"Humanitarian aid can keep the Rohingya alive, but it cannot keep them whole."
August 22-29, 2022 Mixed Migration—hebdo
Welcome to Mixed Migration—hebdo! Here, in the time it takes to read one feature, you get a global sweep of the last week's most relevant migration policy developments, along with links to all the articles you need to dig deeper.
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Spotlight
Last Thursday was Genocide Rememberance Day, observed by the Rohingya to commemorate the launch of an ethnic cleansing campaign by the Burmese military, assented and abetted Myanmar’s civilian leadership. The campaign led to the killing of unknown thousands of Rohingya civilians and the displacement of ~750.000 to Bangladesh, where they have remained miserably encamped these last 5 years, in fenced-off sites around Cox’s Bazaar and on an island containment facility in Bhasan Char.
Beyond the nihilistic ferocity of the abuses committed against the Rohingya in the Tatmadaw’s 2017 campaign, their plight is especially tragic as it brings together all the major failures of the contemporary global refugee order. Structurally, Rohingya refugees exist beyond the reach of not just UNHCR’s traditional long-term solutions to displacement, but also the informal solutions employed by refugees facing more favorable economic and geographic landscapes.
UNHCR’s three traditional solutions to long-term displacement are voluntary return, local integration, and resettlement. A safe and dignified return remains the primary demand of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, five years into their exile (as well as the primary demand of Bangladeshi authorities—though for somewhat less exalted reasons). However, so long as the ruling military junta remains in power in Naypyidaw, safe return is simply impossible for the Rohingya. And, though the exiled National Unity Government has voiced its contrition, it’s hard to decipher the degree to which its wish for atonement is genuine, or whether its intent is to send the right signals to the West. In either event, the NUG is a long way from power, with the military junta willing to spill untold amounts of blood to retain. Five years on from their violent expulsion from Myanmar, voluntary return for the Rohingya remains a chimera—in the short and medium term.
Local settlement in countries of first asylum is no more an option. Though the Rohingya do not face direct violent repression in regional countries of asylum, they face another form of violence: a grinding, day-to-day violence, suppressing their right and ability to participate in society, coupled with the threat of coerced return to Myanmar. Refugee camps around Cox’s Bazaar in Bangladesh are fenced-off and receive only limited cell phone service, while Rohingya living therein are formally prohibited from working or accessing public services, such as healthcare and education, in Bangladesh. Last December, authorities closed down informal schools operating in Cox’s Bazaar, depriving ~30.000 children of what little education they could receive, and thousands more teachers of their precious livelihoods. The ~40.000 Rohingya refugees in India are facing increasing repression as the BJP government mainstreams Hindu nationalism and threatens deportation, with increasing numbers of Rohingya crossing infomally from India into Bangladesh to avoid forcible return to Myanmar. Neither India nor Bangldesh—nor Thailand, Malaysia, or Indonesia, for that matter—are state parties to the 1951 Refugee Convention (understandably wary, as of the early 1950s, of august pledges of legal englightement from Western states and institutions). This means they lack not just the obligation under international law to extend protection to arriving refugees, but also the infrastructure in place to receive arriving asylum seekers, register their identity, and adjudicate their asylum claims. The Rohingya inhabit a singularly inhospitable neighborhood, where UNHCR—whose influence is already frustratingly limited in countries that are signatories to the Convention—simply has no leverage.
UNHCR’s third traditional solution to protracted displacement is resettlement—the process where UNHCR creates lists of particulary-vulnerable refugees, whose need to find a place of safety is particularly urgent, and receiving states select refugees from those lists and resettle them from countries of first asylum to their own soil. The U.S. and Canada have long led the world in global resettlement, though the U.S. system was shredded by the prior Administration, and has not been repaired by its successor. Resettlement, in its current shape, is woefully insufficient to offer solutions at scale to the Rohingya—or to any other community in large-scale protracted displacement. Over the last 20 years, less than 1.2 million refugees have been resettled in total, with a record ~126.000 departures in 2016. Resettlement, by design, can only meet the needs of only the most severely needful. Relocating a large numbers of Rohingya would not only be virtually impossible just in terms of logistics, but also largely undesireable: Rohingya community groups themselves have consistently held that their wish is to return, in safety and dignity, to Myanmar; resettlement would not only leave this desire unmet, but reduce pressure on Burmese authorities to accede to and facilitate their return.
