U.S. Agrees to Accept Refugees in Australia’s Offshore Camps
The U.S. has agreed to resettle refugees who have spent years in Australian-run camps in Papua New Guinea and the Pacific island Nauru.
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, announcing the deal on November 13, said a “substantial” number of the 1,200 refugees and asylum seekers at the two camps would be eligible for resettlement in the U.S., with women, children and families given priority. Those who are refused asylum should return to their countries, he said.
Due to U.S. security and health checks, the first refugees are unlikely to arrive in the U.S. before the January 20 inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, Turnbull said. Analysts warned that Trump could scupper the deal once in office.
Asylum seekers at the camps reacted with both joy and skepticism. “I can’t believe anything before it happens – more than three years we are in this situation and we lose all hope,” one woman told the Guardian.
While the camps are shrouded in secrecy, leaked reports have detailed widespread abuse and self-harm at the facilities. Australia bars refugees who try to enter by boat from ever settling in the country, and reiterated that policy this weekend, stressing that the deal was one-time only and would not apply to new arrivals.
Nigeria Investigates More Reports of Food Aid Stolen From Displaced
Nigeria opened a second investigation into reports that officials and traders are stealing food aid meant to alleviate a humanitarian crisis in northeast Nigeria.
Officials in Adamawa state said most of the food aid sent in 11 trucks this August never reached the displacement camps where thousands are sheltering from Boko Haram’s insurgency, and instead turned up for sale in local markets.
Nigeria opened an investigation in neighboring Borno state after similar allegations in August.
Boko Haram violence has displaced over 2 million people and left northeast Nigeria on the brink of famine. The United Nations’ children’s agency UNICEF has warned that 75,000 children could die this year without a major aid effort in the region.
Stateless Families in the Philippines Receive Citizenship
The Philippines and Indonesia have granted nearly 3,000 stateless people living in the southern Philippines nationality this year, Reuters reports.
The group, which includes 1,226 children, are originally from Indonesia but live in the southern Philippines. They became stateless under a previous Indonesian law that revoked citizenship from nationals who had lived abroad for five years.
The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR praised Indonesia’s and the Philippines’ cooperation on providing citizenship to families in Mindanao.
An estimated 10 million people are stateless around the world, and around 40 percent of them live in southeast Asia, according to the UNHCR.
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