Thursday, June 26, 2014
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Migration surge hits EU as thousands flock to Italy -BBC News
In Libya, The BBC's Quentin Sommerville was met with distressing scenes of squalor inside a Misrata detention centre jail
There has been a significant rise in the numbers of migrants reaching Europe in recent months, the BBC has learned.
The number of people attempting the dangerous sea crossing from North Africa to Italy has risen sharply, says Frontex, the EU border agency.
From January to April, 42,000 migrants were detected on these routes, with 25,650 of these crossing from Libya.
Combined with seven other less busy routes, the total figure for this year is probably now about 60,000.
On Wednesday, the Italian government said the number of refugees and other migrants reaching its shores had soared to more than 39,000.
The total for 2014 so far is more than the equivalent period in 2011, the year of the Arab Spring, which eventually saw 140,000 make clandestine crossings into Europe.
"If the current trends continue, and with the summer months approaching, there is a strong likelihood the numbers will increase further," says Gil Arias Fernandez, Frontex's Deputy Executive Director.
At least a third of the latest arrivals are Syrians, fleeing that country's civil war.
But other significant numbers are coming from Afghanistan and Eritrea.
In Calais, where the French authorities this week demolished two main squatter camps, the BBC found migrants from a host of countries, from West Africa to Bangladesh, with large groups from Iran and Pakistan's restive tribal areas.
Almost three million people have fled Syria's bloody civil war. UN figures show the human tide began in earnest in early 2012.
Experts say the latest numbers are not surprising, after relatively low levels of migration in the early months of 2013.
"The main route through Libya was closed for so long that people in sub-Saharan countries have been waiting for a couple of years," says Franck Duvell, associate professor at the Centre on Migration, Policy, and Society at the University of Oxford.
"So the numbers have been building up and people were waiting for the very first opportunity to move," he says.
"I'm not sure this implies that we are going to see ever-more people arriving in the EU over the next couple of months. We've got to wait and see."
Much depends on the chaotic political and security situation in Libya, where a BBC team has recently seen evidence that large numbers of migrants are still waiting to cross. Some estimates put the figure as high as 300,000.
Italy complains that since last October, when it launched its "Mare Nostrum" [Our Sea] rescue operation, the cost of patrolling its patch of the Mediterranean has risen to 300,000 euros (£24,200: $408,000) a day.
Saturday, June 21, 2014
World Refugee Day: Shameful That Tens of Thousands of Children in South Sudan Could Die From Lack of Food | Rose Caldwell
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Almost a million people have been forced to leave their homes in South Sudan following months of violent conflict. Over one million are displaced and dispersed in hard to reach areas in the country, and over 350,000 more have fled South Sudan for refuge in neighbouring nations.
These statistics, like many others you will no doubt read today on World Refugee Day are shocking in their scale. Unless we act now, these numbers will be about death rather than displacement - because famine is looming. 30 years after the devastating famine in Ethiopia, when nearly a million people died, it would be utterly shameful to see children in South Sudan lose their precious lives, simply because they didn't have enough food to eat.
These statistics, like many others you will no doubt read today on World Refugee Day are shocking in their scale. Unless we act now, these numbers will be about death rather than displacement - because famine is looming. 30 years after the devastating famine in Ethiopia, when nearly a million people died, it would be utterly shameful to see children in South Sudan lose their precious lives, simply because they didn't have enough food to eat.
With the UN and international NGOs all warning of a catastrophe, we cannot claim that we didn't know that famine in South Sudan was a possibility. The UN has stated that50,000 children could die and that more than a third of the population will be on the brink of starvation by the end of 2014. There are no excuses - action is needed now.
To be fair, the international community hasn't completely ignored South Sudan, and there are many competing humanitarian crises that are no less important. But the pledge of $600 million in aid to South Sudan isn't enough. We need more money - and we need it now - so that the programmes, such as the ones Concern Worldwide are running which effectively treat acute malnutrition among children under five, can be scaled up and save more lives.
We are not naive enough to claim that aid alone can solve this problem. South Sudan was a country that struggled to feed itself before the fighting started but it is this conflict that has tipped the balance into the possibility of famine.
A glimmer of hope came last week when it was announced that both parties to the conflict had agreed to halt the fighting and that a transitional government is to be formed within 60 days. Previous deals to end the violence have been broken by both sides. It is essential that the fragile peace holds and increased donor funds are made available now so that we can act fast and ensure that the children of South Sudan don't die of hunger.
