August 19, 2017 (ADDIS ABABA) – The number of South Sudanese refugees living in Ethiopia as of 31 July 2017 was 382,322, a United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) official disclosed on Friday.
“The total number of arrivals since January 1 is 36,939, bringing the total number since the onset of the emergency in September 2016 to over 90,000,” Diana Diaz, UNHCR’s Associate External Relations and Reporting Officer told Anadolu.
She further added that an average of 175 persons arrive in Ethiopia daily.
65% of the total registered new arrivals since September 2016 are children, including 19,848 unaccompanied and separated children, said Diaz.
South Sudan has experienced a civil war since a split between President Salva Kiir and his former deputy, Riek Machar, escalated in December 2013. Tens of thousands of people have reportedly been killed and over 2 million displaced in less than five years.
A peace deal brokered by the East African regional bloc, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) in August 2015, collapsed when fresh violence broke out in the South Sudanese capital, forcing Machar to flee into neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). He currently lives in South Africa.
OVER I MILLION IN UGANDA
Meanwhile, UNHCR said Thursday that the numbers of South Sudanese refugees currently living in Uganda exceeded one million, amid calls for urgent additional support.
Majority of the refugees, the agency said, are women and children.
“Over the past 12 months, averages of 1,800 South Sudanese have been arriving in Uganda every day,” UNHCR said in a statement.
“In addition to the million there, a million or even more South Sudanese refugees are being hosted by Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic,” it added.
According to the UN agency, however, over 85% of the refugees who have arrived in Uganda are women and children below 18 years.
“Recent arrivals continue to speak of barbaric violence, with armed groups reportedly burning down houses with civilians inside, people being killed in front of family members, sexual assaults of women and girls, and kidnapping of boys for forced conscription,” said UNHCR.
As of refugees arrive, it said, aid delivery is increasingly falling short.
The UN agency underscored that although $674 million is needed for South Sudanese refugees in Uganda this year, so far only a fifth of this amount, or 21%, has so far been received. But although a total of $883.5 million is needed for the South Sudan situation, only $250 million has reportedly been received.
(YouTube/Crans Montana Forum)Fr. Mussie Zerai appears in a screen capture of a video from Crans Montana Forum.
An Eritrean priest who was once nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for helping migrants cross the Mediterranean is now being investigated in Italy for aiding illegal immigration.
Fr. Mussie Zerai, who has been hailed for saving thousands of migrants and refugees crossing the Mediterranean, is currently under investigation in Italy for allegedly aiding illegal immigration by illegally sending information about boats and landings to NGO rescue ships.
"I received a letter from the Trapani public prosecutor's office on Monday informing me of the investigation," Zerai told Agence France-Presse (AFP), insisting that he was innocent.
The priest admitted in a statement that he had passed on details of desperate migrant ships to NGOs and rescue authorities, but he maintained that his "interventions are aimed at saving human lives."
"I can assert myself that I have nothing to hide and that I have always acted in the light and in full legality," Zerai said in a statement released on Tuesday.
"Apart from the Trapani initiative, which I have already informed my lawyer so that I can see and possibly contradict it, I have not been called to any other venue to justify or in any way respond to my work in favour of refugees and migrants," he added.
According to AFP, Zerai would transmit coordinates of migrant boats to the Italian coast guard, but sometimes, he also sends out the information to privately-run rescue ships known to be in the vicinity.
His name somehow ended up in an investigation launched by Trapani prosecutors into illegal immigration which focuses mostly on the roles played in migrant rescues by privately-funded NGOs.
Zerai became known as a one-man emergency hotline for refugees after he gave his number to a journalist in 2003 to help him translate stories of Eritreans in a detention center in Libya.
The number soon spread, and it became a crisis support line for migrants who try to contact the priest from inside trucks in the Sahara desert.
The priest became a contender for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015 amid the worsening migration crisis. That same year, he was able to meet with Pope Francis, who was also nominated for the Nobel for his work on social justice and the environment.
