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UN Human Rights Office Says IDF's Deadly Nuseirat Raid May Amount to War Crime
Israeli forces killed at least 274 Palestinians in the refugee camp on Saturday while conducting an operation to save four hostages.
Jun 11, 2024
Citing the "principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution" that international humanitarian law demands military forces obey, the United Nations' top human rights office on Tuesday said the raid conducted at Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces over the weekend may amount to a war crime.
The IDF conducted the operation at the camp in the central Gaza Strip in order to free four Israeli hostages who were kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, and Jeremy Laurence, spokesperson for the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) told reporters their release was "clearly very good news."
But the OHCHR, Laurence said, is "profoundly shocked at the impact on civilians of the Israeli forces' operation," which killed at least 274 Palestinians, including 64 children and 57 women, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society.
"The manner in which the raid was conducted in such a densely populated area seriously calls into question whether the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution—as set out under the laws of war—were respected by the Israeli forces," said Laurence in a statement.
Actions by both the IDF and Hamas, he added, "may amount to war crimes."
As it has since beginning its bombardment of Gaza in October in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, the IDF blamed the civilian casualties on Saturday on the militant group, saying the hundreds of deaths were the result of Hamas operating in the densely populated Nuseirat camp.
But while Laurence said the OHCHR was "deeply distressed" by Hamas' capture of hostages and its operating in densely population areas, Rutgers Law School professor Adil Haque concurred with the office that Israel is obligated to protect civilian lives in Gaza regardless of Hamas' conduct.
"The fact that your adversary is breaking international humanitarian law does not change your obligations," Haque told The Washington Post. "The foreseeable harm to civilians was disproportionate to the legitimate aim of rescuing the four hostages."
Eyewitnesses and aid groups have said the attack began in broad daylight and started after IDF soldiers entered the camp in a humanitarian aid truck. The operation was carried out with jets, drones, and tanks and included strikes in the vicinity of a maternity clinic that has been converted to a hospital to help care for people wounded in Israeli attacks since October.
Paramedic Abdel Hamid Ghorab told the Post he witnessed "random and continuous bombing in the vicinity of the hospital with unprecedented intensity."
"All they cared about was carrying out the operation, even if it was at the expense of all these lives," said Ghorab.
Israeli lawyer Michael Sfard told the Post that the 274 casualties "is enough to raise questions about whether the use of fire was indiscriminate," which would be a violation of international humanitarian law.
"Was the air power used on a prospected military objective, or was it a random, indiscriminate use of bombardment in a very densely populated area?" he asked.
As the OHCHR made its statement, Writers Against the War on Gaza condemned The New York Times' publication of "a whitewashed puff piece on the Nuseirat refugee camp massacre," authored by former IDF soldier Ronen Bergman, which they said was aimed at dehumanizing Palestinian civilians while including no context about potential war crimes by the IDF.
"The framing of this article, typical of New York Times coverage of the massacre, foregrounds four (alive) Israelis over hundreds of dead Palestinians, and presents the IDF as swashbuckling heroes," the group wrote on the X account of its project, The New York War Crimes. "This prefigures the reader to accept the justification for IDF butchery."
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On World Refugee Day, Calls to 'Broker Peace' So 35 Million People Can Go Home
"We know too well the cost of inaction: a world with the highest forced displacement in recorded history," the U.N.'s top refugee official noted. "We cannot let this continue."
Jun 20, 2023
As the worldwide number of refugees soars to an all-time high due in large part to war, advocates marked World Refugee Day on Tuesday by imploring the international community to work toward achieving peace and provide the financial and other resources necessary to enable tens of millions of displaced people to return home.
More than 108 million people around the world were displaced as of the end of 2022—and over 35 million of those people were refugees—due to war and other violence, climate shocks, persecution, and other human rights violations, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR) said in its annual Global Trends report released last week.
That's a 23% increase—or 8 million more people—from 2021, and the figure is expected to surge even higher due largely to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the battle between rival factions of Sudan's military government, the agency warned.
"Right now, the world is facing a refugee crisis unlike any since World War II."