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Ethiopian migrants, desperate for work, find horrors instead | Nation & World | The Seattle Times
Ethiopians and other migrants arriving in Yemen have been captured and tortured by human traffickers planning to extort ransoms from their families, according to a report from the New York-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch.
Bloomberg News
WILLIAM DAVISON / BLOOMBERG NEWS
Sintayehu Beyene, a widower and father of a small child, is shown May 22 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. His attempt to earn more money by working outside Ethiopia ended badly.
Sintayehu Beyene left Ethiopia planning to earn money to begin a carpentry business but ended up captive in Yemen, where Kalashnikov-wielding traffickers stole what little he owned.
Grabbed from a boatload of migrant workers as it landed on a Yemeni shore, he says the armed gang whisked him inland to a desert camp. Beaten and detained for nine days with about 30 others, he was forced to hand over the 1,400 Ethiopian birr ($72) he was carrying before being released.
He crossed to neighboring Saudi Arabia, where wages are sometimes more than double the rates paid in Ethiopia, only to be deported a month later when authorities cracked down on illegal migrants.
“They robbed and beat me,” Sintayehu, 31, said May 22 in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, recalling his treatment at the camp in northern Yemen five months earlier. “They took all the money I had.”
Sintayehu may have gotten off lightly, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). Ethiopians and other migrants arriving in Yemen have been captured and tortured by human traffickers planning to extort ransoms that can be more than $1,000 from their families, the New York-based advocacy group said in a May 25 report. One witness it cited described captors gouging out a man’s eyes with a water bottle.
Torture is one of the dangers faced by thousands of Ethiopians in their travels to the Arabian Peninsula in search of work. The Ethiopian government estimated in 2012 that the average college graduate in Ethiopia earns about $90 a month, less than half of the $200 that maids can make in Saudi Arabia.
Crossing the Gulf of Aden
Numbers of people traveling across the Gulf of Aden have risen this year even after Saudi Arabia, the intended destination for many, began mass deportations of unregistered employees. The number of African migrants in the northern Yemeni city of Haradh increased tenfold to 8,000 between January and March, HRW said in the report titled “Yemen’s Torture Camps: Abuse of Migrants by Human Traffickers in a Climate of Impunity.”
While Saudi Arabia began expelling 160,000 illegal Ethiopian workers in November, the number of migrants traveling by boat to Yemen from Djibouti or Somalia increased to 8,356 in April, 56 percent more than a year earlier, according to the Nairobi, Kenya-based Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat, or RMMS. An estimated 82 percent of arrivals are Ethiopian, it said.
“Some of the migrants encountered were actually reattempting their journeys following deportation from Saudi and Yemen in the last couple of years,” Noela Barasa, an RMMS spokeswoman, said in an emailed response to questions. “A perceived labor gap following the massive deportations may be responsible for spurring movement.”
Ethiopia has temporarily banned citizens from traveling to work in Saudi Arabia until conditions improve and is “sensitizing the public” to the dangers of illegal migration, Foreign Ministry spokesman Dina Mufti said. The treatment of Ethiopians in Yemen wasn’t discussed during a recent meeting between government officials of the two nations, he said by phone from Addis Ababa. Yemen’s deputy foreign minister for political affairs, Hamid Alawadhi, said the government takes the HRW report “seriously” and has formed a committee, including all authorities accused, to discuss its allegations.
“Due to Yemen’s poor and limited resources in dealing with the flood of refugees and illegal migrants, as well as weak support from international institutions, there are problems related to this kind of asylum-seeking,” Alawadhi said. The government plans to issue a statement responding to the report, he said, without specifying when.
Economic hardships
Yemen’s economy contracted 13 percent in 2011, after protests that ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and the lost output won’t be recovered until next year, according to the International Monetary Fund. The nation is also battling an insurgency in its north and a threat from al-Qaida militants.
Sintayehu, whose wife died of breast cancer last year, reckons he needs 50,000 birr ($2,560) to buy tools and begin a business in Ethiopia as a carpenter and painter, and a monthly income of 5,000 birr ($256) to support himself and his 4-year-old daughter.
Before he began looking after his ailing father, he says he earned 80 birr ($4.10) a day on building sites in Ethiopia’s capital, where offices, hotels and shopping malls are sprouting up. That wasn’t enough for his needs, he said.
