grounded deportation flight to Rwanda, describing violent and abusive treatment by security personnel to force them from their holding cells into the airplane intended to deport them. On the same day, the Guardian issued figures tallying that 480 Ukrainian families and another 180 individuals have applied for homelessness assistance from local councils since late February, including 145 participants in the Homes for Ukraine scheme—only 20 of whom were matched with a new host when the found themselves in the street. | On Friday, the Home Office disclosed it would begin tagging irregularly arriving asylum seekers with electronic monitors, beginning with the 130 it had intended to deport on Tuesday. | On Sunday, UK charity Opora signaled that growing numbers of Ukrainian families trying to move on from Homes for Ukraine and rent their own housing are facing insurmountable barriers from leasing agencies demanding reference checks, income certification, or onerous upfront payments. | This Monday, the Guardian highlighted that the Home Office’s plan to subject arriving asylum seekers to GPS tagging contradicts its own guidance, which calls for GPS tagging only of asylum seekers presenting a high risk of criminal or national security threats, and warns against tagging individuals in poor health and survivors of trafficking and abuse. On the same day, the Guardian highlighted widespread exploitation of third-country nationals working on UK fishing vessels while holding transit visas that allow employment only in international waters, with no right of onward entry into UK soil and thus no possibility of changing employers, even in the face of abusive labor conditions.

Sources: euobserver, SchengenVisaInfo, Human Rights 360, InfoMigrants, al Jazeera, EFE, BBC, the Guardian, the Independent, The Yorkshire Post.

The Americas

Migration policymaking in North America
Last Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal law did not require immigration judges to grant bond hearings to immigrants in detention for over 6 months—effectively sanctioning indefinite detention of detainees awaiting adjudication through the severely backlogged U.S. immigration court system. On Tuesday, 177 Ukrainian refugees, carrying 3-year Emergency Travel Visas—allowing residence and labor market access—arrived from Poland to Canada’s eastern province of Newfoundland and Labrador. | On Friday, U.S. authorities announced a $35 million commitment to support local authorities in providing for displaced Venezuelans settled in Ecuador. | On Saturday, U.S. authorities tallied the irregular arrival of just over 140.000 Cuban asylum seekers between October 1 of last year and May 31 of this year. | This Monday, CBS News revealed that, of the 46.000 humanitarian parole applications filed by Afghans who assisted U.S. forces in Afghanistan through last August, only 4.543 have been adjudicated, and only 297 of those approved.

Migration and its drivers in Latin America
Last Tuesday, local authorities struggled to tend to between 2.000 and 3.000 asylum seekers demanding to register in Tapachula, having declined to join northbound caravans in favor of lodging their asylum claims in Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas. | On Thursday, Colombia’s Ministry of Health disclosed that 740.000 displaced Venezuelans had successfully registered for social security, with authorities continuing to work toward a target of 900.000. On the same day, Mexican authorities announced they had intercepted a truck carrying 366 asylum seekers of 16 nationalities, some from as far away as Uzbekistan and Nepal, by the side of a highway in the southern state of Chiapas. Also on Thursday, authorities in Guatemala announced they had apprehended 31 asylum seekers irregularly transiting through Guatemalan soil. | On Friday, authorities in Guatemala intercepted 20 Venezuelan asylum seekers irregularly transiting through Guatemalan soil. On the same day, Guatemalan authorities expelled 90 Cuban and Venezuelan asylum seekers to Honduras. | On Sunday, authorities in Guatemala intercepted another 17 Venezuelan asylum seekers in irregular transit.

Sources: the New York Times, CBC, VOA, AP, Milenio, CBS News, infobae, AGN, Diario de Cuba.

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Spotlight

Tomorrow is 1 year since I published the first issue of started Mixed Migration—hebdo.

At one point I changed the name, though I have yet to update the logo.

This has been a solo project since. It’s been a lot more work than I expected to sustain this space. I can’t be sure if I’ll be able to sustain it another year. Not that I don’t want to.

Thank you to the 415 subscribers that have signed up over the year—the most recent of whom joined just 2 hours ago. Thank you to the 8 paid subscribers who are helping me sustain this space. Thank you to Anita Makri for worming this idea into my head (you should all read and subscribe to her newsletter, by the way). Thank you to those of you who share MMh—it’s incredibly helpful in growing readership.

Thank you, above all, to the journalists out there working too hard and earning too little to keep public attention focused on migration. I hope this newsletter does justice to your vital work.

Thank you for reading MMh. If you like what you’re reading, you can subscribe here. If you’ve already subscribed, please share and help new readers find MMh.

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Share Mixed Migration—hebdo

On to the news…

Asia

Post-occupation Afghanistan
Last Tuesday, the WFP appealed for $1.2 billion to expand its food assistance from the 10 million beneficiaries to 19 million by the end of the year—as the U.S. Special Rapporteur tallies that 70% of people in Afghanistan cannot provide for themselves. | On Friday, demonstrations by Afghan refugees in Pakistan entered their 57th day, with protesters lamenting that the invasion of Ukraine has monopolized global attention, paving the way for their neglect. On the same day, the Washington Post highlighted the ongoing difficulties of families separated in the chaotic August 2021 Kabul evacuation, with U.S. authorities lacking precise figures on the number of direct relatives yet to be reunited with evacuees on U.S. soil, and advocacy groups estimating totals in the tens of thousands. | On Saturday, TOLOnews highlighted the plight of ~3.000 families displaced by flooding from their homes in Baghlan Province, just north of Kabul, in late August, now accommodated in open terrain lacking basic facilities, sanitation, education, or healthcare. | On Sunday, al Jazeera highlighted the difficulties faced by displaced Afghans in Iran, squeezed between painful reforms to Iran’s economy and a populist backlash against increasing irregular arrivals from Afghanistan. On the same day, Voice of America tallied that over the second half of 2021, over 1.750 applications by Afghan refugees in Pakistan for Special Immigrant Visas to the U.S. were denied, while just over 1.400 were issued. Also on Sunday, UN Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees Kelly T. Clements arrived in Kabul for discussions with Afghan officials and civil society leaders on the plight of the 6 million Afghans currently exiled abroad and on how to facilitate their future return.

Myanmar and its neighbors
Last Monday, villagers in Myanmar’s central Sagaing Region accused junta troops of burning ~320 homes in Kantbalu Township as part of an ongoing campaign to brutalize civilians that has seen ~20.000 homes burned across Myanmar since the Februrary 2021 coup, ~15.000 of those in Sagaing. | On Tuesday, Voice of America tallied that between 2.000 and 3.000 Rohingya refugees have fled Jammu state in northern India for Bangladesh over the last month, with Bangladeshi authorities announcing they have instructed border police to push arriving Rohingya back into India. On the same day, Human Rights Watch urged Thai authorities to allow UNHCR to access 59 asylum seekers stranded in the week prior by smugglers on Koh Dong island in southern Thailand, and conduct reasonable fear interviews to assess their refugee status (see HRW’s full statement here). | On Wednesday, Fortify Rights issued a report documenting the Burmese military junta’s accelerated issuance of National Verification Cards to Rohingya remaining in Rakhine—identifying them as Bengali rather than as Rohingya or Burmese (see FR’s full report here). | On Thursday, U.S. State Department official Derek Chollet visited Mae La refugee camp, hosting ~28.000 Burmese refugees across the Moei River from Myanmar—some since 1984—meeting with local authorities and CSOs to better understand the issues affecting Burmese refugees in Thailand. | On Friday, Rohingya community leader Md Azimullah was assaulted and killed in the Balukhali refugee camp near Cox’s Bazaar, as suspected retribution for his collaboration with Bangladeshi law enforcement. | On Sunday, local civilians accused junta troops of assaulting Budalin Township in Sagaing province, burning ~50 homes and abducting 60 civilians for use as human shields. | This Monday, Bangladshi police charged 29 suspects, all from the Rohingya community, for the September 2021 murder of Rohingya civil society leader Mohib Ullah.

Asylum in South Korea, labor migration from Indonesia
Last Monday, Middle East Eye relayed the testimony of Syrian refugee Amer Fadou regarding his ill treatment in South Korea’s asylum and migrant detention systems, a month after his release from 22 months’ imprisonment on spurious charges—following years of living under 1-year humanitarian visas allowing only limited access to the labor market and no access to public services (as do most of the ~1.200 Syrian and ~800 Yemeni refugees in South Korea). | On Wednesday, Indonesian authorities ratified a regulation standardizing recruitment procedures international shipping and fishing companies, intended to protect laborers from injury and abuse.

Sources: TOLOnews, the Washington Post, the Irrawaddy, VOA, al Jazeera, AP, RFA, bdnews24, MEE, Mongabay.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Ethiopia’s civil war
Last Monday, Ethiopian federal officials voiced their trust in the AU’s mediation efforts working to bring peace to embattled northeast Ethiopia, as AU officials stressed the importance of increasing humanitarian aid flows into Tigray to build trust between Mekelle and Addis Ababa. On the same day, Chinese authorities announced a peace conference for the Horn of Africa, to be held in late June. | On Tuesday, U.S. authorities issued a statement acknowledging that, over the previous week, 1.100 aid trucks had entered Tigray to deliver humanitarian assistance, while calling on authorities to restore basic services such as telecommunications and banking. On the same day, former UN Humanitarian Coordinator Mark Lowcock accused Ethiopian authorities of interfering with the IPC mechanism—used to determine the existence and severity of imminent and ongoing famines—to obstruct the issuance of a famine determination in Tigray in late 2021. Also on Tuesday, MSF announced it was resuming activities in Ethiopia’s southwestern and southeastern Gambella and Somali provinces, suspended due to a government order in July 2021. | On Wednesday, the UN Special Rapporteur for the Horn of Africa released a report documenting deteriorating human rights conditions in Eritrea and Tigray, including, inter alia, deliberate blocking of roads from Sudan into Tigray by Eritrean forces to prevent humanitarian access into Tigray, and the targeting of Eritrean refugees in Tigray—whose number has declined from ~96.000 to ~25.000 since the outbreak of hostilities (see the full report here). | On Thursday, MSF issued a report highlighting deteriorating health conditions in Afar State, as communities displaced by the ongoing war in Tigray stress already scarce locally available resources (see MSF’s report here). | On Sunday, Ethiopian officials leaked they had reached a hereto then secret agreement with the TPLF to promptly restore electricity, banking, and phone services to Tigray.

Conflict and displacement in the Sahel and central Africa
Last Monday, HumAngle highlighted the efforts of Nigerian refugees living in Cameroon for planting ~360.000 trees in and around Minawoa camp, turning an arid desert area into lush greenery over 5 years. | On Wednesday, clinicians running the Mamfe District Hospital in the anglophone Southwest Region of Cameroon, bordering Nigeria, accused separatist fighters of opening fire on hospital patients and staff and then burning all but its pharmacy to the ground. On the same day, IDPs living in Dikwa, a small town in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno State, buried 12 youth killed by Boko Haram while scavenging for scrap metal to sustain their families. | On Saturday, local authorities issued starter packs to 15.000 IDPs recently returned to Kirawa, in northeastern Nigeria, after a 6-year long internal displacement.

Environmental disaster and displacement in eastern Africa
Last Thursday, Agence France-Presse highlighted the increasing human toll of drought in Somalia, with physicians at Banaadir Hospital in Mogadishu reporting an increase from 120 to 230 monthly child malnutrition intakes between January and June of this year—as meteorologists predict yet another failed monsoon season later this year. On the same day, authorities in North Kivu, in northeastern DRC, accused the Nyatura rebel group of attacking the Rujagati IDP camp and killing 7 IDPs over the previous night. | On Friday, the Telegraph highlighted the poor living conditions faced by refugees relocated from Libya to the Gashora Transit Centre in Rwanda, where residents complain that many lack viable resettlement prospects, and that almost all lack economic opportunity and sufficient shelter, nutritional, or medical support. | On Sunday, The Star highlighted demands by IDPs in Nyamira, displaced since Kenya’s 2007-2008 electoral violence, to receive financial assistance and relocation support—threatening to boycott August elections if their demands are not met.

Sources: the EastAfrican, Addis Standard, Devex, Tghat, Sudans Post, HumAngle, AFP, the Telegraph, The Star.

Middle East and North Africa

Asylum seeker (im)mobility in MENA
Last Tuesday, the Lebanese military detained 64 people as they attempted to set sail from Sheikh Znad, near Tripoli, toward Cyprus likely to seek asylum. | On Sunday, Turkish authorities announced they had detained just over 2.850 asylum seekers in and around Istanbul over the weekend, on the heels of repatriating 221 Afghan asylum seekers on Friday. | This Monday, Turkish authorities adjusted a law barring foreign residents of Turkey from establishing residence in areas already hosting a foreign pouplation above 20% (down from 25%, as promulgated last February), while barring Syrians refugees from returning to Syria for the mid-July Eid-al-Adha holiday on threat of losing protection status.

Yemen’s civil war
Last Wednesday, Greenpeace implored the Arab League to fund a UN-sponsored rescue of the decaying FSO Safer and ~1.1 million barrels of oil in its hold, moored near the port of Ras Issa in the Red Sea, arguing that the $80 million cost of the rescue operation is a pittance compared to the estimated $20 billion cost of a spill. On the same day, U.S. authorities committed $10 million to help the international community meet the cost of the rescue operation. | On Thursday, 150 Ethiopian civilians stranded in embattled Yemen’s embattled Marib governorate boarded IOM-facilitated voluntary humanitarian returns flights to Addis Ababa. | On Sunday, Saudi Arabia pledged $10 million to the FSO Safer salvage effort, bringing the total pledged funding to at least $53 million.