During their meeting at a conference on human trafficking, they discussed the harrowing survivor stories that they had both heard on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa. "He told me - have courage father, keep going,'" Zerai recalled.
According to UNHCR, about 5,000 Eritreans have entered Europe illegally by crossing the Mediterranean in 2017 alone, with the total of "sea arrivals" landing in Italy and Greece this year, reaching 117,000.
"Up to 50 Immigrants from Somalia and Ethiopia deliberately Drowned by Smugglers off Yemen - UN 0 Wednesday, August 09, 2017 - 23:49:24 in Latest News by Super Admin Visits: 132(Rating 0.0/5 Stars) Total Votes: 0 0 0 Share A boat full of migrants. ADEN – Early Wednesday morning, a human smuggler, in charge of the boat, forced more than 120 Somali and Ethiopian migrants into the pitching sea as they approached the coast of Shabwa, a Yemeni Governorate along the Arabian Sea. The migrants had been hoping to reach countries in the Gulf via war-torn Yemen. Shortly after the tragedy, staff from IOM, the UN Migration Agency, found the shallow graves of 29 migrants on a beach in Shabwa, during a routine patrol. The dead had been buried rapidly by those who survived the smuggler’s deadly actions. IOM is working closely with the International Committee of the Red Cross to ensure appropriate care for the deceased migrants’ remains. IOM’s medical staff also provided urgent care to the 27 surviving migrants, both females and males, who had remained on the beach. IOM provided initial health checks and assistance, including food, water and other emergency relief. Some of the survivors had already left the beach before being assisted. 22 migrants are reportedly still missing and unaccounted for. The approximate average age of the passengers on the boat was 16. "The survivors told our colleagues on the beach that the smuggler pushed them to the sea, when he saw some ‘authority types’ near the coast," explained Laurent de Boeck, the IOM Yemen Chief of Mission. "They also told us that the smuggler has already returned to Somalia to continue his business and pick up more migrants to bring to Yemen on the same route. This is shocking and inhumane. The suffering of migrants on this migration route is enormous. Too many young people pay smugglers with the false hope of a better future," continued de Boeck. Since January 2017 to date, IOM estimates that around 55,000 migrants left the Horn of Africa to come to Yemen, most with the aim of trying to find better opportunities in the Gulf countries. More than 30,000 of those migrants are under the age of 18 from Somalia and Ethiopia, while a third are estimated to be female. This journey is especially hazardous during the current windy season in the Indian Ocean. Smugglers are active in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, offering fake promises to vulnerable migrants. IOM and its partners operate across the region to support these migrants and provide life-saving assistance to those who find themselves abused or stranded along the route. "
Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-13 03:46:03|Editor: Mu Xuequan
ADDIS ABABA, July 12 (Xinhua) -- A total of 6,186 refugees were registered in the month of June in Ethiopia, pushing the number of refugees registered in the East African nation to 843,374.
The figure was given on Wednesday by the United Nations High commission for Refugees (UNHCR) which said the June refugee arrivals have pushed the number of refugees registered in Ethiopia in the first six months of 2017 to a total of 60,293.
UNHCR gave the figures as it works to highlight the funding gap it is facing to meet the needs of the refugees currently estimated at 307.5 million U.S. dollars. So far 23 percent of the needed 307.5 million U.S. dollars has been donated to UNHCR.
Most refugees in Ethiopia come from the strife- torn nations of Somalia and South Sudan and Ethiopia's northern neighbor Eritrea.
Smaller groups of refugees fleeing war in Sudan and from across the Red Sea from Yemenare also part of the group the UNHCR has registered as refugees in Ethiopia.
With Ethiopia currently being among the top five refugee hosting nations in the world, it's also one of five African countries participating in a Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF).
CRRF is a vehicle for the implementation of pledges made at UN leaders' summit in September 2016 in New York, where refugees in Ethiopia will be given funds for assisting with education and employment opportunities in Ethiopia.
Western Countries in particular hope that schemes like CRRF will persuade refugees living in Ethiopia and other African nations not to undertake perilous trips to reach their countries and instead stay at their current host countries.
