NPR: That Little Syrian Boy: Here's Who He Was (Warning: Graphic)

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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-35462698

Syria conflict: Jordanians 'at boiling point' over refugees

 

King Abdullah of Jordan says his country is at "boiling point" because of an influx of hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees.

 

Ahead of a donor conference on Syria, the king told the BBC that there was enormous pressure on Jordan's social services, infrastructure and economy.

"Sooner or later, I think, the dam is going to burst," he warned.

 

He said the international community would have to offer more help if it wanted Jordan to keep taking refugees.

 

The UN is seeking $7.7bn (£5.4bn) to fund aid operations for 22.5 million people in Syria and neighbouring countries next year. However, only 43% of its 2015 appeal for $2.9bn was funded.

For decades Jordan welcomed people escaping wars on its borders - Palestinians, Iraqis, and now so many Syrians they make up nearly 20% of the population.

"For the first time," King Abdullah says, "we can't do it any more."

 

Schools, hospitals, jobs are under pressure. The king is going to London to drive a hard bargain. If Europe's leaders expect him to create jobs for Syrians so they stay in the region, he expects them to provide long-term assistance to also provide jobs for Jordanians. That's what the London Conference is promising Syria's neighbours.

There's tens of thousands more waiting to get in and probably a lot more than that if things get worse in the south (which they will if the current trend continues)

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http://www.ecfr.eu/article/commentary_russias_hybrid_interference_in_germanys_refugee_policy5084

Russia’s hybrid interference in Germany’s refugee policy

 

Anti-immigrant demonstrations, such as those by PEGIDA in Dresden or similar movements in other German cities are nothing unusual for Germans these days. And it is not unusual that such demonstrators would praise the Russian president Vladimir Putin as a role-model of an authoritarian leader who would defend Christianity and not bow to US imperialism. But such ideas were limited to the fantasies of the German far right. But in January 2016, the situation is different. Now Germany faces hybrid Russian interference in its domestic politics, particularly targeted at harming the current government and Chancellor Merkel in particular.

 

It started with the Russian Channel 1 reporting that a girl of Russian decent was abducted and gang-raped by Muslim refugees in Germany. This report was soon contradicted by the German policewho asserted that the girl was not raped (although sex with a minor is still a criminal offense) and that the men in question weren’t refugees. This didn’t stop Russian state media from painting a bleak picture of German domestic situation, portraying a country sliding into anarchy because of the uncontrolled influx of criminal and/or terrorist migrants. Russian propaganda made extensive use of content created by right-wing extremist and neo-Nazi groups to reinforce the picture of a Germany falling apart. The propaganda reached its peak when a rumour was started that 400 Russians had stormed a refugee-home to take their security into their own hands. Of course this incident was pure fiction. But it resonated both in Russia and with the German far right.

 

Then, on Sunday 24 January, smaller demonstrations started against the government and Merkel in particular, demanding “protection” against sexual assaults. While the banners worn were all in perfect German, hardly any German was spoken on the demonstration. The group that organised them, the “International Congress of the Russo-Germans” (Internationaler Kongress der Russlanddeutschen) was previously unknown and had nothing to do with any of the long established organisations of the Germans of Russian descent. The sudden appearance of organisation out of nowhere interested only in political mobilisation bears significant similarities to the Russian hybrid campaign in the Donbas in 2014.

 

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/media-centre/press-releases/2016/01/rich-countries-continue-to-fail-syrians

Rich countries continue to fail Syrians

 

Despite the catastrophic scale of suffering and the numbers of people fleeing the conflict, rich countries have given barely half the aid money needed to help people in Syria and surrounding countries in 2015 and many countries, including the UK, are failing to do their fair share to resettle refugees, according to new analysis by Oxfam launched today.

 

The analysis, published ahead of a donor conference in London on 4 February, calculates how much aid and resettlement places are given by countries according to the size of their economy.  The UK, Germany and the Netherlands continue to give generously while Qatar and Saudi Arabia have decreased their funding significantly, and the US has contributed a smaller percentage of its fair share.

 

While Australia, France and Russia have increased their direct intervention in the conflict, they failed to fund the international appeals as much as they should. Russia provided just one per cent of its fair share to the appeals linked to the crisis in 2015.

 

Mark Goldring, Oxfam GB Chief Executive said: "The world is failing the people of Syria.  Five years on since the start of the crisis the violence and suffering continues to escalate but the level of funding and support fails to match.  Countries must do more to help in Syria, in the region and in resettling the most vulnerable.

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http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/the-worst-of-the-syrian-refugee-crisis-is-coming-for-europe#.Vr5KO4OdrTc.twitter

The Worst of the Syrian Refugee Crisis Is Coming for Europe

 

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/02/france-evict-1000-refugees-calais-jungle-camp-160212193008377.html

France to evict 1000 refugees from Calais 'Jungle' camp

 

Some 1,000 refugees living in the "Jungle" camp in Calais must leave their makeshift dwellings, the top official in France's northern Pas-de-Calais region has announced.