"On World Refugee Day, we honor the courage and hopes of the millions of people forced to flee war, violence, and persecution," U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said in a statement on Tuesday. "This year I'm marking the occasion in Kenya, meeting refugees brimming with strength and ambition despite escaping conflict, drought, and other horrors."
Grandi asserted that the world "can—and must—do more" to offer "hope, opportunities, and solutions to refugees, wherever they are and whatever the context."
According to UNHCR, more than three-quarters of global refugees are hosted by low- and middle-income countries, with Turkey, Iran, and Colombia hosting the most displaced people. The agency also said that roughly 7 in 10 refugees live in nations bordering their countries of origin.
Noting efforts by countries that "have generously hosted refugees," Grandi asserted that "host countries cannot do it on their own."
"The international community must step up and provide the financial resources to enable such progressive policies," he stressed. "We have seen enormous progress in this area over the past years... but clearly, more must be done."
"Unfortunately, in today's divided world, long-term solutions for people forced to flee remain pitifully scarce, leaving many of the world's 35 million refugees in limbo," Grandi continued. "That is why, on World Refugee Day, I [call on] leaders to live up to their responsibility to broker peace so that violence stops, and refugees can return home safely and voluntarily."
"I call on governments to increase resettlement opportunities for refugees desperately in need," he added. "And I call on states to embrace policies that harness the enormous potential refugees have to contribute to the social, economic, and political life of the countries hosting them."
"We know too well the cost of inaction: a world with the highest forced displacement in recorded history," Grandi said. "We cannot let this continue."
This year's World Refugee Day comes amid fears that most of the more than 700 refugees aboard an overloaded fishing boat that sank off the southern Greek coast last week drowned. So far, 81 bodies have been recovered and 104 asylum-seekers have been rescued from the shipwreck.
Former U.K. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn tweeted: "It is a political choice to let human beings drown at sea. On World Refugee Day, we demand justice."
In the United States, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.)—a childhood refugee from Somalia—noted that "right now, the world is facing a refugee crisis unlike any since World War II, with refugee crises in Syria, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Venezuela, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Myanmar," and other countries.
"The climate crisis is only expected to fuel more forced migration from the most-impacted regions," Omar wrote on Twitter. "It is on all of us to live up to our professed values."
"We must provide safe refuge to those seeking asylum and reject nativist efforts to punish and criminalize asylum seekers," Omar added. "And we must pursue a binding agreement on global migration to hold each other accountable for addressing this crisis."
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110 Million Now Forcibly Displaced as War, Climate Crisis Wreak Global Havoc
"The 46 least developed countries account for less than 1.3% of global gross domestic product, yet they hosted more than 20% of all refugees," a new report by the United Nations shows.
Jun 14, 2023
The United Nations refugee agency on Wednesday released its annual report on forcible displacement across the globe, revealing that the refugee population has hit a new record of 110 million people who have been driven from their homes due largely to violent conflicts and climate-related disasters—with the numbers showing the crisis is rapidly intensifying with each passing year.
At the end of 2022, more than 108 million people were living as refugees—up nearly 20 million from the previous year, according to the report, Global Trends in Forced Displacement 2022.
The recently erupted conflict in Sudan has pushed millions more people out of their homes this year, bringing the mid-year total to 110 million.
More than 32.5 million people have also been displaced by disasters, including those caused by the climate crisis, and 21% of those refugees have left their homes in the world's least developed countries and small island nations.
Dominique Hyde, director of external relations for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said the agency's report marks "a world record that no one wants to celebrate."
The majority of people—58%—who have been forcibly pushed out of their homes have gone elsewhere in their own countries. More than 35 million people have fled their home countries to find refuge from conflicts, persecution, and the effects of planetary heating, including drought and flooding.
The war in Ukraine has caused the fastest growth in refugee numbers since World War II and was the main driver of displacement in 2022, with 5.7 million people having fled the country by the end of last year.
Violence in Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Myanmar have also displaced more than one million people each, as vulnerable residents fled to safety within their own countries.
In Somalia, an extreme drought that began in January 2021 has now displaced one million people. The drought has been linked to the climate crisis and the food shortage it's caused has been exacerbated by the war between Russia and Ukraine, which collectively used to provide Somalia with 90% of its wheat.
