June 13-20, 2022 Mixed Migration—hebdo
This week, we review UNHCR's just-released 2021 Global Displacement Report & reflect on the performative dimensions—& desireability thereof—of global actors' refugee advocacy. Then, as usual, the news
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 week, UNHCR released its 2022 Global Displacement Report, tallying ~100 million displaced people worldwide.
Notwithstanding that just one displaced person is one too many, the last decade’s worth of steady growth in UNHCR’s tally obscures some problematic methodological issues. Yes, the number of displaced people worldwide is growing. But so are the datasets that UNHCR and IOM can access as more states adopt international migration management standards. (In other words: part of each year’s growth doesn’t represent newly displaced people, but rather already displaced but newly counted people.)
Highlighting the numerical scale of displacement can offer the public a sense of the scale of the problem—but it also erases individual stories, blurs distinctions between different displaced communities, and can nourish alarmist narratives from populists and xenophobes. It oversimplifies complex issues—definitions matter. I realize, as I’m writing these words, that I’m as guitly as the next person over: I include every tally I come across in each weekly report, as you already know if you’re a regular reader. I do my best to include local context and to verify definitions, but am open to feedback if you think I can do better.
Articulating and implementing solutions to the displacement of 100 million people is a gargantuan task. It’s one we set ourselves up to fail if the way we communicate about it misinforms the public.
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On to the news…
Asia
Post-occupation Afghanistan
Last Monday, U.S. Air Force officials concluded that pilots had acted appropriately in the chaotic first day of last August’s Kabul airport evacuation, taking off despite crowding around the C17 they were piloting and leading to the deaths of multiple individuals who had tried to cling to the airplane’s wheels—claiming the pilots had no alternative, as the plane would have eventually been overwhelmed had it not taken off when it did. | On Tuesday, the World Bank channeled $150 million through the Food and Agriculture Organization to help Afghan farmers build infrastructure to better irrigate crops. | On Wednesday, a bomb attack on the Hazarat Zarkaria mosque in Kabul killed 5 and wounded 22, as 3 further bomb attacks went off in Mazar-e-Sharif. On the same day, Taliban officials insisted they had a plentiful supply of passport booklets, attributing delays in passport issuance to corruption amid the bureaucracy managing applications and issuing passports. | On Friday, the U.S. Special Inspector for Afghanistan issued an estimate that, by mid-2022, the Afghan labor market would see between 700.000 and 900.000 job losses since August 2021. | On Saturday, an attempted bombing of a Sikh temple in Kabul lead to 2 fatalities, including an attacker, and a yet-unknown number of injuries.
Myanmar and its neighbors
Last Monday, civilians in Myanmar’s central Sagaing province accused junta troops of burning over 200 homes across 3 villages over the previous 2 days. On the same day, Radio Free Asia disclosed that ~600 Rohingya refugees had been detained while attempting to flee into Malaysia over the prior 6 months. | On Wednesday, the UNHCR Global Displacement report tallied the world’s 3 largest internal displacement situations in near states to Myanmar, counting ~6 million IDPs in China, ~5.7 million in the Philippines, and another ~4.9 million in India. | On Thursday, 500 IDPs were again displaced by fighting in Myanmar’s nottheastern Shan State and artillery strikes targeted the Kongyan and Zutaun camps. On the same day, Bangladeshi police announced they had recovered 5 firearms, including an assault rifle, from 2 raids in Rohingya refugee camps near Cox’s Bazaar. | On Friday, authorities in India’s northeastern state of Mizoram announced they had issued 30.000 identification cards to Burmese refugees recently arrived from Chin State. | On Saturday, large-scale flooding struck Bangladesh and northeastern India, killing at least 41 and stranding millions. | On Sunday, tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees held simultaneous peaceful demonstrations across 23 refugee camps in mainland Bangladesh, demanding to be able to return in security and dignity to their ancestral homes in Myanmar’s Rakhine State. | This Monday, Pakistani Foreign Minister Asim Iftikhar disclosed that there are currently ~400.000 Rohingya refugees in Pakistan, in addition to ~3 million refugees from Afghanistan.
