• Desperate Red Sea Journeys: Refugees Pour Into and Out of Yemen

    Following the attack that killed 42 Somali refugees off the coast of Yemen, we report from #Djibouti on the desperate choices faced by refugees who fled to Yemen and now find themselves in the middle of another conflict.


    https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/articles/2017/03/28/desperate-red-sea-journeys-refugees-pour-into-and-out-of-yemen
    #Mer_Rouge #mourir_en_mer #asile #migrations #réfugiés #Yémen
    cc @reka

    • Yemen Received More Migrants in #2018 than Europe

      « The International Organization for Migration says that nearly 150,000 migrants arrived in war torn Yemen in 2018. This is despite ongoing conflict, a cholera outbreak and near famine conditions in much of the country.

      Perhaps what is most remarkable about this figure is that the number of migrants expected to arrive in Yemen before the end of 2018 far exceeds the number of irregular migrants who have arrived in Europe in 2018, which is 134,000. Deeper still, while the number of migrants to Europe sharply declined between 2017 and 2018, the number of migrants to Yemen increased by 50% compared to 2017.

      Why are migrants flocking to war torn Yemen in such large numbers?

      According to the International Organization for Migration, the vast majority of migrants are from Ethiopia and they travel to Yemen via smuggling routes across the Red Sea, most from Djibouti. Their ultimate destination is not Yemen, but rather Saudi Arabia where they hope to find gainful employment. From the International Organization for Migration:

      “Located at the cusp of two continents, Yemen historically has been an origin, transit and destination country of migrants. Today, an estimated 92 per cent of its incoming migrants are Ethiopian nationals, with Somalis accounting for the rest. In 2017, an estimated 100,000 migrants reached Yemen.

      Migrants reaching Yemen travel first by land, primarily through Djibouti, and eventually undergo perilous boat journeys across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen, now one of the busiest maritime migration routes in the world. A smaller number sails from Somalia’s coastline.

      Both routes are also among the world’s most “youthful,” in the sense that minors account for an estimated 20 per cent of the migrants. Many are unaccompanied.”

      The stories of these migrants are instructive. Last year, Mohammed Abdiker of the IOM penned an essay on this “deadly migration route that the world is ignoring.”

      “The stories we hear from them are the same; they know someone who has gone before and “made it.” Someone who has sent enough money home to build their parents a house, put their brother through school or regenerate their family farm affected by years of drought. Migrants often cite these examples as proof that once they reach their destination they will be able to pull themselves and their loved ones out of poverty.”

      …One person who our team on the ground helped, was a 14-year-old boy named Mohammed. He wanted to travel from Ethiopia to Saudi Arabia to find work and hopefully save some money. He left his home with some friends without telling his relatives. They walked several hundred miles, while hungry and thirsty.Risking drowning in the sea, they crossed from Djibouti to Yemen. When they got to Yemen, Mohammed says he and his friends were abducted by smugglers in an area where there is ongoing fighting. He says the smugglers abused him physically and only released him once they had extorted money from him and his friends through their families back home.Attempting to then travel through the country to the border, they were seriously injured by an explosion. An ambulance took Mohammed and five others to a hospital. According to Mohammed, two female migrants died and the other migrants from his group were never found. Mohammed was transferred to the prison in Hodeidah, which is where IOM met him and provided him with assistance.”

      The fact that so many people are willing to flee to Yemen is a profound demonstration of the power of migration. People want to move– and they are willing accept huge risks in pursuit of a better life ».

      https://migrationsansfrontieres.com/2019/01/15/yemen-received-more-migrants-in-2018-than-europe
      #statistiques #chiffres

  • Surviving the Sexual Violence Crisis in South Sudan

    In Uganda’s massive Bidibidi camp, which is home to more than 272,000 South Sudanese refugees, aid workers are trying to identify and help sexual violence survivors – despite a dearth of resources.


    https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/articles/2017/03/23/surviving-the-sexual-violence-crisis-in-south-sudan
    #abus_sexuels #viol #Soudan_du_sud #viols