Economic hardship is the main reason Ethiopian arrivals in Yemen give for their journey, Barasa said. Ethiopia, home to about 90 million people, has one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies — the IMF projects expansion of 8 percent this year after average annual growth of 9.3 percent the past four years — yet almost 40 percent of the population lives on less than $1.25 a day, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Unemployment was 17.5 percent in Ethiopian towns and cities in 2012, according to the IMF.
Wondiya Goshu, 31, says he hasn’t been able to find work in his home country. He left for his fourth trip to sell an illicit alcoholic brew in Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, around the time his compatriots were being deported last year, he said.
Yemenis kidnapped him off the boat and contacted his friends in Saudi Arabia to extract a ransom of 3,500 Saudi riyals ($933). Wondiya stayed at a hot, lice-ridden camp for 28 days with about 60 others, surviving on tepid water and small portions of rice, he said in a May 22 interview in Addis Ababa.
Officials assist smugglers
The trafficking camps are near Haradh, where some government officials assist smugglers in an activity that may be responsible for about 80 percent of the area’s economy, Human Rights Watch said.
Illegally selling alcohol and washing cars, Wondiya says he earned 12,000 riyals ($3,200) in about two months in the Saudi city of Jeddah. He says he was later arrested, held at an immigration camp, stripped of his possessions and flown back to Ethiopia.
Such tales aren’t enough to discourage Sintayehu. He said he’d travel again across the Gulf of Aden — a trip that cost him 6,000 birr ($307) last time — if he could only find the money.
“I am willing to work here, but the pay is low in comparison,” he said. “I wanted to take a risk; things are better in Saudi.”
Mohammed Hatem in Sanaa assisted in reporting this story.
Monday, June 9, 2014
Three Ethiopian refugees s killed in Wajir ambush 52 escaped in Kenya
Three Ethiopians were killed in a gun ambush Saturday evening while 52 others escaped death by a whisker after being rescued by police. The illegal aliens, who were been trafficked from Ethiopia’s region five came under heavy gun attack from unknown armed people along Wajir- Moyale road near Wajir town, according to Wajir County Commissioner Naftali Mungathia. “These people were being transported in an open land cruiser. They were packed on top of each other like sardines by human traffickers, who took from them hefty money as charges to smuggle them illegally into the country,” Mungathia said, while speaking to The Standard in Wajir. The county commissioner said the identity bandits who attacked the vehicle ferrying the foreigners couldn’t not be immediately established adding that among those arrested were three Kenyans who were smuggling the Ethiopians into the country. However, a security source who sought anonymity said the attackers could be either of the two militias from clans fighting in the county who might have mistaken those being carried in vehicle as from members of their rival clan. Another source within the smuggling conduits in Moyale town, however, suspects the hand of jilted smugglers in the ambush noting that recently there was some rift between established human traffickers in the area and new entrants from other regions. Mungathia said, “The other aliens were very lucky; despite the intensity of the attack, none of them were hurt in the unfortunate incident apart from those killed. We have sent enough security personnel to pursue the assailants in area around where the attacks happened.” He said, the aliens were now held at Wajir police station for interrogation and could appear before the Wajir senior resident magistrate to answers charges of unlawfully been present in the country. See Also: Police recover five AK47 and arrest two suspects in Moyale operation “The three Kenyans smugglers will possibly face a double charge of aiding foreigners to get entrance to the country illegally,” he explained. Despite the fact that security agents in major towns are engaging in mass detention and deportation of those staying in the country illegally, hundreds of aliens are smuggled into the country through the porous border in the North daily. “Human trafficking is a serious issue here. Hardly a week passes without our security officers nabbing aliens who have been smuggled into the country mainly from Ethiopia,” the county boss noted. “Smugglers at many times attempts to pass through our county. Many times they are apprehended by our security agents, but in some rare cases they escape our security dragnet,” he said.
Read more at: http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/thecounties/article/2000124119/three-illegal-aliens-killed-in-wajir-ambush
Read more at: http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/thecounties/article/2000124119/three-illegal-aliens-killed-in-wajir-ambush
Sunday, June 8, 2014
Friday, June 6, 2014
Yemen’s human traffickers prey on Ethiopian migrants | GulfNews.com
Yemen’s human traffickers prey on Ethiopian migrants
They are kidnapped and tortured by gangs in Yemen to extort ransoms from their families
- By William Davison
- Published: 20:44 June 6, 2014
- Image Credit: AP
- Ethiopian migrants wait to be evacuated at a departure centre in the western Yemeni town of Haradh, on the border with Saudi Arabia and Yemen, on Thursday.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia
Sintayehu Beyene left Ethiopia planning to earn money to begin a carpentry business — he ended up captive in Yemen where Kalashnikov-wielding traffickers stole what little he owned.
