Among the earliest recorded government health policies were the quarantine laws during the plague epidemics of fourteenth-century Europe when several Mediterranean port cities isolated communities affected by disease and restricted population movement in response to the threat of a health…
In 2011, a severe drought combined with intense political violence and general governance failure caused widespread hardship in south-central Somalia, with famine declared in parts of the territory. This crisis generated – and was exacerbated by – high levels of…
In recent years, millions of non-citizens have been displaced in countries where they reside and work. Examples include those affected by invasion in Lebanon in 2006, xenophobic violence in South Africa in 2008, revolution in Libya in 2011, civil war…
We face a new paradigm on migration issues after the so-called Arab Spring, the political, economic and societal crisis in the countries of the Middle East and North Africa. In response, security resolutions adopted by the EU to protect its…
Today’s constant flows of persons and information across frontiers mean that, when an emergency occurs, the international community feels it has to get involved not only out of solidarity but because its citizens could be in danger. Yet while the…
Not all patterns of mobility during crises and not all people on the move during crises are comprehensively covered by current frameworks at the international, regional and national levels. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) recognises the need for improved…
The militarised struggle against drug cartels in Mexico that began in 2008 triggered an unprecedented increase in human rights violations against the population which found itself caught between the criminals and the armed forces and police. This in turn led…
Contemporary irregular migration is mostly ‘mixed’, meaning that it consists of flows of people who are on the move for different reasons but who share the same routes, modes of travel and vessels. They cross land and sea borders without…
There are obvious humanitarian reasons to be concerned about situations in which individuals are unable to move to escape danger. Such immobility magnifies their vulnerability and may inhibit the access of humanitarian actors. There is also a growing weight of…
Internationally the border security agenda has been mainly pushed forward by Europe and the US, based on the perception of all cross-border migration as a potential threat that must be intercepted and controlled or blocked. However, in many other regions,…