 

Prefect Fabienne Buccio said on Friday that the plan to move out those taking shelter in tents and shacks concerned about half the surface of the camp.

"It's time to tell the migrants of Calais who live in undignified conditions and give Calais an image that isn't dignified either, that we have a solution for each of you," she said.

 

Buccio said her agents will explain to refugees "what we expect" of them - to choose to live in heated containers set up last month on the edge of the camp that can hold 1,500 people or agree to be sent to centres around France. They will be given a week to make the choice.

 

State authorities will visit on Monday to advise those affected that they must leave.

 

The prefecture estimates there are about 3,700 people currently in the camp - lower than the more than 4,000 estimated by aid groups.

 

There were some 6,000 people at the camp just months ago, but the prefecture has made a gradual effort to reduce the numbers. Buccio has suggested that only 2,000 people can remain in Calais.

 

Refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and other war-torn and poverty-ridden countries make their way to northern France in hopes of making it across the English Channel to Britain via ferry, the Eurotunnel train or trucks.

 

The camp on the edge of Calais now has shops, mosques, churches and schools built by refugees and volunteers.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/world/europe/constant-tide-of-migrants-at-sea-and-at-turkish-cemetery.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Constant Tide of Migrants at Sea, and at Turkish Cemetery

 

City workers shoveled dirt over the two coffins, one at a time, as an imam, in plaintive and meditative tones, sang prayers in Arabic.

 

“Our Lord, forgive us our sins and remit us from our evil deeds,” he said.

 

The solemnity of the occasion was made more so for what was absent — tears, loved ones or even the names of the dead, who are each identified only by a number.

 

For hundreds of thousands of refugees who fled wars in the Middle East for safety in Europe, this coastal city has been a place of departure. But for hundreds of others, it has become a final resting place.

 

“We are now faced with entire families drowning at sea, with no one left to claim them,” said Ahmet Altan, the imam at Dogancay Cemetery, which has put aside land to bury the unknown migrants who lose their lives at sea.

As NATO dispatches warships to the Aegean Sea in a new effort to contain the flow of refugees coming through Turkey and on to Europe, the deaths keep piling up: at least 400 so far this year, according to the International Organization for Migration. Already in 2016, more than 76,000 people — nearly 3,000 a day — have arrived in Greece from Turkey.

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http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5051372/?ref_=tt_eps_cu_n

Jordan says it has reached its limit taking in refugees

More than 600,000 Syrians have registered as refugees – putting pressure on border communities in the north of the country.

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-germany-idUSKCN0VX2ZW?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews

German government expects arrival of 3.6 million refugees by 2020: media

 

The German government expects a total influx of 3.6 million refugees by 2020, with an average of half a million people arriving each year, German media reported on Thursday, in a country that took in a record 1.1 million migrants last year.

 

The calculations are based on internal estimates by the Economy Ministry in coordination with other ministries, German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung said.

In order to project economic development, the Economy Ministry created "an internal, purely technical estimate on migration in coordination with other government departments".

 

There is no official government estimate on how many refugees Europe's biggest economy expects over the next years, as numbers are highly volatile.

But the unprecedented arrival of 1.1 million asylum seekers last year, included in the 3.6 million forecast, stretched public resources thin and put strains on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's government.

 

Merkel, whose open-door refugee policy has put her under much pressure, in recent months vowed to significantly reduce the number of people arriving this year.

 

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-election-idUSKCN0WE0ZQ?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=twitter

German voters punish Merkel's conservatives in state votes

 

Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives lost in two out of three state elections on Sunday as Germans punished her accommodative refugee policy with a big vote for the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), exit polls showed.

 

The losses in both Baden-Wuerttemberg and Rhineland Palatinate represented a worst-case scenario for Merkel, who has staked her legacy on her decision last year to open Germany's doors to over 1 million migrants - a move voters snubbed.

 

The backlash was also visible in Saxony-Anhalt in former East Germany, where Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) remained the largest party but saw the AfD grab 21.5 percent of the vote as it burst into all three regional parliaments.

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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/02/eu-turkey-refugee-plan-could-be-illegal-says-un-official?CMP=share_btn_tw

EU-Turkey refugee plan could be illegal, says UN official

 

The European Union’s plan to send refugees fleeing Syria’s civil war back to Turkey en masse could be illegal, a top UN official has said, as concerns mounted that Greece lacks the infrastructure needed for the deal to take effect on Monday.

 

Peter Sutherland, the UN secretary general’s special representative for international migration and development, said that deporting migrants and refugees without considering their asylum applications first would break international law.

 

In light of claims by an NGO that Turkey had already been pushing Syrians back over the border to their home country, he said none could be deported from Europe without guarantees that their rights would be protected.

 

Sutherland spoke as Greece prepares to begin deporting migrants and refugees on Monday. Greek immigration officials have already said they need more staff to implement the plan.

 

Asked during an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme whether Europe’s scheme could be illegal, Sutherland replied: “Absolutely, and there are two fundamental reasons for this.