Displacement, present and future, in Syria
Last Thursday, Turkish-backed Syrian rebel forces paraded in the northeastern town of Azaz, announcing their preparedness to support a renewed Turkish assault against Kurdish forces occupying the area between Kobane, Manbij, and Tal Rifat, to establish a 30-kilometer buffer along Turkey’s southern border inaccessible to Kurdish militia in which to repatriate Syrian refugees currently in Turkey.

Sources: AP, Daily Sabah, InfoMigrants, the New Arab, Upstream Online, Addis Standard, VOA, al Jazeera.

Maritime Migration Routes to & through the West

Central and western Mediterranean
Last Wednesday, at least 113 asylum seekers in 6 vessels reached Spain’s Balearic islands—some autonomously, some rescued by Salvamento Marítimo. On the same day, a vessel carrying 17 asylum seekers capsized off the coast of southeastern Spain, of whom 12 were rescued by a nearby cargo ship and Salvamento Marítimo, which also retrieved 4 lifeless bodies and tallied 1 missing person. Also on Wednesday, the Sea-Watch 3 and the Mare Jonio (Mediterranea Saving Humans) were allowed to disembark in Pozallo the 344 and 92 asylum seekers whom, respectively, each ship had rescued over the week prior. | This Monday, the IOM reported that the Libyan Coast Guard had intercepted just under 530 asylum seekers from the Central Mediterranean over the week prior.

Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea
On Friday, U.S. Coast Guard vessels intercepted 6 Cuban asylum seekers in waters off of Boot Key, taking a dehydrated infant child to hospital for treatment. | On Saturday, U.S. authorities detained 19 Cuban asylum seekers who arrived autonomously to Dry Tortugas Island, some 70 miles west of Key West, after 5 days at sea, 4 days after another 23 Cuban asylum seekers arrived autonomously in Key West. On the same day, Colombian authoriteis rescued 26 asylum seekers from a capsized vessel attempting to grossthe Gulf of Urabá, separating the Colombian town of Necoclí from the border with Panamá and the southern edge of the Darién Gap.

Sources: InfoMigrants, the Libya Update, the Miami Herald, Local 10 News, Semana.

Europe

Refugee and migrant naturalization in Europe
Last Monday, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser issued a proposal to grant residency to migrants holding temporary leave to remain—those whom the state has refused residency or asylum, but also cannot repatriate—which would offer 1-year residency permits to those having held this precarious status for 5 years or more. | On Wednesday, a Spanish appeals court confirmed a lower court’s granting of citizenship to a girl born to a Cameroonian mother on a vessel carrying asylum seekers toward Spain, after determining that denying her Spanish citizenship would render her stateless. | On Friday, German authorities disclosed that, throughout 2021, ~131.600 third-country nationals naturalized as German citizens, including slightly over 19.000 Syrian refugees, 81% of whom were able to access expedited naturalization—in 6 years instead of the usual 8—by demonstrating strong commitment to integrating into German society (find Destatis’ full figures here).

Displacement within and beyond Ukraine
Last Tuesday, Ukrainian officials disclosed they are nearing peak overland grain export capacity, exporting 2 million tons of grain per month—compared to the 6 million exported by sea before the Russian invasion and coastal blockade—as a Turkish initiative to escort cargo ships across the Black Sea foundered over Ukrainian misgivings about demining their ports and inviting a Russian amphibious assault. | On Thursday, Balkan Insight highlighted the increasingly evident shortcomings of Poland’s threadbare refugee integration infrastructure, which has starved Polish schools and medical centers of the support needed to serve Ukrainian students and patients across linguistic barriers, and left municipalities and NGOs to improvise systemic solutions in place of the state. On the same day, the European Commission disclosed that ~185.000 out of the ~1.1 million Ukrainian refugees in Poland have entered the labor market, under an expedited procedure allowing Polish employers to hire Ukrainians not yet issued work permits, so long as employment is registered withing 14 days of hiring. | On Sunday, the UN tallied just over 4.9 million refugee movements out of Ukraine, ~3.2 million registrations for temporary protection in an EU state, ~2.3 million return border crossings into Ukraine, as well as ~4.000 civilian fatalities since the Russian invasion in late February. On the same day, the Guardian relayed the testimony of Ukrainian refugees who reached Georgia via filtration camps in occupied Donetsk, attesting to systemic disorganization, forced deportations to Russia’s far east, and abuse of detainees deemed to have links to the Ukrainian military or to nationalist groups.

European migration (mis)management
Last Tuesday, local media revealed that some of 37 Afghans formerly employed at the Dutch Embassy in Kabul and evacuated to the Netherlands last August, terminated from their prior roles 2 weeks after arrival, have been asked to turn over part of their severance payments to help finance the cost of their accommodation in Dutch refugee reception centers. | On Thursday, Slovenia’s recently-inaugurated center-left government announced it would dismantle the barrier marking about one-third of its border with Croatia, built in 2015 at the height of arrivals via the Balkan Route, committing to control its border instead with drones and electronic sensors. | On Friday, French authorities proposed to the European Council a voluntary solidarity plan that would see non-Mediterranean EU states admit 10.000 yearly asylum seeker relocations from Med5 countries—the latest proposal to try to unblock negotiations on the Commission’s New Pact on Migration and Asylum, initially proposed in late 2020. On the same day, authorities in Poland announced they would lift the state of emergency along the Polish-Belarussian border on July 1—with a 200-meter buffer is to remain off-limits to unauthorized personnel—as contractors complete a barrier running along about half of the border’s length. Also on Friday, UN Special Rapporteur for the Human Rights of Migrants issued a report documenting the widespread use of pushbacks across Europe, but particularly in Poland and Greece, and lamenting their legitimation, via both official legislation and the deliberate non-prosecution of offenders. | On Saturday, an overnight fire ripped through an agricultural farmworker encampment in an informal camp in Palos de Frontera in southern Spain, destroying 100 shelters and injuring one individual. | On Sunday, a small truck carrying asylum seekers near the northeastern Greek region of Thrace crashed while trying to evade the police, killing 1 asylum seeker and injuring another 17.

Dystopia at the Home Office
Last Tuesday, local councils in North Yorkshire convened community meetings to discuss growing concern for the welfare and safeguarding of Ukrainian families hosted in remote UK villages, where, amid limited services and access to public transport, hosted families can become entirely dependent on their hosts’ support. On the same day, a UK Court convicted 2 men to 7 years’ imprisonment for smuggling 31 asylum seekers from Calais to Dover, concealed in cargo vans, between 2016 and 2018. | On Thursday, Ryanair defended its policy of verifying the identity of South African travelers attempting to enter the UK—responding to an apparent increase in circulation of fraudulent South African passports—by administering a test in Afrikaans, despite it being just 1 of South Africa’s 1 official languages, spoken as a native language by just 13% of South African nationals. | On Friday, UNHCR testified before the UK High Court that the Home Office had misled asylum seekers set to be deported to Rwanda by telling them UNHCR was closely involved in the relocation plan, re-asserting its determined opposition to the plan. On the same day, High Court Justice Swift decided against granting interim relief to claimants set to be deported from the UK to Rwanda next Tuesday, ruling there was a material public interest in allowing the Home Office to conduct immigration policy, but granting claimants a right of appeal, setting the stage for further litigation over the Home Office’s imminent first deportation flight to Rwanda this coming Monday. Also on Friday, the Home Office admitted that neither the monitoring board nor the joint implementing committee meant to oversee deportations to Rwanda and reception therein are in place, with the former months away and the latter wholly lacking a timeline for establishment. | This Monday, advocates revealed that of the original 130 asylum seekers issued relocation orders, only 11 remained on the manifest for Tuesday’s inaugural deportation flight to Rwanda, as the previous Friday’s litigants lodged their appeal and yet another lawsuit seeking to enjoin Tuesday’s flight was heard in court on Monday. On the same day, a Court of Appeals upheld the High Court’s Friday judgment allowing Tuesday’s deportation flight to go ahead, revealing that only 8 deportees remained on the flight manifest as of its adjudication.

Sources: InfoMigrants, Deutsche-Welle, the Guardian, BIRN, SchengenVisaInfo, UPI, NU.nl, STA, al Jazeera, UN Human Rights Council, AP, YorkshireLive, BBC, the Independent.

The Americas

U.S. migration policymaking
Last Tuesday, ICE issued a directive instructing agents to refrain from deporting active-duty members of the U.S. military lacking regular immigration status in the U.S., and to consider refraining from deporting former service members or their kin. | On Friday, the Biden Administration released the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection at the Summit of the Americas, describing a series of actions at a pan-American level intended to rationalize migration management across the continent (see the full fact sheet here). On the same day, Canadian authorities announced they had exceeded the mark of resettling 15.000 Afghan refugees since last August, slowly progressing toward a commitment made in August 2021 to resettle 40.000 Afghans by the end of 2022. | On Sunday, the Observer highlighted the pathway that has opened for Cuban emigrants trying to reach U.S. soil—via Nicaragua, which offers visa-free travel to Cubans; and across the border where, once on U.S. soil, Cubans become eligible for permanent residency after a year’s presence (a far from unlikely outcome given the parlous state of U.S. immigration processing and resulting backlogs).

Irregular migration in Latin America
Last Monday, Guatemalan authorities announced they had apprehended 23 asylum seekers, from Venezuela and Haiti, transiting irregularly through Guatemala. | On Tuesday, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris announced $1.9 billion in private-sector investment in Central America to address impoverishment and lack of employment opportunities as root causes of migration. | On Thursday, a group of ~1.000 asylum seekers split off from the caravan currently advancing toward northern Mexico, opting to rest in Huixtla and wait to be issued exit visas by Mexican authorities, usable to travel regularly across toward the U.S. or use as the basis to apply for asylum in Mexico. | On Friday, Colombia’s national statistics department issued a report finding that just under 40% of Venezuelans displaced in Colombia feel completely integrated in their host country, a figure that rises to just over 73% among those holding a Temporary Protection Permit (see DANE’s full findings here). | On Saturday day, Mexican authorities dispersed a group of ~7.000 asylum seekers participating in the northbound caravan, issuing them immigration documents regularizing their presence in Mexico. | On Sunday, Costa Rican authorities committed to renew the status regularization of Cuban, Venezuelan, and Nicaraguan asylum seekers present in Costa Rica since before March 2020. | This Monday, Mexican authorities disclosed they had recovered the lifeless bodies of 37 asylum seekers from the Rio Grande over the first 5 months of this year.

Sources: CBS News, al Jazeera, Sudbury.com, the Guardian, AGN, AFP, AP, El Espectador, CNN, CiberCuba, El Universal.

Oceania

Regular and irregular migration to Australia
Last Thursday, the Guardian highlighted that the backlog for 476 visas to Australia, which allow high-skill foreigners to work or study in Australia for 18 months, has stretched out to 41 months, aggravating skills shortages across Australia’s economy and distressing visa applicants. | On Friday, the Nadesalingam family, after a 4-year struggle against Australia’s draconian immigration policies, were allowed to return to Biloela after concerted community pressure compelled Australian authorities to grant them residency. | On Sunday, Sri Lankan authorities detained 38 asylum seekers attempting to sail toward Australia in a fishing boat.

Sources: the Guardian, WION, News1st.

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Spotlight

Last week, the Norwegian Refugee Council issued its annual list of the world’s 10 most neglected displacement crises. For the first time, all 10 crises are to be found in Africa.

The West’s response to humanitarian crises is all too often framed by a focus on preventing irregular migration. The priority is misplaced and frankly racist—though it isn’t necessarily a bad thing to assist vulnerable people where they are, rather than pressure them into costly, high-risk irregular migration. Either way—responding to regional displacement crises before they become global displacement crises requires vision, subtlety, and nuance. Enter the EU.

Last week, European Commissioner for Promoting our European Way of Life stated to a Dutch newspaper that he gives no credence to reports of (thoroughly documented) unlawful asylum seeker pushbacks authored by journalists or NGOs—all while failing to acknowledge additional reports to the same practice by EU and UN agencies.

There’s one take-away here: the EU remains fundamentally unserious about setting functional policies to deal with irregular asylum seeker arrivals to Europe. So long as unserious ideologues like Commissioner Schinas hold policymaking levers in Brussels, and choose instead to spew bile against independent media and civil society, Europe will remain a source of harm for asylum seekers and migrants—and remain vulnerable to manipulation by third countries seeking advantage from targeting the black hole that is European migration policy.

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On to the news…

Asia

Post-occupation Afghanistan
On Tuesday, Germany’s Foreign Ministry disclosed that it has issued ~18.500 visas to former Afghan collaborators from its regional embassies since the fall of Afghanistan’s internationally-recognized government last August, and that it continues relocating ~200 Afghans per week from Pakistan alone. | On Friday, UNHCR tallied 1.3 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan, 52% of whom are children, suggesting that the number’s reduction from a prior tally of 1.4 million may be the result of returns or of refugees holding back from renewing expired status cards.

