Dear Deeply Readers,
Welcome to the archives of Refugees Deeply. While we paused regular publication of the site on April 1, 2019, we are happy to serve as an ongoing public resource on refugees and migration. We hope you’ll enjoy the reporting and analysis that was produced by our dedicated community of editors and contributors.
We continue to produce events and special projects while we explore where the on-site journalism goes next. If you’d like to reach us with feedback or ideas for collaboration you can do so at [email protected].
Exploring the conflicts and political crises that cause refugees to flee and impact their treatment in host countries.
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Doctors Without Borders, which has been operating a search and rescue mission in the central Mediterranean since April 2015, exposes the shocking levels of violence and exploitation reported by asylum seekers who have passed through Libya.
In this second part of our investigation into prostitution among child refugees in Athens, we see how lack of shelter and the rising price of people-smuggling are leaving them prey to the drug trade.
Yemenis fleeing conflict are taking overcrowded livestock boats across the Gulf of Aden to Somaliland – an unrecognized country. Such is the magnitude of violence in one of the oldest centers of civilization in the Middle East.
The first of a two-part investigation into prostitution among child refugees in Athens. With 57,000 refugees stranded in Greece, we look at what some of the most vulnerable among them are doing to survive.
When the Migrant Offshore Aid Station, a Malta-based NGO, rescued 352 Eritreans stranded in Libyan waters, four of their fellow passengers didn’t make it to safety. Here, members of the rescue team share images from the dramatic rescue and its aftermath.
Marking the start of Eid-Al-Fitr celebrations that will continue into the weekend, young and old residents of the Sahrawi refugee settlement in Algeria draw parallels between breaking their month-long fast and their quest for self-determination.
The U.N. deadline to close the controversial Yida refugee camp near the border between the Sudans has passed – but its 70,000 residents are refusing to leave.
Kenya’s November deadline to shut down camps and repatriate Somali refugees leaves a community living in dangerous limbo, with some contemplating escape to Europe.
A latest UN report reveals “enslavement” of hundreds of thousands of Eritreans through forced conscription by the country’s military dictatorship - a driving reason for their flight.
Two Kurdish men whose families fled Iraq for Europe have unique stories as returnee refugees now fighting ISIS in their ancestral homeland. They have also become minor Instagram celebrities, documenting their feats online.
In part two of our story, the Blue Nile’s refugees, who vastly outnumber the host community in Maban, find themselves in a precarious situation, with meager sources of sustenance for both the refugees and hosts and a highly militarized environment.
Following the influx of refugees from Sudan’s Blue Nile into Maban, South Sudan, the new arrivals and their host communities are struggling to live together amid strained political relations and an extreme dearth of resources.
We gather together the highlights of our coverage of the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, including key commentaries on the successes and failures of the 9,000-strong gathering.
Paras Shah Gardner Fellow, Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch researcher Paras Shah calls for the inclusion of people with disabilities in humanitarian response as a means of fulfilling one of the five “core responsibilities” articulated at the World Humanitarian Summit – Leave no one behind.
After Médecins Sans Frontières’ withdrawal from the World Humanitarian Summit, its U.S. executive director, Jason Cone, warns against conferences that blur the line between state and NGO responsibilities and calls for better humanitarian responses on the ground.
In the concluding part of our series on female refugees, we explore the challenges of identifying abuse and exploitation of lone women on the move – who are highly susceptible to sex trafficking and sometimes coerced into “transactional sex” to pay their way forward.
Over the past five years, 70,000 refugees have fled the civil war between Sudan and South Kordofan rebels and eked out a new life in Yida camp in South Sudan. But is the camp’s relocation being driven by safety concerns – or by political jockeying and oil exploitation?
In the second installment of a three-part series, we visit women struggling to find shelter and make a living – two key problems the Women’s Refugee Commission cites as driving gender-based violence against urban refugees, especially in countries neighboring Syria.
As thousands of ethnic Kokang refugees remain stranded in China, communities have been emptied and transformed into “ghost villages” on the Myanmar-China border, according to recent updates by the Shan Human Rights Foundation (SHRF).
During his final stop of our series “Route Mediterranean,” journalist Eric Reidy visits support groups struggling to provide regular services in the refugee camps of Idomeni, northern Greece, where people are living in complete limbo.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) doctor Conor Kenny writes from Idomeni, Greece, where more than 10,000 refugees are trapped at the border with Macedonia.