 

“First of all, collective deportations without having regard to the individual rights of those who claim to be refugees are illegal. Now, we don’t know what is going to happen next week, but if there is any question of collective deportations without individuals being given the right to claim asylum that is illegal.

 

“Secondly, their rights have to be absolutely protected where they are deported to, in other words Turkey. There has to be adequate assurances they can’t be sent back from Turkey to Syria, for example if they are Syrian refugees, or Afghanistan or wherever.”

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/02/world/europe/turkey-forcibly-returned-refugees-to-syria-amnesty-report.html?_r=0

Turkey Has Forcibly Returned Thousands of Refugees to Syria, Amnesty International Says

 

Turkey’s government has forced thousands of Syrian refugees to return to their war-torn country in recent months, exposing the perils of an agreement that allows Greece to send refugees arriving by boat back to Turkey, Amnesty International said in a report issued Friday.

 

Amnesty, a human rights group that has its headquarters in London, said it had collected witness testimony in Turkey’s southern Hatay Province and found that the Turkish authorities had been “rounding up and expelling groups of around 100 Syrian men, women and children to Syria on a near-daily basis since mid-January.” Among the cases the group documented were three young children who were forced to return to Syria without their parents.

 

A Turkish government spokesman did not immediately return messages seeking comment. Turkey has previously denied forcibly returning refugees to Syria, which would be a violation of international law.

 

The allegations come amid growing trepidation over a deal concluded in March between Turkey and the European Union that allows Greece to send refugees back to Turkey. European leaders, hoping to stop millions of migrants who are trying to reach their shores, have framed the agreement as an effort to dissuade refugees from making the perilous sea journey. But relief agencies and human rights groups have warned that several factors, including a continuing security crisis, make Turkey ill-equipped to carry out the deal or cope with large numbers of migrants.

 

There has also been consternation over the lengths European leaders have been willing to go to keep migrants away — including offering billions in aid to Turkey to conclude the agreement, while ignoring an increasingly harsh crackdown on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s opponents by the Turkish authorities.

 

“In their desperation to seal their borders, E.U. leaders have willfully ignored the simplest of facts: Turkey is not a safe country for Syrian refugees and is getting less safe by the day,” Amnesty’s director for Europe and Central Asia, John Dalhuisen, said in the report.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/03/opinion/sunday/locked-up-for-seeking-asylum.html?_r=0

Locked Up for Seeking Asylum

 

I RECENTLY received a phone call from Alabama. It was Samey Honaryar, an Afghan who had worked as an interpreter with the United States military and had fled Taliban persecution hoping to find asylum here. Samey is not accused of committing any crime. Yet for nearly a year, he’s been locked up in Etowah County Detention Center, among the worst and most remote of immigration detention centers, with little access to lawyers or medical attention.

 

“I cannot take it anymore,” said Samey, who was planning a hunger strike. “I served this country. I risked my life for this country, and this is how I’m repaid.”

 

I have reported from Afghanistan frequently since 2001, and I know that interpreters are an essential conduit into a culture easily misread by foreigners. Nearly every translator I’ve worked with has saved my life. But once they choose to work for the military, their job becomes a political act, making them marked men and women for the Taliban.

 

At a time when Europeans and Canadians are sheltering over a million asylum seekers, many from conflicts created by United States policies, Samey’s treatment demands attention. Documents and witnesses show that Samey risked his life for American soldiers. But he has been cast into immigration purgatory nonetheless, his troubles caused by a toxic mix of bureaucracy, fear, prejudice and, most poignantly, his naïve faith in American honor.

 

We know our asylum policy is broken. In 2014, more than 108,000 asylum applications were filed. It is not an exaggeration to say that many of these cases are life or death, yet they are handled by only 254 immigration judges, who are also juggling hundreds of thousands of non-asylum cases. Samey’s case is simultaneously unique and painfully common. Yet there is a remedy.

 

Samey, 35, worked for the American military in Kabul from 2009 to 2012. At one point, thieves stole his car and left a note telling him to stop working with “infidels.” He gave that note to the military and the C.I.A. Days later, he was run off the road. Supervisors told him to vary his route.

 

Then, on his way home in 2012, gunmen smashed his car window, beat him with a rifle and tried to abduct him. A crowd gathered and the gunmen fled. Samey survived but still bears a scar on his face from the assault. Shortly after, he applied for a special immigrant visa for interpreters. His request was denied.

 

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/04/03/nobody-believed-he-was-a-syrian-refugee-online-until-something-clicked.html

Syrian refugee greeted with mistrust in online search for Canadian sponsors

 

Muneer al Zahabi finally got tired of waiting.

 

For nearly three years, his family had been in Jordan, among over half a million Syrians there crammed into apartments and camps. It was safer than sleeping in the bathtub in their house in Syria for protection from missiles, but they wanted out.

 

The UN officially declaring them refugees ensured his two older children could go to school. But the piece of paper provided little other day-to-day benefit. Syrians can’t legally work in Jordan, so even though Zahabi has picked up piecemeal graphic design work — he worked in the industry for 15 years in Syria — it wasn’t stable and the pay low.

