Word: unhcr
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Journalists are not officially permitted into the camps, but TIME obtained firsthand information about them from organizations alarmed by the internment of civilians, a practice that violates internationally accepted conventions on the rules of war. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Human Rights Watch and several other local and international groups have been pushing Sri Lankan authorities for months to open up access. On Jan. 10, the Sri Lankan government instead turned several of the camps into "high-security zones," off limits to everyone except the U.N. and the Red Cross. A recently disclosed proposal to set up "welfare...
...small news item last week that went largely unnoticed: Kenya's Dadaab refugee camp, destination for tens of thousands of fleeing Somalis since 1991, was full. "All [newly arriving] refugees have to find a place with relatives or friends, we no longer have any land to provide them," a UNHCR field officer said. The three camps that comprise Dadaab were built with 60,000 refugees in mind. They now house 230,000, and tens of thousands more are expected in the coming months...
...said it was investigating reports that rebels had destroyed camps housing some 50,000 internally displaced people in the town of Rutshuru, about 50 miles north of Goma. "Hundreds of thousands of people who have already suffered far too much are in danger and in desperate need of help," UNHCR High Commissioner Antonio Guterres said on Friday...
Pakistan is straining under the burden of hosting more refugees than any other country last year, but Guterres says the UNHCR has secured a promise from Islamabad not to force any back to Afghanistan. Of the 130,000 so-called voluntary returns so far this year, he said, 10% have been unable to get any foothold at all in Afghanistan: "Ten percent of 130,000 is a lot of people," he says. "This is not the moment to push people back...
Technically, the UNHCR's brief doesn't extend to economic migrants, whether South Asians in the Gulf, Mexicans in the U.S., or Africans in Europe. But the distinction between an illegal job seeker and a person seeking sanctuary from war and repression may not be one governments are willing to make, given that so many countries are already skittish over immigration. Last year alone, 20,000 people arrived in Italy by sea, most of them on rickety vessels from Libya to the Italian island of Lampedusa; about half that number will seek asylum in the E.U. With anti-immigrant sentiment...