Given the failings of UNHCR’s three traditional solutions, two other solutions remain: irregular migration and subsistence under humanitarian care. The same geography that deprives the Rohingya of regional signatories to the 1951 Refugee Convention strands them far from the highly developed economies that normally absorb immigrant communities: while Syrian or Afghan refugees face extreme and growing difficulties reaching Europe, there is a road they can follow. Rohingya refugees lack even that. As for subsistence, it’s one thing to stay alive, another altogether to live one’s life—especially in a context where humanitarian care can be and is often co-opted by national governments.
Unfortunately, the grim panorama the Rohingya have faced over the last five years looks unlikely to change in the next five. The return of civilian governance to Myanmar offers the only possibility of dignified return for the Rohingya—and just a possibility, not a guarantee. In the meantime, their situation invites reflection on how the contemporary international order fails refugees in protracted displacement. Humanitarian aid can keep the Rohingya alive, but it cannot keep them whole. Sanctions and diplomatic adominition have not sufficed to right the course of the Burmese junta, yet foreign intervention would likely just aggravate internal strife. The Rohingya are beyond questions bona fide refugees, yet UNHCR has only the narrowest of mandates in south Asia. Not to suggest that other refugees have it good, but while other refugees suffer becuase some dimensions of the international legal order fail them, the Rohingya suffer because every dimension of the international legal order has failed them. Resolving this situation is a generational project, with as much to draw from the discipline of development as from that of humanitarianism. And though I have to admit I’m finding myself woefully unfamiliar with the local NGO families that any among
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On to the news…
Asia
Afghanistan and its neighbors
Last Monday, Afghan evacuees stranded in temporary accommodation in the UAE—where ~12.000 evacuees have been awaiting long-term solutions since last August—began a 2-day peaceful protest demanding to be resettled to the U.S. or to other receiving countries. | On Thursday, UN officials announced they were assessing the needs of ~8.200 people affected by flooding across Afghanistan in recent weeks. On the same day, Albanian authorities announced a 6-month extension to the residency permits of Afghan civilians evacuated in August 2021 and temporarily hosted in Albania awaiting resettlement to third countries. | On Friday, Pakistani authorities disclosed that as many as 33 million people have been displaced by flooding triggered by heavy rains lashing Pakistan since this June. On the same day, just under 325 resettling Afghan refugees arrived from Pakistan to Canada’s central province in Winnipeg.
Conflict and displacement in Myanmar
Last Wednesday, The Irrawaddy disclosed that ~7.000 civilians had been displaced from Myanmar’s central Sagaing region by Tatmadaw attacks over the week prior. On the same day, the Chin Human Rights Organization disclosed that just under 51.000 Chin refugees had entered India’s eastern Mizoram State over the 18 months prior, where they were in dire need to humanitarian assistance. | On Saturday, Bangladeshi authorities detained 18 Rohingya refugees who had absconded from Bhasan Char and returned to mainland Bangladesh.
Sources: Reuters, TOLOnews, Exit News, the Guardian, CBC, The Irrawaddy, bdnews24
Sub-Saharan Africa
Conflict resumption and disaster-borne displacement in Ethiopia
Last Tuesday, Tigrayan authorities revealed that they had participated in 2 rounds of direct talks with Ethiopian negotiators, but rejected what they considered unreasonable conditions for peace. | On Wednesday, Tigrayan authorities and local civilians signaled renewed fighting between TPLF and Ethiopian forces around the Amharan town of Kobo, just beyond Tigray’s southeastern tip. WFP officials blasted the TPLF’s apparent theft of 570.000 liters of fuel, intended for aid delivery but diverted to support the renewed fighting off of southeastern Tigray. | On Thursday, local officials signaled that more than 74.000 civilians have been displaced by flooding in Ethiopia’s southeastern Gambella State. the World Meteorological Organization forecast a 5th consecutive failed rainy season in the Horn of Africa starting this October, aggravating already dire drought conditions (see the WMO’s full report here). | On Friday, local media reported that an airstrike had destroyed a kindergarten in Mekelle, killing 4 civilians and injuring at least another dozen. | This Monday, the TPLF denied having seized the strategic Amharan town of Weldiya, south of the hereto now reported fighting around Kobo.