  • Europe’s Refugee Frontier: Pushbacks and Border Closures in Serbia

    In the first part of our series ‘Europe’s Outsourced Refugees,’ we report from Belgrade on how illegal pushbacks of asylum seekers along the Balkan route are leaving refugees invisible and unprotected.


    https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/articles/2017/03/24/europes-refugee-frontier-pushbacks-and-border-closures-in-serbia-2
    #asile #migrations #réfugiés #route_des_balkans #push-back #refoulements #Serbie

  • Photo Essay: Children Who Escaped #Boko_Haram Live in Shadow of #Famine

    As severe hunger takes hold in northeast Nigeria, the U.N. estimates that nearly a half-million children under five will suffer from acute malnutrition this year, and 90,000 may die. Photojournalist #Danielle_Villasana tells the stories behind the devastating numbers.


    https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/articles/2017/03/20/photo-essay-children-who-escaped-boko-haram-live-in-shadow-of-famine

    #faim #enfants #enfance #photographie
    cc @albertocampiphoto

  • Analysis: Politics of Class and Identity Dividing Aleppo – and Syria

    This week marked the end of the sixth year of the war in Syria. On this terrible anniversary we examine the deepening economic, social and other divisions that make it so difficult for refugees to return to Aleppo, the city that has become a bellwether for the country’s future.

    https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/articles/2017/03/17/analysis-politics-of-class-and-identity-dividing-aleppo-and-syria-2
    #Alep #Syrie

  • Iraqi Refugees Return From Syria to Undocumented Lives

    Some Iraqis who fled across the Syrian border ahead of the Mosul offensive are now returning to Iraq. Many say their official IDs were confiscated in Syria, leaving them trapped in Iraqi displacement camps and unable to prove their identities.

    https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/articles/2017/03/13/iraqi-refugees-return-from-syria-to-undocumented-lives
    #irak #Syrie #asile #migrations #réfugiés #retour_au_pays #réfugiés #irakiens #camps_de_réfugiés

  • ‘Strong Women Cannot Be Shaken’: South Sudan’s Refugee Sisterhood

    Over 1 million people have fled ethnic cleansing and #famine in South Sudan, most of them women and children. In this photo and video essay, Angela Wells and Rachel Reed meet the female leaders and refugee women in Uganda who have become warriors for peace.


    https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/articles/2017/03/09/strong-women-cannot-be-shaken-south-sudans-refugee-sisterhood
    #femmes #Soudan_du_sud #nettoyage_ethnique #génocide #réfugiés #femmes #Ouganda #réfugiés_sud-soudanais

  • The Refugee Archipelago: The Inside Story of What Went Wrong — Refugees Deeply
    https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/articles/2017/03/06/the-refugee-archipelago-the-inside-story-of-what-went-wrong-in-greece

    Exactly how much money has been spent in Greece by the European Union is much reported but little understood. Refugees Deeply has calculated that $803 million has come into Greece since 2015, which includes all the funds actually allocated or spent, all significant bilateral funding and major sources of private donations.

    The biggest pots of money are controlled by the European Commission, the E.U.’s executive body, which oversees the Asylum Migration Integration Fund (AMIF) and the Internal Security Fund (ISF) which collectively had $541 million dedicated to Greek funding needs. However, the government in Greece was unable to absorb significant amounts of these funds, necessitating emergency assistance from the commission, channeled through other means.

    Confusion over the true extent of spending has been exacerbated by inflated statements from the European Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship, Dimitris Avramopoulos, who has regularly cited figures in excess of 1 billion euros ($1.06 billion). This amount apparently refers to all available and theoretical funds, not what has actually been allocated or spent.

    Nevertheless, the $803 million total represents the most expensive humanitarian response in history.

    [...]

    A Greek policeman serving at the Moria camp put it more succinctly when explaining that his job was to get a copy of an I.D. and a fingerprint and then speed them on their way to Germany: “Copy, finger, Merkel.”

    [...]

    With his borders set to close, no hot spots and a grilling in prospect at a European leaders’ summit at the end of February, the Greek prime minister, Tsipras, found an unlikely savior. Panos Kammenos has been one of the indisputable political winners from the upheaval of Greek politics and the collapse of its traditional parties. A thickset right-winger with a penchant for military uniforms who blames Greece’s debt crisis on a shadowy global banking conspiracy, he found himself as the junior partner in a coalition government. His price for propping up a hard-left government was the defense ministry.

