Humanitarian news
ZIMBABWE: Hope rekindled among the desperate
HARARE Friday, September 12, 2008 (IRIN) - Hope has been resuscitated among long-suffering Zimbabweans after a power-sharing deal between President Robert Mugabe and his rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, was announced late on 11 September.
Categories: Humanitarian news
CAMEROON-NIGERIA: Bakassi returnees overwhelm authorities
ABUJA Thursday, September 11, 2008 (IRIN) - Up to 100,000 Nigerians displaced from Bakassi in southern Nigeria are sheltering in makeshift camps 10 kilometres away in the state of Akwa Ibom. More keep arriving according to the Nigerian Red Cross, leading local authorities to fear an impending humanitarian crisis.
Categories: Humanitarian news
MOZAMBIQUE-ZIMBABWE: The commodities lifeline
HARARE Thursday, September 11, 2008 (IRIN) - It is 7 a.m. at the main long-distance bus terminus in Zimbabwe's capital, Harare. The roof-rack of a battered 75-seater bus is piled high with goods, from bales of dried tobacco leaves to reed mats, in preparation for the 24-hour journey southeast to the town of Sango, in Chiredzi district on the Mozambican border.
Categories: Humanitarian news
WEST AFRICA: Policy overhaul needed to halt illegal migration
DAKAR Wednesday, September 10, 2008 (IRIN) - Illegal migration continues, but is hard to track because most migrants enter a country legally, but then overstay their visas, according to the 2008 International Migration Outlook released by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Categories: Humanitarian news
MOZAMBIQUE: Buried treasure, hidden risks
MARÁVIA Wednesday, September 10, 2008 (IRIN) - Gidion Mutata, 37, rolls up his shirt sleeves, picks up his tools and makes his barefoot way to his gold claim in the mining region of Marávia in Mozambique's northwestern Tete province.
Categories: Humanitarian news
SOUTH AFRICA-ZIMBABWE: New centre, new hope
JOHANNESBURG Tuesday, September 09, 2008 (IRIN) - A new immigration centre located a few minutes from the South Africa-Zimbabwe border could help legalise tens of thousands of asylum seekers and ease a government backlog in the hundreds of thousands.
Categories: Humanitarian news
YEMEN-HORN OF AFRICA: Calm sea lures African migrants
SANAA Tuesday, September 09, 2008 (IRIN) - Hundreds of African migrants, mostly Somalis, have taken advantage of calm seas to make the perilous journey from Somalia to Yemen in the first week of September and more are expected, Hussein Hajji, the Somali consul in Aden, said.
Categories: Humanitarian news
WEST AFRICA: Family pressure fuels illegal migration
DAKAR Monday, September 08, 2008 (IRIN) - Sibling and family rivalries, parental and community pressure, continue to encourage undocumented migration, according to a four-country “Irregular Migration in West Africa” study released by the Soros Foundation-funded Open Society Institute of West Africa (OSIWA).
Categories: Humanitarian news
EGYPT-ISRAEL: Government says it deported African migrants
EILAT Monday, September 08, 2008 (IRIN) - Israel deported to Egypt 91 illegal African migrants in four operations coordinated during the last two weeks of August, the State Attorney's Office said on 1 September. A spokesman for the Israeli military, which patrols the state's borders, said it had returned them on government orders in line with the bilateral agreement signed with the Egyptian government.
Categories: Humanitarian news
EGYPT: Risking death for new life in Italy
CAIRO Sunday, September 07, 2008 (IRIN) - Italy has long been a popular destination among young men in Nile Valley villages. Relatives save up money for each other and a transnational information and communication network facilitates the movement of migrants across the Mediterranean.
Categories: Humanitarian news
WEST AFRICA: Forced mass deportations, violence against migrants on rise
DAKAR Friday, September 05, 2008 (IRIN) - Participants wrapping up the two-day "Stakeholders in Migration" conference on migration in West Africa organised by non-profit Open Society Institute (OSI) said clandestine migration from sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa and Europe has prompted increased border crackdowns, abuses and killings of migrants.
Categories: Humanitarian news
AFRICA-UNITED KINGDOM: HIV prevention not reaching UK Africans
NAIROBI Tuesday, September 02, 2008 (IRIN) - Africans comprise up to 70 percent of all new heterosexual HIV cases in the United Kingdom each year, but they struggle to access prevention information and services, advocacy groups have said.
Categories: Humanitarian news
ISRAEL-OPT: Scheme to give Israelis "wet jobs" in construction in place of Palestinians
RAMALLAH Thursday, August 28, 2008 (IRIN) - If the Israeli Ministry of Finance manages to push through some reforms as part of the proposed 2009 budget, there may soon be almost no Palestinian workers in Israel’s construction sector.
Categories: Humanitarian news
NIGER: Amoumene, “Sometimes, I think I am close to losing my mind”
AGADEZ Wednesday, August 27, 2008 (IRIN) - Amoumene, 27 years old (not his real name) fled fighting last November in the Air Mountains, coming south to Agadez, one of the largest towns in Niger’s north.
Categories: Humanitarian news
JORDAN: Iraqi students exempted from school fees
AMMAN Wednesday, August 27, 2008 (IRIN) - Jordan has waived annual fees in state-owned schools for Iraqi students to help them cope with rising living costs, a Ministry of Education official said on 26 August.
Categories: Humanitarian news
IRAQ: Some Palestinian refugees to get special IDs
BAGHDAD Wednesday, August 27, 2008 (IRIN) - The Iraqi government has launched a registration process for Palestinian refugees who arrived between 1948 and 1967 - and their descendants - to help ensure they benefit from government aid programmes.
Categories: Humanitarian news
EGYPT-ISRAEL: Asylum-seekers run the gauntlet in Sinai desert
TEL AVIV Tuesday, August 26, 2008 (IRIN) - Egyptian soldiers have killed 19 and arrested some 587 African asylum-seekers attempting to cross the border into Israel this year, according to a statement by an Egyptian government official to reporters in Cairo on 8 August.
Categories: Humanitarian news
WEST AFRICA: Coastline to be submerged by 2099
ACCRA Monday, August 25, 2008 (IRIN) - Swathes of West Africa’s coastline extending from the orange dunes in Mauritania to the dense tropical forests in Cameroon will be underwater by the end of the century as a direct consequence of climate change, environmental experts warn.
Categories: Humanitarian news
SOUTH AFRICA: Rethinking asylum
JOHANNESBURG Friday, August 15, 2008 (IRIN) - South Africa should consider temporarily declaring asylum seekers from certain Southern African countries as refugees, to keep up with the burgeoning numbers of migrants, particularly from Zimbabwe, according to a senior government official.
Categories: Humanitarian news
DJIBOUTI: Access to food halved
NAIROBI Thursday, August 14, 2008 (IRIN) - Access to food in Djibouti has been cut by more than 50 percent because of reduced availability and rising prices, according to a humanitarian official.
Categories: Humanitarian news