Sources: AP, TOLOnews, al Jazeera, the Irrawaddy, BenarNews, PTI, Eleven Myanmar, bdnews24, Aaj News.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Conflict and drought in the Horn of Africa
Last Tuesday, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced the formation of a committee to negotiate a peace deal with the TPLF, giving it a 10-15 day mandate to define scope of imminent negotiations. On the same day, TPLF leadership stated it was prepared to dispatch a high-level delegation to Kenya to begin negotiations with Ethiopian authorities. | On Thursday, Save the Children issued a statement tallying 185.000 children across southeastern Ethiopia facing advanced malnutrition, with drought so severe wild animals have been observed engaging in unusual behavior—such as monkeys attacking children and livestock (see StC’s full statement here). | On Friday, Reuters tallied 9.000 Tigrayans remaining in detention across Ethiopia since a state of emergency was declared in November 2021, and at least 17 fatalities in detention in the interval. | On Saturday, survivors denounced the massacre of ~230 ethnic Amharan civilians in Gimbi, in northern Oromoia, with Ethiopian authorities and the Oromia Liberation Army accusing one another of the atrocity.
Displacement in the Great Lakes area
Last Monday, UNODC announced it had identified, and was working to dismantle, a human trafficking ring run out of the Dzaleka refugee camp in Malawi, having rescued 90 Ethiopian men and an undisclosed number of women and girls from across East Africa thus far. | On Wednesday, authorities in the DRC demanded that Rwanda withdraw 500 troops presumably deployed to the DRC’s eastern North Kivu province, believed to be supporting a local uprising by Tutsi-majority M23 rebels. | On Friday, DRC authorities ordered border crossings with Rwanda closed each day at 15:00, hours earlier than usual, after a gunfire exchange between a lone Congolese soldier and 2 Rwandan border police that killed the former and injured the latter, amid rising cross-border tensions. On the same day, Congolese authorities welcomed a Kenyan proposal to deploy the East African Standby Force to embattled North Kivu, so long as the contingent did not include Rwandan troops.
Conflict and displacement in the Sahel
Last Tuesday, the WFP announced that, due to funding shortages, it would have to suspend its humanitarian programming in South Sudan, appealing for $426 million in contributions to reach 6 million at-risk people through the rest of this year. On the same day, UNHCR issued a report tallying ~80.900 refugee flights from northern Nigeria’s Sokoto State into Niger, and just over 72.250 novel internal displacements, over the last 3 months (see UNHCR’s full report here). | On Wednesday, UN-OCHA signaled that renewed fighting in West Darfur has seen 25 villages destroyed in recent weeks, displacing ~50.000 civilians since hostilities broke out on June 6. On the same day, UNHCR tallied ~800.000 Sudanese refugees displaced to neighboring countries, with the largest contingent comprising nearly 390.000 Darfuris exiled in Chad and just under 312.000 civilians of southern Sudan exiled in South Sudan. | On Thursday, IDPs living in Gubio camp in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno State received food assistance for the first time in 6 months, as authorities relented on a prohibition against provisioning camps aimed to incentivize IDPs to return to their regions of origin. | On Friday, UNHCR appealed for urgent assistance for ~16.000 newly displaced people fleeing fighting in Burkina Faso’s northern Seno province. | On Sunday, local officials disclosed there are currently ~1.5 million IDPs in eastern Nigeria’s Benue State.
Sources: VOA, the EastAfrican, the Independent, Reuters, AP, HumAngle, Sudan Tribune, Vanguard.
Middle East and North Africa
Yemen’s civil war
Last Monday, the UN announced its appeal to remediate the SFO Safer situation had reached $60 million of its $80 million target, calling for donations from the general public to contribute another $5 million. | On Tuesday, anonymous sources revealed that Ansar Allah and Saudi authorities have resumed direct negotiations with an eye to ending Yemen’s 8-year running civil war. | On Wednesday, the GAO revealed that U.S. military and diplomatic authorities had both failed to investigate whether U.S.-sourced weapons systems had been used by the Saudi-led coalition backing Yemen’s internationally-recognized government to target Yemeni civilians.
