Chile Takes in Syrians Under Program to Expand Refugee Resettlement
Chile will resettle 120 Syrian refugees from Lebanon under a U.N. scheme developed last year to encourage more countries to resettle refugees. Fourteen Syrian families arrived in Chile last week and were greeted in Santiago by Chilean president Michelle Bachelet.
The U.N. identifies vulnerable refugees who are eligible for resettlement in third countries. But the number of resettlement places lags far behind needs – of around 1 million people who needed resettlement last year, only around 189,000 actually got places, and around half of those were in the U.S.
In an effort to diversify resettlement countries, a new U.N. mechanism was launched at the Leaders’ Summit in New York in September 2016 to provide funding for more nations to start resettling refugees. The Emerging Resettlement Countries Joint Support Mechanism (ERCM) aims to resettle 30,000 refugees in three years.
Forecasts Show 14 Million Displaced Each Year by Disasters
Disasters such as floods and storms are expected to displace an average of 13.9 million people a year, according to new risk modeling by two international organizations.
South and Southeast Asia are worst hit, with 2.3 million displaced in India and 1.3 million in China, according to the U.N. Office for Disaster Risk Reduction and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).
These numbers do not include people pre-emptively evacuated from such disasters, or so-called “slow-onset” disasters including rising sea levels and drought.
The two organizations said the forecasts should help policymakers mitigate risks – through better urban policies, for example – and track risk reduction.
“We don’t want people to think of disaster displacement as some kind of inevitable act of God – this is not (a) necessary outcome every time there’s heavy rainfall,” IDMC’s head of data and analysis Justin Ginnetti told Reuters.
Germany Investigates Reports Asylum Information Leaked to Turkey
Germany is investigating claims by Turkish asylum seekers that German officials leaked their information to Turkey’s press.
Germany’s Der Spiegel and ARD reported that several asylum seekers were accused of terrorism in the Turkish media shortly after seeing German immigration officials.
Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees is examining the claims. German media reported that at least 600 senior Turkish officials have sought asylum in the country since a failed coup attempt last summer.
Recommended Reads
- Time: The Boy in the Crowd
- Raoul Wallenberg Institute: What Is a Compact?
- IRIN: Old Route, New Dangers: Migrant Smugglers Revive Black Sea Route to Europe
- Refugee Studies Center: Refugee Self-Reliance: Moving Beyond the Marketplace