The Nation Newspaper

Tag: UNHCR

  • 3.5m children refugee out-of-school – UNHCR

    3.5m children refugee out-of-school – UNHCR

    At least 3.5 million children refugee did not have the chance to attend school in the last academic year, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has said.

    The UN refugee agency in a report: ‘Left Behind: Refugee Education in Crisis’ published on Tuesday, called for education to be made a vital component of humanitarian response.

    The report said there were 6.4 million refugees of school age between five and 17 among the 17.2 million refugees under the mandate of UNHCR.

    “The education of these young people is crucial to the peaceful and sustainable development of the countries that had welcomed them, and to their homes when they are able to return.

    “Yet compared to other children and adolescents around the world, the gap in opportunity for refugees is growing ever wider,” the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, said.

    Globally, 91 per cent of children attended primary school and for refugees that figure is far lower at only 61 per cent, according to the report.

    “The figure is even less than 50 per cent in low-income countries.

    “As refugee children get older, the obstacles only increase as just 23 per cent of refugee adolescents are enrolled in secondary school, compared to 84 per cent globally.

    “In low-income countries, which host 28 per cent of the world’s refugees, the number in secondary education is disturbingly low, at a mere nine per cent,” he added.

    Grandi said ensuring that refugees had equitable access to quality education is a shared responsibility.

    NAN

  • 3.5m refugee children out-of-school – UN

    3.5m refugee children out-of-school – UN

    No fewer than 3.5 million refugee children did not have the chance to attend school in the last academic year, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said.

    The UN refugee agency in a report: ‘Left Behind: Refugee Education in Crisis’ published on Tuesday, called for education to be made a vital component of humanitarian response.

    The report said that there were 6.4 million refugees of school age between five and 17 among the 17.2 million refugees under the mandate of UNHCR.

    “The education of these young people is crucial to the peaceful and sustainable development of the countries that have welcomed them, and to their homes when they are able to return.

    “Yet compared to other children and adolescents around the world, the gap in opportunity for refugees is growing ever wider,” the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, said.

    Globally, 91 per cent of children attended primary school and for refugees that figure is far lower at only 61 per cent, according to the report.

    “The figure is even less than 50 per cent in low-income countries.

    “As refugee children get older, the obstacles only increase as just 23 per cent of refugee adolescents are enrolled in secondary school, compared to 84 per cent globally.

    “In low-income countries, which host 28 per cent of the world’s refugees, the number in secondary education is disturbingly low, at a mere nine per cent.”

    Grandi stressed that ensuring that refugees had equitable access to quality education was a shared responsibility.

    As for tertiary education, UNHCR noted that the picture was just as grim.

    “Across the world, enrolment in tertiary education stands at 36 per cent, up two  percentage points from the previous year.

    “For refugees, despite big improvements in overall numbers thanks to investment in scholarships and other programmes, the percentage remains stuck at 1 per cent.”

    Grandi said that refugee girls remained particularly disadvantaged, adding that for every 10 refugee boys in primary school, there were fewer than eight refugee girls.

    At secondary school, the figure was worse with fewer than seven refugee girls for every 10 refugee boys, the UN refugee agency said.

    “Ensuring that refugees have equitable access to quality education is a shared responsibility and it is time for all of us to put words into actions,” he said.

  • UNHCR condemns attack on Borno IDPs camp

    UNHCR condemns attack on Borno IDPs camp

    The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees on Tuesday condemned the August 31 attack on Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp, Borno State.

    At least 11 people were killed in the attack.

    UNHCR’s Country Representative to Nigeria, Mr. Jose-Antonio Canhandula, said victims of the incident were returnees, who arrived from the Minawawo Camp in Cameroon.

    In a statement signed by the Commission’s External Relations Officer, Mr. Hanson Tamfu, Canhandula condemned the incident, which took place on the eve of Eid el-Kabr celebration.

    He said: “The victims are refugees in Cameroon, who had just returned to their home country after fleeing violence with hopes of beginning lives anew.

    “Security is an evident concern as we resolutely begin the implementation of the voluntary repatriation of Nigerian refugees living in Cameroon as part of the tripartite agreement signed earlier this year.

    “The tripartite agreement was signed between Nigeria, Cameroon and UNHCR to ensure voluntary and safe return of Nigerian refugees in Cameroon.”

    He, however, said the military had assured the Commission that it had taken measures to prevent further attacks.

    He said 218,525 returnees from Cameroon, Niger and Chad had registered with the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) with the support of the Commission in the last eight months.