Asylum seeker (im)mobility in the MENA region
Last Wednesday, Turkish authorities accused Greek security forces of having pushed back just over 41.500 asylum seekers from March 2020 to early June of this year. | On Thursday, Turkish authorities and IOM disclosed that, since the resumption of direct flights from Turkey to Afghanistan in January, ~18.000 Afghan asylum seekers have been repatriated on 79 chartered flights to Kabul. On the same day, InfoMigrants highlighted the stall in Morocco’s once-promising migration policy reforms, with increasing numbers of the ~40.000 irregular migrants granted status in 2014 and 2016 amnesties slipping back into irregularity, with no novel reforms or additional amnesties to secure their status or well-being.| On Saturday, Algerian authorities conducted a mass expulsion of 235 asylum seekers to Assamaka in northwestern Niger. On the same day, a 2-month-long and 213-strong asylum seeker protest outside of UNHCR offices in Tunis ended abruptly—after security forces took protesters to an undisclosed location according to local NGOs, or pursuant to a relocation according to UNHCR. | This Monday, Lebanese President Najib Mikati demanded that the international community secure facilities for the safe repatriation of Syrian refugees—reserving the possibility of conducting repatriations unilaterally if external support fell short—as he appealed for $3.2 billion in financial support to address the impact of the Syrian crisis.
Sources: The Washington Post, VOA, AP, Hürriyet, InfoMigrants, Alarme Phone Sahara, The New Arab
Maritime Migration Routes to & through the West
Central and western Mediterranean
Last Tuesday, Tunisian naval authorities intercepted 72 asylum seekers off the coast of Zarzis, who had set off from Zuwara the night prior, as Tunisian police detained another 30 asylum seekers on Kerkennah Island, off Tunisia’s east-central coast, presumably preparing an irregular crossing toward European waters. | On Wednesday, the Aita Mari (Maydayterraneo) rescued 17 asylum seekers who had jumped into the water from a vessel carrying 103 that had just been intercepted by the Libyan Coast Guard—one day after rescuing another 11 asylum seekers from another vessel, and after the Sea-Eye 4 (Sea-Eye) had rescued another 64 asylum seekers from yet another vessel. On the same day, the Nadir (RESQSHIP) located and provided first aid to 30 asylum seekers adrift in Italian waters, who were shortly rescued by the Italian Coast Guard and taken to Lampedusa. Also on Wednesday, the Sea-Eye 4 rescued another 492 asylum seekers in 4 separate operations—as 12 vessels carrying 481 asylum seekers reached Lampedusa autonomously, to be followed by 17 vessels carrying another 698 asylum seekers on Thursday. On Saturday, the Sea Watch 4 took onboard 96 asylum seekers rescued by a cargo ship, and shortly thereafter took onboard another 165 asylum seekers rescued by the smaller Louise Michel for care and eventual disembarkation in safe port. | On Sunday, Tunisian Coast guard officers retrieved the bodies of 4 asylum seekers whose physical state suggested they had perished several days, perhaps weeks, prior to retrieval.
Aegean Sea
Last Tuesday, Turkish Coast Guard vessels rescued 58 asylum seekers in waters off if Izmir province. | On Thursday, Turkish Coast Guard vessels rescued 94 asylum seekers from 2 vessels in waters off if Izmir and Muğla provinces. | On Sunday, Greek Coast Guard vessels rescued 108 asylum seekers and tallied 4 missing persons from a stricken vessel near Mykonos in the central Aegean, presumably trying to reach Italy from Turkey, as another 56 asylum seekers arrived autonomously in Rhodes.
Gulf of Mexico
Last Tuesday, U.S. authorities detained 20 Cuban asylum seekers who had arrived autonomously on several uninhabited islands west of the Florida Keys over the previous 2 days—on the heels of intercepting a fishing vessel carrying 67 Haitian asylum seekers toward the U.S. coast on Monday. | On Sunday, the U.S. Coast Guard repatriated to Cuba 45 asylum seekers whom it had intercepted in waters off of Florida between Wednesday and Friday prior.