"This one-million milestone serves as a massive alarm bell," said Mohamed Abdi, the Norwegian Refugee Council's (NRC) director in Somalia. "Starvation is now haunting the entire country."
About six million Palestinian people are currently refugees, as well as 6.1 million Syrians, 5.7 million Afghans, and 5.5 million Venezuelans.
While low- and middle-income countries are where refugees typically come from, countries in the Global South also disproportionately take responsibility for welcoming and resettling displaced people, compared to wealthy nations.
More than three-quarters of refugees are hosted in low- and middle-income countries.
"The 46 least developed countries account for less than 1.3% of global gross domestic product, yet they hosted more than 20% of all refugees," said the UNHCR.
Iran is currently hosting 3.4 million refugees, including many from Afghanistan. Colombia and Peru have also welcomed millions of Venezuelan refugees, while countries including the United States have enacted policies in recent months making it more difficult for people fleeing persecution and conflict to find refuge there.
"We see increasingly a reluctance on the part of states to fully adhere to the principles of the [1951 refugee] convention, even states that have signed it," Filippo Grandi, the high commissioner for refugees at the U.N., told Reuters.
The record-breaking number of international refugees shows that policymakers "are far too quick to rush to conflict, and way too slow to find solutions," said Grandi in a statement.
"The consequence is devastation, displacement, and anguish for each of the millions of people forcibly uprooted from their homes," he added.
The agency noted that the refugee crisis has exploded in the past decade after roughly 20 years of relatively stable numbers that hovered around 40 million people worldwide prior to the conflict in Syria that began in 2011. Now, more than one in every 74 people is displaced.
"This has been a dark decade," Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, told Al Jazeera. "Every year, the world watches the number of displaced people increase, and then does too little to protect and assist the displaced. There is a reason for the dramatic increase in refugees and internally displaced: we fail to prevent war and violence, and national and international leaderships fail in conflict resolution where we have protracted emergencies."
Hyde noted in a column at Reuters that there are solutions that would help mitigate the refugee crisis, both by allowing people to stay safely in their homes and ensuring they are given support in host countries.
"When refugees are included in national systems and given opportunities to study and work, they move out of a state of dependency to one of self-reliance, contributing to local economies to the benefit of themselves and their hosts," wrote Hyde. "If host countries were given proper support on job creation, educational provision, technology, climate change mitigation, healthcare, and more, both the displaced and local communities would benefit."
"We have also seen refugees and IDPs [internally displaced people] return home when the conditions are right," she added. "During 2022, at least 5.7 million IDPs returned home, while 339,300 refugees were also able to go back to their country of origin. But this can only happen if lasting peace is achieved."
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UN Refugee Agency Says Biden Asylum Plan 'Incompatible' With International Law
"As proposed, the regulation would restrict the fundamental human right to seek asylum," said the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Mar 27, 2023
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees on Monday urged the Biden administration to consider rescinding its proposed anti-asylum rule, which critics have compared to former President Donald Trump's "transit ban" that denied asylum to anyone who had traveled to the United States through a third country.
The Departments of Justice and Homeland Security last month proposed the new rule, which would subject asylum seekers to prompt deportation if they don't have "documents sufficient for lawful admission."
Migrants who pass through other countries en route to the U.S. without first claiming asylum there will be labeled ineligible to claim asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border—a violation of the internationally recognized right to seek asylum, said the UNHCR, echoing a number of refugee rights groups.
"As proposed, the regulation would restrict the fundamental human right to seek asylum for people who passed through another country and arrived in the United States without authorization," said the agency, which is headed by Filippo Grandi. "UNHCR is particularly concerned that, even with the regulation's grounds for rebuttal, this would lead to cases of refoulement—the forced return of people to situations where their lives and safety would be at risk—which is prohibited under international law."
"Key elements of the proposal are incompatible with principles of international refugee law," said the agency.
The UNHCR submitted comments on the proposed rule as part of the U.S. government's federal rule-making process. The public comment period for the proposal ends Monday.
The new rule, titled Circumvention of Legal Pathways, has been proposed to go into effect for two years after the expiration of Title 42, the pandemic-era policy which gave border agents the authority to expel immigrants at the southern U.S. border. Title 42 is currently scheduled to expire in May.
