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	Refugees: People around the world who have fled war, persecution and human rights abuses by UNHCR, Norwegian Refugee Council   24 July 2014   UN Refugee agency calls for urgent European action to end refugee and migrant deaths at sea. (UNHCR)   The UN refugee agency has called for urgent European action to stop rising refugee and migrant deaths at sea, after more than 260 people have died or been reported missing trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to get to Europe in the last 10 days alone.   Survivors reported disturbing incidents of mass drownings, suffocations and a suspected multiple stabbing, UNHCR said in a statement issued in Geneva. The grim tally brings to some 800 the total number of deaths at sea so far this year, compared to a total of 600 deaths in all of 2013, and 500 in 2012.   "The death of 260 people in less than ten days, in the most horrifying of circumstances, is evidence that the Mediterranean crisis is intensifying," said António Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. "Europeans need to take urgent action to stop this catastrophe getting worse in the second half of 2014."   The tragedies mark an intensifying crisis on Europe"s shores, as many fleeing Eritrea, Syria and other countries torn by violence seek safety in Europe by risking their lives at sea in the hand of smugglers.   More than 75,000 refugees and migrants arrived in Italy, Greece, Spain and Malta by sea in the first half of 2014 – 25 per cent more than the 60,000 who made the same journey in the whole of 2013, and over three times the 22,500 who arrived in all of 2012.   Italy received the greatest number of arrivals (63,884), followed by Greece (10,080), Spain (1,000) and Malta (227). A further 21,000 refugees and migrants have arrived in Italy since 1 July. The largest numbers came from Eritrea, Syria and Mali. Most left from North Africa, and principally Libya.   Huge numbers of these – nearly 11,000 -- are children, and some 6,500 of those, mostly Eritreans, were on their own or separated from their families.   Over the weekend of 19-20 July alone, Italian and Maltese authorities, together with several commercial vessels, rescued 8,000 people.   Guterres praised both Italy and Malta for their efforts, but said European states needed to step up their assistance. He called on governments to strengthen rescue operations, provide swift access to asylum procedures for those in need of protection, and offer legal alternatives to dangerous sea crossings.   Rescued refugees and migrants have reported handing over their life savings to smugglers, in order to travel in unseaworthy and overcrowded dinghies, packed into a few metres of space without food, water or life jackets.   The journey can take between one and four days, depending on the weather, sea and boat conditions. In several incidents, people were stranded for more than two weeks before being rescued.   On 14 July, Italian authorities rescued 12 people 40 miles off the coast of Libya. Survivors said their rubber dinghy had been carrying 121 people. Passengers panicked when it started to deflate on one side, and it capsized. A total of 109 people are missing; one man said he lost his pregnant wife during the incident.   On 15 July, 29 people were found dead from apparent asphyxiation in the hold of a fishing boat. Italian police this week arrested five men on suspicion of murdering and throwing overboard more than 100 migrants attempting to cross from Africa to Europe on that boat. Reports say as many as 131 people are missing and presumed dead after some were stabbed and others thrown overboard when they sought to escape suffocating poisonous fumes below deck.   http://www.unhcr.org/53d0e2d26.html   July 2014   Heads of WFP & UNHCR issue urgent appeal as food shortages hit nearly 800,000 refugees in Africa.   The heads of the World Food Programme and United Nations refugee agency warned today that funding difficulties, compounded by security and logistical problems in some countries, have forced cuts in food rations for nearly 800,000 refugees in Africa, threatening to worsen already unacceptable levels of acute malnutrition, stunting and anemia, particularly in children.   Addressing government representatives at a meeting in Geneva, World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director Ertharin Cousin and UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres made an urgent joint plea for US$186 million to allow WFP to restore full rations and prevent further reductions elsewhere through December 2014. For its part, UNHCR needs $39 million for nutrition support it provides to malnourished and vulnerable refugees in Africa.   "Many refugees in Africa depend on WFP food to stay alive and are now suffering because of a shortage of funding," Cousin said. "So we are appealing to donor governments to help all refugees – half of whom are children – have enough food to be healthy and to build their own futures."   