News Highlights: urgency resolution Eritrea, EU ‘reducing migration’, violence in South Sudan

In this week’s news highlights, the European Parliament is about to vote on an urgency resolution about Eritrea, mainly the cases of Patriarch Abune Antonios and journalist Dawit Isaak; the European Commission released new proposals for ‘reducing migration pressures’ in the Central Mediterranean Route; U.S. carried out a drone strike in Somalia aimed at Al-Shabaab; the African Union will send a delegation to Eritrea to discuss the dispute with Djibouti; Amnesty International warns of brutal atrocities in South Sudan; and UNHCR released a new report on mixed migration in Libya.

New highlights: Yemini prisoners in Eritrea, Italy considers shutting out boats, mandate Special Rapporteur Eritrea extended

In this week’s news highlights, Italy is threatening to close its ports to foreign boats carrying stranded migrants and refugees; worrying reports state that hundreds of Yemeni prisoners are detained and abused, including at an AUE base in Eritrea; the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on Eritrea is extended; an in-depth report looks at how Israel aims to get rid of its Eritrean and Sudanese refugees; and 2.000 leave South Sudan each day to flee violence and hunger.

SAR operations by NGOs: new report inverts the relation of causality and clarifies role of NGOs

During the last months the NGOs that conduct the Search and Rescue (SAR) operations in the Mediterranean have been at the centre of a political and media storm.The report by Forensic Oceanography assesses that a toxic rhetoric has been created where the only victims are the NGOs, and most importantly no concrete evidence has been found in this “criminalization campaign”.The report goes beyond, and addresses not only the accusation of collusion in smuggling per se, but rather it challenges the assumptions reinforcing this accusation.