African migrants currently in Libya who qualify as refugees will be legally resettled to the European Union, according to the European Commission.
The surprise announcement, one of a number of "immediate measures" made in a new EU Action Plan, is designed to tackle an increasingly urgent phase in the ongoing Mediterranean migration crisis.
"All actors now need to intensify and accelerate their efforts in line with the increasing urgency of the situation and the commitments undertaken by EU leaders," the plan states.
The Commission, the executive arm of the EU, published the measures after an overwhelmed Italian government threatened to block entry to Italian ports for all aid ships who rescue and recover migrants trying to cross from Libya to Italy.
Migrant arrivals in Italy are up nearly 19% over the same period last year.
EU figures estimate that 85,183 people, from countries all over Africa, have been rescued while attempting the deadly crossing. Ninety-five percent leave Africa from the Libyan coastline in flimsy boats.
The relocation pledge from Libya is an extension to existing relocation programmes focused on refugees in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, from where 17,000 mostly Syrian refugees have been resettled.
"The Commission will launch a new resettlement pledging exercise in conjunction with the UNHCR starting with those in need of international protection from Libya, Egypt, Niger, Ethiopia and Sudan" the new pledge states.
The commission document, called 'Action plan on measures to support Italy, reduce pressure along the Central Mediterranean route and increase solidarity' will form the basis of discussions at an EU interior ministers meeting in Estonia on Thursday.
The document contains a series of new measures including renewed impetus on training and equipping Libyan border and coastguard operations, as well as an official code of conduct for charities involved in search and rescue missions in the Mediterranean.
Charities have been accused of encouraging the pull of migrants by providing rescue missions. They deny this, pointing out that the migrants were making the journeys in similar numbers before they operated in the region.
Other measures in the Action Plan include €35m (£30.7m) in extra cash for Italy to help the government in Rome deal with the crisis.
Migrants travel to Libya from countries all over Africa - Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan in the east, Mali and Niger in the centre and from Nigeria, Senegal, Guinea, Ivory Coast and Gambia in the west.
More than 2,000 are known to have died this year alone according to the International Organisation for Migration.
Around 50 migrants were missing, feared dead, off the coast of Spain on Tuesday. If confirmed, it would make the voyage the deadliest sea crossing in that part of the Mediterranean this year.
Survivors are routinely brought to Italy by charity rescue vessels because Libya is not considered a safe country for them to be returned to.
Charities including the Italian Red Cross have repeatedly warned that Italy's overcrowded reception centres are in a critical state and cannot cope with the overwhelming number of asylum applications.
Sky News has spoken to numerous migrants who have walked out of the centres after an initial registration process which includes fingerprinting. Many make their way to Rome en-route to northern Europe.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said: "The dire situation in the Mediterranean is neither a new nor a passing reality."
"We have made enormous progress over the past two and half years towards a genuine EU migration policy but the urgency of the situation now requires us to seriously accelerate our collective work and not leave Italy on its own.
"The focus of our efforts has to be on solidarity - with those fleeing war and persecution and with our Member States under the most pressure.
"At the same time, we need to act, in support of Libya, to fight smugglers and enhance border control to reduce the number of people taking hazardous journeys to Europe."
Last September, Sky News witnessed the perilous crossings from the deck of a rescue vessel run by the charity Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS).
In the nine months since then, the situation has deteriorated.
MOAS and other charities who operate rescue vessels have repeatedly called for "safe and legal routes" for migrants so that they don't resort to deadly sea crossings fuelled by people traffickers.
Cultural similarities have helped Ethiopia absorb more than 160,000 refugees from Eritrea, despite a still-bitter border dispute. But the government has also put out the welcome mat for strategic reasons, at a time when many countries are doing the opposite.
BADME, ALONG THE ERITREAN-ETHIOPIAN BORDER —When Yordanos and her two young children slipped safely across the Mereb riverbed between Eritrea and Ethiopia late one recent night, they thought the worst of their journey into exile was over. The smuggler had done his job, and they were safely over the border.
