Refugees and Migrants

Critical health services must be scaled up for nearly 1.3 million people – Rohingyas and their surrounding host communities – in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar, where vulnerable populations in crowded settlements and ‘mega camps’ are at risk of a host of waterborne diseases, the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) warned Tuesday.

Recognizing Latin American and Caribbean countries as “pioneers” in the protection of refugees and asylum seekers, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees urged the region to bolster its standards even further given the global increase in number of people being driven from their homes.

There are “alarming holes” in the availability, reliability, timeliness and accessibility of the data and evidence essential for understanding how children and their families are impacted by migration and forced displacement, United Nations agencies and their partners warned on Thursday.

Nearly six months after an outbreak of violence drove almost 700,000 minority Rohingyas from Myanmar to seek safety in Bangladesh, senior United Nations officials on Tuesday said it is time to address the root causes – including decades of repression inside Myanmar – so those who fled feel safe enough to return to their homeland.

Over 22,000 desperate Congolese refugees crossed Lake Albert to Uganda last week, with four drowning when their boat capsized on the perilous journey from the conflict-hit eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Asylum seekers are reporting sexual harassment and violence at some sub-standard reception centres on Greek islands – where even bathing during the daytime can be dangerous – despite Government measures to address the dire living conditions, the United Nations refugee agency warned on Friday.

The number of migrants losing their lives attempting to cross the United States-Mexico border in 2017 remained high in spite of substantial decrease in the number of arrests along the frontier, the United Nations migration agency reported on Tuesday.

Warning that Burundi could become a “forgotten crisis,” with the number of people struggling for survival increasing by the day, United Nations agencies together with aid partners on Wednesday launched a funding appeal to keep the humanitarian situation from deteriorating further.

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The United Nations refugee agency and its partners are ramping up to assist Bangladesh’s efforts to mitigate some expected impacts of the upcoming monsoon season in the country, during which, according to an initial risk analysis, at least 100,000 Rohingya refugees could be in grave danger from landslides and floods.