The UNHCR noted that the United States' mass denial of asylum for people arriving in the country after Title 42 expires would put strain on other countries which are already hosting millions of refugees.
"In line with the goals of the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection and other international commitments, it is essential that countries work together to secure collaborative and coordinated responses to increasing movements of refugees and migrants in the Americas," said the agency, referring to the 2022 agreement between Western Hemisphere countries that aimed to "create the conditions for safe, orderly, humane, and regular migration and to strengthen frameworks for international protection and cooperation."
The agency added that it is committed to supporting "broader reform efforts" regarding the U.S. immigration system aimed at improving "the fairness, quality and efficiency of the asylum system."
The UNHCR included recommendations for the U.S. system in its public comment, including:
- Introducing integrated border processing, reception, and registration to ensure asylum-seekers are identified as soon as possible after entering the U.S. and can be directed to the services they need, as well as helping to reduce overcrowding at ports of entry and minimizing delays and inefficiencies;
- Providing legal information, aid, and representation at the earliest possible stage to contribute to fairness and efficiency;
- Providing "non-adversarial adjudication," in which authorities could work with asylum applicants to "establish necessary facts and analyze them in accordance with international standards";
- Introducing "differentiated case processing modalities," in which straightforward cases with fewer legal or factual questions could be "streamed into accelerated and/or simplified procedures," allowing authorities "to enhance protection and build efficiencies by dedicating greater resources to the adjudication of complex claims."
"UNHCR stands ready to support these efforts throughout the region, including with the United States," said the UNHCR, "with a focus on genuine responsibility sharing, strengthening asylum systems and building safe pathways to protection and solutions."
The UNHCR has denounced the Biden administration's immigration policies in the past, warning in January that the president's expansion of Title 42—in which up to 30,000 people from specific countries would be sent to Mexico each month unless they met certain requirements—was "not in line with refugee law standards."
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Nearly 130,000 People 'Looking Death in the Eyes' in Horn of Africa, WHO Official Warns
"I've been working on and off in this region for almost 25 years now—and in terms of accumulated emergencies, this is bad as I've ever seen it," the expert said.
Mar 10, 2023
Extreme hunger fueled by the climate emergency, violence, and disease has nearly 130,000 people in the Horn of Africa—which has entered its sixth straight failed rainy season—facing starvation, while 48 million others suffer from crisis levels of food insecurity, a United Nations expert warned Friday.
Liesbeth Aelbrecht, a consultant on health and food insecurity for the World Health Organization (WHO) sounded the alarm on what she said was the worst situation she's ever seen in over two decades of work in a region that includes the nations of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Uganda.
"These 48 million people do include as many as 129,000 who are facing catastrophe," Aelbrecht told reporters in Geneva, Switzerland. "That means they are facing starvation and literally looking death in the eyes."
According to a report published earlier this year by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR):
The Horn of Africa region continues to experience the longest and most severe drought on record, threatening lives and livelihoods, including millions of refugees and internally displaced people. Relentless drought and high food prices have weakened many people's ability to grow crops, raise livestock, and buy food... Harvests have yielded little and water sources have dried up. Conflict and insecurity continue to intersect with the drought emergency. As conditions continue to worsen, hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to flee in search of safety and assistance.
UNHCR—which is appealing for $137 million "to respond to the immediate needs of affected populations" in the drought-stricken region—says 1,750,000 people have been internally displaced in Ethiopia and Somalia alone, while more than 180,000 refugees have crossed from Somalia and South Sudan into regions of Kenya and Ethiopia that are also suffering from drought.
The region is also experiencing soaring disease rates.
"All seven countries are battling measles, a deadly disease, Aelbrecht said. "Four of the countries are fighting cholera, South Sudan being one of them; they just declared an outbreak," she added. "Malaria, which we know is endemic in this region and remains the biggest cause reason for [medical] consultation, is really on the rise."
Cases of hepatitis, meningitis, and dengue are also increasing, with Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, reporting its first-ever dengue outbreak this year.