Grabbed from a boatload of migrant workers as it landed on a Yemeni shore, he says the armed gang whisked him inland to a desert camp. Beaten and detained for nine days with about 30 other people, he was forced to hand over the 1,400 Ethiopian birr ($72, Dh264.24) he was carrying before being released. He crossed to neighbouring Saudi Arabia, where wages are sometimes more than double the rates paid in Ethiopia, only to be deported a month later when authorities cracked down on illegal migrants.
“They robbed and beat me,” Sintayehu, 31, said in a May 22 interview in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, recalling his treatment at the camp in northern Yemen five months ago. “They took all the money I had.”
Horror stories
Sintayehu may have got off lightly, according to Human Rights Watch. Ethiopians and other migrants arriving in Yemen have been captured and tortured by human traffickers planning to extort ransoms that can be more than $1,000 from their families, the New York-based advocacy group said in a May 25 report. One witness cited by HRW described captors gouging out a man’s eyes with a water bottle.
Torture is one of the dangers faced by thousands of Ethiopians who travel to seek work in the Arabian peninsula, where maids can earn $200 a month compared to the $90 the Ethiopian government estimated in 2012 that an average college graduate made back home.
Numbers travelling across the Gulf of Aden have risen this year even after Saudi Arabia, the intended destination for many, began mass deportations of unregistered employees. The number of African migrants in the northern Yemeni city of Haradh increased 10-fold to 8,000 between January and March, HRW said in the report titled Yemen’s Torture Camps: Abuse of Migrants by Human Traffickers in a Climate of Impunity.
Increase in numbers
While Saudi Arabia began expelling 160,000 illegal Ethiopian workers in November, the number of migrants travelling by boat to Yemen from Djibouti or Somalia increased to 8,356 in April, 56 per cent more than a year earlier, according to the Nairobi, Kenya-based Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat, or RMMS. An estimated 82 per cent of arrivals are Ethiopian, it said on May 16. “Some of the migrants encountered were actually re-attempting their journeys following deportation from Saudi and Yemen in the last couple of years,” Noela Barasa, an RMMS spokeswoman, said in an emailed response to questions on May 19.
“A perceived labour gap following the massive deportations may be responsible for spurring movement.”
Ethiopia has temporarily banned citizens from travelling to work in Saudi Arabia until conditions improve and is “sensitising the public” to the dangers of illegal migration, Foreign Ministry spokesman Dina Mufti said.
The treatment of Ethiopians in Yemen wasn’t discussed during a recent meeting between government officials of the two nations, he said by phone from Addis Ababa. Yemen’s deputy foreign minister for political affairs, Hamid Al Awadhi, said the government takes the HRW report “seriously” and has formed a committee, including all authorities accused to discuss its allegations.
“Due to Yemen’s poor and limited resources in dealing with the flood of refugees and illegal migrants, as well as weak support from international institutions, there are problems related to this kind of asylum-seeking,” Al Awadhi said. The government plans to issue a statement responding to the report, he said, without specifying when.
Economy in trouble
Yemen’s economy contracted 13 per cent in 2011, in the wake of protests that ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and the lost output won’t be recovered until next year, according to the International Monetary Fund. The nation is also battling an insurgency in its north and a threat from Al Qaida militants.
Sintayehu, whose wife died of breast cancer last year, reckons he needs 50,000 birr to buy tools and begin a business in Ethiopia as a carpenter and painter, and a monthly income of 5,000 birr to support himself and his four-year-old daughter.
Before he began looking after his ailing father, he says he earned 80 birr a day on building sites in Ethiopia’s capital, where offices, hotels and shopping malls are sprouting up. That wasn’t enough for his needs, he said.
Economic hardship is the main reason Ethiopian arrivals in Yemen give for their journey, Barasa said.
Such problems aren’t enough to discourage Sintayehu. He said he’d travel again across the Gulf of Aden — a trip that cost him a total of 6,000 birr last time — if he could only find the money.
“I am willing to work here, but the pay is low in comparison,” he said. “I wanted to take a risk; things are better in Saudi.”
— Washington Post
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