A new report on the world’s refugees finds the number of people fleeing their homes because of conflict, persecution or other harrowing circumstances exceeded 70 million in 2018 – and it’s the highest level in almost 70 years. That’s according to UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, which released its…
Efe Obada’s dream to play in the National Football League in the United States came true on Saturday. He made the cut for the Carolina Panthers after spending last season on the practice team through the NFL’s International Player Pathway Program, an initiative that launched in 2017. Now the Nigerian-born…
Migrants aboard a Mediterranean Sea rescue ship denied entry to Italian ports set sail for Spain at 9 p.m. local time Tuesday night, according to the Sos Méditerranée NGO that operates the ship in collaboration with Doctors Without Borders (MSF). Their departure alongside two Italian military vessels ended a two-day…
Human traffickers in Libya reportedly killed more than a dozen people and wounded many others after a group of some 200 Eritreans, Ethiopians and Somalis attempted to escape captivity, UNHCR said on Friday. The United Nations refugee agency said the incident happened May 23 in Bani Walid, about 180 kilometers…
Global human rights organization Amnesty International is again pressuring European Union nations to change its policies on migration from Libya, where thousands of refugees and migrants are trapped in shocking conditions. That message comes as EU officials said Wednesday that the central Mediterranean transit numbers remain much lower, but the…
A Zambian asylum seeker in the United States is anxiously awaiting a court decision to determine if he’ll be able to participate in a spoken-word poetry contest that he’s currently been barred from entering. Allan Monga, 19, arrived last summer in the coastal city of Portland, Maine, and lived in…
Hundreds of people gathered Friday evening in the central Lavapiés neighborhood of Madrid to protest against police treatment of migrants, following the death Thursday of a 35-year-old Senegalese man. The protesters in Nelson Mandela Square were peaceful, according to El Mundo, but riot police were on hand to ensure that…
At least 400 migrants, many of them from Eritrea and Ethiopia, are still living on the streets or the wooded outskirts of the French city of Calais months after the sprawling migrant camp there was dismantled by French authorities. Some 200 of them are unaccompanied minors, while another 300 people…
More than 1,800 Moroccans gathered at the border crossing to the Spanish enclave at Ceuta on Tuesday, forcing authorities to again close the crossing because of the demonstrations. The border was closed for a week following the April 24 death of a woman who was crushed in a stampede at…
At least four people are dead after a boat carrying migrants on the Mediterranean Sea came under attack off the coast of Libya, a German humanitarian group said. The Sea Watch organization said Friday’s attack came as its staff was trying to help about 150 people aboard a rubber boat when…
Egyptian authorities said Friday that nearly 150 bodies have been recovered since a migrant boat capsized this week in the Mediterranean Sea after leaving the port city of Damietta. The accident adds to the rising 2016 death toll for migrants traveling through North Africa to Italy on the Central Mediterranean…
“The spirit of Bratislava is the spirit of cooperation,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel, describing Friday’s meeting of 27 European Union member states in Slovakia in lofty terms even as she warned of the critical juncture at which Europe finds itself. On the unresolved issue of migrants, some EU leaders…
Laureen is the editor of Africa Times