---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "IRIN" <[email protected]> Date: 3 Feb 2016 03:04 Subject: Your daily selection of IRIN Africa English reports, 2/2/2016 To: "Elisabeth Janaina" <[email protected]> Cc:
[image: IRINnews logo] <http://www.irinnews.org/> humanitarian news and analysis Table of contents 1. Somalia offers Yemenis a safer home <#-1349987691_1> 2. Stop scapegoating Greece <#-1349987691_2> ------------------------------ *Somalia offers Yemenis a safer home <http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=102402>* [image: lead photo]GARDO, 2 February 2016 (IRIN) - Somalia is the new home for 30,560 people <http://data.unhcr.org/yemen/regional.php> who have fled the fighting in Yemen and are trying to adjust to life in a country that – while no longer written off as a “failed state” – certainly has its challenges. Many who once left Somalia, fleeing war, are now returning, fleeing a different war.The majority of those who have landed by boat in the autonomous regions of Puntland and Somaliland since March last year are Somalis, embarking from Yemen’s southern ports. They had either earlier crossed the Gulf of Aden to escape Somalia’s long-standing conflict, looking to transit north to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, or were part of an old Somali community that had settled in Yemen as traders. But at least 4,360 of the new arrivals are Yemenis who paid the roughly $150 boat fare to escape the violence and resultant humanitarian crisis <http://www.unocha.org/yemen> in Yemen, where 21.1 million people – 80 percent of the population – require some form of humanitarian protection or assistance. There is no let-up in the weekly arrivals <https://www.iom.int/sites/default/files/situation_reports/file/IOM-Yemen-Crisis-Regional-Repsonse-Situation-Report-21-January-2016.pdf> of boats from Yemen. Between 7 and 20 January, three boats landed in Puntland and two in self-declared independent Somaliland to the northwest. Of the 210 people on board, 52 were Yemenis. According to Peter de Clercq, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, the needs of the Somali returnees are “very similar, if not identical, to the needs of internally displaced persons [IDPs] in Somalia”. They are vulnerable to exploitation and violence – especially women and unaccompanied children – and IDPs from minority clans suffer discrimination since they often lack clan protection and connections. But for the Yemeni refugees, who have no previous knowledge of Somalia, the experience can be daunting. “In view of the deprivation around them, in a country still suffering from conflict, it’s not an easy situation,” de Clerq told IRIN. “It’s a very small group. They don’t speak Somali. And their intention is to return to Yemen as soon as the situation permits.” *Unprepared for refugees* The Somaliland and Puntland authorities have granted prima facie refugee status to Yemeni nationals, but there is no legal framework or established procedures in place to cope with any mass influx. Both regions “require support and capacity-building for the reception and assistance of new arrivals,” the UN refugee agency, UNHCR <http://www.unhcr.org/557066529.html>said. Abokor Abdullahi, a father of five, landed in the port city of Bossaso in Puntland, and was later transferred with other refugees 250 kilometres south to Gardo. “I was fleeing war, conflict, destruction, famine and lack of economic opportunities. But I don’t see much of a difference here in Somalia,” Abdullahi told IRIN. The family lives in a single room in a small house shared with two other Yemeni families, and pays $25 a month rent. “We don’t get enough support from the local administration and international development organisations. Only UNHCR gives $150 per month to my family. This does not cover the cost of electricity, water, and house rent, so it’s rubbish. We as refugees want [official] shelters. “I don’t have employment opportunities to feed my children, and they don’t have access to schools. We desperately need social services like health and education,” he said. UNHCR has set up a temporary reception centre in Bossaso that provides screening and registration and some basic support for a few nights to both IDPs and refugees. Local officials in Puntland told IRIN a formal refugee camp is planned. But in the meantime, refugees settled in Gardo have to make do with private accommodation. * Two-way traffic* Gardo, the seat of an ancient sultanate that ruled Puntland is the fourth largest city in the region with a population of 47,000. But it’s located in a relatively deprived area, which means there is little the local authorities can offer the refugees. “Since the arrival of Yemen refugees in this region, the worry has always been whether we can accommodate that large number of refugees/returnees from Yemen due to our limited resources and the little support we receive from international partners. But we are coping,” Puntland’s deputy