    Prior to February, Kammenos’ contribution to the refugee response had been to growl that Europe should back down in debt negotiations or Greece would flood the E.U. with migrants. His change of heart came after $74 million was added to the defense ministry budget for refugee support, recurring annually. In a period of less than 10 days the Greek army established spartan but functional facilities at the hot spots.

    The pattern was set for inertia, concealment of chaos, external pressure and last-minute actions. With responsibility for the response now divided between several Greek ministries and a U.N. agency more accustomed to working in the developing world, E.C. cash flowed and effective oversight of refugee spending was removed. A series of amendments that passed through Greece’s parliament stripped out auditing requirements on contracts related to the refugee crisis.

    [...]

    bon j’arrête de copier-coller. C’est un excellent article. Lisez-le !

    #refugee #réfugiés #grèce #europe #argent #ong #ngo

    What about @rezo ?

    @cdb_77

    • By late spring 2016 the larger international aid agencies were already tabling plans to winterize the tented camps and donors were allocating funds. The Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund, a German NGO, put forward a $1.6 million proposal to turn Softex into a 1,500-person site with accommodation in containers with heating and plumbing. Bilateral aid money from Germany was agreed to fund the winterized camp and the proposal went to the Greek migration ministry.

      Instead of signing off and allowing work to begin, the Greeks returned with their own proposal costed at $8 million. When donors and aid agencies replied that this was a nonstarter, Mouzalas refused to budge or negotiate a compromise. In a letter dated July 7, the ministry wrote to ASB “that for Softex camp our plans will not change” and therefore their proposal was rejected.

      #mouzalas #corruption #ordures

    • Adding to the uncertainty was a murky game over the number of refugees within Greek borders. After the closure of the northern frontier and the implementation of the Greece-Turkey deal, arrivals slowed dramatically. When the first official count of asylum seekers remaining in Greece was released by the migration ministry it stated that there were 57,000 on the mainland and the islands.

      This number grew with the trickle of new arrivals on the islands to 63,000 on the official bulletin from the migration ministry. But the numbers ran counter to what European officials and NGO staff were seeing in the camps where more and more people were disappearing. At the end of July a new column appeared on the ministry report listing “refugees outside camps.” As the numbers reported in individual camps reduced, the number in the new column rose.

    • “I am not sure officials understand the consequences of the situation they have created or the humiliation this bears for the country,” says Poutou. “I have no idea why they don’t make the managing authority function. Any minister who understands the responsibilities of his mandate could have managed this if he was interested.”

  • The Refugee Archipelago: The Inside Story of What Went Wrong in Greece

    Refugees Deeply investigates failures in the most expensive humanitarian response in history, which played out during the refugee crisis in the Eastern Mediterranean.
    Exactly how much money has been spent in Greece by the European Union is much reported but little understood. Refugees Deeply has calculated that $803 million has come into Greece since 2015, which includes all the funds actually allocated or spent, all significant bilateral funding and major sources of private donations.
    The biggest pots of money are controlled by the European Commission, the E.U.’s executive body, which oversees the Asylum Migration Integration Fund (AMIF) and the Internal Security Fund (ISF) which collectively had $541 million dedicated to Greek funding needs. However, the government in Greece was unable to absorb significant amounts of these funds, necessitating emergency assistance from the commission, channeled through other means.


    https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/articles/2017/03/06/the-refugee-archipelago-the-inside-story-of-what-went-wrong-in-greece
    #asile #migrations #réfugiés #Grèce #échec #argent #business #aide_humanitaire
    cc @daphne @marty

  • Africans Face Dead End After Death-Defying Odyssey to U.S.

    The number of Africans crossing the Americas to seek refuge in the U.S. grew tenfold last year. Now survivors of that long, expensive and dangerous journey face shrinking prospects of reaching the U.S. and more hardships in Mexico amid Trump’s immigration crackdown.

    In the Mexican border town of Tapachula, near the Guatemalan border, a 27-year-old Somali man made inquiries at a grotty inn called the Imperial Hotel. He had arrived in Mexico a day earlier.