 

They wanted a home in another country. But his family is five of 4.2 million refugees. To date, only about 180,000 resettlement spaces are available worldwide. Canada has offered over 38,000 of them since 2013. But the people most often chosen for new homes here and elsewhere aren’t families like his — educated, healthy, with his fluency in English and their professional backgrounds.

 

“My wife said we needed to wait in line, wait for our turn, there were hundreds ahead of us,” Zahabi, 40, said in an interview from Amman.

But the call from the UN never came. So, six months ago, Zahabi decided to take things into his own hands.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-france-idUSKCN0X21L4

France says Syrian refugee intake insufficient, vows to double efforts

 

France acknowledged on Tuesday that its intake of Syrian refugees had been slow and insufficient, but vowed to double efforts to meet commitments in light of a deal agreed between the European Union and Turkey.

 

Under a pact criticized by refugee agencies and human rights campaigners, Ankara will take back all migrants and refugees who cross the Aegean to enter Greece illegally, including Syrians.

 

In return, the European Union will take in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey and reward it with money, visa-free travel and progress in its EU membership negotiations. The first Syrian refugees arrived in Germany on Monday.

 

"The number of people welcomed is still extremely insufficient compared to our commitments and we will need to redouble our efforts," Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told reporters during a meeting with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

 

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/04/turkish-town-puts-eu-turkey-refugee-deal-test-160406054502330.html

Turkish town puts EU-Turkey refugee deal to the test

 

In Dikili, on Turkey's Aegean coast, the harbour cafe is filled with locals drinking coffee and fishermen mending their nets. A fishmonger plies his wares by the pier, as ferries make their way over the sparkling sea. It's the type of ambiance that has made this town of 40,000 a popular tourist resort.

 

But, a quick look at the docks and the mood changes abruptly. Men and boys are escorted one by one on to white coaches, driven through a corridor of yellow cordon tape, past police dogs, photographers and curious onlookers, their faces silhouetted behind tinted windows.

 

With one officer from EU border agency Frontex assigned to each of the 202 deportees on their departure from Greece, blue tarpaulin masking registration procedures and strong police presence on the streets, nothing was left to chance.

 

As the town has grown into a major hub for migration to the EU, locals fear that its economy of hotels, cafes and other services catering to tourists would be jeopardised by the presence of a new refugee camp.

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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/16/pope-refugees-vatican-lesbos-eu-humanity?CMP=twt_gu

‘Before they are numbers, these people are human beings’: pope’s poignant visit to refugees in Lesbos

 

It lasted barely five hours, began on the asphalt of an island airport, moved to a prison-like camp, stopped at a harbour and ended on the runway again. But when Pope Francis’s lightning tour of Lesbos was over on Saturday, almost nothing was as it had been before.

 

From the outset the leader of the Roman Catholic church’s stopover on the frontline of Europe’s refugee crisis was heavy on symbolism, replete with emotion, extraordinary in ways big and small. Yet nothing was more poignant than the manner of its ending, as Francis, with a single gesture, sent a strong rebuke to Europe’s political elite, sharing his plane back to Rome with 12 refugees who, until then, had been held like inmates on the island. Even the most hard-nosed appeared teary as his plane took off.

 

“This pope, he always likes to surprise,” exclaimed a reporter dispatched with Italy’s state-run RAI TV as the aircraft taxied up the runway. “Twelve refugees, half of them children, chosen by chance in the name of a man who wants to send a message.”

 

With the precision of a surgeon, the pontiff began to send that message from the moment he touched down. Greece, he announced, had given the world a lesson in humanity. Others should follow suit.

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500 feared dead after shipwreck

http://bnonews.com/news/index.php/mobile/id4181

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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/25/tories-vote-against-accepting-3000-child-refugees?CMP=share_btn_tw

Tories vote against accepting 3,000 child refugees

 

A high-profile campaign for the UK to accept 3,000 child refugees stranded in Europe has failed after the government narrowly won a vote in the House of Commons rejecting the plan.

 

MPs voted against the proposals by 294 to 276 on Monday after the Home Office persuaded most potential Tory rebels that it was doing enough to help child refugees in Syria and neighbouring countries.

 

The amendment to the immigration bill would have forced the government to accept 3,000 unaccompanied refugee minors, mostly from Syria, who have made their way to mainland Europe.

 

It originated in the House of Lords after being introduced by Alf Dubs, a Labour peer who was a beneficiary of the Kindertransport, the government-backed programme that took child refugees from Germany in the run-up to the second world war.

 

Following the vote, Labour vowed to continue its efforts to make the government change its mind, tabling a new amendment in the House of Lords asking it to accept a specified number of child refugees from Europe after consultation with local councils.

The amendment was backed by Labour, the SNP and Liberal Democrats.

 

Keir Starmer, a shadow Home Office minister, said “history would judge” MPs for voting against the plan, saying it was the biggest refugee crisis in Europe since the second world war.

 

“It is the challenge of our times and whether we rise to it or not will be the measure of us,” Starmer said. “We have the clear evidence of thousands of vulnerable children and we now need to act. This is the moment to do something about it, by voting with us this evening.”