minister of interior, Abdullah Hashi, told reporters last week. The refugees, however, say far more needs to be done. “We desperately need help with food and shelter as a priority number one,” said Falastine Abdullahi, Abokor’s wife. “Sometimes we take only lunch and forget about supper. It’s bad.” Abdullahi Munir, who, like Abdullahi, was a fisherman in Yemen’s port city of Aden, urged UNHCR to take action. “We are in so much trouble,” he told IRIN. But the numbers of boats arriving in Somalia is almost matched by those going in the opposite <http://www.unhcr.org/569e3b19530.html> direction, according to the refugee agency. [ ] Despite the ongoing conflict in Yemen, where some 8,000 lives have been lost since March, more than 90,000 people from across the Horn of Africa, the majority of them from Ethiopia, headed there in 2015. Of those, roughly 10,000 were from Somalia. Almost 100 people died trying to make the crossing. mom/oa/ag Access report online <http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=102402> ------------------------------ *Stop scapegoating Greece <http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=102403>* [image: lead photo]MYTILINE, 2 February 2016 (IRIN) - *Fotini Rantsiou is a volunteer aid worker and field advisor for Greek NGO, Solidarity Now. She is based on Lesvos while on a leave of absence from the UN’s emergency aid coordination body OCHA.* As the Greek islands continue to receive around 2,000 migrants and refugees every day, despite treacherous winter sea conditions, many other European countries are trying to prevent their onward movement. Greece is increasingly isolated and under pressure. Last week, the European Commission discussed the findings of an evaluation report <http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-174_en.htm> on Greece that found serious deficiencies in its management of Europe’s external borders and rekindled a debate about whether Greece should be suspended from Europe’s passport-free Schengen zone. If after three months “serious deficiencies persist”, Greece could face suspension from Schengen for up to two years. Not only would such a scenario have disastrous implications for Greece’s already fragile national economy – with potential impacts on tourism and the movement of goods through the Balkans – but it would also create an unprecedented humanitarian crisis as hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants would be stuck here for an indefinite period. The possibility of suspension has been vehemently denied by the EU commissioner for migration and home affairs, but last week the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, asked its humanitarian partners in Athens to start working on a contingency plan for up to 200,000 people being stranded in the country in the coming months. Greece does not share borders with any other Schengen member state, putting it in a particularly vulnerable position as it can be sealed externally through unilateral actions. In fact, the border between Greece and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYRoM), which is the main gateway to the Western Balkan migration route, has been closed to all nationalities besides Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans since November, and in recent weeks it has been sealed entirely <http://newirin.irinnews.org/border-closures-and-freezing-temperatures/> for days at a time, leaving thousands of migrants and asylum seekers to sleep outside in freezing temperatures. FYRoM’s border restrictions, which include a new fence, are a reaction to similar restrictions imposed by European countries further north. They have contributed to a sense of urgency among refugees to reach their final destination before Europe (or Greece) is completely sealed off, and may explain the continued high numbers of arrivals to the Greek islands, even during mid-winter. Austria’s minister of the interior recently suggested <http://www.ekathimerini.com/205365/article/ekathimerini/news/austrian-minister-speaks-of-temporary-exclusion-from-schengen> that Greece could do more to protect its sea border with Turkey by making use of its navy. “It’s a myth that the Greek-Turkish border cannot be protected,” Johanna Mikl-Leitner said. But using the navy to patrol and prevent migrant boats from landing on the islands would be equivalent to treating refugees as invaders. A spokesperson for Frontex, the EU’s border agency, pointed out that sea borders are almost impossible to fully control and that pushing boats back into Turkish seas would be illegal under the 1951 Refugee Convention’s principle of non-refoulement. Greece has also come under fire for failing to scale up the use of ‘hotspots’ – an EU initiative to screen and fingerprint all migrants and refugees arriving in Greece and Italy. So far, only one in five hotspots is up and running on Lesvos – the island that receives 60 percent of new arrivals. The rest of the islands can only do basic fingerprinting