War

Aral Kakl (right), a Kurdish Iraqi journalist, his Syrian wife Shevin, his brother Rewan and some other refugees who have applied for the relocation programme, kill time in the cafeteria of their Athens hotel.  Photo: Nicola Zolin/IRIN

irinnews.org - by Andrew Connelly

ATHENS, 18 January 2016 (IRIN) - “Relocation does not work.”

With these words on Thursday, EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos finally admitted that the bloc’s September agreement to relocate 160,000 asylum seekers from the frontline states of Greece and Italy to other EU states over two years has been a dismal failure. After the Commission revealed recently that only 272 asylum seekers had been relocated in the past four months, few could deny it.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

Madaya Syria: Aid convoy reaches besieged town - bbc.com

nytimes.com - Associated Press - January 11, 2016

Aid convoys delivered long-awaited food, medicine and other supplies to three besieged communities Monday, part of a U.N.-supported operation to help tens of thousands of civilians cut off for months by the war in Syria.

Reports of starvation and images of emaciated children have raised global concerns and underscored the urgency for new peace talks that the U.N. is hoping to host in Geneva on Jan. 25.

The U.N. Security Council took up the issue Monday. The U.N. says 4.5 million Syrians are living in besieged or hard-to-reach areas and desperately need humanitarian aid, with civilians prevented from leaving and aid workers blocked from bringing in food, medicine, fuel and other supplies.

It will take several days to distribute the aid in the town of Madaya, near Damascus, and the Shiite villages of Foua and Kfarya in northern Syria, and the supplies are probably enough to last for a month, aid agencies said.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

ALSO SEE RELATED ARTICLES IN THE LINKS BELOW:

newirin.irinnews.org - 2 November 2015

The Boko Haram insurgency has claimed more than 25,000 lives in the past six years.

Since 2014, it has escalated and splintered across a wider swathe of West and Central Africa, uprooting millions of people in the process. Where should they go? This special feature examines the options and explores what the future holds. . . .

. . . Millions of Nigerians have fled Boko Haram, but the violence follows them.

Scores of people have been killed in the last few weeks in a string of suicide bombings in the main northeastern cities where they seek refuge. Border areas where refugees flee in Cameroon, Chad, and Niger are increasingly under attack. So pervasive is the insurgency, it is even starting to strike the displacement camps where the most desperate seek help.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

A small girl feeds her parents cows in Kaduna State, where thousands of people displaced by Boko Haram are now shivering through the seasonal Harmattan winds.  Photo: Mohammad Ibrahim/IRIN

irinnews.org - BY Mohammad Ibrahim

KADUNA, 5 January 2016 (IRIN) - The temperature is dropping across northern Nigeria as the seasonal Harmattan winds blow in a haze of dust from the Sahara, blotting out the sun for days on end. It’s miserable at the best of times, worse still if you’ve been made homeless by Boko Haram violence and don’t have decent shelter.

“It has not been easy since we came to this camp 11 months ago,” said Mama Aisha, who fled Maiduguri, the main city in the northeast, and now lives 800 kilometres away in north-central Kaduna State. “We don’t have blankets to keep us warm.”

Aisha is just one of hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) who have set up informal camps throughout the northern region, with little to no protection from the low temperatures.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)