"The frequency of these disease outbreaks is directly linked to these extreme weather events and to climate change," Aelbrecht said. "I've been working on and off in this region for almost 25 years now—and in terms of accumulated emergencies, this is bad as I've ever seen it."
"We need to do anything possible to control these disease outbreaks," she added. "We know how to control cholera, what we need is really the resources to scale this up."
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'A Sigh of Relief' as Hundreds of Rohingya Refugees Rescued After Harrowing Sea Journeys
However, around 180 other Rohingya are feared dead amid reports their overcrowded boat sank after setting sail from Bangladesh earlier this month.
Dec 28, 2022
The rescue of hundreds of Rohingya refugees by fishers and local authorities in Indonesia's Aceh province was praised Tuesday as "an act of humanity" by United Nations officials, while relatives of around 180 Rohingya on another vessel that's been missing for weeks feared that all aboard had perished.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that "Indonesia has helped to save 472 people in the past six weeks from four boats, showing its commitment and respect of basic humanitarian principles for people who face persecution and conflict."
"We feel like we got a new world today... We could see their faces again. It's really a moment of joy for all of us."
"UNHCR urges other states to follow this example. Many others did not act despite numerous pleas and appeals for help," the Geneva-based agency added. "States in the region must fulfill their legal obligations by saving people on boats in distress to avoid further misery and deaths."
Ann Maymann, the UNHCR representative in Indonesia, said in a statement that "we welcome this act of humanity by local communities and authorities in Indonesia."
"These actions help to save human lives from certain death, ending torturous ordeals for many desperate people," she added.
The Syndey Morning Herald reports residents of Ladong, a fishing village in Aceh, rushed to help 58 Malaysia-bound Rohingya men who arrived Sunday in a rickety wooden boat, many of them severely dehydrated and starving.
The following day, 174 more starving Rohingya men, women, and children, were helped ashore by local authorities and fishers after more than a month at sea.
Mohammed Rezuwan Khan, whose 27-year-old sister Hatamonesa was aboard the boat with her 5-year-old daughter, told Pakistan's Arab News that "we feel like we got a new world today."
“We could see their faces again. It's really a moment of joy for all of us," he said of his family. Speaking of his sister, he added that "she thought that she would die in the voyage at sea."
Babar Baloch, the UNHCR regional spokesperson in Bangkok, stated that 26 people had died aboard the rescued vessel, which left Bangladesh a month ago.
"We were raising alarm about this boat in early December because we had information that it was in the regional waters at least at the end of November," he said. "So when we first got reports that it was somewhere near the coast of Thailand, we approached authorities asking them to help, then when it was moving towards Indonesia and Malaysia we did the same."
"After its engine failure and it was drifting in the sea, there were reports of this boat being spotted close to Indian waters and we approached and asked them as well and we were also in touch with authorities in Sri Lanka," Baloch continued.
"Currently as we speak, the only countries in the region that have acted are Indonesia, in big numbers, and Sri Lanka as well."
According to the BBC, the Indian navy appears to have towed the boat into Indonesian waters after giving its desperate passengers some food and water. The boat drifted for another six days before it was allowed to land.
"Currently as we speak, the only countries in the region that have acted are Indonesia, in big numbers, and Sri Lanka as well," Baloch said. "It is an act in support of humanity, there's no other way to describe it."
Relatives of around 180 other Rohingya who left Bangladesh on December 2 said Tuesday that they fear the overcrowded vessel has sunk in the Andaman Sea. Mohammad Noman, a resident of a Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, told The Guardian that his sister was aboard the boat with her two daughters, who are 5 and 3 years old.
"Every day we called up the boat two or three times on the boatman's satellite phone to find out if my sister and her two daughters were all right. Since December 8, I have failed to get access to that phone," he said. "I know some other people in Cox's Bazar who made phone calls to the boat every day and stayed in contact with their relatives there. None of them has succeeded to reach the phone after December 8."
The captain of another vessel transporting Rohingya refugees said he saw the distressed boat swept up in stormy seas sometime during the second week of December.
"It was around 2:00 am when a strong wind began blowing and big waves surfaced on the sea. [Their] boat began swaying wildly, we could gauge from a flashlight they were pointing at us," he told The Guardian. "After some time, we could not see the flashlight anymore. We believe the boat drowned then."
