Recent Biden Administration border policy reforms “risk undermining the basic foundations of international human rights and refugee law”, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, said on Wednesday.
The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) has reiterated its call for a ban on forced returns to eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), including asylum seekers who have had their claims rejected.
A UN human rights expert on Friday urged the United Kingdom to halt its controversial policy of transferring some asylum seekers to Rwanda and expressed serious concern that the two country’s asylum partnership arrangement violates international law, and risks causing irreparable harm to those seeking international protection.
A staggering 100 million people have now been forced to flee their homes globally, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said on Thursday, highlighting worldwide food insecurity, the climate crisis, war in Ukraine and other emergencies from Africa to Afghanistan as leading causes.
Ukraine; food and energy crisis: Countries must resist hoarding, says UN’s Guterres
Banditry in north-central Nigeria blamed for killings, displacement
Egypt in spotlight for ‘ongoing collective expulsions of Eritrean asylum seekers
“Catastrophic and famine-like conditions” hang over Afghanistan’s farmers and herders, whose needs continue to worsen with the onset of winter, UN humanitarians said on Friday.
Migrants and asylum seekers in Libya have been facing increasingly heavy-handed treatment from targeted security operations, that have resulted in at least one death and a steep increase in detentions.
The number of refugees given shelter in safe host countries plunged last year because of pandemic border restrictions, which continue to hamper the resettlement of vulnerable people.
The number of people fleeing wars, violence, persecution, and human rights violations, rose last year to nearly 82.4 million people, a further four percent increase on top of the already record-high of 79.5 million, recorded at the end of 2019.