 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/25/us-warships-may-join-eu-in-patrolling-waters-off-libya?CMP=twt_gu

US warships may join EU in patrolling waters off Libya

 

American warships may join European Union vessels off the coast of Libya by the summer in a Nato-led attempt to slow the flow of refugees from Africa into Europe, it emerged at a meeting of the G5 world leaders in Hanover.

 

Until now, the EU, through Operation Sophia, has been entirely responsible for policing the international waters off Libya and Nato has been patrolling the much narrower Aegean Sea between Turkey and Greece.

 

Officials at the G5 meeting said it was now being proposed that the EU and Nato work together off Libya sharing intelligence and assets to close down the smugglers’ networks. EU leaders, especially Italian ministers, are deeply concerned by a potential surge in the number of refugees reaching Europe from Africa, even though there has not yet been a spike in the figures this year.

 

The wider Libya mission is likely to be approved by alliance leaders at a Warsaw summit on 7 July, according to the Italian defence minister, Roberta Pinotti.

“At the Nato level, we have asked for Operation Active Endeavour to be recalibrated from an anti-terrorist operation in the eastern Mediterranean to one which oversees the Libyan coast,” said Pinotti.

 

Asked if she expected a green light at the Warsaw summit, Pinotti said: “Yes, certainly for the coordination of missions in the Mediterranean. At this summit, the proposal should become an effective decision.”

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https://www.buzzfeed.com/hayesbrown/look-at-the-awesome-robot-these-syrian-teen-refugees-built?utm_term=.elKYaazMp

A Group Of Syrian Teens Took A Refugee Robot Named “Robogee” To The White House

 

Hollywood producers take note: this is your next “scrappy underdogs make good” story and it involves a team of teenage refugees and their robot.

 

These are the members of the “Hope for Syria” robotics team, based out of Beirut, Lebanon. The programming class that the students took part in is part of a project run by Lebanon-based NGO Multi-Aid Programs (MAPs) known as the Continuing Education and Community Service program.

 

Despite only being founded last December, the team entered an annual international robotics competition called VEX. This year’s challenge: build a robot that can not only be remotely controlled to pick up and throw balls but THROW THEM ON ITS OWN.

 

So they built themselves a robot.

 

And even though they’d never done it before, their robot — dubbed “Robogee,” as in “robot refugee” — worked pretty darn well.

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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-36139904

Identity 2016: 'Global citizenship' rising, poll suggests

The poll suggests a degree of soul-searching in Germany about how open its doors should be in the future.

 

It says 54% of German respondents approved of welcoming Syrians to their country. In the UK, where the government has resolutely capped the number of Syrian refugees, the figure was much higher at 72%.

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http://www.runnersworld.com/general-interest/syrian-immigrant-finishes-a-marathon-24-hours-after-becoming-a-us-citizen?cid=soc_Runner%27s%20World%20-%20RunnersWorld_FBPAGE_Runner%E2%80%99s%20World__News

Syrian Immigrant Finishes a Marathon—24 Hours After Becoming a U.S. Citizen

 

Inside a white tent near mile 16 of the Kentucky Derby Festival Marathon in Louisville, members of the veterans support group and running club Team RWB waved American flags. A man running the race in a sweaty gray shirt and black shorts saw the fluttering fabric and stopped.

 

He asked if he could carry one of the flags for the remaining 10 miles of the race. They gave him their biggest one and requested he come return it after finishing. He clasped the metal pole and trudged off without introducing himself.

 

Nobody on Team RWB knew his name was Ghaith Aldammad, that he was 33 years old and was born in a small city in southern Syria called Daraa, or that he moved to Louisville in 2009 to live with his brother and study English.

 

They also didn’t know that the morning of the race, April 30, was his first full day as a citizen of the United States.

 

Twenty-four hours earlier, an immigration officer smiled, shook Aldammad’s hand, and informed him that his application for citizenship had been approved.

 

“I was so happy, I had never experienced a feeling like that before in my life,” he told Runner’s World a few weeks later.

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http://aa.com.tr/en/europe/islam-has-no-place-in-slovakia-says-pm/579420

'Islam has no place in Slovakia,' says PM

 

Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico has said he was against the development of a Muslim population in his country.

 

"It may look strange but sorry, Islam has no place in Slovakia," Fico told the Slovakian TASR news agency on Wednesday.

 

Fico said he would continue to oppose a European Union migrant quota plan under which responsibility for refugees and migrants would be shared across the 28-nation bloc.

 

His comments came weeks before Slovakia is supposed to hold the EU rotating presidency.

 

Fico told TASR that the problem was not migrants entering Slovakia, but "rather in them changing the face of the country”.

 

In Slovakia, which boasts a population of 5.4 million people, only 169 asylum applications were made.

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http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/05/700-refugees-feared-drowned-italy-160529085357124.html

UN: More than 700 refugees feared drowned off Italy

 

The UN refugee agency said more than 700 refugees may have drowned in three Mediterranean Sea shipwrecks south of Italy in the last few days.