More than a million Rohingya Muslims are crowded into squalid refugee camps in southern Bangladesh after having fled ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and other violence and repression in Rakhine state, Myanmar, which is ruled by a military dictatorship. Since 2020, thousands of Rohingya have fled the camps by sea.
Hundreds have died during the perilous journey. If the sinking of the boat with 180 aboard is confirmed, it would make 2022 the deadliest year for Rohingya at sea, according to UNHCR.
UNHCR's Baloch stressed that "countries and states in the region have international obligations to help desperate people."
"We have been calling on states to go after people smugglers and human traffickers as they are responsible for putting people on those death-trap boats, but victims have to be saved and saving human life is the most important act," he told the Morning Herald.
"The refugee issue and saving lives cannot just be left to one country, it has to be done collectively, together in the region," he added.
Tun Khin, a Rohingya activist and refugee who now heads the Burmese Rohingya Organization U.K., took aim at regional power Australia, which has been criticized for decades over its abuse of desperate seaborne asylum-seekers, nearly all of whom are sent to dirty, crowded offshore processing centers on Manus Island and Nauru to await their fate.
"Australia has too often set a shameful example for the region through its treatment of refugees," he told the Morning Herald.
"These people are facing genocide in Burma," Khin added, using the former official name of Myanmar. "It is a hopeless situation for them in Bangladesh, there is no dignity of life there."
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'We're Dying Here': SOS Issued for Rohingya Refugees Desperately Adrift at Sea
"These are human beings—men, women, and children," said one U.N. expert. "We need to see the states in the region help save lives and not let people die."
Dec 23, 2022
A United Nations refugee advocate on Friday joined human rights defenders in imploring South and Southeast Asian nations to rescue nearly 200 Rohingya refugees "on the verge of perishing" after drifting on the Andaman Sea for weeks—an ordeal that's already reportedly claimed around 20 lives aboard the vessel.
The refugees—who are fleeing ethnic cleansing and other severe state repression in their native Myanmar—have been packed aboard the unseaworthy boat for as long as a month without adequate food or water, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement.
"While many in the world are preparing to enjoy a holiday season and ring in a new year, boats bearing desperate Rohingya men, women, and young children, are setting off on perilous journeys in unseaworthy vessels."
"It is devastating to learn that many people have already lost their lives, including children," Indrika Ratwatte, UNHCR's Asia and Pacific director, said on Friday, lamenting that the refugees' plight has been "continuously ignored" by countries in the region.
"This shocking ordeal and tragedy must not continue," Ratwatte continued. "These are human beings—men, women, and children. We need to see the states in the region help save lives and not let people die."
Using his phone, the captain of the stranded boat told Mohammed Rezuwan Khan, whose sister and 5-year-old niece are on the vessel, that "we're dying here."
Khan told The Washington Post on Friday that he has lost contact with his relatives aboard the vessel and that he is "very concerned" for their well-being.
"I ask the international community to not let them die," Khan added. "Rohingya are human beings. Our lives matter."
According to UNHCR:
Since the first reports of the boat being sighted in Thai waters, UNHCR has received unverified information of the vessel being spotted near Indonesia and then subsequently off the coast of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India.
Its current location is reportedly once more back eastwards, in the Andaman sea north of Aceh.
UNHCR has repeatedly asked all countries in the region to make saving lives a priority and requested the Indian marine rescue center earlier this week to allow for disembarkations.
While the Sri Lankan navy and local fishers acted rapidly to rescue over 100 Rohingya from a boat in distress in the Indian Ocean last weekend, no such assistance has been rendered to the vessel drifting in the Andaman Sea.
"International humanitarian law requires the rescue of people at sea when they are in distress, and their delivery to a place of safety," Amnesty International stressed in a tweet Thursday. "Further delays to alleviate this suffering or any attempts to send Rohingya back to Myanmar where they face apartheid are unconscionable."
Two weeks ago, a Vietnamese commercial ship en route to Myanmar rescued 154 Rohingya refugees from a sinking boat before turning them over to Burmese authorities, who reportedly arrested the migrants.