    Nadir C. fled Somalia several years ago after falling in love with a woman from a rival tribe. Pursued by her family, he escaped to Kenya, before traveling on to Uganda and South Sudan.


    https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/articles/2017/03/02/africans-face-dead-end-after-death-defying-odyssey-to-u-s
    #parcours_migratoires #migrants_africains #asile #migrations #réfugiés #itinéraires_migratoires #Mexique #USA #Etats-Unis #migrerrance
    cc @reka

    • The New Coyote Trail : Refugees Head West to Bypass Fortress Europe

      Europe’s closing borders and the death toll in the Mediterranean are forcing asylum seekers to look further afield. An investigation into the migration routes out of Latin America into the U.S. and Canada finds Africans, Afghans and Iraqis enduring great risks.

      https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/articles/2017/12/19/the-new-coyote-trail-refugees-head-west-to-bypass-fortress-europe
      #réfugiés_afghans #réfugiés_irakiens #Canada #Equateur

    • More Migrants From Far-Flung Lands Crossing US-Mexico Border

      The young man traversed Andean mountains, plains and cities in buses, took a harrowing boat ride in which five fellow migrants drowned, walked through thick jungle for days, and finally reached the U.S.-Mexico border.

      Then Abdoulaye Camara, from the poor West African country of Mauritania, asked U.S. officials for asylum.

      Camara’s arduous journey highlights how immigration to the United States through its southern border is evolving. Instead of being almost exclusively people from Latin America, the stream of migrants crossing the Mexican border these days includes many who come from the other side of the world.

      Almost 3,000 citizens of India were apprehended entering the U.S. from Mexico last year. In 2007, only 76 were. The number of Nepalese rose from just four in 2007 to 647 last year. More people from Africa are also seeking to get into the United States, with hundreds having reached Mexican towns across the border from Texas in recent weeks, according to local news reports from both sides of the border.

      Camara’s journey began more than a year ago in the small town of Toulel, in southern Mauritania. He left Mauritania, where slavery is illegal but still practiced, “because it’s a country that doesn’t know human rights,” he said.

      Camara was one of 124 migrants who ended up in a federal prison in Oregon after being detained in the U.S. near the border with Mexico in May, the result of the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy.

      He was released October 3, after he had passed his “credible fear” exam, the first step on obtaining asylum, and members of the community near the prison donated money for his bond. He was assisted by lawyers working pro bono.

      “My heart is so gracious, and I am so happy. I really thank my lawyers who got me out of that detention,” Camara said in French as he rode in a car away from the prison.

      Camara’s journey was epic, yet more people are making similar treks to reach the United States. It took him from his village on the edge of the Sahara desert to Morocco by plane and then a flight to Brazil. He stayed there 15 months, picking apples in orchards and saving his earnings as best he could. Finally he felt he had enough to make it to the United States.

      All that lay between him and the U.S. border was 6,000 miles (9,700 kilometers).

      “It was very, very difficult,” said Camara, 30. “I climbed mountains, I crossed rivers. I crossed many rivers, the sea.”

      Camara learned Portuguese in Brazil and could understand a lot of Spanish, which is similar, but not speak it very well. He rode buses through Brazil, Peru and Colombia. Then he and others on the migrant trail faced the most serious obstacle: the Darien Gap, a 60-mile (97-kilometer) stretch of roadless jungle straddling the border of Colombia and Panama.

      But first, he and other travelers who gathered in the town of Turbo, Colombia, had to cross the Gulf of Uraba, a long and wide inlet from the Caribbean Sea. Turbo, on its southeast shore, has become a major point on the migrant trail, where travelers can resupply and where human smugglers offer boat rides.

      Camara and about 75 other people boarded a launch for Capurgana, a village next to the Panamanian border on the other end of the gulf.

      While the slow-moving boat was far from shore, the seas got very rough.

      “There was a wave that came and tipped over the canoe,” Camara said. “Five people fell into the water, and they couldn’t swim.”

      They all drowned, he said. The survivors pushed on.