 

Speaking to Al Jazeera from Geneva, William Spindler, a UNHCR spokesman for Europe, said there had been a spate of incidents in the Mediterranean last week.

 

"The first one was Wednesday, which was widely reported. A boat capsised, carrying about 600 people. Some of those people are still missing," Spindler said.

"Then there was a second incident on Thursday and a third one on Friday. In total, we fear that in these three incidents more than 700 people are missing, presumed drowned.

 

"There is a number of boats at the moment trying to make their way from Libya to Italy and several rescue operations are ongoing."

 

Spindler said more needed to be done to stop refugees from taking to the sea in small boats.

 

"It is very difficult to prevent people from doing this. In our view, what needs to be done is to offer legal alternatives to the most vulnerable refugees to travel to Europe. The reason why people are undertaking these dangerous journeys is because they have no choice," he said.

Carlotta Sami, a spokeswoman for UNHCR, told the Associated Press news agency by phone an estimated 100 people were missing from a smugglers' boat that capsised on Wednesday.

 

She said about 550 others were missing from the boat that sank on Thursday.

 

Refugees said that boat, which was carrying about 670 people, did not have an engine and was being towed by another smuggling boat before it capsised.

 

About 25 people survived the incident, 79 others were rescued by patrol boats, and 15 bodies were recovered.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/31/us/politics/as-us-admits-migrants-in-a-trickle-critics-urge-obama-to-pick-up-the-pace.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

U.S. Struggles With Goal of Admitting 10,000 Syrians

 

President Obama invited a Syrian refugee to this year’s State of the Union address, and he has spoken passionately about embracing refugees as a core American value.

 

But nearly eight months into an effort to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees in the United States, Mr. Obama’s administration has admitted just over 2,500. And as his administration prepares for a new round of deportations of Central Americans, including many women and children pleading for humanitarian protection, the president is facing intense criticism from allies in Congress and advocacy groups about his administration’s treatment of migrants.

 

They say Mr. Obama’s lofty message about the need to welcome those who come to the United States seeking protection has not been matched by action. And they warn that the president, who will host a summit meeting on refugees in September during the United Nations General Assembly session, risks undercutting his influence on the issue at a time when American leadership is needed to counteract a backlash against refugees.

 

“Given that we’ve resettled so few refugees and we’re employing a deterrence strategy to refugees on our Southern border, I wouldn’t think we’d be giving advice to any other nations about doing better,” said Kevin Appleby, the senior director of international migration policy at the Center for Migration Studies of New York.

 

“The world notices when we talk a good game but then we don’t follow through in our own backyard,” Mr. Appleby said.

 

The delay is frustrating for Mr. Obama, who has made a point of speaking out against anti-immigrant sentiment both in the United States and abroad, arguing that Republicans, particularly the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, are playing on misplaced fears about terrorism.

 

“We’ve got to push back against anti-immigrant sentiment in all of its forms, especially by those who are trying to stoke it just to seek political gain,” Mr. Obama told a gathering this month of Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders in Washington.

 

At the White House, he has instructed his top advisers that they must not fall short of meeting his goal to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees to the United States by the fall. But an onerous and complex web of security checks and vetting procedures, shared among several government agencies, has made the target difficult to reach.

 

At the same time, White House officials concede that the challenging election-year politics surrounding the issue — 47 House Democrats joined Republicans in November in voting for legislation to further tighten the screening process — make it impossible to quickly take in substantially more Syrians by removing any of the tough vetting procedures.

 

http://bnonews.com/news/index.php/news/id4441

More than 1,000 migrants died in Mediterranean shipwrecks last week

 

At least 1,000 migrants are believed to have drowned after a string of deadly shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea over the last week, according to new figures, making it one of the worst weeks in the ongoing refugee crisis.

 

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday that it now believes at least 993 people died in three separate shipwrecks, while a number of others died in smaller incidents. Those figures are significantly higher than initially reported.

 

The worst incident happened on Thursday when a wooden boat being towed by a larger smuggling boat began to take on water as it tried to reach Europe. The captain of the towing boat then cut the tow line, causing the second vessel to capsize with more than 550 migrants on board. Only 87 of those survived.

 

"There were many women and boys in the hold," one of the survivors, a young Eritrean man called Stefanos, told IOM. "We were taking on water, but we had a pump that helped us to push the water out. When the pump ran out of fuel, we asked for more fuel to the captain of the first boat, who said no. At this point there was nothing left to do: the water was everywhere and we slowly started to sink."

 

At least 280 people are believed to have died in a second incident on Thursday, while 250 others died in a third shipwreck last Wednesday, pushing the combined death toll from all three incidents to nearly 1,000. Others died in smaller incidents as they tried to make the dangerous crossing.

 

The updated figures mean that at least 2,443 migrants have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea so far this year, which is up from 1,828 in the same period last year. The vast majority - more than 2,000 - died in waters off Libya and Tunisia, while nearly 400 died in the sea between Turkey and Greece.

