Fewer than half of Syrians seeking asylum in the European Union (EU) manage to get refugee status. In contrast, in 2014 Brazil recognised all of the 1,405 Syrians who applied to Brazil for refugee status. In August 2015, Brazil had…
Liberia has gradually been recovering from the social and economic damage caused by fourteen years of brutal civil war, between 1989 and 2003, which forcibly displaced about 700,000 Liberians outside the country. A significant number of Liberians repatriated following the…
Ecuador is one example where refugees’ right to work and their potential positive contribution to the host society were recognised with the introduction of universal citizenship in the Constitution of 2008. As a result, refugees and asylum seekers enjoy the…
In 1984, the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in northern China – a sparsely settled, mostly desert region – launched extensive displacement programmes intended to restore a deteriorating ecosystem and eradicate absolute poverty, with the support of the central government and…
In October 2012, the European Commission recommended that Albania be granted European Union (EU) candidate status, subject to the completion of key measures in certain areas, including in asylum. One of the government’s objectives was to align Albania’s Refugee Status…
I first met Melchora, a Guatemalan Mayan Indian refugee in Quintana Roo on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, more than 20 years ago. I was visiting the hospital in Chetumal where her son was being treated following an accident two months previously.…
The Dayton Peace Agreement ended the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) on 14 December 1995, and its Annex 7 on ‘Agreement on Refugees and Displaced Persons’ established that: “All refugees and displaced persons have the right freely to return…
The devastation orchestrated by political, military and paramilitary leaders a generation ago continues to exert a malicious influence on the Western Balkans region long after many of those responsible have been convicted for their crimes. Just as the legacy of…
The clash of separatist and ethnic interests in the Balkans led to a war that began in early 1992 and in which the use of violence against civilians shocked the world. It was during this conflict that the term ‘ethnic…