Then they heard the hyenas.
Yordanos and her children began to yell for help, their panicked calls fading into the solid darkness. Suddenly, she saw a group of Ethiopian soldiers coming towards them. The men comforted the young families, and then escorted them to the nearby town of Badme. “They were like brothers to us,” says Yordanos, who asked that her last name not be used for fear of reprisals from the Eritrean government against her relatives at home.
In some regards, Ethiopia – and in particular this sliver of Ethiopia’s arid north – is the last place you might expect an Eritrean refugee like Yordanos to receive a warm welcome. In 1998, after all, an Eritrean invasion of this sleepy border town touched off a two-year war between the two countries that cost tens of thousands of lives and more than $4.5 billion, along with destroying most of the then-flourishing network of trade between the two countries. And before that conflict, Eritreans fought a 30-year civil war for independence from Ethiopia, which ended only in 1991.
Even today, the ashes of those conflicts still smolder. The internationally-brokered peace settlement ending the 1998-2000 war decreed that Ethiopia should give this region of the country back to Eritrea, which claims it as historical land. But Ethiopia never did, and border clashes between the two countries’ militaries continue into the present.
Still, Yordanos’ story is not uncommon. Fleeing enforced, indefinite military service, illegal imprisonment, and torture, about 165,000 Eritrean refugees and asylum seekers currently live in Ethiopia, according to the United Nations. Upon arrival and registration, they are automatically granted refugee status, and the country continues to welcome more. In February of this year alone, 3,367 new Eritrean refugees arrived in the country, according to Ethiopia’s Administration for Refugee and Returnee Affairs (ARRA).
“We differentiate between the government and its people,” says Estifanos Gebremedhin, the head of the legal and protection department at ARRA. “We are the same people, we share the same blood, even the same grandfathers.”
The reasons for that openness, indeed, owe much to shared history.As in many parts of Africa, colonialism sliced much of this region apart in illogical ways (though Ethiopia itself was never colonized), sowing political conflicts between members of the same community that have persisted to the present day. For much of the roughly 600-mile Ethiopian-Eritrean border, people on both sides share the same language – Tigrinya – as well as Orthodox religion and cultural traditions.
“It’s only the Eritrean government creating problems, not the people,” says Benyamin, a resident of Axum, a town in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, who didn’t give his last name. “I haven’t got relatives in Eritrea but many people here do. Some from the refugee camps go to the university here.”
But there may also be more strategic reasons for Ethiopia’s open-door policy, experts say.
“Ethiopia strongly believes that generous hosting of refugees will be good for regional relationships down the road,” says Jennifer Riggan, an associate professor of international studies at Arcadia University in Pennsylvania, who studies Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia.
There’s also an increasing amount of money in hosting refugees, some highlight,as the international community tries to block secondary migration to Europe. One recent example was the joint initiative announced by Britain, the European Union, and the World Bank to fund the building of two industrial parks in Ethiopia to generate about 100,000 jobs, at a cost of $500 million, with Ethiopia required to grant employment rights to 30,000 refugees as part of the deal.
It might also be a way of countering international controversy about the Oromo protestsand shoring up Ethiopia’s standing in the world, according to Milena Belloni, a researcher in the Department of Sociology at the University of Antwerp in Belgium, who is currently writing a book about Eritrean refugees. The protests, which roiled the country's largest region throughout 2016, have prompted a government crackdown that left hundreds of Ethiopians dead and sharply curtailed basic freedoms, according to human rights groups.
Either way, Ethiopia’s approach is in marked contrast to the strategies of reducing migrant flows that are being adopted in much of the West, Dr. Riggan says.
“Ethiopia's response is to manage the gate, and figure out how it can benefit from these inevitable flows of people,” she notes. “I definitely think Ethiopia's approach is the wiser and more realistic one.”