 

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2016/05/orphans-syria-war-160528083608975.html

The orphans of Syria's war

 

As Syria's civil war continues into its sixth year with no end in sight, more than 2.7 million Syrians have fled the violence in their home towns and crossed the border into Turkey. While some find themselves in refugee camps, others have moved across into pockets of Turkey.

 

Jabal, an impoverished neighbourhood in the southernmost Turkish province of Hatay, is one such pocket. This neighbourhood, 40km away from the Turkish/Syrian border, is now home to hundreds of widows and orphans who are trying to reconcile the loss of land and loved ones in Syria.

 

Most refugee families have arrived in Turkey with few possessions and have few prospects of earning a livelihood within Turkey. The Turkish government has made attempts to address the influx of refugees outside refugee camps by providing free basic services such as medical care and schooling.

 

However, for displaced widows and children, often living in derelict accommodation with no source of income and fast approaching the end of their life savings, the daily fight for survival is real.

 

*names of the children have been changed

[visionary]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/germany-refugee-shelter-migrants-air-rifle-shooting-five-year-old-girl-macedonia-teenager-syrian-a7079636.html

German man shoots five-year-old refugee girl and teenager with air rifle

 

Two people including a five-year-old girl have been injured after a man opened fire on a German refugee shelter with an air rifle.

 

A 21-year-old man has been accused of shooting at the shelter from his third floor apartment, only 40 meters away from the camp in western Germany.

 

Police searched the man’s apartment and reportedly removed the air rifle and munitions.

 

The suspect was not arrested as “there were no ground for arrest”, a police spokeswoman said.

 

The police confirmed the investigation was ongoing, adding “it is unclear if the act was politically motivated.”

[visionary]

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-idUSKCN0ZC0ZZ?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Reuters%2FworldNews+%28Reuters+World+News%29

Italy rescues over 3,300 migrants over weekend

 

Italian coastguard and navy ships rescued over 3,300 migrants in 26 separate operations in the Mediterranean over the weekend, a spokesperson for the Italian navy told Reuters on Sunday.

 

The people were picked up from 25 dinghies and one boat, all north of the Libyan coast, the Coast Guard said in a separate statement.

 

The navy spokesperson said one adult was found dead and another four injured migrants were transported by helicopter to the nearest hospital, on the island of Lampedusa.

 

Italy is on the front line of Europe's worst immigration crisis since World War Two, with little sign of any slowdown in the flow of people coming from North Africa.

 

About 60,000 boat migrants have been brought to Italy so far this year, according to the Interior Ministry.

 

On Friday ship crews rescued more than 2,000 people from overcrowded boats.

 

Improved weather conditions in the Mediterranean encourage more migrants and their human smugglers to attempt the crossing despite the dangers involved. More than 3,700 migrants died in the Mediterranean last year, according to the International Organisation for Migration.

[visionary]

Game of Thrones Cast Members in Greece with refugees:

 

https://twitter.com/Albino_Direwolf/status/748190107371511808

Photos from @Maisie_Williams,@IAMLenaHeadey & @liamcunningham1's visit to the  Kara Tepe Refugee Camp(Lesvos,Greece)

12:23 PM

 

https://twitter.com/GameOfThrones/status/748169122609934336

 Follow along. @Maisie_Williams @IAMLenaHeadey & @LiamCunningham1 are headed on a field trip with @theIRC.

10:59 AM

 

Journey continues. @Maisie_Williams @IAMLenaHeadey & @LiamCunningham1 on visiting Lesbos w/ IRC. #RealmToTheRescue

Game of Thrones Stars' Field Trip with IRC - PART 2
11:14 AM

 

https://twitter.com/KathleenAPrior/status/748547405407227904

In Greece @Maisie_Williams meets 13yo Haya who dreams of being an actor & performed 3 plays at @theIRC safe space

12:03 PM

 

 

 

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/06/29/484058814/syrian-refugee-finds-55-000-cash-turns-it-in-to-german-police?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social

Syrian Refugee Finds $55,000 Cash, Turns It In To German Police

 

The windfall must have seemed heaven-sent. How else to explain a young man who had fled Syria's violence and reached Germany — where he realized the donated wardrobe he'd been given contained 50,000 euros (around $55,000) in cash?

 

But instead of keeping it, the man contacted the immigration office to ask about turning the money in. And so, eight months after he entered Germany as a refugee from Homs, Syria, the man is being praised as a hero by local police for his honesty.

 

The man, identified by German media as Muhannad M., was given the wardrobe to help furnish his apartment in Minden, a city west of Hanover. As he cleaned and reassembled the pieces, he found a wide storage pouch hidden beneath a lower shelf. In it: a hundred 500-euro notes, along with bank passbooks to accounts holding an additional 100,000 euros (around $110,000).

[visionary]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/world/middleeast/if-a-carrot-for-jordan-works-syrian-refugees-will-stay-put.html?smid=tw-share

If a Carrot for Jordan Works, Syrian Refugees Will Stay Put

 

On a busy thoroughfare in Amman, Jordan’s capital, a coffee seller named Mohammed Al Mulki no longer shivers when he sees a police car pull up. At a nearby sweet shop, the counterman, Zuheir Taleb, no longer slips out of the back when a uniformed official walks in.

