The United Nations refugee agency responded quickly on Tuesday to a decision made by Italy’s parliament that will impose harsher penalties against those people and organizations involved in migrant search and rescue on the Mediterranean Sea. The UNHCR said that under the changes, fines for private vessels that rescue migrants…
What is being called the single greatest loss of life on the Mediterranean Sea this year has claimed an estimated 150 migrants traveling by boat from Libya, according to early reports from the United Nations refugee agency on Thursday. The shipwreck happened off the coast of Al Khoms, between Tripoli…
More than a third of all Africans consider migration in search of opportunity, especially as the continent’s young and educated populations continue to grow, according to new data from the Afrobarometer research organization based in Ghana. “Potential emigrants are overwhelmingly motivated by a hunger for jobs and economic opportunity,” said…
The cost of remittances for African migrants was the focus of a three-day meeting in Ghana, as the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and other stakeholders looked at how to improve access. While the money sent home to families in sub-Saharan Africa is on the rise, the cost to transfer…
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, speaking in Greece, conceded that a migration deal struck between Turkey and the European Union in 2016 isn’t working as planned but Europe will continue to support its implementation. That deal affecting Middle Eastern and North African migrants immediately ended crossings from Turkey into Greece, with…
Rwandan President Paul Kagame, current head of the African Union, has blamed Europe for the Mediterranean migrant crisis while discussing China’s engagement with Africa, all in an interview with Austrian media outlet that caught the attention of Beijing on Tuesday. Kagame sat for the interview with Die Presse while attending…
At least 25 people are dead or missing after some passengers in a group of six migrant boats were stranded on the Mediterranean Sea before rescuers reached them off the Spanish coast on Thursday. A spokeswoman for the UN Refugee Agency, UNCHR, said the Spanish Coast Guard found the boats…
Global leaders meeting in Morocco have adopted the Global Compact for Migration, an international strategy to deal with migrant flows first introduced at the United Nations General Assembly two years ago. The compact approved by 164 countries on Monday is meant to end the trauma of migrant experiences across Africa and…
The Government of Morocco, under pressure to stem the tide of African migrants crossing into Spain, has established new entry visa rules for travelers from some African nations. Reuters reports that the new requirements apply in up to seven countries that have historically had no visa requirement to visit Morocco….
More than 1,700 people have died this year on the Mediterranean Sea migration route to Europe, and both UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and IOM, the UN Migration Agency, appealed jointly to European governments on Wednesday to change their “dangerously toxic” discourse on migration. “The current tenor of the political debate…
A key climate report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released Monday warns that the global community must act decisively and dramatically to try and limit catastrophic impacts from climate change – and that some impacts remain unavoidable even if global warming is held to the 1.5°C level….
There’s little consensus on migration in Europe or North America, but there’s agreement in Africa that the issue needs to be viewed through fresh eyes – and that’s the point of Generation Africa, a documentary project seeking filmmakers to tell the story. STEPS (Social Transformation and Empowerment Projects) is a…
Hundreds of migrants rounded up in Algeria have arrived in Niger, despite the Algerian government’s strong denials that it is forcibly removing the primarily West African migrants and dumping them in the desert. Migrants from Guinea, Cameroon and other nations tell the International Organization for Migration (IOM) that they are…
The much-awaited Global Compact for Migration is one step closer to adoption, as the United Nations finalized the text on Friday. Plans for that adoption are set for December at a conference in Morocco. The Global Compact initiative was approved in 2016 during the Addressing Large Movements of Refugees and…
Officials with the United Nations migration agency say the death toll has reached at least 112 after a boat on the Mediterranean Sea sank off the coast of Tunisia at the weekend. The boat was carrying an estimated 180 migrants, many of them from Tunisia, when it went down between…