Assisted Voluntary Return (AVR) programmes are schemes to assist asylum seekers to return to their countries of origin. The programmes normally help refugees by arranging their travel and providing them with some financial support for establishing a new life on…
Age assessment is a process for determining the age of unaccompanied young people without documents (or who have not shared their documents) in countries where they are seeking refuge. As the European refugee ‘crisis’ continues, more unaccompanied children are travelling…
Sweden has long been one of the main destination countries within the European Union (EU) for people seeking protection, and almost 163,000 people – mainly from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq – applied for asylum in Sweden in 2015. The country’s…
Over the past decade, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Ugandans have sought safety and asylum in various countries but never in such numbers or with such a high degree of visibility as following the passage of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act…
UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency) estimates that approximately 4.5 million Iraqis – one sixth of Iraq’s population – have been displaced. Nearly four million are internally displaced, and most of the rest are living in countries in the region, such…
The lack of legal status for Iraqi refugees in Lebanon has a variety of unwelcome consequences. For example, if they find themselves exploited or abused – by employers or landlords – they are unable to approach the legal authorities to…
Roughly 110,000 camp residents – mostly ethnic Karen – live in nine camps on the Thai-Burma border, where humanitarian programmes now focus on preparedness for return. The general consensus among the humanitarian community is that conditions in Burma are not…
From a statement made to the United Nations General Assembly, 20 November 1967.[1] I should like to return for a moment to the question of Africa, and to the comment I made at the beginning of my statement when I…
Following conflict in 1972, and then a decade-long civil war beginning in the 1990s, over a million Burundians sought refuge in neighbouring countries, predominantly Tanzania. After the signing of peace accords in 2000, subsequent ceasefires and changing regional and global…