 

And in the country’s north, on scorching fields a few miles from the Syrian border, Badra Hadahed, a diabetic grandmother doing backbreaking work, no longer worries that she will be plucked from the cucumber fields and sent back to her home.

 

Like many Syrians who fled their country’s civil war, all three had been working illegally in Jordan. But under a shrewd, delicate experiment that grew out of Europe’s desire to contain the influx of foreigners to its shores, Jordan has been persuaded to let these Syrians make an honest living — in return for potentially big financial rewards.

 

Jordan, which has 650,000 Syrian refugees registered with the United Nations inside its borders, has long made it nearly impossible for them to work legally, citing concerns about high unemployment among its citizens. But under the new experiment, the government has given out 13,000 work permits to Syrians, and is promising to issue up to 50,000 by year’s end — and tens of thousands more in the future.

 

In exchange, the World Bank is giving Jordan a $300 million interest-free loan, the likes of which are traditionally reserved for extremely poor countries in Africa. Western nations, including the United States, have offered roughly $60 million to build schools to accommodate Syrian children. And Jordan is close to clinching what it wants most: tax-free exports to the European Union, especially garments stitched in its industrial export zones.

 

http://www.france24.com/en/20160709-300000-syrians-could-get-turkish-citizenship?ref=tw_i

Up to 300,000 Syrians 'could get Turkish citizenship'

 

Up to 300,000 Syrian refugees living in Turkey could be given citizenship under a plan to keep wealthy and educated Syrians in the country, a Turkish newspaper reported on Saturday.

 

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on July 2 that Syrian refugees in the country would be offered nationality "if they want it", the first time such an idea had been proposed at the highest level.

 

Nationality would be given step-by-step, with initial plans for 30,000 to 40,000 Syrians gaining citizenship, the Haberturk daily said.

 

In total, Turkey is targeting giving Turkish citizenship to up to up to 300,000 Syrians, it added.

 

Turkey is hoping such a move would allow skilled Syrian refugees to become citizens, the paper said. Educated refugees from other countries could choose to become nationals as well.

[visionary]

Strangers work together to help a lost Syrian refugee faintly at a Canadian train station.

http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/toronto/go-train-riders-help-syrian-family-lost-1.3691281

[visionary]

http://www.marieclaire.com/politics/features/a21603/lena-headey-refugee-crisis/

Lena Headey on Her Life-Changing Journey to Greece, and the Heartbreak That Awaited Her There

 

Earlier this month, actress Lena Headey traveled to Greece with the International Rescue Committee and her co-stars, Maisie Williams and Liam Cunningham, to meet with refugees fleeing from Syria. She heard their stories of searching for a better life—and now, here, is her own.

[visionary]

https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/07/19/growing-without-education/barriers-education-syrian-refugee-children-lebanon

“Growing Up Without an Education”

 

Barriers to Education for Syrian Refugee Children in Lebanon

 

In Lebanon—a country of around 4.5 million citizens—almost one in four people today is a refugee. Since the start of the Syria conflict in 2011, 1.1 million Syrians have registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR); the Lebanese Government puts the total number at 1.5 million.

 

Lebanon’s Ministry of Education and Higher Education has taken several positive steps to enroll Syrian children in formal education. But the system has struggled to keep pace. Five years after the start of the conflict, more than 250,000 children—approximately half of the nearly 500,000 school-aged Syrian children registered in Lebanon—are out of school. Some have never stepped inside a classroom. In far too many cases, as one Syrian woman said, “Our children are growing up without an education.”

 

Older children are particularly affected: of the 82,744 registered Syrian refugees aged 15-18 as of August 2015, less than 3 percent enrolled in public secondary schools during the 2015-2016 school year.

 

This report finds that it is unlikely that Syrian children will be able to realize their right to an education unless Lebanon undertakes reforms that go beyond the framework of its current education policies and receives increased donor funding targeted at improving access to school.

 

http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/europe-migrants-turkey-children/

In Turkish sweatshops, Syrian children sew to survive

 

Muna Awwal wants to go to school. But she needs to go to work.

 

Muna says she is 10 years old. Nine, corrects her father, Mahmud, as they sit in the family’s second-floor flat in Istanbul’s textile district.

 

Muna and her family arrived in Turkey from Syria in 2013. For the past few weeks she has helped her father and 13-year-old brother Muhamed in a basement they rent, making cheap tops, dresses and T-shirts for other textile suppliers. Her father Mahmud says some of the clothes are sold in Europe. 

 

The family comes from the city of Aleppo and fled fighting in May 2013, he said. He shoos his children out of the room and settles on the carpeted floor. Now, he says, he relies on three of his five children to get by.

 

The Awwal family’s situation is not unusual. It adds to questions about how safe Turkey is for families fleeing war.

 

“It’s not normal at all to make my child work -- with me or with anyone else,” Mahmud Awwal said in June. “It’s not good. But we have no other choice. It’s very common here in Turkey.”