as they lack the technology to do biometric registration despite the government requesting the necessary hardware from the EU six months ago. The current pressure on Greece stems in part from the false assumption that the movement of refugees to Europe could be significantly slowed by channeling aid to Turkey to improve conditions for the 2.2 million Syrians estimated to be living there. The reality is that most Syrian refugees arrive in Greece after short Turkish stop-overs and there is little or no incentive for other nationalities to remain in Turkey. Refugees will continue to rely on smugglers to reach Europe via Greece unless the EU comes up with a viable alternative for them. As Francois Crepeau <http://www.fmreview.org/destination-europe/crepeau>, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights for migrants has said: “’Fighting the smugglers in isolation is useless; the irregular migration market is created by the barriers to mobility.” Residents of the Greek islands have demonstrated remarkable resilience in the face of a relentless flow of migrant boats coming on top of the economic crisis. They have had to watch helplessly as the Aegean has brought dead bodies to their shores almost daily. The lack of a coherent EU policy has created a humanitarian crisis for those seeking sanctuary and for those responding on the frontlines. It has allowed individual European politicians to develop extreme positions on migration, creating an environment that threatens to close the door on refugees in need of protection. Writing about the crisis recently, Maria Stavropoulou <http://www.fmreview.org/destination-europe/stavropoulou>, director of the Greek Asylum Service, concluded that “the EU’s member states must start to perceive Europe as a single asylum space with a common European asylum status and work towards these goals. “Until then the dominant attitude will continue to be ‘not in my back yard’, forcing states and refugees alike to adopt irregular practices,” she said. Europe urgently needs to have a credible policy on the large-scale resettlement of refugees, and member states must start accepting asylum applications at their consulates in countries of first arrival like Jordan and Lebanon. For the ‘survival migrants’, whose main reason for mobility is the search for employment and decent living conditions, a separate visa system needs to be established. For both groups, we have to be mindful of the triggers that cause people to move: wars and poverty resulting from social inequality and climate change, for which Europe bears some responsibility. fr/ks/ag Access report online <http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=102403> ------------------------------ About IRIN <http://www.irinnews.org/about.aspx> | Jobs <http://www.irinnews.org/jobs.aspx> | Revise/unsubscribe <http://www.irinnews.org/registration/login.aspx> Copyright © IRIN 2015. All rights reserved. [image: Facebook] <https://api.addthis.com/oexchange/0.8/forward/facebook/offer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irinnews.org&pubid=ra-5165551068a72215&ct=1&title=IRIN%20-%20%20the%20inside%20story%20on%20emergencies&pco=tbxnj-1.0> [image: Twitter] <https://api.addthis.com/oexchange/0.8/forward/twitter/offer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irinnews.org&pubid=ra-5165551068a72215&ct=1&title=IRIN%20-%20%20the%20inside%20story%20on%20emergencies&pco=tbxnj-1.0> [image: Google+] <https://api.addthis.com/oexchange/0.8/forward/google_plusone_share/offer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irinnews.org&pubid=ra-5165551068a72215&ct=1&title=IRIN%20-%20%20the%20inside%20story%20on%20emergencies&pco=tbxnj-1.0> [image: LinkedIn] <https://api.addthis.com/oexchange/0.8/forward/linkedin/offer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irinnews.org&pubid=ra-5165551068a72215&ct=1&title=IRIN%20-%20%20the%20inside%20story%20on%20emergencies&pco=tbxnj-1.0> [image: Pinterest] <https://api.addthis.com/oexchange/0.8/forward/pinterest/offer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irinnews.org&pubid=ra-5165551068a72215&ct=1&title=IRIN%20-%20%20the%20inside%20story%20on%20emergencies&pco=tbxnj-1.0> [image: Addthis] <https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?source=tbx32nj-1.0&v=300&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irinnews.org&pubid=ra-5165551068a72215&ct=1&title=IRIN%20-%20%20the%20inside%20story%20on%20emergencies&pco=tbxnj-1.0> -- To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/d/forum/southsudankob View this message at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/southsudankob/topic-id/message-id For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "South Sudan Info - The Kob" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/SouthSudanKob. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/SouthSudanKob/CAJb14orpaftqWE_X8yHAaPROzKS_evDyP_6qFgui8XD%2BYQ42Vg%40mail.gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