Conflict and displacement in central Africa and the Sahel
Last Wednesday, UNHCR announced the repatriation of 300 refugees from Zambia to their home communities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. On Thursday, local authorities signaled that ~5.000 civilians had been displaced from the DRC’s western Kwamouth province, on the heels of long-running tensions that erupted into open fighting this August. On the same day, Nigerien officials signaled that ~76.000 people have been displaced by flooding that has struck multiple regions across southern Niger since this July. | On Friday, UNHCR announced that 105 refugees from the CAR had voluntarily returned from exile in the Republic of Congo over the few weeks prior. | This Monday, al Jazeera highlighted the benefits derived from the ongoing issuance of biometric ID cards by Cameroonian authorities to refugees from the CAR, allowing them to better access livelihoods and services.
Sources: AP, the Washington Post, Devex, Addis Standard, VOA, UNHCR, HumAngle, al Jazeera.
Middle East and North Africa
Yemen’s civil war
Last Monday, HSA Group, Yemen’s largest private-sector company, pledged $1.2 million toward the salvage of the FSO Safer, rotting off the Red Sea coast of Yemen with 1.1 million barrels of crude oil on board threatening environmental catastrophe, as the UN salvage effort remains $15 million short of its $80 million target months after launching its appeal. | This Monday, Yemen authorities announced renewed fighting around Taiz, accessible only via a limited number of dangerous mountain roads since Ansar Allah seized the city in 2015, as 16 advocacy organizations pleaded for the main roads into Taiz to be reopened to end the city’s isolation (see the multi-author open letter here).
Internal displacement in Syria
Last Tuesday, the Guardian profiled Turkey’s rapprochement with the Assad regime and analyzed its implications for internally and externally displaced Syrians, revealing that Turkish authorities appear to have abandoned a planned invasion of northern Syria feared by Kurdish military and civil society groups. | This Monday, Middle East Eye highlighted a pilot project providing 5 daily hours of education to 71 children confined in the al-Hol detention site, as their countries of origin continue refusing to repatriate their own nationals confined in northeast Syria.
Asylum seeker (im)mobility in the MENA region and labor migration to the Persian Gulf
Last Tuesday, Tunisian authorities announced they had intercepted ~16.000 asylum seekers attempting irregular crossings of the Mediterranean toward southern Europe thus far this year. | On Wednesday, MEMO revealed that Qatari authorities have deported ~60 migrant workers detained earlier this month as they demonstrated to protest unpaid labor building Qatar’s World Cup infrastructure. Alarmephone Sahara charged that Algerian authorities had pushed back over 1.560 asylum seekers in 2 operations on August 14 and 16 of this year.
Sources: Splash247, AFP, the Guardian, Middle East Eye, ANSA, Middle East Monitor, Alarmephone Sahara.
Maritime Migration Routes to & through Europe
The English Channel
Last Monday, just under 1.300 hundred asylum seekers reached UK soil across the English Channel, setting a new 1-day arrivals record. | On Thursday, just over 800 asylum seekers reached UK soil in 16 vessels. | On Saturday, 915 asylum seekers reached UK soil in 19 crossings, for a total of just over 3.730 arrivals this week alone.
Central and western Mediterranean
Last Tuesday, Italian authorities rescued ~1.100 asylum seekers in 3 operations in waters off of Sicily and southern Italy, as the Ocean Viking (S.O.S. Méditerranée) rescued another 41 asylum seekers from the central Mediterranean. | On Friday, Cypriot authorities rescued 37 asylum seekers from the eastern Mediterranean, promptly detaining 5 on suspicion of smuggling. the Open Arms Uno received authorization to disembark 101 asylum seekers it had rescued over a week prior in the Italian port of Messina. | On Sunday, Italian authorities reported ~1.000 asylum seeker arrivals over the weekend, with vessels reaching the islands of Lampedusa and Pantelleria, and the coasts of Calabria and Puglia. On the same day, the Ocean Viking (S.O.S. Meditérannée-IFRC) announced it had rescued 466 asylum seekers in 10 operations in the Central Mediterranean over the previous 3 days.