    NAN

  • Pakistan begins documentation of unregistered Afghans refugees

    Pakistan begins documentation of unregistered Afghans refugees

    Pakistan has commenced documentation of one million unregistered Afghan refugees in the country, officials of the two countries said on Wednesday in Islamabad.

    According to the UN refugee agency, Pakistan is host to about 1.45 million registered Afghan refugees.

    The refugees were given Proof of Registration (POR) cards to stay legally in Pakistan until Dec. 31 this year.

    Pakistani officials said the documentation would enable the authorities to know the exact number of unregistered refugees, where they live and what they do in Pakistan.

    They would also be given cards for their identification.

    Officials said that 21 registration centres had been set up across Pakistan, including its capital Islamabad for the registration.

    Pakistan’s National Data Base Registration Authority is providing technical support to the government in the documentation process.

    The Afghan government had also sent officials to monitor the process.

    The registration follows three years of consultations between the governments of Afghanistan, Pakistan and UNHCR.

    It forms part of Pakistan’s Comprehensive Policy on Voluntary Repatriation and Management of Afghans, which was endorsed by its cabinet in February this year.

    The UNHCR said the programme seeks to register undocumented Afghans living in the country, many of whom had lived in Pakistan for nearly four decades and raised their children there.

    Under the scheme, Afghans would be issued with Afghan citizen (AC card) to provide legal protection from arbitrary arrest, detention or deportation under Pakistan’s Foreigner’s Act.

    The documentation process is expected to be completed in six months, Pakistani officials said.

    The Afghan government had already launched the passport programme for the refugees in Pakistan and Iran.

    The registration would help to regularise the stay for many refugees at a time when they could not return to their home country.

  • Suicide bombers kill two in Niger – UN

    Suicide bombers kill two in Niger – UN

    The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) said suicide bombers on Wednesday killed two people and wounded 11 others at a camp in Niger housing thousands of people who have fled Boko Haram violence.

    UNHCR said two women entered the camp in Kabelawa, around 50 km north of the border with Nigeria, and joined a group of young people before detonating suicide belts just before midnight on Wednesday.

    “The explosion killed two young inhabitants of the camp, a male and a female, as well as the two women. 11 others were injured, two seriously,” Reuters quoted the UN agency as saying in a statement.

    Boko Haram launches frequent cross-border raids from its strongholds in northeastern Nigeria in its bid to carve out an Islamic caliphate, though most recent suicide attacks have targeted towns in northern Cameroon.

    The group’s eight-year insurgency has killed more than 20,000 people in the Lake Chad region and displaced 2.7 million.

     

  • Returning refugees could create new crisis as rainy season starts – UNHCR

    Returning refugees could create new crisis as rainy season starts – UNHCR

    Nigerian refugees who fled Islamist militants are returning from Cameroon risk creating a new humanitarian crisis, the head of the UN refugee agency, Filippo Grandi, said on Wednesday.

    The UNHCR issued a similar warning in May when about 12,000 refugees returned to the border town of Banki in Borno state, which was already housing 45,000 displaced Nigerians.

    Grand said another 889 refugees, mostly children, arrived in Banki on June 17 from Minawao camp in Cameroon.

    “The new arrivals, and we hear reports of more refugees seeking to return – put a strain on the few existing services, he said in a statement.

    “A new emergency, just as the rainy season is starting, has to be avoided at all costs.”

    “It is my firm view that returns are not sustainable at this time.”

    Banki, once a thriving town, was razed to the ground by the time the Nigerian army retook it from Boko Haram insurgents in September 2015.

    Grandi said the severely overcrowded town could not provide adequate shelter or aid and its water supply and sanitation were “wholly inadequate”, creating the risk of disease.

    Although Boko Haram attacks have been fewer in recent months, more people are on the move and there are 1.9 million Nigerians displaced across the northeast, the World Food Program (WFP) said in a report on June 14.

    The WFP said “insecurity persists in parts of Northeast Nigeria, disrupting food supplies, seriously hindering access to basic services, and limiting agricultural activities, worsening an already dire food security situation”.

    The WFP said no fewer than five million people in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states in northeastern Nigeria have no secure foods.

  • War forces two million South Sudanese children to flee

    The UN says war and famine have forced more than two million children in South Sudan to flee their homes, creating the most worrying refugee crisis in the world.

    The civil war in the oil-producing country began two years after it won independence from neighboring Sudan,when President Salva Kiir fired his deputy in 2013.

