sexual abuse

• Libya

Amnesty said it found new evidence of "harrowing violations, including sexual violence, against men, women and children" living in Libyan detention camps after being returned from the Mediterranean.

• Pakistan
• Afghanistan
• Spain

If one story can encompass within itself the atrocities of war and what it does to people, it’s Shola Rashid’s story. Living currently as a refugee in Spain, the Afghan woman tells her tale of escape and the horrors of travelling irregularly as a woman.

• Libya

There are growing calls for the release of five girls being held in a government-run migrant detention center in Libya. One of the girls told the Associated Press that all of them had been subjected to sexual abuse.

• Afghanistan
• Bosnia & Herzegovina
• Croatia

Croatian police are investigating reports that an Afghan woman was sexually harassed at the country’s border with Bosnia-Herzegovina in the middle of February. She says she was held at knife-point and asked to strip naked whilst being touched by officers.

• Lebanon
• Ethiopia

The economic repercussions of the COVID-19 crisis have forced many irregular migrants from Ethiopia to return home, where they are faced with destitution on a daily basis. Some turn to sex work as their only option to rise out of abject poverty. Others resort to prostitution to finance their next migration.

• United Kingdom

A joint media investigation in the UK has uncovered cases of sexual harassment and intimidation of asylum seekers being housed in hotels. The claims come amid growing pressure on the government over its accommodation policy.

• Italy

The agencies IOM, UNHCR, and UNICEF in Italy have launched a guide for front-line workers who provide support to migrant and refugee survivors of gender violence. The guide is adapted to the Italian migratory context.

• Mali
• Burkina Faso
• Niger

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) denounced in a statement that COVID-19 and conflicts in the Central Sahel region of Africa have forced over 12 million children there to leave school.

• Libya

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has once more called for the closure of migrant detention centers in Libya. He highlighted that human rights abuses cost scores of migrant lives in the country.

• Yemen
• Mali
• Afghanistan

Sexual violence is rampant in most armed conflicts and has a direct impact on mass population displacement, rise of extremism and structural gender-based inequality and discrimination, states a UN report released on July 22. We talked to Pramila Patten, Special Representative of the Secretary-General (United Nations) on Sexual Violence in Conflict about the findings.

• Sudan
• Somalia
• Nigeria

Despite a decade of efforts and various resolutions, the use of sexual violence as a tactic of war and to spread terror remains rampant in armed conflicts, states a report by the United Nations. InfoMigrants summarizes the number of cases documented by the UN in 12 conflict settings.

• Iraq
• Germany

On the sixth anniversary of the Yazidi genocide at the hand of IS in Iraq, Germany's development minister has called for further commitment for those affected. The Yazidis' central council in Germany, meanwhile, sharply criticized the international community for a lack of willingness to clear up the atrocities.