The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) has said it is “heartened” by the United States’ president’s signing of executive orders on Tuesday which aim to provide safety and solutions for those seeking asylum, on the grounds that they need protection from violence and persecution at home.
Following another deadly shipwreck off the coast of Libya that claimed 43 lives on Monday, the UN migration and refugee agencies have called for countries to re-activate search and rescue operations.
Syrian refugee Fatima Hussein Al Ahmad, a mother of four, lives on a farm with 50 other workers in Sahba, Jordan. COVID-19 travel restrictions meant that she didn’t work for two months in 2020, and feeding her family became a daily struggle.
Travel restrictions and other curbs to movement put in place in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic, have put a significant dent in migration figures, but the overall trend shows 100 million more people living outside their countries of origin in 2020, compared to the year 2000, a new UN report revealed on Friday.
In part four of our review of the global impact of COVID-19, UN News considers the new challenges faced by refugees and migrants during 2020; from a heightened risk of catching the COVID-19 virus in crowded camps, to being stranded due to travel restrictions, and becoming the targets of criminal gangs.
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) will have to further reduce food rations and cash assistance for more than 1.2 million refugees in Uganda due to a funding shortfall, the agency has said, calling for urgent resources to sustain aid efforts.
In a $1.4 billion appeal launched on Thursday, the UN migration organization IOM and the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, warned that the pandemic has strained the capacity of Latin American and Caribbean countries to look after Venezuelan nationals.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi has launched an appeal for $147 million to support as many as 100,000 people fleeing Ethiopia’s Tigray region into neighbouring Sudan, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said on Monday.
Refugee resettlement numbers will be at a “record low” this year, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Wednesday, with only 15,425 people resettled in the first nine months of 2020, compared to more than 50,000 in 2019.
Luis Jose Faife, a UN refugee agency (UNHCR) worker from Mozambique, survived the devastation of Cyclones Idai and Kenneth, which killed more than 600 people in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe, and displaced some 2.2. million people, in March 2019. Now COVID-19 is posing a new challenge to humanitarian workers, and the people they help.