After Yordanos, her children, and another mother and her two children who crossed with them were collected by the soldiers near Badme, they were taken into town and left at a so-called “entry point,” a cluster of disheveled government buildings. From there, refugees join the bureaucratic and logistic conveyor belt that assigns them asylum status and moves them to one of four refugee camps in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region.
There, relationships between refugees and locals do sometimes grow strained, particularly as both groups compete for scarce shared resources like firewood and cattle pastures. And many Eritrean refugees regard Ethiopia as only a stopover point on their journey to the West. In 2013, there was unrest in all four camps, with riots in two camps, Adi Harush and Mai Aini, when refugees demanded more opportunities for international resettlement and protested authorities' alleged corruption.
“People recognize the shared culture and ethnic background, and that helps for many things, but there’s still distrust because of the 30-year-war [for independence], and mostly due to 1998-2000 border conflict and related mass displacement,” says Dr. Belloni. “There’s a double narrative.”
In addition to the camps, meanwhile, thousands more Eritreans live in Ethiopia outside the asylum system, both legally and illegally. About 650 miles south of the border, in the capital Addis Ababa, whole neighborhoods function as Eritrean enclaves, where the distinctive, guttural sounds of Tigrinya pour out of cafes with Italian-sounding names like Lattria Piccolo, a nod to Eritrea’s history as an Italian colony.
The prospect of a better life elsewhere is on everyone’s lips in rural Ethiopia - Tobias Hase/DPA/ZUMA
While the EU seeks an agreement with Libya to halt the influx of migrants across the Mediterranean, the prospect of a better life elsewhere is what all in rural Ethiopia talk about.
AGARFA — A soldier chews on a leaf of khat, a mild stimulant, and spits it on the ground. "Hey you, ferenji, how much do you want to take me with you to Italy?" he asks me, laughing with his comrade. Ferenji means stranger in Amharic, Ethiopia’s official language.
In the small, far-flung town of Agarfa, in the province of Bale, the soldier is working security at an event organized by Medical Collaboration Committee (CCM), an Italian NGO. The CCM has come to this town, which lies 280 miles away from the capital of Addis Ababa, to educate locals on the risks of illegally migrating to Europe.
Mohammed, the local imam, asks to speak. "I haven’t heard back from four of my children," he says, holding back tears. "I know nothing, they’ve disappeared. I had warned them not to go."
Mohammed’s words clearly have an effect on those attending the meeting; the women around him hide behind their hijabs or begin to cry openly.
While the European Union seeks an agreement with Libya to halt the influx of migrants across the Mediterranean Sea, the prospect of a better life elsewhere is on everyone’s lips here in rural Ethiopia. Some have relatives in Europe, the United States, or in the Arab world; some have families stuck in migrant welcome centers in Libya; some have attempted the journey and were sent back; some cry over their loved ones who didn’t make it out; and some just want to leave.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the country’s strategic location in the Horn of Africa — the region comprising Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, and Djibouti — and local political instability contributed to rising emigration from Ethiopia in recent years. There has been a growing exodus since 2015. About 740,000 Ethiopians now live abroad. Ethiopia itself is home to the largest number of refugees in Africa, housing 670,000 refugees in camps along its borders with Eritrea, South Sudan, and Somalia.
The province of Bale has one of the highest emigration rates in the country. Images of Italian soccer star Mario Balotelli are emblazoned on the tuk-tuks — known here as Bajaj — that fill the streets in the cities of Robe and Goba. People don’t seem to care that Balotelli is of Ghanaian origin and was born in Palermo; what matters is his success and the color of his skin.
"People leave because there’s no work here," says Abdulkadir Gazali, a 39-year-old father of five. "I tried going to Saudi Arabia three times, but they always sent me back."
It might appear easy to leave as long as you have money to pay smugglers.
"It costs 400 to 600 euros ($420 to $640) to reach an Arab country," says Waldayese, head of immigration at Bale’s department of social affairs.
The price for migrating to Europe is much higher. It can cost up to 4,000 euros ($4,245). The entire practice is illegal, of course.
"Young people collect the necessary funds by selling livestock or working in the fields," says Waldayese.
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