The reasons why people seek asylum are diverse but the common factor is the overriding need to flee and a hope that life will be better. For many asylum seekers, Australia seemed to offer everything they hoped for. But in…
A recent study suggests that 27% of adult forced migrants living in high-income countries like the UK are survivors of torture.[1] Many have complex physical, psychological, social and legal needs arising from their torture and from their often prolonged and…
In recent years, there has been a concerted effort by humanitarian actors to include people with disabilities in service provision and programming. However, those identified as having disabilities are more often than not people with ‘visible’ physical difficulties. People with…
Many of the women travelling through Greece to escape conflict and reach safety are already pregnant when they leave home or they become pregnant during the journey. Their journey may take months and they are likely to have limited access…
Violence that erupted in Sri Lanka in 1983 and on various subsequent occasions triggered a decades-long exodus of Sri Lankan Tamils to seek asylum in India and other countries in Asia, Europe, America and Australia. In total, some 303,000 people…
Since 2014, when refugees started arriving in Trieste, in north-east Italy on the Balkans route, every day between 30 and 100 people have camped in tents and cardboard boxes with makeshift beds inside the building known as Silos. This is…
At the height of the war between the Government of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army, close to 90% of the Acholi population was displaced and living in more than 150 forced encampments known as ‘protected villages’, many within a…
The UN-Habitat New Urban Agenda adopts human rights language, with repeated references to the principle of non-discrimination “regardless of their migration status”.[1] Unlike its predecessor Habitat II, the Agenda calls for inclusion of urban refugees within existing city structures; however,…
Successive French governments have responded to the large undocumented migrant population in the northern port of Calais by heightening security around the border and by controlling migrants’ access to shelter in the immediate vicinity of Calais. There has been a…
Refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) living in informal settlements or in rented housing are among those most at risk of eviction.[1] Traditional humanitarian shelter responses in urban areas have tended to favour ownership or collective centres, often lacking means…