For the first time ever, the number of displaced people reached 70.8 million at the end of 2018, according to the UNHCR. The agency's chief warned against a hostile climate for refugees, but Germany came in for praise.
Many Somali refugees have decided to return home from Yemen because of the worsening security situation, the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR reports. Last week, 125 refugees boarded a ship to return to Somalia.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) assisted in the voluntary repatriation of a first group of migrants who survived shipwrecks off the coast of Tunisia between May 10 and May 12, as part of an assisted voluntary return program.
Students at a school in Turin have organized a mini-Olympics in memory of Saamiya Yusuf Omar, a young Somali sprinter. Omar died in a migrant shipwreck in 2012.
Not the usual material for a feature film, female genital mutilation is the subject of an upcoming Belgian-Irish production 'A Girl From Mogadishu'. It tells the inspiring story of Ifrah Ahmed from Somalia, where girls are routinely subjected to the practice. But FGM is not confined to Africa – girls and women in Europe are also at risk, and in Germany, cases have increased.
Africans who flee their home countries usually have a favored destination. As the number of refugees rises, the countries in which they seek shelter remain the same. Uganda tops the list.
Many girls and women in Africa suffer from the effects of female genital mutilation (FGM), although it is banned in several countries. Doctors on the ground and in Germany provide medical and psychological help.
A rescue boat with 311 migrants on board who were saved off the Libyan coast has arrived in Spain after repeatedly being denied entry by Italy and Malta. Libya, France and Tunisia also failed to respond to requests for permission to dock.
A Somalian mother and her six-year-old daughter were reunited after three years apart and now live together in Cyprus, thanks to efforts by the UN Migration Agency International Organization for Migration (IOM), which made the family reunification possible.
Laura Speranza, a baby girl born a year ago in Crotone after migrants rescued on a boat landed in Italy, has found her Somali grandmother and sister through the Italian Red Cross's Restoring Family Links service.
The number of migrants officially missing is higher than it has been for more than a decade. The German Red Cross reports that nearly 100,000 people are registered as missing as a result of war and persecution worldwide.
The UN Refugee Agency (UNCHR) said it has facilitated the voluntary return of more than 2,000 Somali refugees from Yemen, through a program called Assisted Spontaneous Returns (ASR) it started in 2017. Since the start of this year, 1,321 migrants from Somalians living in Yemen have returned home.