    The fighting that followed split the country along ethnic lines, spurred hyperinflation and plunged parts of the nation into famine, creating Africa’s biggest refugee crisis since the Rwandan genocide in 1994.

    Valentin Tapsoba, the Africa chief for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in a statement said: “no refugee crisis today worries me more than South Sudan.”

    The UN said in a country of 12 million people, nearly three in every four children do not go to school.

    The UN also said that no fewer than one million children have fled outside South Sudan while another one million are internally displaced.

    UNHCR and UNCEF also said more than a thousand children have been killed in the fighting.

    The true figure may be much higher since there are no accurate death tolls available for South Sudan, one of the world’s least developed nations.

    Many South Sudanese refugees have fled into neighbouring Uganda, Kenya, Sudan or Ethiopia, nations which are already struggling to provide enough food and resources for their own populations.

  • Boko Haram: 2,600 Nigerian refugees forced to return from Cameroun

    The UN has expressed concern over the forced return of Nigerian refugees from Cameroon in spite of recent tripartite agreement aimed at ensuring voluntary returns of nationals.
    According to a statement from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on Tuesday, Cameroon has forcefully returned more than 2,600 refugees back to Nigerian border villages “against their will”.
    UNHCR Spokesperson, Babar Balogh, said in the statement that the organisation was particularly concerned “as these forced returns have continued unabated”.
    Balogh recalled that the governments of Nigeria and Cameroon signed a tripartite agreement with UNHCR in Yaoundé on March 2, 2017.
    He said that the forced return of asylum-seekers and refugees was a “serious violation” of the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1969 OAU Convention, which he said, Cameroon had ratified.
    He, however, commended Cameroon for its generosity in hosting more than 85,000 Nigerian refugees but urged it to honour its obligations under international and regional refugee protection instruments.
    The spokesman said that refugees had fled violent attacks from Boko Haram and urged that “their access to asylum and protection must be ensured”.
    “Insecurity persists in parts of north-eastern Nigeria and access to basic services remains limited.
    “Most returning refugees find themselves in situations of internal displacement upon return and are unable to return to their places of origin,” he stated.
    He also said that UNHCR recognised the legitimate national security concerns of the Cameroon Government. (NAN)

  • Nigerians, others taking enormous risks to Europe – UNHCR

    The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has raised an alarm that refugees and migrants, many of them Nigerians, are taking more “diversified and dangerous journeys” to cross rough seas.

    UNHCR Director of Europe Bureau, Vincent Cochetel, while releasing a new report “Desperate Journeys” on Monday in New York, said the immigrants are relying on people-smugglers or using flimsy boats to cross rough seas to Europe.

    He said increased border restrictions and lack of accessible legal ways to reach Europe have caused more desperation among immigrants.

    “About 90 per cent of them travelled by boat from Libya, and the top two nationalities of those arriving were Nigerians (21 per cent) and Eritreans (11 per cent), Cochetel said.

    “This route is particularly dangerous and in 2016 more deaths were recorded at sea than ever before.

    “Furthermore, children making this journey are especially vulnerable, and the number of unaccompanied and separated children arriving is increasing.

    “Last year more than 25,000 came, representing 14 per cent of all new arrivals in Italy.

    “Their number more than doubled compared to the previous year.”

     

    NAN

     

  • Tuface donates N3.5m to support UNHCR in Nigeria

    Tuface donates N3.5m to support UNHCR in Nigeria

    music icon Innocent Idibia, popularly known as Tuface, has donated N3.5 million to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), Nigeria, to support humanitarian interventions.
    The commission stated this in a statement yesterday by UNHCR’s External Relations Officer, Mr. Hanson Tamfu.
    He said the donation from the 2face Foundation was to support the commission in providing life-saving support to families forcibly displaced in Nigeria and across the continent, adding that the musician pledged his continuous support to UNHCR in its assistance to the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).
    The statement quoted Tuface as saying: “I am proud to support the UN Refugee Agency because of its record of being at the fore front of displacement emergencies.
    “I want to help people who have been forced to flee their homes because of different issues. I care about them and this donation is one of such efforts. We plan to hold a major charity concert in June to raise money while offering my music and talents to the world for donations towards this noble cause.
    “I am confident in UNHCR because it knows how to make a difference in the lives of millions of women, children and men who have lost everything but hope.”
    UNHCR’s Director of the Africa Bureau Mr. Valentin Tapsoba thanked Tuface for his generosity.
    He said having someone of Tuface’s calibre, who recognises people’s needs, was encouraging.