      Finally arriving in Capurgana after spending two nights on the boat, the migrants split into smaller groups to cross the infamous Darien Gap, a wild place that has tested the most seasoned of travelers. The thick jungle hides swamps that can swallow a man. Lost travelers have died, and been devoured, boots and all, by packs of wild boars, or have been found, half out of their minds.

      Camara’s group consisted of 37 people, including women — two of them pregnant, one from Cameroon and one from Congo — and children.

      “We walked seven days and climbed up into the mountains, into the forest,” Camara said. “When it was night, we slept on the ground. We just kept walking and sleeping, walking and sleeping. It was hard.”

      One man, who was around 26 and from the African nation of Guinea, died, perhaps from exhaustion combined with thirst, Camara said.

      By the sixth day, all the drinks the group had brought with them were gone. They drank water from a river. They came across a Panamanian man and his wife, who sold them some bananas for $5, Camara said.

      Once he got out of the jungle, Camara went to Panamanian immigration officials who gave him travel documents enabling him to go on to Costa Rica, which he reached by bus. In Costa Rica, he repeated that process in hopes of going on to Nicaragua. But he heard authorities there were not so accommodating, so he and about 100 other migrants took a boat around Nicaragua, traveling at night along its Pacific coast.

      “All we could see were the lights of Nicaragua,” he said. Then it was over land again, in cars, buses and sometimes on foot, across Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico, all the way to the U.S. border at Tijuana. He was just about out of money and spent the night in a migrant shelter.

      On May 20, he crossed into San Ysidro, south of San Diego.

      “I said, `I came, I came. I’m from Africa. I want help,”’ he said.

      He is going to stay with a brother in Philadelphia while he pursues his asylum request.

      https://www.voanews.com/amp/more-migrants-far-flung-lands-crossing-us-mexico-border/4651770.html?__twitter_impression=true
      #parcours_migratoire #nouvelle_Méditerranée

    • For African migrants trying, and dying, to reach north America, the Darién Gap is the “new Mediterranean”

      By the time Basame Lonje made it out of the jungle, he was beyond exhausted. The 35-year-old from Cameroon had gone four days out of seven without food, surviving each day on a single biscuit. He drank from rivers flowing with debris and death, carrying the corpses of an unknown number of people who have perished in the Darién Gap, a remote stretch of jungle between Colombia and Panama known as the most dangerous in the world. “I barely survived,” Basame says. “People had sores on the soles of their feet and they had nobody to carry them. They were left there. Do you know what it means to walk for days?”

      As a result of tough migration policies in traditional destination countries in Europe, Basame is one of thousands of so-called‘extracontinental migrants’ taking the desperate decision to try and traverse the American continent in the hope of seeking asylum in the United States or Canada. In previous times this route was used almost exclusively by central American migrants. More recently it has seen a surge in migrants from African countries like Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Eritrea, Mauritania, Nigeria, Ghana and Burkina Faso, as well as people from Asian and Middle Eastern countries such as India, Pakistan, Syria and Nepal. Mexico authorities apprehended around 3,000 Africans and some 12,000 extracontinental migrants in total in 2018, according to the Migrant Policy Unit of Mexico’s Interior Ministry. Most are escaping a mix of conflict, political repression and crumbling economies.

      They fly to visa-friendly countries such as Ecuador, Brazil and Guyana, before navigating their way up north to Mexico, sometimes with the help of smugglers, other times with the aid of social media posts of those who have gone before them. They spend thousands of dollars on flights and bus tickets for journeys that can take months.

      Basame was a teacher back in Cameroon but says he fled the bloody conflict that has been raging in parts of his country since 2016 after he was abducted by armed groups fighting for the secession of the English-speaking parts of the country. His crime? Daring to hold classes.

      New migration regulations have rolled out swiftly and unpredictably since Trump took office in January 2017. Military troops were deployed to the border in October 2018, when some 7,000 people from central America fleeing gang violence and poverty approached on foot. In January 2019, the Migration Protection Protocols (MPP), known as ‘Remain in Mexico’ went into effect: as a result, asylees that arrive in the US via Mexico are now sent back to wait while their cases are processed, instead of being released on parole in the US as prescribed by US law. Rights organisations point out that sending asylum seekers back to Mexico, where they often face deportation, is a violation of the 1951 Refugee Convention.