Across Africa, 2.4 million refugees in some 200 sites in 22 countries depend on regular food aid from the World Food Programme. Currently, a third of those refugees have seen reductions in their rations, with refugees in   Chad facing cuts as high as 60 per cent   Supplies have been cut by at least 50 per cent for nearly 450,000 refugees in remote camps and other sites in the Central African Republic, Chad and South Sudan. Another 338,000 refugees in Liberia, Burkina Faso, Mozambique, Ghana, Mauritania and Uganda have seen their rations reduced by between five and 43 per cent.   In addition, a series of unexpected, temporary ration reductions has affected camps in several countries since early 2013 and into 2014, including in Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo and Cameroon. Some cuts were also due to insecurity that affected deliveries.   "The number of crises around the world is far outpacing the level of funding for humanitarian operations, and vulnerable refugees in critical operations are falling through the cracks," said High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres. "It is unacceptable in today"s world of plenty for refugees to face chronic hunger or that their children drop out of school to help families survive," he said, calling for a rethink on funding for displacement situations worldwide.   A joint UNHCR-WFP report says that refugees are among the world"s most vulnerable people and warns that reductions in their minimum rations can have a devastating impact on already weakened populations.   Many refugees arrive in countries of exile already in urgent need of emergency nutritional care. Lacking any means to support themselves in many host countries, they remain totally dependent on international assistance – sometimes for years – until they can return home or find other solutions. Generally, WFP tries to provide 2,100 kilocalories per refugee per day.   Guterres warned that while a sustained 60 per cent reduction in rations would be catastrophic for refugees, even small cuts can spell disaster for already undernourished people. The impact, especially on children, can be immediate and often irreversible. Undernutrition during a child"s first 1,000 days from conception can have lifelong consequences, compromising both physical growth and mental development. Numerous studies have shown that this "stunting" leaves affected children at a severe social and economic disadvantage for the rest of their lives.   Even before the most recent ration cuts, refugees in many of the camps surveyed were already experiencing unacceptable levels of malnutrition   http://www.unhcr.org/53b26a066.html   June 2014   World Refugee Day is being marked by yet another sombre milestone in a year that has seen crisis after crisis force desperate people to flee their homes ahead of bullets and bombs: a new UN report reveals that the number of refugees, asylum-seekers and internally displaced people has, for the first time in the post-World War II era, exceeded 50 million people.   The annual global trends report by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), states that even as the war in Syria continued to grind on – driving 9 million people from their homes by the end of last year – millions of individuals were forcibly displaced in other parts of the world, notably in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, Mali, and the border area between South Sudan and Sudan.   By the end of 2013, an estimated 51.2 million people worldwide were considered to be forcibly displaced due to persecution, conflict, generalized violence, or human rights violations. These included 16.7 million refugees, 33.3 million internally displaced persons (IDPs), and close to 1.2 million individuals whose asylum applications had not yet been adjudicated by the end of the reporting period.   “We are seeing here the immense costs of not ending wars, of failing to resolve or prevent conflict,” said High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres. “Peace is today dangerously in deficit. Humanitarians can help as a palliative, but political solutions are vitally needed. Without this, the alarming levels of conflict and the mass suffering that is reflected in these figures will continue.”   The global total of 51.2 million forcibly displaced represents a huge number of people in need of help, with implications both for foreign aid budgets in donor nations and the absorption and hosting capacities of countries on the front lines of refugee crises, says UNHCR.   “The international community has to overcome its differences and find solutions to the conflicts of today in South Sudan, Syria, Central African Republic and elsewhere. Non-traditional donors need to step up alongside traditional donors. As many people are forcibly displaced today as the entire populations of medium-to-large countries such as Colombia or Spain, South Africa or South Korea,” said Mr. Guterres.   The annual report – this year subtitled War’s Human Cost is based on data compiled by governments, non-governmental partner organizations, and from the agency’s own records – notes that the Syrian crisis, entering into its third year in 2013, was the primary cause of these outflows, as highlighted by two dramatic milestones.   