Myanmar and its neighbors
Last Monday, Rohingya IDPs in Rakhine State accused Burmese forces of firing mortars and live ammunition into the Maha Muni and Nyaung Chaung camps, hosting 4.000 IDPs, amid increasing tensions between the Arakhan Army and the Tatmadaw. | On Wednesday, police in Silchar transferred 26 Rohingya refugees into immigration detention, after detaining them as they traveled from Kashmir through India’s northeastern Assam state the prior Sunday. On the same day, Burmese forces detained 104 Rohingya transiting without permit from Rakhine state toward Yangon. Also on Wednesday, Hasina Begum—a UNHCR-registered Rohingya refugee deported from Kashmir to Myanmar in spring 2021, and deported to Myanmar a year later—managed to reunite with her family in Cox’s Bazaar, after she and her family crossed into Bangladesh irregularly from Myanmar and India, respectively. | On Thursday, the murder of a Hindu in Kashmir triggered fresh protest by Kashmiri Pandits for assistance in departing Kashmir, a short few years after settling in India’s contested northern region under a government campaign to incentivize Hindu immigration into Kashmir. | On Friday, Indian police detained 8 Rohingya refugees trying to cross irregularly into Bangladesh from India’s northeastern Tripura province. | On Sunday, Thai police rescued 59 Rohingya refugees stranded on Dong Island, near the Malaysian border, where smugglers stranded them several days prior, telling them they had reached Malaysia. | This Monday, The New Humanitarian reported dramatically increasing scabies infection rates in Rohingya refugee camps near Cox’s Bazaar, with over 20.000 cases between mid-March and early May alone, and an overall prevalence rate assessed at 10.2%. On the same day, local media relayed demands by Karenni civil society organizations for urgent humanitarian assistance to be provided to ~200.000 IDPs in Myanmar’s eastern Karen State. Also this Monday, Thai police announced they had detained 66 Burmese irregular migrants in 4 separate operations.

Sources: InfoMigrants, InfoMigrants, the Irrawaddy, the Times of India, BNI, the Guardian, the Washington Post, Northeast Now, Reuters, The New Humanitarian, Bangkok Post.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Ethiopia’s civil war
Last Monday, the TPLF accused Eritrean forces of invading Tigray, and claimed it had pushed back the invasion force at Adi Awala in the region’s north. On the same day, UNHCR tallied 73.000 Ethiopian refugees displaced in Sudan, the majority coming from embattled Tigray. | On Saturday, the FAO announced it was targeting agricultural inputs and training toward 620.000 households in Tigray, Amhara, and Afar states. | On Sunday, Tigrayan health authorities lamented they had been forced to suspend services at Ayer Referral Hospital in Mekelle, due to power outages, lack of medicines, and fuel shortages. | This Monday, Ethiopian authorities called for tighter controls on humanitarian deliveries into Tigray, charging that aid groups were delivering more fuel than was mandated, as well as unspecified material that could aid the TPLF’s military efforts.

Displacement in the Sahel and West Africa
Last Monday, several dozen farmers in Gusau, in Nigeria’s northwestern Zamfara State, were forced to evacuate their farmland after repeated threats from local armed groups, contributing to both internal displacement and food insecurity in Nigeria. | On Wednesday, 300 refugees living in the Cabo Badzere refugee camp in Cameroon signaled they were ready to return to the CAR, with another ~2.200 returns expected by the end of this year out of the ~300.000 CAR refugees currently living in Cameroon. | On Thursday, Reuters highlighted the displacement of ~6.000 Senegalese and Gambian civilians in recent weeks from along the border of The Gambia and Senegal’s southern Casamance province, fleeing conflict between Senegalese forces and separatist fighters. On the same day, commanders of the regional Multinational Joint Task Force congratulated themselves on major operations against Boko Haram around Lake Chad, which they claimed would allow the resumption of commerce and return of displaced people. | On Friday, HumAngle highlighted the plight of young children arriving to IDP camps in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno State, often with little or no memory of their parents’ identities, after having been rescued from Boko Haram camps cleared in military operations. | On Saturday, MSF disclosed that Mahamat Ahamat, a local employee of the NGO working as a medicines dispenser, had been shot and killed by a CAR soldier in the town of Moyenne-Sido, 500 kilometers north of Bangui.

Displacement in the Great Lakes area and southern Africa
Last Wednesday, authorities in South Sudan indicated they would be willing to receive returned refugees should Kenyan authorities make good on a prior commitment to close the Kakuma refugee camp by June 20 of this year, but demanded UNHCR assistance coordinating the effort and ensuring all returns were voluntary. On the same day, Africanews highlighted continuing protests by Burundian and Congolese refugees in South Africa, denouncing poor living conditions and xenophobia, and demanding that UNHCR facilitate their resettlement to third countries or repatriation to their country of origin. | On Friday, Namibian officials tallied ~8.000 refugees currently in Namibia, the majority from the DRC, while celebrating the return of all but 6 Namibian refugees from Botswana, in late 2019, on the heels of unrest triggered by a secession movement in Namibia’s northeastern Caprivi strip. | On Sunday, the Washington Post highlighted increasing concern in South Africa with the resurgence a populist movement known as Dudula, or pushback, which targets immigrants in with xenophobic abuse.

Sources: Addis Standard, Sudan Tribune, ENA, the EastAfrican, AFP, HumAngle, Voice of America, Reuters, the City Review, Africanews, New Era, the Washington Post.

Middle East and North Africa

Yemen’s civil war
Last Tuesday, OXFAM implored warring parties in Yemen’s civil war to extend the Ramadan truce begun last April 2, set to expire on June 1 (see OXFAM’s full statement here). On the same day, the IOM disclosed that ~27.800 people from the Horn of Africa have made irregular crossings into Yemen thus far this year—exceeding the total figure for all of 2021—to seek livelihood opportunities in the Persian Gulf. | On Wednesday, U.S. Ambassador to the UN lamented that extension negotiations remained at risk, as Yemen’s internationally-recognized government urged UN authorities to pressure Ansar Allah to loosen its blockade of the roads leading into Taiz as a condition to extend the truce. | On Thursday, UN Envoy Hans Grundberg announced that all parties to Yemen’s civil war had agreed to extend the existing truce by another 2 months, despite no breakthrough on the issue of Ansar Allah’s blockade of Taiz.

Asylum seeker (im)mobility in North Africa
Last Tuesday, UNHCR evacuated 132 asylum seekers from Libya to Rwanda, for a total of just under 8.300 such evacuations since 2017. | On Wednesday, MSF issued a statement denouncing asylum seeker pushbacks from Algeria and Libya into Niger, documenting over 14.000 such pushbacks from A.geria between January and May of this year (see MSF’s full statement here). On the same day, Libya’s Government of National Unity granted citizenship to 130 of 289 applicants, including the children of Libyan women married to foreign national.

Sources: al Jazeera, UN News, The Libya Observer, the New Arab.

Maritime Migration Routes to & through Europe

Central and western Mediterranean
Last Monday, the Ocean Viking (SOS Meditérrannée) received authorization from Italian authorities to disembark 294 asylum seekers it had rescued from 4 distressed vessels over the previous 5 days. On the same day, the Aurora (Sea-Watch) disembarked in Lampedusa 85 asylum seekers it had rescued the evening prior from a distressed vessel in the Maltese search-and-rescue zone. Also on Monday, IOM disclosed that 727 asylum seekers had been intercepted at sea by the Libyan Coast Guard and refouled to Libyan shores between May 22 and 28. | On Thursday, 44 asylum seekers arrived autonomously to Cyprus from Turkey, signaling 1 more person—whose lifeless body was eventually retrieved by authorities—had gone missing near land. On the same day, the Sea-Watch 3 rescued 148 asylum seekers from 2 distressed vessels in the Central Mediterranean. | On Friday, Italian Coast Guard vessels rescued 281 asylum seekers from multiple vessels in waters off of Lampedusa, as the Mare Jonio (Mediterrania Saving Humans) and the Sea Watch 3 rescued 29 and 85 asylum seekers, respectively. On the same day, the Libyan Coast Guard announced it had intercepted and pulled back to Libya 302 asylum seekers trying to reach European waters over the previous 3 days.

Ruta Canaria
Last Wednesday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 217 asylum seekers from 4 distressed vessels in waters off of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote. On the same day, 47 asylum seekers arrived autonomously to the port of Restinga, on the southern coast of El Hierro. | This Monday, Spanish police announced it had dismantled 2 illicit organization smuggling asylum seekers from Morocco to the Canary Islands, which had facilitated just over 200 successful crossings, at a cost of €3.000 each.

Sources: InfoMigrants, EFE.

Europe

European migration policymaking
Last Monday, interim Frontex Director Anja Kalnaja addressed EU parliamentarians, admitting that Frontex needed a change in culture that reflected the input of its fundamental rights officers, while revealing that former Director Fabrice Leggeri’s tenure and fall from grace were traumatic for the organization. | On Thursday, the European Court of Human Rights ruled on the H.M. and Others v. Hungary case, finding that Hungarian authorities had subjected an Iraqi Kurdish asylum seeking family to inhuman and degrading treatment over 4 months of detention following their arrival to the Tompa transit zone to demand asylum in Hungary, during which time they were confined but for urgent medical appointments, which they could only attend under invasive police surveillance. | On Friday, Europol announced it had dismantled a smuggling network responsible for the irregular arrival of ~10.000 asylum seekers into EU states, arresting 8 suspected ringleaders and seizing €900.000 in assets. | This Monday, Estonian media reported that authorities are preparing a legislative measure—similar to measures approved in Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia—that would allow border police to conduct pushbacks in the face of mass irregular migration events.

Displacement within and beyond Ukraine
Last Monday, Bulgarian authorities announced the termination of a program hosting ~90.000 Ukrainian refugees in Black Sea coastal hotels, compelling refugees to either transition to self-financed accommodation or to relocate to hosting facilities in Sofia and Elhovo, with advocacy groups criticizing the last-minute, poorly messaged termination. | On Tuesday, Czech firefighters erected a 150-bed tent facility to relocate Romani Ukrainian refugees who had been living informally in Prague’s railway station. | On Thursday, Frontex tallied that, since the Februrary 24 invasion, ~7 million refugees have fled Ukraine, including third-country nationals, ~2.3 million of whom subsequently returned, as another ~7 million people are believed to be internally displaced within Ukraine. | On Friday, Czech authorities relocated another 30 Ukrainian Romani refugees living informally in Brno’s central station. On the same day, Spanish authorities offered to relocate 2.000 Ukrainian refugees from Moldova. | On Sunday, Czech authorities approved a measure restricting allowances for Ukrainian refugees, capping health insurance coverage to 150 for all but vulnerable groups and cutting €200 payments to those living in state-provided accommodation—nominally to combat supposed ‘benefit tourism’ by Romani Ukrainians. On the same day, Swiss NGO Campex lamented that of the ~24.000 home placements it had facilitated for ~57.000 Ukrainian refugees among Swiss families, only ~4.500 have been approved by regional authorities.

Dystopia at the Home Office
Last Tuesday, the Home Office announced its first relocation flight removing asylum seekers to Rwanda would lift off on June 14, offshoring a yet-unknown number of asylum seekers currently in UK detention to Kigali. On the same day, the Home Office cancelled a deportation flight set to return 30 rejected asylum seekers to Iraqi Kurdistan after Kurdish authorities, who had not received returnees’ identifying details, refused to admit it. Also on Tuesday, local authorities in Linton-on-Ouse denounced the Home Office’s shambolic planning and messaging after receiving a last-minute notification that the relocation of the first 60 of 1.500 asylum seekers to be contained in a nearby RAF base, set to commence this week, would be postponed indefinitely. | On Wednesday, UK advocacy groups denounced that the passenger manifest for the June 14 relocation flight to Rwanda includes refugees from Syria and Afghanistan, as shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper accused the Home Office of chasing headlines with the announcement. | On Thursday, the Home Office admonished several asylum seekers, on hunger strike to protest their impending deportation to Rwanda on June 14, that their striking may lead to the deferral of their removal proceedings, but could also accelerate them. On the same day, UNHCR signaled that it considers the vast majority of irregular arrivals to the UK to be likely refugees, admonishing the Home Office’s claims to the contrary. | This Monday, asylum seekers pending removal revealed that they have been offered the option to return to their countries of origin as an alternative to removal to Rwanda, and that they have no option to appeal their inadmissibility determinations.

Med5 migration (mis)management
Last Tuesday, Italian authorities let expire the regulation mandating offshore COVID-19 isolation, on quarantine ships, for arriving asylum seekers. | On Friday, Spanish authorities disclosed that, as the result of a reform to its citizenship laws approved last October, ~9.300 refugee youth had obtained residency and work permits, after arriving to Spain as unaccompanied minors, and then aging out of UAM protection and losing regular status and access to services. | On Saturday, Italian authorities announced a 75.000-strong migrant worker admission quota for 2022. On the same day, 2 asylum seekers perished and another 12 were injured in a car accident that occurred near Greece’s northern city of Thessaloniki when a trafficker tried to evade a police checkpoint. | On Sunday, Spain and Morocco resumed regular ferry passage across the Straits of Gibraltar, ceased for months due to the Coronavirus pandemic and to diplomatic tensions. On the same day—after at least 5 days since arrival, dozens of distress calls, and an ECHR Rule 39 order to act—Greek police reached a group of ~50 asylum seekers stranded on an islet in the Evros River, making the Greco-Turkish border, after which point advocates lost contact with the group.

Sources: euobserver, InfoMigrants, ERR, bne IntelliNews, romea.cz, euractiv, swissinfo, the Guardian, Sky News, ANSA, el País, AP, Voice of America, the New Arab.