Josephine Huetlin Based at the Europe and Central Asia Division, Human Rights Watch
The Russian government’s crackdown on civil society groups by classifying them as “foreign agents” involved in “political activities” has extended to NGOs filling the gaps in state support for refugees, claim Human Rights Watch researchers.
Traditional views toward gender roles that tend to be amplified by the ongoing cultural and political conflict have forced some women journalists to take hiatus not just from reporting, but also residing, in Libya.
While the E.U.-Turkey deal jeopardized the onward journeys of many Syrian refugees, South Asians do not stand a chance of admission to Europe, despite having legitimate grounds to claim asylum. Lesvos is the fourth stop in our series Route Mediterranean.
Ghinwa Obeid reports from the Bekaa Valley, where a children’s choir is teaching Lebanese students and Syrian refugee children about the power of unity.
In the four-year battle between rival factions to control Libya’s post-revolutionary political landscape, women journalists are highly visible and vulnerable. In part one of a two-part article, we present the voices of Libyan women forced into indefinite exile.
Nihad was one of 5,000 Yazidi women and girls kidnapped by the Islamic State group. When she escaped, her suffering followed her to the refugee camps of Iraq. NGOs like Amar try to reach Nihad and other women who face social stigma and suffer psychological trauma.
For the third stop of our series “Route Mediterranean,” journalist Eric Reidy takes a detour to visit an informal encampment in Torbali,Turkey, where several Syrian families, including children as young as 14, work in the fields to make a living.
The case of the 800 Sudanese asylum seekers who were deported by Jordan after protesting in front of the UNHCR office has disappeared from media coverage. But nearly five months later many returnees like Hawa Abdo Adam are waiting to be reunited with family members who
Three years after the French intervention in northern Mali, thousands of refugees in neighboring Burkina Faso are still afraid to go home. Mali’s conflict may be over, but its border areas remain deeply unstable, with jihadist militant groups still believed to be operating.
During the early years of the Syrian conflict, Mersin was considered “the best place to be Syrian in Turkey” and thousands of middle-class Syrians fled to the port city. With few allowed to work and their resources now exhausted, most now struggle to survive. Mersin is the second stop in our series “Route Mediterreanean”.
Hanne Beirens & Paul Clewett
With Germany reporting another 6,000 missing child refugees, researchers at the Migration Policy Institute ask if arrangements under the current E.U.–Turkey deal are affording children a fair hearing and whether Turkish laws protect returned minors in practice.
In light of leaked E.U. plans to return 80,000 Afghan asylum seekers, we explore the conditions that forced civilians to flee in increased numbers in 2015 – deemed the bloodiest year since 2001 – and the limited protection they are offered due to Afghanistan’s post-conflict status.
While Macedonian police clash with refugees protesting at Idomeni and returns under the E.U.–Turkey deal slow due to a lack of clarity, researchers at the Forced Migration Review argue that “there is much about earlier migration crises that today’s European policymakers might profitably recall”.
Embarking in Tripoli, Lebanon, where desperate Syrian refugees have sought shelter in embattled neighborhoods reminiscent of the war at home, journalist Eric Reidy traverses one of several refugee trails that ends in Idomeni, Greece. Tripoli is the first stop in our series “Route Mediterranean”.
The series #5YearsWeFled is a collection of interviews with Syrian lawyer Ayman Jalwan. It highlights the difficult choice that Syrians face – between dying in a war zone that the country has become after five years or conflict, or fleeing the land they love with no hope of imminent return.
Bart Peeters-Akkermans Journalist, Researcher and Translator
As Europe battles economic and refugee “crises,” independent researcher Bart Peeters-Akkermans argues that European leaders have exercised a “damage maximization” strategy, creating hardship and hatred for refugees and their own citizens. Enlarging the “zone of prosperity” is the way forward, he says.
The series #5YearsWeFled is a collection of interviews with a Syrian lawyer Ayman Jalwan. It highlights the difficult choice that Syrians face – between dying in a war zone that the country has become after five years or conflict, or fleeing the land they love with no hopes of imminent return.
Amid rumors of repatriation and forced returns, refugee advocates argue that militarization, confiscation of land and decreases in international aid would threaten the security of ethnic-minority refugee groups should they return to their home communities in Myanmar.
Khairunissa Dhala Researcher, Amnesty International
The world must stop failing Syria’s refugees, writes Amnesty International’s head researcher on refugee and migrant rights in the lead up to the United Nations Refugee Agency’s March 30 conference centered on sharing responsibility for the refugee crisis globally.
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