Day: June 17, 2022

UN human rights chief won’t seek second term

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said Monday that she will step down when her term finishes at the end of August. The news was welcomed by China rights activists, who have criticized Bachelet for failing to more forcefully criticize Beijing’s incarceration of nearly 2 million Uyghurs in Xinjiang, including during her recent visit to China.

Activists Welcome UN Rights Chief’s Decision to Step Down

Truce eases Yemen violence, but hunger remains grave threat

U.N. officials said Tuesday that a temporary truce in place across Yemen since April 2 has eased some hardships, but the country is still facing a dangerous food crisis in which 19 million people are going hungry.

Hunger Stalks Yemenis as Truce Eases Some Hardships

UK cancels controversial deportation flight to Rwanda

On Tuesday night, Britain canceled its first deportation flight to Rwanda after a last-minute intervention by the European Court of Human Rights, which decided there was “a real risk of irreversible harm” to the asylum-seekers involved. U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi has been among critics of the plan. “This is all wrong,” Grandi told reporters Monday.

UK Cancels First Flight to Deport Asylum Seekers to Rwanda

In brief

— The heads of six U.N. humanitarian agencies called Thursday on the U.N. Security Council to renew the mandate allowing aid agencies to bring critical food and medical supplies into northwestern Syria from Turkey. The resolution authorizing the cross-border aid operation is due to expire on July 10. Russia has previously opposed renewing it and forced the council to gradually go from four crossing points to just one. The U.N. officials said the operation provides life-saving assistance to 4.1 million Syrians trapped in nongovernment-controlled areas. Damascus would like to see the cross-border operations end, saying all aid distribution should be through the government from inside the country. The U.N. has said such cross-line distribution is insufficient but would like to see it expanded.

— Senior U.N. officials continue to work with Kyiv and Moscow on getting some 20 million tons of Ukrainian grain blocked at a port in Odessa to international markets to ease the growing global food crisis. The drop in Ukrainian grain has particularly hurt parts of the Middle East and Africa and has dramatically driven up operating costs for the World Food Program. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told reporters Friday that alternative routes and methods are being sought, “but certainly they are much less efficient than using big ships through the ports.” U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Thursday at the U.N. that Washington is looking at helping Ukraine build temporary silos along its border to prevent Russian troops from stealing grain and to make space for the upcoming winter harvest.

— The head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, Deborah Lyons, concluded her post this week. In a farewell statement, she said that when she accepted the job two years ago she could not have imagined the Afghanistan she is now leaving. Lyons said she is heartbroken, especially for the millions of Afghan girls who have been denied their right to education and for the talented women told to stay at home by the Taliban authorities. Her replacement is expected to be named soon. On June 23, the Security Council will hold its regular meeting on the situation in Afghanistan.

Quote of note

“We have not seen a single genocide or Holocaust, or anything of that nature, that has happened without hate speech. People do not recognize that what Hitler did with his Ministry of Propaganda that was headed by [Joseph] Goebbels, that really was hate speech at the highest level you can imagine. Official hate speech.”

— Alice Nderitu, U.N. Special Adviser on Genocide, in remarks to reporters Friday ahead of the first International Day for Countering Hate Speech on June 18.

What we are watching next week

Monday, June 20, is World Refugee Day. The U.N. Refugee Agency, UNHCR, said this week in its Global Trends report that the war in Ukraine has pushed global displacement to over 100 million. Watch more here:

Source: Voice of America

GENEVA — In marking the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought, the United Nations is calling for better land management and regreening initiatives to tackle the twin disasters.

Europe is struggling with an unusually early and intense heat wave, which has spread from North Africa. That has been preceded by a prolonged heat wave in India and Pakistan in March and April.

Spokeswoman for the World Meteorological Organization, Clare Nullis, said European countries are experiencing scorching temperatures in mid-June that are more typical of those in July or August. She added that temperatures more than 10 degrees higher than average are combined with drought in many parts of Europe.

“As a result of climate change, heat waves are starting earlier. They are becoming more frequent and more severe because of concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which are at record level,” Nullis said. “What we are witnessing today is, unfortunately, a foretaste of the future.”

Heat waves can exacerbate drought and wildfires, and trigger desertification. Droughts are increasing in frequency and severity, the WMO says, adding that they have gone up by 29 percent since 2000, affecting 55 million people a year.