Aegean and Ionian Seas
Last Friday, Aegean Boat Report relayed media sent by 85 Palestinian asylum seekers adrift off the southwestern Greek island of Zakynthos after the boat in which they had meant to sail from Turkey to Italy broke down, tracking their 24-hour wait to be rescued by a passing tanker that disembarked them in Kalamata on the following day. | This Monday, Turkish authorities rescued 96 asylum seekers off the coast of Izmir, whom they believe had been left adrift after being pushed back from Greek waters.
Gulf of Mexico
Last Tuesday, Bahamanian authorities intercepted 111 Haitian asylum seekers in waters off of Guichos Cay, a small island about halfway between Cuba and the Bahamas. | On Saturday, U.S. authorities rescued several dozen Haitian asylum seekers from a vessel in waters ~30 miles south of the Bahamanian island of Cay Salt Bay, roughly halfway between southern Florida and northern Cuba. On the same day, U.S. authorities also apprehended 27 Cuban asylum seekers who had arrived autonomously to the Florida Keys. Also on Saturday, U.S. authorities announced they had repatriated 90 Cuban asylum seekers intercepted off the coast of Florida on the preceding Wednesday and Thursday.
Sources: Deutsche-Welle, BBC, InfoMigrants, Reuters, AP, S.O.S. Meditérannée, ABR, Daily Sabah, Local10News.
Europe
EU migration policymaking
Last Monday, German media disclosed that just over 8.000 failed asylum seekers had been deported from Germany thus far this year, with ~6.200 repatriated to their country of origin and ~1.800 intra-EU transfers under the Dublin Regulation. | On Thursday, French authorities relocated 38 asylum seekers from Italy, the first of 3.000 to be thus relocated under the EU’s novel solidarity mechanism. | On Friday, Dutch authorities announced they were temporarily withdrawing from the relocation mechanism provided for under the 2016 EU-Turkey Statement, which calls for 1.000 Syrian refugees to be relocated to the Netherlands each year. | On Sunday, EU officials leaked they will likely repeal visa facilitation for Russian nationals at an EU JHA Council this coming week, falling short of an outright visa ban demanded by some EU governments but still significantly reducing Russian nationals’ access to EU soil.
Border control in southeastern Europe
Last Tuesday, Greek authorities re-announced a series of previously announced measures to extend the existing 40-kilometer border fence along the Evros River by another 220 kilometers, hire additional border guards, and invest in surveillance technology to deter irregular arrivals across the Evros. | On Wednesday, Philenews reported that nearly 14.000 irregular asylum seeker arrivals had taken place thus far this year, doubling figures for the same period last year and overwhelming reception and processing capacity. Also on Wednesday, IOM disclosed it had assisted 8.000 asylum seekers return from Greece to their countries of origin since 2019 via assisted voluntary return. | On Sunday, Bulgarian authorities announced they had intercepted just over 140 Afghan asylum seekers near Burgas, awaiting further irregular travel toward the Schengen Zone.
Refugee reception in Benelux
Last Tuesday, a 3-month old child perished at the overcrowded Ter Apel reception center in the Netherlands’ northwestern Gronigen province, prompting authorities to open an investigation into accommodation conditions as MSF’s Dutch chapter launched its first-ever domestic intervention to improve sanitation in Ter Apel. | On Wednesday, local authorities reported that ~700 asylum seekers were sleeping rough outside of Ter Apel, as Dutch authorities remain unable to resolve a weeks-long reception crisis. | On Thursday, Belgian NGO Orbit revealed there are ~1.600 recognized refugees stranded in reception centers in Belgium due to housing shortages, obstructing their settlement and integration into Beglian society. | On Friday, Dutch authorities relocated 400 asylum seekers from Ter Apel to reception centers across the Netherlands—one day after transferring away another 150.