The English Channel
Last Wednesday, 146 asylum seekers were brought ashore in Dover after mid-sea rescue, on the heels of 444 autonomous arrivals to Dungeness, Dover and Ramsgate on in 11 vessels on Tuesday. On the same day, 12 asylum seekers arrived autonomously to the UK’s Devon coast, where they were promptly located by authorities. | On Saturday, the Ministry of Defense announced that 321 asylum seekers had reached UK soil across the English Channel through the day.
Sources: IANS, InfoMigrants, RESQSHIP, Reuters, Ilkha, Local 10 News, the Miami Herald, BBC, Daily Express.
Europe
EU migration policymaking
Last Monday, EU officials revealed that, as of mid-June, yearly asylum seeker relocation pledges from Med5 to other EU countries stood between 7.000 and 8.000 places, just short of negotiators’ target of 10.000 desired to restore solidarity to the core of European asylum policy. | On Wednesday the European Commission pledged €50 million to support healthcare and protection programming targeting at-need refugees living in Turkey. | On Thursday, euobserver unveiled an EU internal paper detailing plans to disburse $80 million over 2 years to help Egyptian authorities deter and interdict irregular maritime crossings toward Italy. On the same day, the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs issued a letter to the European Commission demanding it investigate renewed evidence of pushbacks raised in recent weeks along the Greco-Turkish land border—in defiance of Rule 39 judgments from the European Court of Human Rights—and ensure EU and international law is upheld at external EU borders.
European migration (mis)management
Last Monday, CNN Türk and AFP documented the fatal shooting of an asylum seeker attempting to cross the Evros River from Turkey into Greece—the second such incident in less than 2 months. On the same day, the Council of Europe’s Group of Experts on Human Trafficking issued a report documenting 1.150 incidents of human trafficking in Portugal between 2016 and 2020, and urging Portuguese authorities to step up efforts against the abuse of asylum seekers and labor migrants (see GRETA’s full report here). Also on Monday, Trento’s Assamblea antirazzista denounced that 60 asylum seekers have endured homelessness for several months as they await a place in oversubscribed municipal reception centers. | On Tuesday, Belgium’s judiciary admonished national authorities for under-resourcing asylum seeker reception, leading to systemic homelessness among asylum seekers deemed less vulnerable. | On Wednesday, Austrian police announced they were investigating a labor trafficker accused of exploiting over 230 Iraqi asylum seekers, overworking and underpaying them, all while claimig undue COVID-19 public support. On the same day, a fire at Eleonas camp, hosting ~1.200 asylum seekers in Athens, destroyed 5 shelters and injured 2 residents. | On Friday, al Jazeera relayed the testimonials of asylum seekers pushed back at the Greco-Turkish land border, attesting to security forces’ evident recruitment of people-on-the-move to carry out pushbacks, in exchange for offers of an eventual granting of asylum and the right to keep items stolen from pushback victims. On the same day, two Spanish courts ruled that authorities cannot turn back stateless individuals at ports of entry, and must rather admit them into Spanish soil while their claim to statelessness, and subsequent protection claim, are adjudicated.