The World Health Organization calls drought an urgent, global issue. It says droughts are getting more frequent and fiercer in all regions, affecting the health and well-being of millions of people. WHO spokeswoman Carla Drysdale said a particularly hard-hit region is the greater Horn of Africa.

“In the past 10 years, the region has endured three severe droughts,” Drysdale said. “The frequency and severity of droughts in recent years, linked to the changing climate, has made it harder and harder for families to recover from these shocks. … Millions in the greater Horn of Africa are facing acute hunger.”

U.N. agencies agree early action can avert a crisis, lessen the impact of drought, and reverse desertification. They say measures such as rainwater harvesting, drip irrigation systems, and crop engineering that increases resilience to dry conditions can ward off some of the worst effects of drought.

They recommend better land management, tree planting and other regreening projects to combat desertification and restore the land to what it was. They also point to the Great Green Wall of the Sahel project in Africa, which has restored millions of hectares of land and created thousands of jobs, from Dakar, Senegal, to Djibouti.

Source: Voice Of America

Everyday scores of stranded and vulnerable migrants make their way to any one of 12 Migration Response Centres (MRCs) in the East and Horn of Africa with the intention of accessing various services, including medical attention and information.

The MRCs are all situated along key migration routes and are run by governments and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) with support from programmes such as the EU-IOM Joint Initiative for Migrant Protection and Reintegration in the Horn of Africa (the EU-IOM Joint Initiative).

Due to the thousands of migration movements recorded in the region annually, there is need for MRCs to play an even greater role in supporting migrants in distress, according to an assessment conducted by Altai Consulting supported under the EU-IOM Joint Initiative. Among those who participated in the research were partner agencies, including governmental bodies.

MRCs have been credited with providing life-saving assistance, including at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when movement restrictions and border closures left many more migrants stranded and in need of support.

The numbers and locations of the MRCs are as follows:

Djibouti (1), at Obock

Ethiopia (5), at Dire Dawa, Metema, Moyale, Semera and Togochale

Somalia (3), at Bossaso, Hargeisa and Mogadishu

Sudan (3), at Gedarif, Kassala and Khartoum

“Across all locations, MRC stakeholders and partners perceive the MRC as one of the most relevant actors in the field of migration management,” the report said. “The MRC is seen as the institution that holds the knowledge required by everyone else active in migration and that can bring all the stakeholders together to improve the migration management response in the region.”

The suggestion is for MRCs to leverage their role as a coordinating body and to provide support in areas like training and information-sharing in migrant protection, migrants’ rights, human trafficking and gender-based violence.

Deeper collaboration would benefit from the establishment of a structured communication and an electronic referral mechanism. Just as important would be supporting partners with infrastructure renovations, such as the work done with migrant community schools in Sudan.

Similarly, there is need to boost shelter capacity in safehouses. This is necessitated by the fact that migrants currently spend prolonged time in transit. In Ethiopia this is partly due to the temporary restrictions of assisted voluntary returns to the northern parts of the country.

Direct Support

Other ways of improving collaboration between MRCs and government stakeholders would include the strengthening of coordination mechanisms across the various MRC partners, together with participating in established coordination platforms such as Hargeisa’s mixed migration management taskforce meetings.

In turn, government stakeholders can support MRC operations by availing staff, including social workers, as well as focusing their extensive reach to identify migrants in vulnerable situations while also providing direct support to migrant groups.

IOM teams supporting the MRCs strive to continue providing quick and efficient service to the migrants who need it. This is despite that migrants reported being satisfied with the services provided by MRCs, especially free medical assistance.

Accessible Feedback

Two percent of respondents reported being very satisfied, 76 percent were satisfied, 20 percent were neutral and 2 percent were dissatisfied. The highest level of satisfaction was among beneficiaries between the ages of 11 and 17. However, migrants singled out the need to speed up turnaround in assisted voluntary return and reintegration support, followed by more and better food.

The research findings also pointed to the benefit of having an official and easily accessible feedback and complaint mechanisms at the MRCs. Beneficiaries polled said they were most comfortable sharing feedback or a complaint by addressing it directly to an MRC staff member (55%), followed by calling the hotline (29%), where one existed.

About the EU-IOM Joint Initiative

Launched in December 2016 and funded by the European Union (EU) Emergency Trust Fund for Africa, the programme brings together 26 African countries of the Sahel and Lake Chad region, the Horn of Africa, and North Africa, the EU, and IOM around the goal of ensuring migration is safer, more informed and better governed for both migrants and their communities.

Source: International Organization for Migration