Refugees, Migrants and helping (Merged Thread)

[AdamG]

German Chancellor Angela Merkel made a major concession to Europe's populist movement this week when she admitted the existence of so-called “no-go zones” in Germany.
Conservatives and populists have long warned of the existence of such zones as the partial consequence of mass Muslim migration from the Middle East and Africa, particularly after Merkel opened Germany’s borders in 2015 as a response to the Syrian refugee crisis. Such areas are said to be dogged by high-levels of crime and are described as "no-go zones" because outsiders, including police and other authorities, are unable to enter.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/03...n-germany.html

By The Associated Press
BERLIN — Feb 28, 2018, 11:58 AM ET

In an interview Monday with German broadcaster n-tv, Merkel said she favors a zero tolerance policy on crime and that includes preventing no-go areas, "that's areas where nobody dares to go."
She added: "There are such areas and one has to call them by their name and do something about them."
Asked to name the areas, Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters Wednesday that "the chancellor's words speak for themselves."

https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/201...-go-areas.html

[AdamG]

South Sudan. Syria. Afghanistan. Myanmar. Somalia.

The mention of these nations conjures images of violent conflict — and of humanity on the move.

Many in the affluent West are fearful of a world in which they imagine refugees from these countries are flooding into Europe and the United States at record rates. Those anxieties have driven governments to tighten borders and slash refugee resettlements.

But in reality, the vast majority of the world’s refugees have not gone very far and are largely living in neighboring countries, a fact reasserted in an annual report from the United Nations refugee agency this week.

The report said 68.5 million people worldwide were classified in 2017 as having been forcibly displaced because of conflict and persecution, the highest number since the end of World War II. Among them are 25.4 million refugees — those who have fled to another country to escape war or persecution in their own country and who receive special protections under international law.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/w...-refugees.html

[davidbfpo]

A startling article, although years ago the movement of refugees into the Yemen was encountered. So here are two passages by a SME on the Yemen:

more than 160,000 people arrived in Yemen in 2018 alone. Just to be clear this means that more desperate people crossed the Red Sea into Yemen than crossed the Mediterranean heading for Europe. Yemen is in the midst of an internationalised civil war and suffering from the world’s worst humanitarian crisis according to the UN’s Secretary General. There has been no outcry about a ‘migrant invasion’ from any Yemeni Minister of the Interior, whether from the internationally recognised government or the Huthi movement who control the capital Sana’a. Indeed Yemen has received and accepted close to a million Somali refugees since the 1990s, allowing them to work and live in the country, as Yemen is the only country in the Arabian Peninsula to recognise the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. Prior to the current war, the country’s authorities have been impressively hospitable to Somali refugees, though not to the thousands of Ethiopians and others who have crossed the Red Sea.

Near the end:

Migrants heading into Yemen are facing extreme hardship conditions in addition to entering a country at war where most of the population are also suffering from famine conditions. What does all this say about living conditions and prospects in their own countries?

Link:https://www.opendemocracy.net/north-africa-west-asia/helen-lackner/migrant-crisis-in-europe-look-at-yemen?