The Americas

U.S. migration policymaking
Last Monday, Mexican authorities disclosed that, between January and March of this year, U.S. authorities had repatriated just over 7.000 children to Mexico, nearly 5.500 of whom had entered U.S. soil as unaccompanied minors. | On Wednesday, DHS disclosed that 6.500 Ukrainian refugees have arrived to the U.S. under the United for Ukraine scheme, and that another 27.000 resettlement visas have been issued, joining an additional 22.000 Ukrainian refugees admitted across the U.S.-Mexico border in the last 3 months. | On Thursday, DHS officials disclosed that novel expedited asylum and removal proceedings, announced in March, had entered into effect this week, allowing USCIS officials to issue asylum decisions without the intervention of an immigration court and intended to decongest the chronically backlogged U.S. asylum adjudication system. On the same day, U.S. officials leaked emerging agreements with Canada and Spain to increase their resettlement of refugees from across Latin America, with Spain also slated to multiply its employment visa issuance to Central American migrant workers. | On Friday, Reuters highlighted setbacks U.S. plans to tackle root causes of migration in Central America as USAID has been forced to cancel major projects to capacity-build Guatemala’s and El Salavdor’s judiciaries in recent years, as a result of political interference in these countries’ judiciary institutions. On the same day, Canadian officials announced a one-off payment of $3.000 per adult, and $1.500 per child, to Ukrainian families recently settled in Canada to help them meet immediate needs upon arrival. | On Sunday, CNN highlighted a dramatic increase in cell phone application-based tracking of asylum seekers both inside and outside of immigration detention across the U.S., from ~6.000 just 3 years ago to ~185.000 nowadays.

Irregular migration in Latin America
Last Monday, the UN disclosed that, since 2016, its intranational mobility and livelihoods program has relocated just under 22.000 asylum seekers from southern Mexico to labor-scarce cities across the rest of the country, with 92% of those relocated subsequently finding formal employment. | On Tuesday, Centro de Dignificación Humana Director Luis García Villagrán announced that there were ~11.000 asylum seekers ready to depart Chiapas in a caravan set to begin transiting toward northern Mexico on June 6, when ongoing rains cease. | On Wednesday, Mexican authorities issued an unprecedented letter authorizing the Centro de Dignificación Humana’s caravan to begin transiting from southern Mexico toward the U.S.-Mexico border. | On Thursday, the Washington Office on Latin America issued a report denouncing Mexican immigration policies, documenting the abuse and endangerment faced by asylum seekers at Mexico’s southern border as a result of policies that prioritize containment over meeting humanitarian needs (see WOLA’s full report, in Spanish, here). On the same day, Guatemalan police turned over 52 irregular migrants to immigration authorities for registration and processing. | On Friday, Ecuadorian authorities announced a forthcoming status regularization campaign to register and offer residence permits to the ~513.000 displaced Venezuelans currently in Ecuador. On the same day, UNHCR signaled that, under Mexican law, permanent residency is not required for formal employment, lamenting that numerous employers in Tijuana, apparently unaware of this, wrongfully deny employment to holders of temporary humanitarian visas. Also on Friday, Cuban Red Cross officials confirmed that just over 585 of the nearly 850 Haitian asylum seekers, who had arrived irregularly in Cuba after a failed maritime crossing toward Florida, had been repatriated, with the remainder expected to be returned to Haiti in the coming week.

Sources: Expansión, CBS News, Voice of America, Axios, Reuters, Ukrinform, CNN, Excélsior, la Razón, EFE, AP, AGN, Deutsche-Welle, el Sol de Tijuana, Cubadebate.

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Today’s issue is reaching you on a Thursday and is a bit longer than usual—as I explained on Monday, I’ll be taking some time off (starting now!) and figured I’d extend this issue a bit and capture as much of what’s going on as possible before I go off-grid. MMh will be back in 2 weeks at most… and I would love to welcome a solid group of new readers to the newsletter when I come back from digital detox—so please share this issue and help your friends and colleagues find this space!

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Spotlight

Last week, a deranged and radicalized gunman killed 10 innocent Black people in Buffalo, New York, charging in his manifesto against the great replacement theory, which posits that national elites in Western states are deliberately importing foreign migrants to dilute white majorities and their electoral power.

This is horseshit—and yet right-wing media across the West propagate this, and countless other similar forms of horseshit, every time they cover migration.

I started this space nearly a year ago to try to compile honest coverage of global migration events and policy developments, and create a reference point for those interested in understanding migration as it unfolds in reality.

Migration, as a process, is much more intricate than above-named horseshit-peddlers could understand or pass on. Properly managed, migration can even become invisible: most Europeans live in a free-movement zone made possible by the ingraining of migration to the very core of the EU project, to the point that many migrating Europeans might not see themselves as migrants.

Migration is also dynamic—the product of millions of individual decisions that sometimes converge to create the appearance of a flow, and other times diverge and create the appereance of turbulence. The notion that elites could harness it to engineer demographic change—that migration could be harnessed to that precise of an end—is insane.

Migration can, on a good day, be channeled toward certain desired outcomes—though channels will fail unless they work for migrants as well as for the states trying to do the channeling. Migration is neither the scourge that populists cry foul over, nor the silver bullet to societal problems that advocates—myself included—conjure in fantasy. Migration is little more and little less than reality, from which societies and states (receiving and sending) can benefit, alongside migrants themselves, by applying equal doses of compassion and common sense to migration policymaking.

Neither of which are to be found in horseshit.

Juan: making about as much sense as the Great Replacement Theory, since October 2020.

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On to the news…

Asia

Post-occupation Afghanistan
Last Monday, the WFP and FAO issued March-November 2022 IPC forecasts for Afghanistan, tallying 19.7 million people facing acute hunger over the next 6 months, including 20.000 people facing level 5 catastrophic food insecurity between March and May in Afghanistan’s central Ghor Province. On the same day, ICRC Director Robert Mardini traveled to Tehran to discuss the plight of Afghan civilians in Iran with domestic authorities, as mistreatment of Afghan migrants in Iran continues roiling tensions on both sides of their shared border. | Last Friday, an attacker detonated a bomb at Ayuob Saber Mosque in Kabul, injuring 3 worshippers. | Last Saturday, Middle East Eye highlighted increasing enrollment in girls’ schools serving displaced Afghan communities in Iran over the last 6 weeks, as educational continuity contributes to the push factors driving Afghans to emigrate westward. |
This Monday, Taliban authorities announced their first annual budget since taking power last August, deploring a $501 million deficit, and announcing they would close 5 key government departments as a result, including Afghanistan’s Human Rights Commission and its High Council for National Reconciliation. | This Wednesday, the Taliban Ministry of Interior ordered that irregular crossing points long the border of Afghanistan and Iran be sealed, in an effort to crack down on cross-border human smuggling.

Myanmar and its neighbors
Last Thursday, Bangladeshi authorities detained 18 Rohingya refugees irregularly entering Bangladesh from India. On the same day, Bangladeshi authorities detained 3 Rohingya refugees in mainland Bangladesh for absconding from Bhasan Char, promptly returning them to the containment facility. Also last Thursday, a fire broke out in the Ukhia Rohingya refugee camp, near Cox’s Bazaar, injuring 6 camp residents, including 4 children. |
This Tuesday, a father and son caught in the previous Thursday’s fire succumbed to their injuries. On the same day, Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen acknowledged increasing irregular arrivals of Rohingya refugees from India, forewarning of the policy problem this poses Bangladesh, as it may push demand on thinly-stretched local capacity past sustainability. | On Wednesday, dissenters in Myanmar denounced that the military junta had begun suspending passport issuance and renewal to striking civil servants.

Economic and environmental disaster in South Asia
Last Monday, incumbent Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa resigned from his post as protests against his government’s misrule began turning violent across Sri Lanka. | Last Thursday, 5-time former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was appointed Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, offering known quantity to international funders as Sri Lanka begins pursuing a bailout. |
This Monday, newly-installed Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe announced that Sri Lanka had one day’s worth of petrol reserves remaining, pleading for assistance securing $75 million in foreign exchange to finance essential imports. | This Wednesday, scientists at the UK Met Office found that climate change has made heatwaves, such as the one currently decimating agricultural livelihoods in India and Pakistan, 100 times likelier than previously and on track to take place once every 3 years, as opposed to once every 3 centuries.

Sources: WFP-FAO, InfoMigrants, TOLOnews, Middle East Eye, Reuters, New Age, UNB, bdnews24, the Financial Express, the Irrawaddy, al Jazeera, the Guardian.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Ethiopia’s civil war
Last Monday, the BBC reported that fresh fighting had broken out between TPLF and Eritrean forces around the contested city of Badme. | Last Tuesday, a 99-truck carrying 3.600 tons of food aid and another 40 tons each of NFI and educational materials reached Mekelle, as UN officials continued pleading for greater humanitarian access to Tigray. On the same day, Addis Standard highlighted deteriorating conditions in Western Oromia, amid spiraling conflict that has already displaced half a million people. | Last Wednesday, WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus deplored that civilians in Tigray are continuing to starve and die of preventable disease, accusing Ethiopian authorities of engineering pitiful humanitarian outcomes by sustaining its blockade of Tigray. | Last Thursday, borkena signaled that the TPLF appears committed to a renewal of hostilities, reporting that it is mobilizing Tigrayans for novel fighting against Ethiopian and Eritrean forces. | Last Friday, the Amhara Regional State Security Council issued a statement indicating it is prepared to meet any novel TPLF attacks with force, portending renewed fighting in northern Ethiopia. | Last Saturday, Amharan authorities issued a report commissioned from local universities and researchers tallying ~7.000 civilian fatalities as a result of the TPLF’s partial occupation of Amhara between June and December of 2021. | Last Sunday, the first 40 of several hundred Ethiopian peacekeepers, fearful of returning home after the end of their deployment to South Sudan due to their Tigrayan origins, began arriving in Sudan where they hope to obtain asylum. |
This Monday, Reuters issued a report suggesting that the TPLF may be engaging in forced conscription to sustain its armed effort against the Ethiopian government. This Tuesday, Eritrean authorities accused the TPLF of planning to attack Eritrean soil as well as parts of Western Tigray currently occupied by Amharan militia and Ethiopian forces. | This Wednesday, 12 civil society organizations from across Africa wrote an open letter to the UN pleading that it not repeat its errors in 1994 Rwanda and act on warnings signs of further conflict and genocide before Ethiopia spirals into further conflict (see the full letter here). On the same day, Voice of America highlighted the dire state of education amid conflict in northern Ethiopia, as ~1.39 million children stand to miss on a third year of schooling if conflict flares up again.

Conflict and displacement in East Africa and the Sahel
Last Monday, 14 civilians and 1 soldier were killed in an attack against the Loda IDP camp in northeastern DRC’s Ituri Province. |
This Monday, the Guardian revealed that, in the weeks following the announcement of the UK-Rwanda refugee relocation deal, Rwandan President Paul Kagame has begun suggesting the deal gives him new leverage to demand the extradition of suspected 1994 génocidaires living in the UK.

Displacement and agricultural livelihoods in the Sahel
Last Tuesday, HumAngle relayed the difficulties faced by civilians in northern Burkina Faso, where deliberate attacks on hydraulic infrastructure—including the deliberate poisoning of 32 water treatment facilities—have left 300.000 civilians with access to only 3 liters of water per day. | Last Sunday, the ICRC announced it had distributed seeds and cash assistance to facilitate land and equipment rentals to 24.000 farmers displaced from Borno State in northeastern Nigeria.

Sources: BBC, IANS, Addis Standard, HumAngle, borkena, Bloomberg, Africanews, Reuters, the Guardian, VOA, the EastAfrican.

Middle East and North Africa

Syria’s civil war
Last Tuesday, an international donor conference raised $6.5 billion in humanitarian funding to support at-need Syrians within Syria, as well as Syrian refugees, over the next 2 years. | Last Sunday, ICRC President Peter Maurer bitterly complained about Western states’ indifference as to their own nationals held in detention in the al-Hol containment camp in northeastern Syria, where deprivation and radicalization both fester as Kurdish militias bear an outsized burden, both detaining militants of the Islamic State and sustaining their families. |
This Tuesday, the WFP issued a $10.1 million appeal to sustain its food distribution and cash assistance to ~72.000 Syrian refugees encamped in Iraqi Kurdistan, part of the ~260.000 Syrian refugees living in Iraq.

Yemen’s civil war
Last Wednesday, donors pledged the first $33 million of $144 million needed to salvage the 1.1 million barrels of oil held in the decaying FSO Safer off the coast of western Yemen. | Last Thursday, Yemeni officials announced that northern Yemen residents holding Ansar Allah-issued passports would be allowed to travel abroad through Sana’a International Airport, blockaded since the beginning of the war and re-opened in April as part of a Ramadan truce—until disputes over the travel rights of AA-issued passports were called into question. | Last Saturday, the Saudi-led coalition backing Yemen’s internationally-recognized government granted permission for 2 fuel ships to dock in Hodeidah, as the Ramadan ceasefire continues holding and delivering results, however slowly, for the Yemeni people. |
This Monday, the first commercial flight in 6 years departed from Sana’ a airport, with passengers holding dated Ansar Allah-issued passports to be issued new passports by Yemeni consular agencies upon the flight’s arrival in Amman. This Wednesday, Ansar Allah announced it was considering a possible extension of the ongoing truce with the Saudi-led coalition, beyond its 2 months of current operation.