      This February, Trump declared a state of emergency and accessed emergency funds to begin construction of a physical wall between the US and Mexico. He has also pursued agreements with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras under which all migrants who pass through these countries must first seek refuge and be rejected in them before placing claims in the US. The agreement disregards the fact that not only do these countries lack the capacity to process large-scale asylum claims but that many people are fleeing violence and poverty from these same countries.

      Cumulatively, these policies have seen thousands of people waiting in shelters in US-Mexico border towns like Tijuana and Matamoros where conditions are deteriorating. A ‘metering’ system sees US customs officials attend to about three people daily. Mexico’s northern towns are also notorious for violence, and migrants are vulnerable to exploitation by drug cartels and human traffickers.
      Externalising borders

      In July 2019, Mexico signed an agreement with the US after President Trump threatened to impose trade sanctions if migration flows were not brought to a minimum. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador agreed to deploy 6,000 troops from the newly-formed National Guard to police its borders, adopting the US border militarisation strategy and sealing Mexico’s fate as President Trump’s outer wall.

      Since then, Mexican immigration officials have stopped issuing exit permits to extracontinental migrants arriving at the southern border, trapping many like Basame in a country they have no desire to stay in. With fewer people able to reach the US, Mexico – a transit country – is becoming an unintentional final destination. Although Mexico has refused to sign a third safe country agreement with the US, it has been forced to field over 60,000 asylum claims – double the number received last year. It has been estimated that 60 per cent of these applications are made in Tapachula.

      With no work permit, and even if he had one, with few opportunities available to him as an African migrant and a non-Spanish speaker, Basame is clear about his options: “Mexico can’t give me that.”

      But Mexico’s immigration agency has denied his application for a visitor’s visa that would help him move north. Officials are only issuing permanent residency cards, a document that he fears will affect his asylum claim in the US.

      By 09.00, hundreds of men and women from over two dozen countries were waiting in the blistering sun. Their voices were a cacophony of languages – Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, Tigrinya and Haitian Creole – clashing with the wails of hot, hungry children hanging from their parents. Migrants of Asian origin are mostly absent from these daily crowds: since Mexico deported 310 Indian migrants in an “unprecedented” move this October, they have been keeping a low profile for fear of suffering a similar fate.

      An immigration officer appeared behind the gate, looked at the crowd and shook his head in frustration. A fight broke out when the gates opened as people rushed to get in. Despite his punctuality, Basame was not seen that day.
      “My friends died there”

      Narrating his long, treacherous journey from Cameroon to Mexico, Basame tells Equal Times that after fleeing the captivity of armed rebels this March, he headed to Nigeria before deciding to try to reach the safety of the US. He wanted better opportunities than Nigeria could offer and feared the rebels could easily reach him there. First, he took a flight to Ecuador, then by bus he moved through Colombia. In the north-western town of Capurgana on the Colombian-Panamanian border, he met fellow Cameroonian migrants, as well as Haitians and Cubans. As they prepared to enter the Darién, villagers living at the mouth of the jungle warned them: “If you start this journey, you must finish it, otherwise it is bad news,” alluding to the dangers of the wild animals, poisonous insects and armed kidnappers marauding inside the impenetrable rainforest that breaks up the Pan-American Highway.

      Basame spent seven days in the dense thickness of the Darién, battling the rain and cold, moving from morning until nightfall with nothing but a bag of clothes and some snacks. “You do not stop in the Darién. You keep moving,” he says. He walked with a group of other migrants. Many didn’t make it out of the jungle due to exhaustion. Others were swept away in the fast-moving rivers. “My friends died there,” Basame remembers soberly. One of his worst memories is of walking past the corpse of a dead baby left in a backpack.

      Basame is one of the lucky ones. After reaching Panama, exhausted and starving, he regained his strength before moving up through Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala. After crossing the Suchiate River into Mexico by raft, he arrived in Tapachula in July. He spent a week at an immigration detention centre there before he was given an exit permit to leave the country.