Dystopia at the Home Office
Last Tuesday, UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss affirmed that the inaugural deportation flight to Rwanda would take off with 7 or 8 asylum seekers on board—pending the outcome of a final legal challenge—committing that the remaining 130 initially slated for deportation, but removed from the flight due to legal challenges, would be deported at a later date. On the same day, the European Court of Human Rights issued a Rule 39 judgment blocking UK authorities from deporting K.N., one of the passengers slated for removal to Rwanda, until his and other deportees’ litigation was complete, temporarily halting the planned deportation flight (see the ECHR’s full ruling here). Also on Tuesday, the Home Office announced its a long-delayed plan to launch the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme, reducing its commitment to resettle 5.000 at-risk Afghans within its first year to only 2.000. | On Wednesday, the Independent reported dreadful morale in the Home Office on the heels of the previous day’s spectacle, with civil servants reporting being sidelined from the elaboration and implementation of a purely ministerial initiative nonetheless conducted in their name. On the same day, local authorities in Linton-on-Ouse signaled that, following the Home Office’s failure to respond to its pre-action protocol letter by its June 14 deadline, they would be shortly moving forward with legislation to halt the conversion of disused RAF facilities into an asylum seeker detention center. Also on Wednesday, climate researchers issued a study predicting that ~200.000 coastal residences across the UK will become uninhabitable by 2050 due to climate change-induced coastal erosion, with resources insufficient to save every community, demanding prompt discussion on selecting communities to be preserved and others to be relocated. | On Thursday, the Independent relayed the testimony of multiple asylum seekers forced onto Tuesday’s ultimately grounded deportation flight to Rwanda, describing violent and abusive treatment by security personnel to force them from their holding cells into the airplane intended to deport them. On the same day, the Guardian issued figures tallying that 480 Ukrainian families and another 180 individuals have applied for homelessness assistance from local councils since late February, including 145 participants in the Homes for Ukraine scheme—only 20 of whom were matched with a new host when the found themselves in the street. | On Friday, the Home Office disclosed it would begin tagging irregularly arriving asylum seekers with electronic monitors, beginning with the 130 it had intended to deport on Tuesday. | On Sunday, UK charity Opora signaled that growing numbers of Ukrainian families trying to move on from Homes for Ukraine and rent their own housing are facing insurmountable barriers from leasing agencies demanding reference checks, income certification, or onerous upfront payments. | This Monday, the Guardian highlighted that the Home Office’s plan to subject arriving asylum seekers to GPS tagging contradicts its own guidance, which calls for GPS tagging only of asylum seekers presenting a high risk of criminal or national security threats, and warns against tagging individuals in poor health and survivors of trafficking and abuse. On the same day, the Guardian highlighted widespread exploitation of third-country nationals working on UK fishing vessels while holding transit visas that allow employment only in international waters, with no right of onward entry into UK soil and thus no possibility of changing employers, even in the face of abusive labor conditions.
Sources: euobserver, SchengenVisaInfo, Human Rights 360, InfoMigrants, al Jazeera, EFE, BBC, the Guardian, the Independent, The Yorkshire Post.
The Americas
Migration policymaking in North America
Last Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal law did not require immigration judges to grant bond hearings to immigrants in detention for over 6 months—effectively sanctioning indefinite detention of detainees awaiting adjudication through the severely backlogged U.S. immigration court system. On Tuesday, 177 Ukrainian refugees, carrying 3-year Emergency Travel Visas—allowing residence and labor market access—arrived from Poland to Canada’s eastern province of Newfoundland and Labrador. | On Friday, U.S. authorities announced a $35 million commitment to support local authorities in providing for displaced Venezuelans settled in Ecuador. | On Saturday, U.S. authorities tallied the irregular arrival of just over 140.000 Cuban asylum seekers between October 1 of last year and May 31 of this year. | This Monday, CBS News revealed that, of the 46.000 humanitarian parole applications filed by Afghans who assisted U.S. forces in Afghanistan through last August, only 4.543 have been adjudicated, and only 297 of those approved.
Migration and its drivers in Latin America
Last Tuesday, local authorities struggled to tend to between 2.000 and 3.000 asylum seekers demanding to register in Tapachula, having declined to join northbound caravans in favor of lodging their asylum claims in Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas. | On Thursday, Colombia’s Ministry of Health disclosed that 740.000 displaced Venezuelans had successfully registered for social security, with authorities continuing to work toward a target of 900.000. On the same day, Mexican authorities announced they had intercepted a truck carrying 366 asylum seekers of 16 nationalities, some from as far away as Uzbekistan and Nepal, by the side of a highway in the southern state of Chiapas. Also on Thursday, authorities in Guatemala announced they had apprehended 31 asylum seekers irregularly transiting through Guatemalan soil. | On Friday, authorities in Guatemala intercepted 20 Venezuelan asylum seekers irregularly transiting through Guatemalan soil. On the same day, Guatemalan authorities expelled 90 Cuban and Venezuelan asylum seekers to Honduras. | On Sunday, authorities in Guatemala intercepted another 17 Venezuelan asylum seekers in irregular transit.
Sources: the New York Times, CBC, VOA, AP, Milenio, CBS News, infobae, AGN, Diario de Cuba.
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