Asylum seeker (im)mobility in North Africa, migrant labor abuse in the Gulf
Last Thursday, Algerian authorities condemned to death an army deserter and whistleblower who had been denied asylum by French and Spanish authorities, and deported from Spain to Algeria in late March. | Last Friday, Moroccan police detained 22 asylum seekers and arrested 7 suspected smugglers in Laayoune as they prepared to embark on an irregular crossing toward the Canary Islands. |
This Thursday, a global coalition of human rights groups called on FIFA to set aside $440 million—equivalent to the minimum prize awarded to each World Cup participating country—to compensate migrant workers abused in stadium construction and tourism services leading up to the 2022 World Cup (see the coalition’s full letter here).

Sources: ANSA, the Washington Post, WFP, UN News, Reuters, IANS, AFP, the New Arab, Público, Morocco World News, the Guardian.

Maritime Migration Routes to the West

Ruta Canaria
Last Tuesday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 59 asylum seekers from a distressed vessel in waters east of Lanzarote, one day after rescuing 13 asylum seekers and tallying 28 missing people from a vessel that sank ~120 kilometers south of Gran Canaria. | Last Wednesday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued another 223 asylum seekers, followed by another 318 on Thursday. | Last Sunday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 114 asylum seekers from 4 vessels off the coasts of Lanzarote and Gran Canaria. On the same day, the Moroccan Cost Guard rescued 46 asylum seekers, recovered 2 lifeless bodies, and tallied 11 missing persons from a shipwreck off the southern Moroccan coastal city of TanTan. |
This Tuesday, Spanish authorities tallied just under 1.000 irregular arrivals to the Canary Islands in the last 2 weeks alone. | This Wednesday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 104 asylum seekers from 2 inflatable dinghies in waters 94 and 245 kilometers south of Gran Canaria.

Central and western Mediterranean
Last Wednesday, Tunisian authorities announced they had intercepted 248 asylum seekers, and retrieved 3 lifeless bodies, from 10 vessels trying to reach European waters. | Last Thursday, the GeoBarents (MSF) announced it had rescued 470 asylum seekers in multiple operations over the previous 3 days, mainly in the Maltese search-and-rescue zone. | Last Friday, Libya’s Coast Guard announced it had intercepted 673 asylum seekers from 3 vessels off of the Libyan coast. | Last Saturday, the Tunisian Coast Guard rescued 81 asylum seekers from a damaged boat taking on water 6 kilometers off of Tunisia’s northern Coast. | Last Sunday, the Sea-Eye disembarked 58 asylum seekers—34 of whom it had picked up after a cargo ship had rescued them in the week, and another 24 of whom it had rescued on Thursday—in Pozzallo. |
This Monday, the Italian Coast Guard rescued 500 asylum seekers pursuant to a distress call relayed by Alarm Phone. On the same day, the Libyan Coast Guard intercepted a rubber dinghy carrying 41 asylum seekers toward European shores, returning them to Libya. | This Wednesday, Spanish authorities intercepted 40 asylum seekers sailing toward the Balearic Islands in 3 vessels. On the same day, the Astral (Open Arms) rescued 115 asylum seekers from 2 vessels, transferring all to Italian Coast Guard ships. Also this Wednesday, the Ocean Viking (SOS Méditerranée) rescued 158 asylum seekers from 2 inflatable dinghies in waters off the coast of Libya.

Gulf of Mexico
Last Tuesday, U.S. authorities tallied 58 irregular arrivals to the Florida Keys in 6 separate autonomous landings. | Last Wednesday, the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted a vessel carrying 207 Haitian asylum seekers in waters south of the Turks and Caicos, returning them summarily to Haiti. | Last Thursday, the U.S. Coast Guard rescued 31 asylum seekers, and tallied 11 fatalities, from a boat that capsized in waters off of western Puerto Rico. |
This Monday, the U.S. Coast Guard called off its search-and-rescue efforts west of Puerto Rico, having rescued 38 shipwrecked asylum seekers in total. | This Tuesday, 28 Cuban asylum seekers arrived autonomously in 2 vessels to the Florida Keys, where they were promptly apprehended for likely repatriation. On the same day the U.S. Coast Guard repatriated to Cuba 55 asylum seekers intercepted at sea from 6 vessels between May 9 and 14.

Aegean Sea
Last Saturday, the Greek Coast Guard rescued 20 Syrian asylum seekers from a distressed vessel in waters west of Rhodes. | Last Sunday, a group of 62 asylum seekers became stranded off the coast of Kithira, as the boat in which they were trying to sail irregularly to Italy suffered engine failure off the coast of Greece’s southern Peloponnese peninsula.

The English Channel
Last Sunday, the Ministry of Defence announced that 436 asylum seekers had reached UK soil on Sunday, on the heels of another 167 arrivals on Saturday.

Sources: InfoMigrants, EFE, Morocco World News, AFP, Alarm Phone, LCNA, Majorca Daily Bulletin, the Miami Herald, CBS Miami, the Guardian, Reuters, ekathimerini, Aegean Boat Report, BBC.

Europe

Displacement within and beyond Ukraine
Last Wednesday, UNHCR tallied that just under 6.030.000 refugees have fled Ukraine since Russia invaded in late February, roughly 90% of them comprised of women and children. | Last Thursday, the European Commission disclosed that, as of May 8, ~2.7 million displaced Ukrainians have registered for temporary protection in EU states, with the remainder either hesitating to register due to imperfect information regarding proceedings, or because they intend to return—as 1.6 million Ukrainians already have. | Last Saturday, an evacuation convoy of 500-1.000 cars reached Zaporizhzhia from Mariupol, in the largest humanitarian evacuation since the Russian siege of the port city began in March. | Last Sunday, local authorities tallied 2.000 refugee returns to Kharkiv, as UNHCR figures tally just under 1.7 million border crossings into Ukraine since February 28, though it remains unclear how many of these represent permanent returns. |
This Monday, ~260 Ukrainian soldiers were evacuated from the Azovstal steel plant, where they had held out as Russian forces gained control over the rest of Mariupol, with 53 relocating to hospital in Novoazovsk and another 200+ to Olenivka—both Russian-held Ukrainian towns. | On Wednesday, Russian authorities announced that 959 soldiers had surrendered in total from the Azovstal Steel plant, 51 of whom were being treated in hospital while the remainder were being held in detention, as Ukrainian and Russian authorities issued conflicting messages as to whether or not they would be returned to government-controlled parts of Ukraine under a prisoner exchange or held indefinitely in Russian custody. On the same day, UN Secretary General António Guterres lamented that the global food crisis provoked by the Russian invasion of Ukraine could last for years if left unaddressed, as the World Bank announced $12 billion in novel funding for agro-production boosting, trade promotion, and household support, on top of $18 billion already committed to these ends.

Med5 migration (mis)management
Last Wednesday, a fire broke out at the Pournara asylum seeker reception center in Cyprus, injuring 6 residents. | Last Thursday, Greece’s National Transparency Agency released the findings of its investigation on border control practices—which according to an April 29 press release had found no evidence of pushbacks—but was forced to withdraw the report just one day later when it became clear that poor anonymization had exposed the identities of numerous informants. On the same day, Italy’s Fondazione Leone Moressa issued a report tallying a 12.2% increase in remittances from Italy to migrant worker countries of origin, with the largest outflows reaching Bangladesh, Pakistan, and the Philippines. |
This Monday, the Puglia branch of Coldiretti, Italy’s farmers association, called for the urgent acceleration in visa issuance for seasonal agricultural workers, warning that harvests could be lost if migrant workers were not invited to help collect them. On the same day, Italian authorities signed an MoU with the national builders association and sector-specific labor unions to train 3.000 refugees in construction work, with the aim of enabling to support their own livelihoods. Also this Monday, a group of 15 Turkish asylum seekers denounced that they had been brutalized and pushed back by Greek border guards in recent weeks at the Evros river, leading to their immediate apprehension by Turkish authorities. | This Wednesday, 2 asylum seekers went on trial in Samos accused of facilitating illegal entry and endangering lives, after the dinghy in which they tried to reach Europe capsized in November 2020, with the pilot and the father of a deceased child facing up to a decade’s imprisonment if found guilty. On the same day, residents of the €43 million asylum seeker containment center in Samos endured their 12th consecutive day without running water, as a broken pump and authorities’ generalized indifference in its repair have left residents with access to roughly 1 hour of running water per day, only partly compensated by bottled water distributions. Also this Wednesday, the two asylum seekers on trial in Samos were released, one acquitted of all charges and the other handed a 17-month suspended sentence.

The Home Office, never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity
Last Friday, High Court Justice Robert Jay ruled in the case of E3 and N3, two UK nationals of Bangladeshi origins who had been wrongfully stripped of their citizenship, finding that their daughter ZA, born during period of anomalous statelessness, had not been born a UK national and would thus need to apply for citizenship. | Last Saturday, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that the first 50 asylum seekers to be relocated to Rwanda would be departing within the fortnight, claiming that his government was ready for any legal challenges that might stand in the way. On the same day, the Observer signaled that thousands of hosts registered with the Homes for Ukraine scheme have not yet completed background checks, revealing yet another dire safeguarding gap as visa issuances exceed 100.000 and arrivals near 50.000. | Last Sunday, the Home Office leaked its intention to commission an inquiry into the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, an independent body set up in the aftermath of the Windrush scandal, which recently called for an investigation of its own into the Home Office’s refugee relocation deal with Rwanda. On the same day, the Independent revealed that the Home Office’s habitual pursuit of legal challenges to their fullest extent even in cases where civil servants advise settlement, have cost British taxpayers dearly, as legal bills for lost cases have doubled from £17.1 to £35.2 million, and restitutive payments quadrupled from £2.1 to £9.3 million, over the last 5 years. |
This Thursday, Rwandan officials announced they expect to receive the first group of 50 refugees relocated from the UK by the end of May.

Sources: al Jazeera, euobserver, Reuters, UPI, InfoMigrants, the Guardian, Politico, ANSA, Stockholm Center for Freedom, Middle East Eye, the Telegraph, the Independent.

The Americas

U.S. migration policymaking
Last Wednesday, Border Report relayed the unusual arrival in the week prior of ~3.500 Haitian asylum seekers to Nuevo Laredo—a border city whose high crime rate makes it unattractive to asylum seekers—in the apparent expectation that Title 42 would soon be lifted, and the subsequent departure of ~1.400 from the group in the hopes of finding work in Monterrey. | Last Friday, 20 suing states argued in Federal Court to have the forthcoming repeal of Title 42 reversed, pleading that the CDC had not met standard notice-and-comment requirements before announcing it would rescind the policy, with the court committing to issue a ruling by the May 23 termination date. |
This Tuesday, U.S. authorities repatriated 132 rejected asylum seekers to Guatemala, inviting press, in an unusual move, to the tarmac as deportees were boarding their expulsion flight. | This Wednesday, U.S. authorities opened near Laredo the first of 8 new asylum seeker reception centers to be brought online along the U.S.-Mexico border, consolidating law enforcement, asylum officers, and other service providers for streamlined processing ahead of an increase in arrivals expected with the repeal of Title 42. | This Thursday, U.S. authorities announced they had administered COVID-19 vaccination to 20.000 asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border since late March.

Irregular migration in Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean
Last Wednesday, Guatemalan authorities announced they had detained 17 Venezuelan asylum seekers shortly after their irregular entry into Guatemala. | Last Thursday, 120 asylum seekers staged a protest after being transported there from Tapachula to Oaxaca, under the pretense that their residency permits would be processed more quickly, and then told on arrival they would be contained for 20 days before issuance. | Last Sunday, Venezuelan human rights activist Yesenia Gonzalez denounced that authorities in Trinidad and Tobago were routinely undermining the rights of Venezuelan refugees, up to and including unlawfully repatriating individual refugees to Venezuela. |
This Wednesday, Panamanian Foreign Minister Erika Mouynes disclosed that irregular crossings into Panama have plummeted, from 2.800 per day a year ago to 180 per day today, attributing the decline to effective cross-border collaboration to dismantle smuggling organizations across Central America. On the same day, Mexican authorities found the lifeless bodies of 5 asylum seekers who appeared to have mistakenly boarded a southbound cargo train, taking them away from the U.S.-Mexico border, and then succumbed to heatstroke and dehydration. | Also this Wednesday, Honduras’ Foro Social de la Deuda Externa issued a report finding that 69% of Honduran asylum seekers repatriated from the U.S. or transit countries en route hope to emigrate again.

Sources: Border Report, the Arizona Republic, CBS News, AGN, EFE, Trinidad & Tobago Guardian, Bloomberg.

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Thank you to all of you who shared MMh last week. It had been a long time since I had received 20+ new subscribers in a week. Think we can get to 500 subscribers in total by MMh’s 1-year anniversary in another month? Thank you as well to the readers who access MMh through a paid subscription. Your support means the world to me! MMh is freely available, and will remain so for as long as I can sustain it. If you appreciate what you find here every week, and you’d like to help me keep it coming, please consider switching to a paid subscription. I’ve set rates as low as I can. If you can’t afford to, no problem—you can still share MMh and help me grow this space! Thank you again for your support.

Spotlight

Last week’s Spotlight should have covered the resignation of Fabrice Leggeri as Executive Director of Frontex, but instead I had already written on a different subject by the time he announced his resignation. I just finished recording a new episode of the Fractured Podcast, where I discuss his resignation—so rather than re-write that here, I’ll invite you to listen to it when it drops (should be this Thursday). In the meantime, I thought I would brainstorm a bit what Frontex could look like, if its priorities in recent years had been to fulfill its stated mission (controlling EU external borders while upholding human rights). Were Frontex to operate according to its mandate, its tasks might include:

• Deterring irregular arrivals—non-violently. This could involve installing and monitoring border markers and patrolling unmarked borders, to discourage irregular entry and channel arriving asylum seekers toward regular crossing points.

