Worldcrunch
THIAROYE — Sitting on the corner of his bed, behind the curtains drawn to hide the blazing sun, Saada Ndiaye is waiting for the moment to come. That moment is his would-be departure to Spain, via a clandestine and uncertain path from this small town in Senegal, and onward through Morocco. Ndiaye, who introduces himself […]
-Editorial- When the photo appeared Sept. 2 of Alan Kurdi, a lifeless 3-year-old boy facedown on a beach, the plight of refugees from Syria’s civil war shocked the world. In Canada’s election campaign, rivals responded with pledges to accelerate their resettlement. The election winner, Justin Trudeau of the Liberal Party, outlined the most ambitious agenda, to bring 25,000 refugees to Canada by year’s end. Trudeau has extended the deadline eight weeks, out of prudence over the logistical challenges. It is a small adjustment to a generous response that serves as a rebuke to the senseless xenophobia heard lately in the […]
After the Paris attacks last month, an emergency accord between Turkey and the European Union has sealed a border that was once so porous. It has real-life effects on desperate refugees, and entire towns.
The global refugee crisis forces us to rethink city planning and housing, with more focus on assuring people’s rights and needs. A chance to actually wind up with more human cities.
PARIS — As investigators follow possible leads from Syria to Greece and Belgium, Friday’s deadly and meticulously coordinated assault in Paris was no doubt very much a European attack. Governments across the continent are busy taking measures to enhance security against a growing threat of similar coordinated terror assaults. FRANCE French authorities carried out anti-terror […]
Bangkok and other urban areas in Thailand are home to some 8,000 refugees who have fled religious persecution in their home countries. But since the deadly shrine bombing in August, the government has been harassing and arresting illegal immigrants.
Molested, harassed, abused: Women in refugee camps are increasingly victims of sexual violence. Authorities in Hamburg try to react.
On the island of Sardinia, asylum seekers rebuild their lives on the football pitch.
As a border guard in 1989, Arpad Bella personally opened a portion of the Iron Curtain between Hungary and Austria to a crowd of East German refugees. Today, while migrants rush to the gates of Europe, he sadly watches history run backward.
Tensions rise between northern European neighbors. Sweden is second only to Germany for hosting the most refugees, while Denmark is dubbed Hungary of Scandinavia.
-OpEd- BERLIN — German authorities are now trying in every possible way to come up with solutions for sheltering the wave of refugees entering our country. But that has somehow led the state to threaten the suspension basic rights of property and ownership. The federal government does its best to foster optimism. German Chancellor Angela […]
Two Syrian refugees who attempted to swim part of the way to Europe recounted why they wound up making such a dangerous journey.
Peyrelevade, a village of 800 people in central France, has welcomed 60 refugees since April. Its former retirement home has been renovated, the primary school has avoided a class closure, and there are new jobs for residents. But the future is no less un
BODRUM — When the photograph of Alan Kurdi’s lifeless body spread around the world, the plight of Syrian refugees suddenly came into focus like never before. Yet Kurdi was just one of many who have died making the perilous journey to Europe, where they hope to attain asylum as the ongoing Syria civil war in their homeland continues to claim countless civilian lives. Turkey, which currently hosts some 1.8 million exiled Syrians, has increasingly become a departure point for a perilous sea journey toward Greece in flimsy rafts and ill-equipped boats to get inside European territory. Sayeed, a construction worker […]
From local politics to the the battle against polio to a banned prostitution film, here’s a quick tour of what has been happening in Morocco in recent days.
Arriving in Germany every day, Syrians who have fled civil war are now the targets of the Salafi movement, radical Muslims who include those who espouse Islamis jihad.
A vacation destination in western Turkey is now at the center of the human trafficking of Syrian refugees and other migrants trying to make the perilous sea journey to Europe.
Humanitarian, demographic and economic reasons have been cited by much of the German establishment for welcoming migrants. But what’s the real end game?
Why are they here? Who can stay? How should we treat them? The fate of Middle East and African refugees dominates German debate. They were once our own grandparents.
A French philosopher dissects the mix of reactions across society, and within our own individual psyches, when human misery arrives at our door.