      It wasn’t until he got pulled from a bus to Tijuana by the National Guard that he realised that he could not legally leave Tapachula unless he was heading south, back to Guatemala. The US-Mexico deal took effect on 10 July and he was amongst the first people stranded by Mexico’s new regulations. Basame’s permit would force him back through the jungle of death he had barely survived.
      Death and disease in Mexico

      Judeline Romelus sits with her friends in Tapachula’s main square watching as they braid the hair of her 10-year-old daughter, Mariska. Nearby, Ghanaian and Guinean flags announce African food at restaurants, alongside Mexican and Honduran colours. Haitians and Africans give locals a trim in makeshift barbershops.

      But the general atmosphere of warmth masks the apprehension many locals feel. Despite being in one of the country’s poorest regions, Tapachula has tried to bear the weight of its new migrant population but some people are concerned that government agencies and NGOs are focusing their attention on these new arrivals when the needs of the locals are also many.

      Like Basame, Judeline and Mariska are stranded. Judeline applied for a humanitarian visa so that she can travel north with her daughter, but she must wait for her appointment in February 2020. The 28-year-old mother packed her bags and left Haiti three months ago. Economic stagnation and recent political unrest have caused many to flee the small Caribbean nation. “There are no opportunities in Haiti and I cannot work,” she says, even with a diploma. Judeline says she is looking for a better life in the US where friends are waiting for them in Florida. She relies on their monthly remittances of US$50 to pay for the small room the mother and daughter share.

      The unsanitary living conditions in overcrowded shelters such as these have caused a spike in health problems. “Women are presenting diseases related to sexual and reproductive health,” says Claudia León, regional head at Jesuits Refugee Service, a humanitarian non-profit providing legal and psychosocial assistance to refugees. Many were assaulted in the Darién. “The situation is critical. They have no clean water to wash with and those who are pregnant are at risk.”

      Migrants of all nationalities are suffering from invisible illnesses too. A spokesperson for the medical humanitarian NGO Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) says it is dealing with many cases of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and trauma. Poor living conditions coupled with the memories of the treacherous journey to Mexico and the general uncertainty is causing some to self-harm. “We are in an emergency,” says León. “I have seen people outside the immigration centre hurting themselves because they are in such extreme conditions.”

      The desperation to get to the US has led to the exploration of dangerous alternative routes. A boat smuggling Cameroonian migrants capsized off the coast of Mexico in October, killing one man. “We knew him,” one migrant tells Equal Times at the restaurant where the deceased once frequented. But even as they recall his tragic passing, another man says that he is also considering taking the same route to the US.
      “The new Mediterranean”

      All across the world, tough policies on migration are forcing the most vulnerable migrants and refugees to go underground and seek the services of smuggling gangs and human traffickers. Like the US, Europe has enforced stringent measures to stem migration flows. An increase in anti-immigrant sentiments from far-right, populist governments in the US and Europe in particular sees leaders like Trump and Hungary’s Viktor Orban routinely employ rhetoric that fuels racist anxieties and emphasises the building of walls to prevent a ‘migrant invasion’.

      In 2016, Turkey signed an agreement with the European Union and a bilateral agreement with Greece to keep some three million refugees fleeing the Syrian war from crossing the Aegean Sea into Greece. The agreement saw the European Union send back anyone who crossed without documents after 20 March 2016.

      A similar agreement between Italy and Libya in 2017 was extended this November. Italy is training and funding the Libyan Coast Guard to stop African and Middle Eastern migrants on the Mediterranean and return them to Libya, a country at war.
      Interception numbers have dropped from 181,000 in 2016 to only 8,000 this year, according to UNHCR. Thousands are held in detention centres run by armed factions battling for control since the Arab uprisings of 2011. African migrants have been enslaved, tortured and sold. They have also been caught in the crossfire of the battle for Tripoli. In July, a bomb fell on one detention centre, killing 44 people.

      The number of asylum claims in Mexico keeps rising and is expected reach 80,000 by the end of the year. Although most Africans initially refused to seek asylum in Mexico, more people are applying, particularly from Cameroon. The number of asylum claims from Africa is currently around 500.

      The influx of migrants and refugees has split Mexico politically, with many accusing President Obrador of yielding to President Trump and rescinding on human rights promises he made when he campaigned last year.