• Providing basic assistance to irregular arrivals once they have taken place. It is not the role of Frontex, nor of any border force, to adjudicate whether an arriving individual is a refugee or a non-refugee migrant.—that is a task for competent asylum authorities. As soon as asylum seekers have entered domestic soil, all border police can do is registration and assistance, never deterrence or summary return.

• Ensuring security along external borders—to protect not the state from the perceived threat of irregular migration, but rather to protect asylum seekers from localized threats. Such threats could range from the weather, natural predators, petty criminals, or anti-migration extremists. In some cases, smugglers and ill-intended individuals among asylum seeker groups could also constitute a threat—and in this case, the only way for Frontex agents to discern those individuals would be by cultivating the trust of the asylum seekers it encounters… by extending them protection, rather than treating all of them as threats.

• Coordinating anti-trafficking initiatives, to ensure that vulnerable asylum seekers are not subjected to additional abuse, and to dismantle trafficking networks existing within Europe and looking to gain from asylum seeker arrivals.

• Coordinating maritime search-and-rescue.

• Registering and identifying arrivals, with an eye to supporting community settlement of asylum seekers rather than containment in closed controlled centers.

This is far from a comprehensive list, and it’s 100% aspirational. That being said, I also think it’s more realistic than aspiring for Frontex to be abolished—which, much as I would like to see happen, I don’t think will. The question is whether the EU is now going to prove willing to and capable of reining in an agency that went completely rogue under Mr. Leggeri’s directorship. My expectations are realistic.

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On to the news…

Asia

Post-occupation Afghanistan
Last Monday, heavy rainfall caused severe flooding in 12 Afghan provinces, killing 29 civilians and damaging or destroying 2.500 homes, displacing an unknown number. On the same day, Uzbek authorities delivered 4.000 tons of food and medial aid to the cross-border town of Hairatan. | On Wednesday, Germany’s Interior Ministry leaked its intention to set a cap of 5.000 further arrivals on its refugee resettlement program for at-risk Afghans, which has thus far received 3.000 Afghans, and admitted another 10.000 who have yet to leave Afghanistan. | On Friday, Pakistani officials ruled out conferring refugee status to increasing numbers of Afghans accumulating in Pakistan to apply for P-1 and P-2 visas, which would allow relocation to the U.S. upon issuance, but whose processing is advancing exceedingly slowly. On the same day, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction reported to the U.S. Congress that 24 million Afghans, or 70% of the population, are unable to provide for their basic needs and in urgent need of humanitarian assistance. | On Saturday, Taliban leadership announced that women would henceforth be required wear the burka in public, and admonished to step out of their homes only when strictly necessary. | This Monday, TOLOnews relayed concerns from irregular Afghan migrants over a forthcoming cesus by Iranian auhorities, leading to fears the information collected will be used to blacklist them from housing and employment.

Myanmar and its neighbors
Last Monday, Malaysian authorities announced they had detained 30 Rohingya refugees in waters off the island of Pulau Lima, off of mainland Malaysia’s northeast coast, where their vessel had run out of fuel. On the same day, Indian police announced they had detained 24 Rohingya refugees in Tripura state, bordering Bangladesh, but released them upon finding they were registered with UNHCR. | On Tuesday, local resistance units accused the Tatmadaw of detaining 300 civilians for interrogation after suffering an ambush outside of Yangon. On the same day, Fortify Rights blasted Thailand’s treatment of displaced Burmese, releasing a video appearing to show Thai forces destroy a footbridge over the Wa Le river, marking the border between Myanmar and Thailand. | On Wednesday, the FAO released its 2022 Global Report on Food Crises, tallying that 64% of Rohingya are severely food insecure, with this food insecurity leading to a 95% dependency on humanitarian aid among the Rohingya community. | On Thursday, Bangladeshi police detained 450 Rohingya refugees celebrating Eid on a beach near Cox’s Bazaar. On the same day, Bangladeshi authorities defended recent closures of community schools in Rohingya refugee camps, claiming the facilities closed were not schools but training centers that charged students for study, undermining official education programming to turn lessons into a commodity. | On Friday, Thai authorities deported 130 Burmese asylum seekers, at least some of whom had originated in Rakhine State, and intercepted 8 more trying to irregularly enter Thailand. | On Saturday, Malaysian Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah called for 3rd countries to increase Rohingya refugee resettlement from Malaysia. | On Sunday, Malaysian authorities detained 20 Burmese asylum seekers, suspected of having entered Malaysia via irregular means, as well as 1 smuggler.

Sources: TOLOnews, InfoMigrants, VOA, FMT, IANS, Fortify Rights, the Daily Star, AFP, bdnews24, Bangkok Post, Malay Mail.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Ethiopia’s civil war
Last Tuesday, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission lamented increasing difficulties for media workers in Ethiopia, in the form of increasing threats of harassment as well as the imposition of extortionate costs to conduct their business. | On Thursday, UN officials announced that a convoy of 27 trucks bearing 1.000 tons of aid had entered Mekelle, for a total of only 169 trucks bearing 4.300 tons of aid delivered since a ceasefire was proclaimed in early April—far less than what the TPLF expected when it acceded to the ceasefire, or than Tigrayan civilians need to stay alive. | On Friday, the BBC relayed testimonials of a concerted effort to destroy evidence of war crimes in Tigray, including instances of Amharan militias exhuming mass graves to burn and relocate civilian remains, in progress since the UN Human Rigths Council approved the creation of a monitoring body to document human rights abuses in Ethiopia. | On Sunday, the Eritrean Press Agency reported that the TPLF had demanded international support restraining Eritrea from intervening in a supposed intended assault to recover Western Tigray from occupying Amharan forces. On the same day, UN-OCHA appealed for urgent deliveries of seed, fertilizer, and pesticides to embattled areas of Tigray and Amhara states ahead of the June-September rainy season, where ~85% of Ethiopia’s staple crops are planted.

Conflict and displacement in the Sahel, displacement and cross-border mobility in East Africa
Last Wednesday, UNHCR disclosed that, amid increasing regional conflict, there have been 36.000 refugee arrivals to Niger from Nigeria, Mali, and Burkina Faso since the beginning of the year. | On Saturday, novel fighting broke out in the Tshilenge district of Kasai-Oriental region in the DRC, displacing several thousand civilians. | This Monday, Kenya’s National Bureau of Statistics issued its Economic Survey 2022, documenting a doubling in commerce between Kenya in Tanzania as a result of bilateral relaxations in trade and in cross-border labor mobility.

Sources: Addis Standard, UN News, BBC, IANS, UNHCR, HumAngle, the EastAfrican.

Middle East and North Africa

Displacement in the Levant and Arabian Peninsula
Last Monday, ~3.000 Yazidi civilians were displaced from the Sinjar district on the heels of fighting between Iraqi security forces and local YBS militias, as Iraqi forces, invited by Erbil to restore Iraqi state presence in Sinjar, met resistance when trying to dismantle YBS checkpoints. | On Thursday, Syria Relief pleaded for international donors to supplant the funding it lost as a result of UK authorities’ 2021 foreign aid reductions, lamenting that 40.000 children in Syria stood to lose access to its 133 schools, amid a range of services affected by a 69% reduction in UK aid financing to Syria. | On Friday, Middle East Eye disclosed increasing abuses against mainly Ethiopian and Yemeni migrant detainees in Saudi Arabia, whose numbers have grown dramatically since a repatriation agreement offered Saudi authorities an excuse to expand a dragnet apprehending Ethiopian nationals and keeping them in pre-removal detention.

Asylum seeker (im)mobility in Turkey and North Africa
Last Tuesday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced a plan intended to relocate ~1 million Syrian refugees to Turkish-controlled areas in northern Syria, and to develop infrastructure to support such large-scale returns. | On Thursday, 128 Nigerian asylum seekers were repatriated from Libya, under IOM facilitation. | On Friday, Moroccan authorities disclosed they had intercepted just under 14.250 asylum seekers at sea over the previous year, and had already intercepted another 97 thus far this year. | On Sunday, Tunisian authorities tallied 25.000 border crossings from Libya in the 3 days following Eid, attributing the sudden increase to the accumulation of mobility needs over the course of Ramadan. On the same day, Turkish authorities tallied just over ~4.080.000 refugees living in Turkey, including just over 3.762.500 Syrians holding temporary residency permits.

Sources: AP, the Guardian, Middle East Eye, InfoMigrants, the Libya Observer, EFE, Hürriyet.

Maritime Migration Routes to & through the West

Atlantic routes—to the Great Britain and the Canaries
Last Monday, 293 asylum seekers reached UK soil on 9 vessels, contributing to over 500 arrivals in just 3 days after an 11-day lull misleadingly attributed to the announcement of the UK-Rwanda relocation deal. | On Friday, 116 asylum seekers reached UK soil in 4 vessels across the English Channel. On the same day, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 118 asylum seekers from a vessel in waters off of Gran Canaria. | On Saturday, UK authorities rescued 169 asylum seekers from 11 vessels in the English Channel, disembarking them in Dover. | On Sunday, at least 44 asylum seekers drowned after their vessel capsized in waters off of Cape Boudjour, with another 12 survivors apprehended and 7 lifeless bodies retrieved by the Moroccan Coast Guard.

Central and western Mediterranean
Last Monday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 29 asylum seekers from a vessel that had stalled ~7 miles southeast of Tarifa. | On Tuesday, the GeoBarents disembarked the 101 asylum seekers it had rescued in the Sicilian port of Augusta. | On Wednesday, IOM disclosed that 246 asylum seekers had been intercepted by Libyan Coast Guard vessels and forcibly returned to Libya over the week prior. | On Thursday, a Turkish vessel intercepted 17 asylum seekers in waters off of Misrata, returning them to Libya for likely detention and abuse. | On Friday, Italian Coast Guard officers rescued 108 asylum seekers, and retrieved 2 lifeless bodies, from a sailboat that reached the coast of Calabria autonomously and then ran aground and tipped over near a jetty. On the same day, 34 asylum seekers sent a distress signal from a vessel in rough waters in the Maltese search-and-rescue zone, neglected by authorities though shadowed by a cargo ship unable to effect a rescue. | On Saturday, Libyan Coast Guard vessels rescued 20 asylum seekers from punctured vessel sinking off the coast of Zuwara. | On Sunday, the SeaEye 4 facilitated the rescue of 34 asylum seekers who remained adrift in the Maltese SAR zone, coordinating the support of 2 passing container ships in the absence of official EU or state assistance, as the Sea-Watch 4 rescued another 88 asylum seekers in a separate operation. | This Monday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 13 asylum seekers and tallied 28 missing persons from a vessel in waters off of the Canary Islands.

Gulf of Mexico
Last Thursday, 4 Cuban asylum seekers arrived autonomously in the Florida Keys, where they were apprehended by U.S. authorities for likely repatriation to Cuba. | This Monday, authorities announced, over the weekend, they had intercepted 6 vessels carrying 58 asylum seekers toward Florida.

Aegean Sea
Last Friday, a group of 18 asylum seekers contacted Alarm Phone claiming they had reached Greek waters and were approaching the coast of Lesvos when they were pushed back into Turkish waters and deposited into unnavigable life rafts, from which they were eventually rescued by the Turkish Coast Guard. | On Saturday, Greek authorities located 106 asylum seekers on a half-sunk vessel in shallow waters off the shore of Kos, transferring them to the island’s Reception and Identification Center.

Sources: BBC, Simon Jones, EFE, KentOnline, AFP, InfoMigrants, the Libya Observer, Europa Press, the Times of Malta, Local10, Alarm Phone, KeepTalkingGreece.

Europe

Displacement within and beyond Ukraine
Last Monday, legal advocates revealed they are preparing a collective lawsuit against the Home Office on behalf of Ukrainian refugees unable to access UK soil under the Homes for Ukraine scheme, alleging that less than 12.000 out of nearly 75.000 applicants for the scheme have managed to reach the UK—despite 59.000 visas having been approved—with a significant proportion of successful applicants not having been notified of visa issuance. | On Wednesday, 344 civilians were able to evacuate from Mariupol and reach safety in Zaporizhzhia. | On Thursday, German authorities announced they had received just over 610.000 refugees from Ukraine since the outbreak of hostilities on February 24, ~ 1.5% of whom were third-country nationals residing in Ukraine. | On Friday, Human Rights Watch issued a report beseeching Ukrainian authorities to release asylum seekers in detention in containment centers in Mykolaiv and Zhuravychi, detailing how detainees in yet another center in Chernihiv were released when hostilities broke out, but that those of these other centers were only offered release if they joined the war effort. | On Saturday, Ukrainian authorities confirmed that all civilians had been evacuated from the besieged Azovstal complex in Mariupol, leaving only military personnel in the interior of the plant. On the same day, inews issued a report identifying 66 relocation camps across Russia holding an estimated 6.025 Ukrainian nationals, removed from Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine and into the Russian interior likely under duress. | On Sunday, the Observer revealed that UK authorities were scrambling to find appropriate accommodation to 600 Ukrainian refugees who had arrived to the UK under the Homes for Ukraine scheme, but whose intended hosts were deemed unsuitable pursuant to background checks. | This Monday, just over 170 civilians reached Zaporizhzhia after being evacuated from Mariupol 2 days prior, including 51 civilians who had been hiding in the Azovstal plant, and the remainder from other parts of the city.

