Search: Refugees

SOME 53 Casamance refugees deported from Guinea-Bissau have arrived in Ziguinchor, southern Senegal, from Sao Dominga where they had been since last week. They were met at the border by local administrative authorities and NGOs represented in Ziguinchor, which took them to Ziguinchor’s children’s centre for further assistance. The returnees – 33 children, 13 women […]

A TRUCK convoy arrived in Kolomba, a southeast Guinean town Wednesday to begin moving some 50_000 refugees from neighbouring Sierra Leone to a safer place in central Guinea, more remote from a combat zone. The refugees were assembled in a salient of Guinea territory known as the Parrot’s Beak, adjacent to Sierra Leone, where they […]

SIERRA Leonean refugees fleeing intensified fighting in Guinea are being raped, killed and abducted by Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels despite a promise of “safe passage,” a rights group said. The US-based Human Rights Watch said RUF rebel attacks “raise serious questions about the so-called safe passage as proposed by the office of the UN […]

To mark International Women’s Day, a special Court of Women heard moving accounts of hardship from women displaced by war Marianne Merten ‘My husband was an ex-soldier and in my country [with the coming to power of a new government] ex-soldiers were pursued [for political reasons],” explains refugee Susan Matata. Matata, who comes from a […]

ABOUT a dozen trucks loaded with food for some 4_000 refugees and displaced people have arrived in combat zones of southeastern Guinea, the World Food Program (WFP) said. The trucks, escorted by the Guinean army, bore 58 tonnes of food including flour, beans, oil and high-energy biscuits for some 2_500 Sierra Leonean and Liberian refugees […]

SCORES of Ethiopian refugees living in Sudan are protesting to the UN High Commissioner of Refugees (UNHCR) over a plan for them to return home or lose their refugee status. The group objects to a decision by the UNHCR to deprive them of their refugee status because the reasons that drove them from Ethiopia vanished […]

THE world will pay an enormous price if it ignores the plight of refugees and fails to find them homes, the new UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Ruud Lubbers, has warned. He said “it would be nonsense to praise UNHCR for its care for refugees” unless the international community made “political efforts and, where […]

CLAIRE KEETON, Pretoria | Saturday THE UN refugee agency is having to cut back its Africa programmes because funds from donor governments are insufficient, its southern Africa director said this week. “The UN budget for Kosovo was 90% funded. Africa only got 60% of its total budget. This means cutting down on programmes,” said Ilunga […]

OVER 600000 civilians have been displaced by an upsurge in fighting in rebel-held parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo over the last few months, a senior United Nations official said this week. The new figure brings the total estimated number of displaced in the northern and eastern halves of the country alone to […]

targets Khadija Magardie The thousands of undocumented migrants and asylum-seekers entering South Africa every year often bear the brunt of the police’s predilection towards violence. African migrants, especially, are randomly picked up by local police, and jailed for “being illegal” or on the basis of suspicion that they are involved in crime. The “Roll Back […]