Displacement within and beyond Ukraine
Last Tuesday, IOM issued a report tallying ~13.2 million displaced since the Russian invasion of Ukraine last Feburary, including ~303.000 third-country nationals displaced into EU countries where their rights-guarantees are, at best, precarious (see the full IOM report here). | On Wednesday, Spanish authorities confirmed they had granted temporary protection to 138.000 Ukrainian refugees since Russian forces invaded Ukraine last February. | On Sunday, advocates again signaled alarm at the possibility that 15.000-21.000 Ukrainian refugees could become homeless by winter, rising to 50.000 by mid-2023, as Homes for Ukraine placements expire in coming months.
Dystopia at the Home Office
Last Wednesday, advocacy groups blasted the Home Office’s response to recent reports of child abuse in asylum seeker hotels, charging that halving the time unaccompanied asylum seeking minors spend in hotel accommodation among unfamiliar adults would not solve the risk of exploitation faced by these children. | On Thursday, the Home Office revealed that its refugee status recognition rate between June 2021 and June 2022 stood at 76%, a record high, as its asylum claims backlog also reached a record high of 118.000 pending cases. On the same day, the Home Office announced plans to fast-track the review of asylum claims from Albanian nationals, so as to promptly repatriate all failed applicants. | This Monday, the Home Office revealed it has disbursed ~£2.5 million to contract 4 rescue vessels from 2 offshore wind utilities to augment Border Force resources providing maritime search-and-rescue in the Central Mediterranean.
Sources: InfoMigrants, NL Times, the Guardian, Philenews, EFE, RFE, DutchNews, The Brussels Times, ANSA, Europa Press, AP.
The Americas
U.S. migration policymaking
Last Monday, asylum seeker arrivals by bus from Texas and Arizona to New York and Washington, DC reached ~8.000, straining resources and fueling toxic political score-settling across U.S. politics. | On Tuesday, Border Report revealed that U.S. authorities at the San Diego port of entry are allowing 120 daily admissions of asylum seekers with disabilities, chronic illnesses, or fear of identity-based persecution, granting humanitarian parole to those admitted. | On Wednesday, the Biden Administration issued a rule codifying the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program into administrative law, putting the legal status of ~825.000 dreamers on firmer footing than DACA’s former status as a Presidential order gave them. | On Thursday, immigration advocates welcomed the DACA rule issuance, but demanded Congressional action to grant dreamers a path to citizenship, and to make children who arrived irregularly to the U.S. after 2007 eligible from protection for deportation and labor market access as well.
Irregular migration in Latin America
Last Monday, a novel caravan composed of 500 asylum seekers departed Tapachula, where they felt neglected by immigration authorities, to try to reach Huixtla and obtain travel documents there—as authorities note a novel phenomenon of asylum seekers leaving Tapachula in mini-caravans, of 50 to 500 participants, rather than the larger groups formerly assembled. | On Tuesday, 400 caravan participants declined invitations from Mexican authorities to turn back and return to Tapachula, fearing deportation to Guatemala if they neared its border again. On the same day, Mexican authorities rescued 72 asylum seekers confined in a warehouse in the central Mexican town of Aguascalientes. Also on Tuesday, authorities in Guatemala apprehended just under 100 asylum seekers irregularly present on Guatemalan soil. | On Wednesday, Guatemalan authorities announced they had expelled just over 9.000 asylum seekers thus far this year to Honduras, despite the vast majority being nationals of Venezuela. | On Friday, analysts noted that Mexico’s introduction of travel visas earlier this year has not reduced irregular arrivals to the U.S.-Mexico border, while it has dramatically increased irregular entry into Panama and dangerous crossings of the Darién Gap. On the same day, Honduran authorities announced that nearly 80.000 asylum seekers had irregularly entered Honduras thus far this year, the majority of them nationals of Venezuela. | On Sunday, a novel caravan composed to ~1.000 asylum seekers departed Tapachula to demand humanitarian visas from Mexican authorities.
Sources: AP, Border Report, ABC News, NBC News, Milenio, EFE, AGN.
Oceania
Refugee resettlement to Australia
On Friday, Voice of America highlighted a novel Community Refugee Integration and Settlement Pilot program, intended to provide 12 months of community support to arriving refugees who lack existing family links in Australia. |
Sources: VOA.
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