European migration policymaking
Last Tuesday, advocates lodged the first legal challenge against the UK-Rwanda refugee relocation deal, on behalf of an Iranian asylum seeker claiming his integration prospects in Rwanda would be null—prompting the Home Office to back down from relocating him but leaving questions as to how relocation selections are conducted. | On Wednesday, the European Parliament further delayed approving Frontex’s budget, demanding to see the findings of a longstanding investigation by the EU anti-fraud agency before voting on the Frontex budget. | On Thursday, Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson noted to the EU Parliament that she was awaiting reply from Polish authorities to a Commission inquiry as to the environmental impact of the border fence being built through the primal forest of Białowieża, amid accusations from a broad range of parties that the Commission had failed to step up in defense of Europe’s natural environment and of sound migration policy. | On Friday, Médecins sans Frontières demanded that Lithuanian authorities release 2.500 asylum seekers held in detention for the last 9 months since they attempted to enter EU soil from Belarus. | This Monday, Spanish police commander for the Canary Islands Rafael Martínez stated his belief that irregular migration and criminality are separate and distinct phenomena, and that the former does not contribute to the latter.

Med5 migration (mis)management
Last Tuesday, the Greek Refugee Council, Oxfam, and Save the Children issued a report deploring Greece’s 2-tier refugee system, that has deployed services and support of Ukrainian arrivals virtually overnight, that asylum seekers from other countries still struggle to access despite years of advocacy (see the full report here). | On Thursday, a Greek court sentenced 3 asylum seekers who survived a deadly shipwreck to then be questionably accused of migrant smuggling, to sentences between 126 and 187 years’ imprisonment.

Sources: the Guardian, Deutsche-Welle, Human Rights Watch, inews, euobserver, MSF, EFE, InfoMigrants, borderline-europe.

The Americas

U.S. migration policymaking
Last Tuesday, the AP relayed demands by Ukrainian refugees and advocates for faster processing under the Uniting with Ukraine scheme, which allows displaced Ukrainians to apply for resettlement from abroad, as Ukrainians arriving in Mexico, no longer exempt from Title 42, accumulate in a temporary camp in Mexico City. | On Wednesday, CNN reported that the Biden Administration has included an Afghan Adjustment Act in a recent budget proposal, which would allow Afghan evacuees with humanitarian parole or temporary protected status, 1 year after their arrival to the U.S., to apply for permanent residency. | On Friday, the U.S, Border Patrol terminated several shadowy units conducting internal investigations without official authority and suspected of systematically covering up misconduct by Border Patrol agents.

Irregular migration in Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean
Last Tuesday, the Observatorio Consular y Migratorio de Honduras revealed that just over 35.500 asylum seekers have been returned to Honduras thus far this year, mainly from the U.S. and Mexico. | On Wednesday, Mexican authorities identified 275 asylum seekers, including 67 children, found in a truck trailer that had been abandoned by smugglers in the state of Veracruz. | On Friday, Mexican authorities disclosed they had received just over 40.000 asylum claims in the first 4 months of this year, a 27% increase from the same period in 2021, when over the whole year Mexico received a record ~131.500 asylum claims. | On Saturday, a caravan of 47 Central American mothers of missing asylum seekers reached Mexico City, to demonstrate in front of the Zócalo palace and demand information on the whereabouts of their sons—or of their remains. | On Sunday, Mexican authorities announced they would open Mexico’s population registry to nationals of Guatemala and Belize, allowing them to perform cross-border work under regular contracts and access benefits entitled to them by virtue of their payroll tax contributions. On the same day, authorities detained just over 1.600 asylum seeers from 38 countries across Mexico, as Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador was overseas discussing migration management with his regional counterparts. Also on Sunday, the U.S. Congressional Research Service released findings tallying that, from 2013 to the present day, Mexican authorities have granted asylum to ~76.800 out of ~341.800 asylum seekers, for a recognition rate of ~22%, all while leaving ~224.475 asylum claims unexamined.

Migration and its drivers in South America
Last Wednesday, U.S. authorities announced a $6 million aid package for Venezuelan refugees living in Chile. On the same day, Colombian authorities announced the launch of a $15.8 million plan to provide healthcare to displaced Venezuelans, funded mainly by Spain and the EU. | On Friday, Venezuelan authorities claimd that 340.000 displaced Venezuelans had returned to their home country in recent months under the Vuelta a la Patria plan. | This Monday, El País released a poll suggesting that 52.5% of Colombians oppose the status regularization of displaced Venezuelans in Colombia, with only 42.4% supporting Colombian authorities’ reception and integration efforts.

Sources: AP, CNN, San Diego Union-Tribune, EFE, Deutsche-Welle, Border Report, La Jornada, infobae, El Economista, el mostrador, infobae, Prensa Latina, El País.

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Before we proceed, I need to ask you a solid: your opinion. MMh is an open resource that—I can only hope—provides a useful service to readers by consolidating disparate information and threading it into a coherent narrative. Is it just me telling myself this? Yes, I’m asking for your feedback. To be brutally honest: I benefit from writing MMh—by learning loads through the week as I write it up—whether or not you benefit as well when you receive it each Monday. I’m not doing this for myself, however: it’s important for me to know if MMh is as useful to my readership as it is to me. Is it?

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Spotlight

This Spotlight should cover the long-overdue resignation of Fabrice Leggeri, head of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, but I got inspired to write about something else the day before… see why it’s important to procrastinate? So, if you want to know more about Leggeri’s resignation, start with Der Spiegel’s latest report on Frontex’s wrongdoing, and continue with Lighthouse Reports borders newsrooms’ extensive investigative work. Lighthouse deserves huge credit for uncovering sustained wrongdoing and misuse of European taxpayer funds over the last few years—it’s hard to overstate its impact. Congratulations and thank you.

All that being said… the World Bank said last Tuesday that humanity is in for three or so years of dramatically increased fuel and food commodities costs, as a consequence of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and that’s a pretty big deal too. Per the World Bank’s forecast, the twin commodity shocks could lead to global stagflation. This period of unexpected economic stress, in an era of increasing environmental stress, can only drag down human security outcomes—worldwide. For the comfortable, life will get a bit less comfortable. For the resilient, life will likely get more trying. For the already vulnerable, life will become more precarious, leading some to greater undeserved suffering and others to complete devastation. Cue: misplaced fears of dramatic increases in irregular migration…

Migration plays a spectacular—if misunderstood and underrated—role in economic development. Simplifying many complexities, migration benefits sending and receiving countries alike. It allows developed economies to sustain employment in hard-to-fill sectors, at every skill level of their labor markets. It also pipes cash not just into the economies of developing countries, but also at the level where it is most needed and most effectively spent—the household.

For the last seven decades, migration has been to Europe’s economic growth both a fuel and an emission. In the immediate post-war era, young laborers emigrated in droves from Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain, to work abroad. While their labor rebuilt northern Europe’s battered infrastructure, their remittances nurtured their home countries’ economies. (Economically) healthier PIGS allowed more and more yesterday’s emigrants to begin finding tomorrow’s job close to home, and as emigration from southern to northern Europe slowed down, northern Europe began sourcing labor from a wider arc of emigration: the Mahreb and Turkey. As the Mahreb and Turkey developed in the following decades, and as families became less reliant on remittance income, and more reliant domestic income, the Mahreb and Turkey’s migration patterns evolved. While fewer workers emigrated to work aboard, Europe’s labor migration arc was already shifting past their southern and eastern borders. As emigration from the Mahreb and Turkey to Europe slowed down, emigration through the Mahreb and Turkey, from sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, have increased significantly. The Mahreb and Turkey are now equally significant as countries of transit, as they are as countries of origin.

Emigration, as both a fuel and emission of economic development, is by nature an exclusive undertaking, accessible only to those with the resources to finance emigration. The world’s poorest are not often in a position to meet the prohibitive costs of human smugglers, and as a result, not likely to migrate long distances in order to escape their impoverishment. The world’s rich (enough) are less likely to turn to emigration to sustain their livelihoods, so long as local economies can sustain their incomes. Those in between—the emerging middle classes of emerging economies—are those most likely to see their income suffer as stagflation takes hold, and to have enough resources to use emigration as a coping mechanism.

Staglation, however, can only dull the virtuous circle whereby emigrants keep developed economies humming by filling crucial jobs, and enrich developing economies with their remittances. Hardship—in the form of reduced household income in developing economies, and of increased hostility and prejudice in developed countries—can only grow as a result.

It’s important to remember that global migration is both more complex and more banal than the tropes that dominate public perception of migration in Europe and more broadly in the West. Forced migration justly receives a disproportionate share of our attention, but it constitutes only a small proportion of global migration. Much more of the sum total of global migration is driven not by hardship, but by market forces, than we usually acknowledge. If the world bank’s prognosis comes to pass, however, this vast majority of global migration, guided relatively smoothly by the invisible hand of the market will become strained, and the urgency that underpins forced migration will begin suffusing labor migration as well.

I wouldn’t bet on our news media to cover that suffusion well—nor on our leadership to adjust existing migration policies intelligently.

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On to the news…

Asia

Post-occupation Afghanistan
Last Monday, TOLOnews tallied 90 fatalities and 190 injuries in a wave of violent attacks across Afghanistan in the previous few weeks, illustrating for what it is the ability of Taliban leadership to secure Afghan soil. | On Tuesday, Save the Children documented how dramatic food price increases, such as a 45% increase in the price of wheat, and wage reductions by about one-third since the Taliban takeover last August, is forcing families into abjection this Ramadan (see StC’s full report here). | On Thursday, two bombs placed in minibuses blasted through different areas of Mazar-i-Sharif, killing 11 civilians and injuring another 17. | On Friday, a bomb attack on a mosque in Kabul’s Darul-Aman neighborhood killed at least 10 worshippers and injured at least another 20. | On Sunday, a gathering of clerics in Paktia issued a call for Afghan authorities to restore girls’ schooling from grades 7 onward.

Myanmar and its neighbors
Last Tuesday, villagers in central Myanmar’s Sagaing province denounced that Tatmadaw forces had burned down 200 homes in a village in Khin-U Township, contributing to a total 4.500 novel displacements in the area in the last 2 weeks. | On Wednesday, a 14-year old Rohingya refugee in Malaysia, injured in an ill-fated attempt to escape a detention facility in the week prior, succumbed to his injuries, bringing the attempted escape’s fatality toll to 7. | On Friday, Malaysian Home Minister Hamzah Zainudin announced that Malaysia would shortly begin issuing its own refugee identification cards, adjudicated according to internal adjudication processes rather than UNHCR standards. | On Sunday, UNICEF announced the Myanmar Curriculum Pilot, a schooling program teaching ~10.000 Rohingya children aged 4-14 according to Myanmar’s national curriculum, to be eventually expanded to all 400.000 Rohingya children encamped in Bangladesh—300.000 of whom receive some education and the remaining 100.000 of whom are completely unschooled (see UNICEF’s full statement here). On the same day, Malaysian authorities detained 143 asylum seekers, including 134 Rohingya, attempting irregular entry from Myanmar by sea, after their vessel got stuck on a sandbank.

Irregular migration to India
Last Wednesday, India’s Ministry for Home Affairs disclosed that there are ~93.000 Sri Lankan asylum seekers in India, ~59.000 of whom live in 162 refugee camps in southern India and another ~34.000 in self-sustained accommodation, many of whom are pending repatriation since 1995; and another ~72.000 Tibetan refugees, all but a small minority self-settled and self-sufficient.

Sources: TOLOnews, the Irrawaddy, FMT, Malaysia Now, EFE, IANS.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Ethiopia’s civil war
Last Monday, the TPLF announced it would withdraw its forces from Afar State, expecting as a result that aid deliveries would resume promptly to both Afar and Tigray. | On Tuesday, The New Humanitarian highlighted the grave state of healthcare provision in Tigray, with hospitals unable to provide patients basic medication or even clean bedding, an increasing number of home births and unattended delivery complications, and some 100.000 diabetes and hypertension patients having disappeared from the system. On the same day, local authorities lamented that federal aid is insufficient to feed the ~30.000 IDPs encamped across Afar State, let alone the 200-300 daily new arrivals to IDP camps. | On Wednesday, the Conflict and Environment Observatory issued a study documenting that tree and shrub cover in Tigray has declined in ~280 square kilometers as a result of the ongoing war, reversing decades of gains in vegetation cover beneficial both to Tigray’s natural environment, and to its agriculture and human security (see CEOBS’s full report here). | On Thursday, Ethiopian authorities contradicted the TPLF’s claims to have withdrawn from Afar State, insisting that as of Thursday, TPLF fighters remained in the Koneba, Abala, Berhale, and Magale districts.

Conflict and displacement in the Sahel
Last Monday, the General Coordination for Refugees and Displaced in Darfur lamented that 173 Darfuri civilians had been killed and another 100 injured, over the previous Friday and Sunday, as a result of clashes over scarce aid supplies. | On Friday, UN High Commissioner for Refugees visited Cameroon to evaluate conditions for refugees from the CAR, where smoldering conflict has produced 1.3 million displaced people, including 700.000 refugees. | On Sunday, Chad’s Foreign Ministry announced it would delay national reconciliation talks, slated to begin on May 10, as parties to a preliminary talks summit in Doha have yet to find common ground on the substance of the intended reconciliation.