      Human rights organisations condemn the US and Mexico’s strategies. “Those seeking safety want the same thing any of us would want if we were in their shoes,” says Isa Sanusi, of Amnesty International in Nigeria. “Mexico and the US must ensure that these migrants from Africa and other parts of the world are not denied the rights guaranteed to them by international law.”

      For now, Basame is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Even if he had the money, it would be too dangerous for him to go home, and yet he currently has no way out of Mexico. As he struggles to stay afloat, his hopes are fading fast. “I’m running out of cash and I’m running out of patience. I’m sick and I don’t have anywhere to live,” he says. “How will I survive?”

      https://www.equaltimes.org/for-migrants-trying-and-dying-to?lang=en

    • Es cosa suya: entanglements of border externalization and African transit migration in northern #Costa_Rica

      Starting from the idea that border externalization – understood as the spatial and institutional stretching of borders – is enmeshed with the highly contextual humanitarian and securitarian dynamics of migrant trajectories, this article addresses the reach of border externalization tentacles in Costa Rica. Although Costa Rica does not formally engage in border externalization agreements, it is located in a region characterized by transit migration and transnational securitization pressures. Moreover, externalization efforts across the Atlantic have contributed to a relatively new presence of so-called extra-continental migrants. Given these circumstances, we aim to interrogate the ways in which border externalization plays a role in Costa Rica’s discourses, policies and practices of migration management. We do so by analysing a migrant reception centre in the northern Costa Rica border region, and by focusing on African transit migration. Our analysis is based on exploratory field research at the centre as well as on long-term migration research in Central America. Building on these empirical explorations and the theoretical notions of mobility regimes, transit and arterial borders, the article finds that Costa Rica’s identity as a ‘humanitarian transit country’ – as enacted in the migrant reception centre – both reproduces and challenges border externalization. While moving towards increased securitization of migration and an internalization of its border, Costa Rica also distinguishes itself from neighbouring countries by emphasizing the care it extends to African migrants, in practice enabling these migrants to move further north. Based on these findings, the article argues for a deeper appreciation of the role of local-regional histories, perceptions, rivalries, linkages and strategies of migration management. This allows for a better grip of the scope and shape of border externalization across a diversity of migration landscapes.

      https://comparativemigrationstudies.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40878-019-0131-9

    • New contested borderlands: Senegalese migrants en route to Argentina

      This article sheds novel, light on how Senegalese men and women adapt to European border governance by finding new ways to ‘look for life’ (chercher la vie) in Latin America, as an alternative to the perilous clandestine routes to Europe. The article follows how Senegalese migrants’ mobility to Argentina has evolved over the last two decades. It particularly focuses on the migrants’ journey to Argentina and explores the migrants’ accounts of their experiences en route and compares them to how different intersecting state-driven national and supranational migration policies become entangled in their mobility. By analytically focusing on the changing migration infrastructure and the different forms of friction the migrants encounter and respond to while moving, the article shows how the risk and uncertainty along the journey increasingly mirror the struggles which African migrants face at EU–African borderlands, and thus how similar features of global mobility regimes seem to be reproduced along this new route from West Africa to Latin America. In this way the politics and hierarchies of mobility are brought to the fore. Yet the article also points to how migrants find new openings and ways to contest the hindrances that aims to stop them as they move through these newly traversed borderlands.

      https://comparativemigrationstudies.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40878-018-0109-z
      #migrants_sénégalais #Argentine #Sénégal

  • EU-Turkey Agreement Failing Refugee Women and Girls

    https://www.womensrefugeecommission.org/images/zdocs/EU-Turkey-Refugee-Agreement-Failing.pdf
    #femmes #asile #migrations #réfugiés #Accord_UE-Turquie #Grèce #Turquie

    In a recent, damning report, the Women’s Refugee Commission—an independent think tank focusing on problems that affect displaced women—called for a dramatic boost to financial, material, and human resources to specifically safeguard female asylum-seekers trapped in Greece and to remedy “a policy of delay, discrimination and despair.” According to the WRC report, more than 50 percent of the refugees stranded in Greece are women, and they face unprecedented threats to their physical and mental well-being.