Coast guards Archives - Page 23 of 26

28 Aug 2020

News Highlights: Alarm Phone’s reconstruction of deadly shipwreck week, refugee food rations cut amid funding shortages in East Africa, Italy convicts three men for crimes in Libyan detention center

by Dion De Vries | posted in: Abiy Ahmed, Africa, Asylum Seekers, Coast guards, COVID-19, Detention, Eritrea, Ethiopia, European Politics, European Union, IOM, Torture, United Nations, Weekly news highlights | 0

In this week’s news highlights: Alarm Phone’s reconstruction of deadly week of shipwrecks off Libya’s coast; 15-fold increase in Libyan COVID-19 cases; IOM resumes migrant repatriation flights from Libya; Major food ration cuts for refugees in East Africa amid funding shortages; Many missing persons from Horn countries and Libya; Eritrean activist missing for over two years in Ethiopia; Italy convicts three men to twenty years in prison for crimes in Libyan detention centre; NGO Mediterranea to resume search-and-rescue operations; France relocates 49 unaccompanied children from Greece; Bosnia and Herzegovina’s restrictions on asylum seekers “discriminatory and reckless”; And Greece continues to claim ‘fake news’ as evidence of abuse and illegal pushbacks mount.

10 Jul 2020

In this week’s news highlights: Violence in Ethiopia claims 116 lives, Pope Francis calls migrant detention centers in Libya “concentration camps”, 52 migrants and refugees forced to stay in animal cages on ship

In this week’s news highlights: 116 people killed and opposition arrested in Ethiopia amid protests; 30 Eritrean Christians arrested at a wedding; COVID-19 restrictions fuel radicalization in Kenya; 3000 Congolese refugees entered in Uganda through temporary border opening exception; Eritrean road project only benefits multinational’s interests, states article; Call for eyewitness accounts of Sawa military school in Eritrea; Pope Francis calls Libyan detention centers for migrants “concentration camps”; Foreign involvement in Libya at “unprecedented levels”; Italian Senate renews mission in Libya; Ocean Viking finally allowed to disembark; 52 migrants and refugees not allowed off animal cargo ship; EC announces monitoring system against illegal pushbacks; EU handbook for family reunification announced; Greece advised to roll back criminalization of NGOs; Law expert explains how the EU criminalized humanitarian help of refugees; And Eritrean refugees experience isolation and uncertainty in Europe.

2 Jun 2020

EU’s unsustainable and deadly Libyan migration policy

Between May 24 and May 27 around 400 migrants and refugees have been picked up by the Libyan coastguard and returned to Libya. Two of them drowned during the operation. An additional 90 migrants and refugees have been stopped by a commercial ship and have been returned to Libya as well. The pushback operations are funded and supported by the European Union (EU) and individual member states like Malta and Italy. While Libya has been an unsafe place from the start of the EU’s so called externalized border policy, COVID-19 brings even more risks as detention camps in Libya are high-risk areas for the spread of the virus and rescue operations on the Mediterranean Sea have been minimized. An additional element of danger is the intense civil war in Libya, which has turned into a geopolitical conflict and a proxy war between Russia and The United Arab Emirates (UAE) on the one hand and Turkey on the other. The war takes its toll on the civilian population; on June 1 another 5 civilians were killed and 11 wounded in a rocket attack near Tripoli.