-Essay- PARIS — There are times when it is necessary to compare things that are not comparable. There’s a chance at least that it will wake up some anesthetized minds. Between 1933 and 1940, several million refugees who had escaped from Germany, Poland, the Baltic countries and elsewhere, fleeing Nazism, were met with closed borders. […]
PARIS — Shocking photographs of the body of a Syrian toddler, whose body had washed up on a Turkish beach after his family’s failed attempt to reach Europe, are sparking global outcry. Will the publication of the hard-to-look-at images mark a turning point in raising global consciousness of the plight of refugees? The series of […]
CALAIS — Three rows of men gather side-by-side, their heads bent down. A coffin lies on the sand, in front of them. They silently pray and place the coffin down a deep pit. Moussa Houmed was 17; he was Eritrean. He dreamed of setting foot on English soil, but ended up drowned in the retention […]
New waves of migrants, including Syrian war refugees, seek to reach the gates of Europe at the Hungarian border.
Portrait of Yar Yar Kan, one of the many Rohingya Muslim minority rejected by the Burmese — and shunned by other Asian countries in an attempt to emigrate.
As part of 2011’s uprising against Assad regime, Alaa Arsheed fought for his country’s freedom before he was forced to flee to Beirut. Now safely in Italy, he plays to forget.
Nicolas Ngwabije fled his native Congo in 1966, a political refugee. He ended up working for decades at a French migrant center, a reference point for generations of refugees. And they keep coming.
ISLAM QALA — It’s almost midday when, under a blazing sun, the first bus transporting Afghans expelled from Iran arrives. At the border crossing of Islam Qala, in western Afghanistan and 460 miles from the capital Kabul, two metal sentry boxes are built opposite one another. Over one flaps the Iranian flag, on the other […]
A popular hot spot for European summer vacationers, the Greek island of Kos is now also a prime destination for undocumented immigrants from places like Syria and Pakistan.
The six Nigerian women had each risked their lives like so many crossing the Mediterranean. When they found each other in church in northern Italy, they discovered they had something else in common.
Thousands of asylum seekers are passing through the small Balkan nation on their way to the European Union, but the short journey is far more arduous than it seems.
Syria Deeply had a rare opportunity to hear from Palestinians facing violence and starvation in the Yarmouk refugee camp in southwestern Syria.
BRUSSELS — Moved by the dramatic situation of the Christian population in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, a group of Belgian activists, with support from the government, orchestrated a remarkable rescue operation to save nearly 250 Syrian Christians. In Aleppo, the Christians were under continuous assault by ISIS, the al-Qaeda-aligned al-Nusra front and the Assad regime. […]
From Hungary to Switzerland, fortifications are rising in the heart of Europe, where the once-heralded borderless zone is being diminished by the day.
The number of Brazilians living and working in the United States is growing fast, yet neither government has taken the steps necessary to mobilize this community.
LANGSA — It was 8 p.m. and the sea was calm in the Strait of Malacca, at the northern tip of Indonesia’s Sumatra island. Ibrahim, a local fisherman, was pulling in his first catch of the night when he received news that a nearby boat was overcrowded and in trouble. “We met another small fishing boat and they asked us to help,” Ibrahim recalls. “The fisherman said there were more than 1,000 people that needed help, but his boat could only take around 20 to 30 people.” He immediately released his catch and headed towards Malaysia. Half an hour later, […]
Reflections on the influx of (mostly) wealthy Chinese students enrolling at New York’s Columbia University.
Kos is one of the Greek islands closest to the Turkish coast and receives hundreds of Syrian and Afghan refugees every day, a heavy burden for a country already ravaged by economic crisis.
KIGOMA — The outline of the MV-Liemba looms on the horizon. The oldest ferry in the world drops anchor off the coast of Kagunga, a Tanzanian village just three miles from Burundi’s border. Around 600 Burundian passengers are subsequently brought on board after arriving from the shore on small fishing boats. The MV-Liemba will steam […]
Europe’s immigration crisis has also been gathering under a Metro overpass in the French capital. Officials have now acted, but that hardly means there is a solution.