On Thursday, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Myanmar Tom Andrews said that nations in the region "should prevent any loss of life and urgently rescue and provide immediate relocation" to the stranded Rohingya.
"Too many Rohingya lives have already been lost in maritime crossings."
"Too many Rohingya lives have already been lost in maritime crossings," asserted Andrews, a former Democratic U.S. congressman from Maine. "Increasing numbers of Rohingya have been using dangerous sea and land routes in recent weeks, which highlights the sense of desperation and hopelessness experienced by Rohingya in Myanmar and in the region."
UNHCR has reported a 600% increase of mostly Rohingya people endeavoring perilous sea journeys from Myanmar and Bangladesh in 2022. The agency says at least 119 people have died or gone missing this year.
"While many in the world are preparing to enjoy a holiday season and ring in a new year, boats bearing desperate Rohingya men, women, and young children, are setting off on perilous journeys in unseaworthy vessels," Andrews said.
"The international community must step forward," he added, "and assist regional actors to provide durable solutions for the Rohingya."
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Refugee Planet: There Have Never Been This Many Displaced People on Earth
Half of refugees worldwide are children, new United Nations report finds
Jun 20, 2016
An unprecedented 65.3 million people have been displaced around the world due to war and persecution, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) reported on Monday.
The new figure is not only a 21st-century record but also the first time that the numbers have surpassed 60 million. This means one in every 113 people worldwide is now either an asylum-seeker, internally displaced, or a refugee, the UN said. Half of them are children.
Over the past five years, forced displacement has increased quicker than ever due to long-standing conflicts in regions like Somalia and Afghanistan; "dramatic" escalations in newly destabilized countries like Syria, Yemen, and Ukraine; and a growing resistance from other nations to providing asylum for refugees, the UN reported.
"More people are being displaced by war and persecution, and that's worrying in itself, but the factors that endanger refugees are multiplying too," said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi.
Grandi also warned on Sunday that a "climate of xenophobia" was spreading due to political rhetoric painting refugees as terrorists or beggars. "Refugees... don't bring danger" but "flee from dangerous places," he told Agence France-Presse.
The UN's report, Global Trends (pdf), was released to mark World Refugee Day on June 20 and in conjunction with the agency's #WithRefugees campaign, which calls on governments to ensure asylum seekers are given education, safe shelter, and opportunities to work.
"At sea, a frightening number of refugees and migrants are dying each year; on land, people fleeing war are finding their way blocked by closed borders," Grandi said Monday. "Politics is gravitating against asylum in some countries. The willingness of nations to work together not just for refugees but for the collective human interest is being tested today, and this spirit of unity badly needs to prevail."
Syria at 4.9 million, Afghanistan at 2.7 million, and Somalia at 1.1 million together accounted for more than half the refugees under the UNHCR mandate. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, in total, saw the highest number of displaced people in 2015. Intervention in Syria--led in part by the U.S.--has seen at least 4.9 million people driven out of the country and at least 6.6 million displaced internally, totaling around half of the nation's pre-war population.
Hikmat, a Syrian farmer now living in a tent in Lebanon with his family, told the UN, "We're stuck here. We can't go on, and we can't go back. My children need to go to school; they need a future."
Elsewhere in the world, people fleeing drug gangs in Central America contributed to a 17 percent rise in displacement in the region. At the same time, refugees from Asia and the Pacific accounted for almost a sixth of global refugees and internally displaced people in 2015. Meanwhile, as Europe and the U.S. have largely turned their backs on asylum seekers, Pakistan and Iran held onto their position as two of the world's leading refugee host countries. In fact, 86 percent of refugees are currently living in low- and middle-income countries close to areas of conflict, such as Ethiopia, Jordan, and Turkey.
The report excluded people displaced by natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes, which uprooted at least 19 million people in 2015, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, which released its own report in May.
UNHCR said the 2016 report must act as a "watershed moment" for the cause.
"World leaders can no longer watch passively as so many lives are needlessly lost," the report states. "We must be smart about finding solutions to help refugees. We must find humane and dignified means to ensure refugees don't risk their lives and those of their families by resorting to ruthless traffickers or by boarding flimsy boats in a bid to reach safety."
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