Refugees

Fourteen people, including at least two civilians, were killed inside a “religious site” as government and rebel forces fought for control of a Central African Republic (CAR) town, rights group Amnesty International said Thursday.

Fifteen members of a contingent of Ethiopian peacekeepers in South Sudan, originally from the Tigray region, refused to return to Ethiopia on Monday, the UN said, citing their right to seek asylum if they fear for their lives.

Novak Djokovic became King of Melbourne for a record-extending ninth time and re-established his credentials in the Greatest Of All Time conversation.

Idris Aloma, a worker with United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in a video released by Boko Haram on Saturday pleaded with the organisation to liaise with the government to secure his release.

“If there is war in Nigeria, it will submerge the entire West Africa and there won’t be enough space to accommodate us as refugees. Those who have seen the effects of war, the consequences of tribal conflict, of religious conflict will never want it for Nigeria.”

The Italian coastguard has launched a rescue operation after a boat carrying at least 50 migrants and refugees capsized overnight off the coast of Lampedusa.

The United States has expressed concerns about Malaysia’s plans to deport asylum seekers and others from Myanmar, as the nearby country’s navy ships arrived in Malaysian waters to pick them up.

The World Health Organisation, WHO has recommended the use of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine as African countries gear up in earnest to begin rollout of COVID-19 vaccines.

A former Head of State, Abdulsalami Abubakar, has warned that Nigeria could disintegrate if the violence and other security challenges currently witnessed in many parts of the country are not curtailed.

The federal government on Wednesday said all was set to begin repatriation of Nigerian refugees from Cameroon, Niger and Chad back home.

The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) on Wednesday held their National Executive Council (NEC) meeting, at the Nigerian Airforce Conference Centre, Abuja, where they lamented the precarious state of insecurity and economic woes in the country.

The idea of having a near-perfect country out of a ruptured Nigeria is illusory. The composite parts of the country each contribute to the miasma of confusion that Nigeria is. No single entity is responsible for Nigeria’s problems. All the ethnic nationalities are equal shareholders in the failing of the Nigerian enterprise. There is enough blame to go around.

At least 11 people have been buried on Sunday in the aftermath of Friday’s altercation between Hausa and Yoruba traders at Shasa Market in Akinyele Local Government Area, Oyo State.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has directed commercial banks and other financial institutions to, henceforth, accept Machine Readable Travel Documents (MRCTD) and Refugee Identification Card, as means of identification for financial transactions.

A total of 4982 Nigerian refugees in Cameroon are set to return as the National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons, NCFRMI, has begun moves to that effect.

U.S. President Joe Biden plans to raise the refugee cap for the current fiscal year to 62,500, a sharp increase from the 15,000 set by former President Donald Trump, two people familiar with the move told Reuters on Friday.

As many as 20 000 refugees are missing after two camps in Ethiopia’s war-torn Tigray region were destroyed, the United Nations said.

Bangladesh called for peace and stability in Myanmar after a military coup on Monday, and said it hoped its neighbour make genuine efforts to move forward the stalled process of voluntary repatriation of Rohingya Muslim refugees.

China said on Monday it had “noted” the military coup in Myanmar and hoped that all sides could properly manage their differences under the constitution and uphold stability.

Myanmar’s military seized power on Monday in a coup against the democratically elected government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who was detained along with other leaders of her National League for Democracy (NLD) party in early morning raids.

More than 200,000 people have fled fighting in the Central African Republic since violence erupted over a December election result, the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Friday, with nearly half crossing into the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The United Nations on Wednesday appealed to member countries for $100 million to help it boost support for refugees fleeing escalating conflicts and crises in Africa and embarking on risky migration routes to Europe.