Conflict and displacement in the Great Lakes area and southern Africa
Last Wednesday, UNMISS reported that ~40.000 people had fled conflict in Leer County in South Sudan’s north-central Upper Nile State, crossing the Nile to seek safety in adjacent Jonglei State. | On the same day, the UN and 44 INGOs issued a collective appeal for $47 million to provide food aid to ~35.000 refugees newly arrived to Uganda in flight from the DRC’s North Kivu and Ituri provinces since the beginning of the year. | On Friday, Japanese authorities announced a donation of just over $370.000 to Zimbabwean authorities to support refugees encamped near Tongrara in northeast Zimbabwe. | On Saturday, South Africa reopened its refugee reception offices, closed since March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, making it possible for asylum seekers to register with authorities, lodge their asylum petitions, and access basic support.

Sources: CNN, The New Humanitarian, Addis Standard, Reuters, Middle East Monitor, VOA, AFP, the EastAfrican, the Herald, Daily Brief.

Middle East and North Africa

Asylum seeker mobility and mortality in Libya
Last Monday, Libyan authorities detained a commander of the Kaniyat militia, suspected of involvement in the detention and killing of hundreds of asylum seekers whose bodies were found in mass graves in Tarhuna over the last 2 years. | On Tuesday, an IOM-facilitated voluntary return flight repatriated 131 Sudanese asylum seekers from Libya to Khartoum. | On Friday, German lawmakers extended Germany’s participation in Operation IRINI, enforcing the UN arms embargo on Libya.

Yemen’s civil war
Last Monday, Yemen’s Abductees’ Mothers Association released its 6th annual report, documenting 586 cases of enforced disappearance in Yemen in 2021, attributing 422 disappearances to Ansar Allah, 109 to the Southern Transitional Council, and another 48 to Yemen’s internationally-recognized government (see the AMA’s full report here). | On Tuesday, the UN reiterated calls for an urgent disbursement of $80 million to support the transfer of 1.1 million barrels of crude oil stored on the FSO Safer, as part of a $144 million appeal to safeguard the Red Sea from environmental disaster should the oil spill from the decaying ship. | On Saturday, UN OCHA released its latest humanitarian appeal for Yemen, seeking $4.3 billion to provide basic services to ~17.3 million out of Yemen’s colossal at-need population of ~24.3 million.

Displacement in and from Syria
Last Tuesday, Turkish authorities disclosed that, since 2016, they have deported ~132.000 foreign nationals, naturalized ~192.000, and overseen the voluntary return of ~493.000 Syrians; that over 2021, they prevented ~450.000 irregular arrivals into Turkey, and prevented another ~127.000 irregular arrivals thus far in 2022. | On Thursday, the Syrian Response Coordination Group blasted poor food procurement and preparation standards by aid groups providing cooked Eid meals to displaced Syrians in Idlib, attributing recurring cases of food poisoning among IDPs to aid groups’ recklessness. | On Sunday, security forces in northeast Syria’s al-Hol IDP camp reported they had located the lifeless body of an adult camp resident, whom they believe had been killed by ISIS cells within al-Hol.

Sources: the Libya Observer, Middle East Monitor, UN News, Daily Sabah, Kurdistan24.

Maritime Migration Routes to & through the West

Atlantic routes—to the Canaries and to Great Britain
Last Monday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 116 asylum seekers, retrieved 1 lifeless body, and tallied 24 missing persons, from 3 vessels intercepted in waters off the Canary Islands—one of which capsized 245 kilometers south of Gran Canaria as rescuers were still en route. | On Sunday, the UK Border Force intercepted 7 vessels transporting 254 asylum seekers toward British shores, the first crossings of the English Channel in 11 days.

Mediterranean Sea
Last Wednesday, the Ocean Viking announced it had rescued 131 asylum seekers from 2 vessels off the Libyan coast over the previous 2 days, as Italian authorities announced they had rescued another 80 asylum seekers from a fishing boat in waters off of Sicily. | On Thursday, Cypriot authorities rescued 25 Syrian asylum seekers adrift off of Cyprus’ Akamas peninsula, bringing 24 to the Kokkinotrimithia and arresting one suspected smuggler. | On Saturday, the Moroccan Human Rights Association announced that the lifeless body of an aspiring asylum seeker has been found in waters off the port of Melilla, in a tragic attempt to circumvent the land border between Morocco and the Spanish enclave, closed since the spring of 2020. | This Monday, the GeoBarents disembarked 101 asylum seekers it had rescued over a week prior in Augusta, Sicily, as the Ocean Viking continued waiting to be assigned a safe port of disembarkation.

Aegean Sea
Last Tuesday, the Greek Coast Guard rescued 73 asylum seekers who shipwrecked off the coast of Kythira, off the southern coast of the Peloponnese peninsula. | On Wednesday, the Turkish Coast Guard announced that, between the Friday and Monday prior, it had rescued 108 asylum seekers from multiple points in the Aegean Sea, whom it believes had been pushed back from European waters, and intercepted another 31 asylum seekers before they could depart Turkish waters. On the same day, the Turkish Coast Guard rescued 47 asylum seekers from 2 vessels off the coast of Seferihisar, in Izmir province, including one of which Turkish authorities believe had been pushed back from European waters with 24 people on board. | On Thursday, 34 asylum seekers arrived in Lesvos spontaneously, and where transported to the Mavrovouni Reception and Identification Center for registration and accommodation.

Gulf of Mexico
Last Wednesday, the U.S. Coast Guard repatriated 84 Cuban asylum seekers, intercepted on multiple vessels off the coasts the Bahamas and the Florida Keys over the previous 3 days. | On Friday, authorities apprehended 3 Cuban asylum seekers on Plantation Key in the northern Florida Keys. On the same day, authorities detained 6 Cuban asylum seekers after they arrived spontaneously in South Beach, Miami. | On Saturday, 9 asylum seekers arrived spontaneously to Cayman Brac.

Sources: InfoMigrants, BBC, Cyprus Mail, Alarm Phone, Europa Press, TRT, Aegean Boat Report, Miami Herald, CBS Miami, loopcayman.

Europe

The two faces of EU migration policymaking
Last Wednesday, the European Commission issued a reform proposal to loosen restrictions on regular migration into the EU-27, allowing migrant workers to quit or change jobs without losing residency, for long-term EU residency to be transferable across EU states, and for third-country nationals to become eligible for naturalization after 5 years’ residence in the EU, rather than in a single EU state. On the same day, Lighthouse Reports issued a new investigation revealing that while Frontex designate most of their operations in the Aegean as departure prevention operations (where asylum seekers never reach European territory, such that their rights under European law are never triggered), Frontex has misleadingly used this designation in at least 145 incidents where just over 950 asylum seekers were expelled from Greek waters or soil without being offered a chance to claim asylum. | On Thursday, Sea-Watch and Fagdenstaat filed suit against Frontex, demanding it release 73 documents relating to a suspected pull-back to Libyan waters from the Maltese search-and-rescue zone on July 30 of last year. | On Friday, Frontex Executive Director Fabrice Leggeri resigned shortly after the European anti-fraud agency released preliminary findings of its investigation into Leggeri’s obfuscation of human rights violations conducted and condoned by Frontex.

Baltics & Balkan border brinksmanship
Last Monday, Polish authorities warned they had intercepted 103 asylum seekers trying to enter irregularly from Belarus, with arrivals rising to between 40 and 120 per day with the improving weather and via a novel apparent route from the MENA region, via Moscow, and through Belarus to the Polish border. | On Thursday, InfoMigrants highlighted the plight of 5 Syrian asylum seekers detained in the Lesznowola Guarded Center for Foreigners, who have been on hunger strike since April 19 to protest not conditions in the center—which they acknowledge are adequate—but rather the fact they are detained at all. On the same day, Bosnian authorities cleared an informal encampment and squat in Miral, returning 150-200 asylum seekers to facilities in Lipa, where most were already registered but had left of their own accord.

Displacement within and beyond Ukraine
Last Tuesday, the UN revised its projections for displacement out of Ukraine, predicting that 8.3 million Ukrainians will become refugees by the end of the year, with 5.2 million refugees and another 7.7 million IDPs as of Monday prior. | On Wednesday, the European Banking Authority called on European banks to reduce due diligence standards applied to Ukrainian refugees trying to open bank accounts in their country of residence, finding that strict anti-money laundering checks were preventing Ukrainians from accessing basic financial services (see the EBA’s full statement here). On the same day, EU authorities announced they would inaugurate the EU Talent pool to facilitate labor market absorption of Ukrainian refugees, as a pilot program toward a broader deployment of the Talent Pool for all incoming labor migrants. Also on Wednesday, Hungarian authorities announced they would admit 1.000 Moroccan students displaced form Ukraine, to complete their higher education in Hungarian universities. | On Sunday, Ukrainian authorities announced that 100 civilians had been evacuated from the besieged Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, as part of a humanitarian evacuation organized by the UN and ICRC with Russian and Ukrainian compliance.

Med5 migration (mis)management
Last Tuesday, efsyn reported on a week’s worth of back-and-forth irregular crossings of the Evros River, marking the Greco-Turkish land border, where over the prior a group of Syrian refugees, at risk of repatriation from Turkey, had reached an islet in the middle of the river, applied for and been granted interim measures by the European Court of Human Rights compelling Greek authorities to admit them into Greek soil for asylum procedures, and then reported being repeatedly assaulted, pushed back to Turkish soil, and eventually placed in detention in Greece—all as Greek authorities repeatedly misled the Court, reporting to it that they were unable to find the concerned group. | On Wednesday, Save the Children warned that reception facilities for unaccompanied minors in the Canary Islands were nearly overwhelmed, tallying a caseload of 2.500 children—double their recommended capacity—and demanding that minors be relocated to reception facilities in mainland Spain.

UK migration policymaking
Last Wednesday, the Nationality and Borders Bill gained parliamentary approval after overcoming a last-ditch attempt to scuttle it in the House of Lords, clearing the government to seek royal assent and implement the bill into law. On the same day, Freedom from Torture announced it had demanded extensive documentation from the Home Office on the details of the UK-Rwanda asylum seeker relocation deal, as the first step toward likely litigation challenging the deal’s legality. Also on Wednesday, Doctors of the World issued a report documenting poor healthcare standards in UK asylum seeker containment centers, such as Napier Barracks, assessing that deficient provision leaves basic medical conditions untreated, visiting harm on asylum seekers’ physical and mental health (see the full report here).

Sources: Politico, the Guardian, euobserver, InfoMigrants, Reuters, ANSA, Middle East Monitor, efsyn, Europa Press, the Independent.

The Americas

Migration policymaking in North America
Last Monday, a U.S. federal judge issued an order suspending the Biden Administration’s intended termination of Title 42, preventing the Administration from rescinding the order prior to May 23, the termination date set by the CDC. On the same day, Reuters relayed figures from Canadian authorities finding that, between December 2021 and Februrary of this year, just over 7.350 asylum seekers crossed into Canada from U.S. soil, a dramatic increase from the year prior attributed to the loosening of pandemic-era restrictions on access to the Canadian asylum system. | On Tuesday, Gallup issued a poll indicating that 78% of Americans would support resettling 100.000 Ukrainian refugees, with 92% of Democrats and 61% of Republicans in agreement (see the full poll here). | On Wednesday, USAID announced a $670 million global food aid package, roughly a third of which would finance aid delivery in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan and Yemen, with the remainder targeting logistics and supply chains. | On Thursday, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas disclosed that there remain 1.000 separated children in U.S. custody as a result of the preceding Administration’s zero-tolerance policy, 500 of whose families have been traced and contacted, with 400 already in reunification proceedings.

Irregular migration in Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean
Last Monday, Mexican authorities disclosed that they had detained just under 5.700 asylum seekers from 42 countries over the 4 days prior, with nearly half coming from Honduras, Guatemala, and Cuba. | On Wednesday, Mexican authorities dissolved an asylum seeker caravan of about 300 just one day’s march out of Tapachula, securing their agreement to disband in exchange for providing them transport to a migration processing center in Huixtla, 30 kilometers ahead, to register their asylum claims there. | On Thursday, Mexican authorities announced they had dissolved an additional caravan shortly after it departed from Tapachula, offering its ~200 participants transport to Huixtla and registration there. On the same day, U.S. and Mexican authorities returned 47 and 84 asylum seekers, respectively, to Cuba, for a total 1.878 repatriations to Cuba from all countries of return since the beginning of 2020. | On Saturday, the third asylum seeker caravan to depart from Tapachula this week dissolved upon reaching Huixtla and meeting immigration officials in a position to register the ~300 asylum seekers’ claims. On the same day, Panamanian authorities tallied ~19.000 irregular arrivals across the Darién Gap thus far this year, a substantial increase from the ~11.500 arrivals recorded in the first 4 months of 2021.

Sources: NBC News, Reuters, USA Today, the New Arab, Milenio, EFE, Deutsche-Welle.

Oceania

Mobility to Australia and New Zealand
Last Tuesday, Australian authorities disclosed that Indian migrants have supplanted their Chinese counterparts as Australia’s second-largest diaspora community, with immigration having sustained 28-years of recession-proof economic growth in Australia. | This Monday, New Zealand re-opened its borders to COVID-19 vaccinated and negative-tested international arrivals from 60 countries, with the intention to admit arrivals from remaining countries by October.

Sources: Bloomberg, the Guardian.

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