human rights

• Italy

The United Nations want Italy to do more to prevent the exploitation of migrant farmworkers and to dismantle the illegal labor system known as "caporalato."

• Turkey
• United Kingdom

Zozan Yasar is a Kurdish journalist from Turkey. Denied access to education, Zozan taught herself to read and write and went to university to get a degree before working as a journalist. As a Kurd, she struggled to officially register her Kurdish name with the government in Turkey. After arrests and harassment, she was eventually forced to seek asylum in the UK.

• Eritrea

The rights advocacy group Human Rights Watch published a report saying that thousands of young people are forced into indefinite national service despite a peace deal with Ethiopia. This practice of conscription apparently drives many into exile and migration.

• Italy
• Malta

The Times of Malta has published a report claiming that migrants were subjected to ill treatment on a film set for an Italian production. Among them was a pregnant women. Several crew members reportedly resigned following the incident.

• Bangladesh
• Italy

The Bangladeshi community in Italy is the second largest in Europe. However, many women are still struggling to acclimatize, not least because of their husbands. Michele Bertelli reports from Rome.

• Libya

Despite its record of abuses, Libya’s EU-funded and -trained coast guard is the bloc’s preferred partner to prevent migrants from reaching European soil. Having intercepted some 20,000 people in 2017 alone, the coast guard in the Mediterranean is efficient; it is not as good, however, at abiding by the law. InfoMigrants takes a look at the funding, training and questionable monitoring of the loosely organized force whose members are often former militia.

• Libya

Following the deadly air strike that hit a migrant detention center in Libya’s capital Tripoli, aid organizations including MSF and UNHCR are becoming increasingly worried about and critical of the situation at refugee detention centers in Libya. They call on the EU, which is defending its course, to cancel their cooperation with the Libyan coast guard.

• France
• Germany

An Administrative Court in Germany suspended the return of an Iranian asylum seeker and her 10-year-old child to France under the so-called Dublin Regulation. The court ruled that there was sufficient proof that two might be subjected to severe hardship, and spoke of a potential for a “violation of human rights” in this particular instance.

• Kyrgyzstan
• United Kingdom

Ernest Zhanaev is from Kyrgyzstan. He has a long career behind him, first as a banker, then as a human rights defender. Now he wants to make it as a journalist in the UK where he holds refugee status.

• Eritrea
• Kenya
• Netherlands

The Eritrean government ended its long period of isolation in 2018 when it signed peace accords with Ethiopia and was nominated to join the UN’s Human Rights Council. The government, however, continues to harass and intimidate its critics, even in Europe, Amnesty International reports. In a new briefing, the organization sheds light on how the abuses cause Eritrean migration on the one hand, but are sometimes facilitated by it too.

• Germany
• Kenya
• Lebanon

Although access to education is a fundamental human right, only one percent of the refugee population worldwide are enrolled in university. The photo exhibition titled "The Other 1 Percent - Refugees at Institutions for Higher Education Worldwide" wants to shine a light on this deficit by highlighting young refugees' often difficult path to attend university.

• France

Twenty prominent organizations have published an open letter warning the French government about the condition of migrants held in the country's detention centers, where two people recently committed suicide.