In August, the one millionth Syrian refugee child was registered; only a few weeks later, UNHCR announced that the number of Syrian refugees had passed two million. “The Syrian Arab Republic had moved from being the world’s second largest refugee-hosting country to being its second largest refugee-producing country – within a span of just five years,” states the report.   The annual survey also notes that 3.5 million refugees, or one-third of the global total, were residing in countries covered by UNHCR’s Asia and Pacific region. Of these, more than 2.4 million were Afghans (69 per cent) in Pakistan and Iran. Sub-Saharan Africa was host to more than 2.9 million, or one-quarter of all refugees, primarily from Somalia (778,400), Sudan (605,400), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (470,300), the Central African Republic (251,900), and Eritrea (198,700).   “On World Refugee Day we honour the strength and resilience of the more than 50 million people around the world who have fled war, persecution and human rights abuses,” declared UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in his message, in which he noted that last year alone, more than 10 million people were newly displaced; every 15 minutes, a family was forced into flight.   “Let us renew our commitment to end armed conflict, and to help the people who have been forced to flee their homes. Even one family torn apart by war is too many,” he said.   http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/home http://www.refworld.org/ http://www.nrc.no/?did=9694581 http://www.msf.org/topics/refugee-idp http://www.un.org/apps/news/newsmakers.asp?NewsID=107 http://www.iom.int/cms/en/sites/iom/home/what-we-do/humanitarian-emergencies.html Visit the related web page
	Soweto comes together to celebrate the life of Nelson Mandela by News agencies South Africa   Soweto, 7 December 2013   "One man came and unified the people," declared Bob Nameng, a youth organiser standing centre stage. "And this man is …?" Together the children pointed to the picture of a smiling, white-haired man and replied in unison: "Nelson Mandela!"   Wearing traditional dress, the boys and girls danced and sang their hearts out, accompanied by a young man thumping long drumsticks and watched by rows of elderly women in woolly hats and fraying cardigans. A tough corner of Soweto, South Africa"s biggest black township, had come to thank the father of the born free generation.   That it was colourful, raucous and chaotic seemed apt on a day that South Africa came together to celebrate Mandela, not to mourn him. Lofty tributes could be left to the politicians. The people wanted to jump and dance and stamp and sing and ululate for the great man.   Radio phone-ins flooded with memories of meeting or glimpsing the great man. Hundreds of noisy pilgrims made their way to Mandela-related sites to pray, weep, light candles, release doves, lay flowers and find consolation in kindred spirits of all races. And contrary to some of the more lurid predictions, people went on shopping, traffic went on flowing and South Africa"s skies did not fall in.   Surrounded by such ordinariness, it was tempting to reach for Shakespeare: "The breaking of so great a thing should make/ A greater crack: the round world/ Should have shook lions into civil streets,/ And citizens to their dens." But perhaps it is the simple eulogy for George Washington that is now most fitting for South Africa"s founding black president: "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."   It was announced that Mandela, who died aged 95 on Thursday night, will receive a state funeral on 15 December. From the Pope to Barack Obama, to South Africa"s retired archbishop Desmond Tutu, the world paid its respects.   Many South Africans and their children headed instinctively for Soweto, where Mandela moved in 1946, a tenure cut short by his arrest in 1962. He returned for 11 days after his release from prison in 1990. In his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, he recalled Soweto as "the teeming metropolis of matchbox houses, tin shanties and dirt roads, the mother city of black urban South Africa, the only home I ever knew as a man before I went to prison".   After the musical tribute at a youth centre, Nameng, 43, who met Mandela three times, still couldn"t quite believe he was gone. "I went to my room and it was all over the TV that Mandela had died. It sounded like a dream, it looked like a dream. I told my kids and they took it light. Even now it"s a strange feeling."   For Busi Hlatshwayo, 76, a former nurse who has lived here all her life, Mandela was the lingering flame of hope even during his long imprisonment when many had never seen his photograph.   "It was hell," she recalled of the apartheid days. "You used to have no sleep on account of police raiding us in the homes. We couldn"t get a basic education. We were in the dust.   "When Mandela came out of prison, people had a chance of education, even adults. It changed many things. We will never have another man like him. He really sacrificed his life for us, he showed us how to behave."   But even on such a day, lurking beneath the blanket praise for Mandela and his legacy there remain the freedoms not yet achieved, the millions who remain in poverty and angered daily by cavernous inequality.   This part of Soweto, Kliptown, has been left behind. The muddy roads, rugged and uneven, flood in heavy rain. Rubbish is piled on the sides and never collected. People live in a jumble of shacks with corrugated roofs weighted down by rocks or upturned wheelbarrows, fenced off by mattress springs and razor wire. The nearby railway tracks are unprotected, leading to fatalities on dark winter nights.   And beyond the tracks, within tantalising sight of these miserable conditions, is a luxury hotel, a public square and elaborate monument to the Freedom Charter with a banner that promises: "Let us speak together of freedom." It is one South Africa"s many jarring juxtapositions of rich and poor.   "What you see there is heaven," said Ntokozo Dube, 29, a community organiser living on the wrong side of the tracks. "But when you are here it changes the mindset."   The principles of the Freedom Charter, drawn up on this spot in 1955, are now carved in stone at the nearby memorial with demands including a share of the country"s wealth, redistribution of land and access to education. They remain frustratingly out of reach for Dube. He lives with three other people in a small shack with access only to a communal water tap and illegally connected electricity. "In Kliptown there"s no school, no structure, no proper sanitation, nothing at all. It"s a slum area."   But like many here, he refuses to blame Mandela, who was president from 1994 to 1999. "It"s a failure but we don"t put these things on the legend himself. It is the team that has failed the people in terms of service delivery and failed to implement his vision. We really have a long way to go. We are not even close."   Soweto, containing 2-3 million people, captures something of the dichotomy of post-apartheid South Africa: while some languish, others have begun to thrive in neat suburban houses. The township now has one of Africa"s biggest shopping malls and a state-of-the-art theatre complex. For tourists the main focal point is Vilakazi Street, the world"s only street to house two Nobel peace prize winners: Mandela and Tutu.   On Friday, Vilakazi Street brought hundreds of people dancing the "toyi-toyi" and singing liberation songs or gathering outside Mandela"s old home, now a museum. Some wore the colours and regalia of Mandela"s beloved African National Congress (ANC). Outside was a simple message written on a whiteboard: "Rest in peace Tata. We love you."   Standing nearby, California Mgwenya, 66, who has lived in Soweto all his life, recalled: "It used to be like Germany under the Gestapo. We were harassed left and right by the apartheid government. It was terrible.   "But after Mandela"s release things changed a lot. Now we have a free South Africa where human rights are considered and people have the right to vote. He"s my leader."   South Africans black and white wanted to be here. Liska Leslie, 31, a teacher, had brought her young sons from Pretoria. "We were all crying in the car," she said, still weeping. "There are mixed emotions. A sense of mourning and a sense of joy at his being here and a sense of rest for him."   Her six-year-old son, John, added: "He"s special and a very nice man and the world loves him. He"s a good man to have in our world."   The crowds milling around Houghton where Mandela lived in recent years with his third wife, Graça Machel, were a snapshot of South Africa as it would like to advertise itself – affluent and colour blind.   A troupe of singers massed outside the high walls of his home, while tourists mingled with ANC activists and parents sporting iPads and toddlers wandered past. Muslims as well as Christians of several denominations rubbed shoulders with orthodox Jews in kippah prayer caps, as people laid floral tributes and took pictures.   Rush Lehutso had brought his teenage daughter Thando along to see a slice of history. The 50-year-old said Mandela had "taken a country from the brink of civil war to the top of the mountain".   Mandela"s body was taken from his home in Houghton to a military morgue in Pretoria, the capital, in the early hours of Friday. Across the country, flags were lowered to half-mast.   In a church service in Cape Town, Tutu said Mandela would want South Africans to be his "memorial" by adhering to the values of unity and democracy that he embodied. "All of us here in many ways amazed the world, a world that was expecting us to be devastated by a racial conflagration," Tutu said. "God, thank you for the gift of Madiba."   http://www.nelsonmandela.org/ http://www.nelsonmandelachildrensfund.com http://www.nelsonmandela.org/news/entry/parliament-pays-tribute-to-nelson-mandela http://www.sabc.co.za/mandela http://madiba.mg.co.za/ http://www.mandeladay.com/ http://www.un.org/en/events/mandeladay/ http://www.un.org/en/events/mandeladay/inhiswords.shtml http://www.mandela.gov.za/mandela_quotes/index.html Visit the related web page
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