KAMPALA, Ouganda, 18 décembre (HCR) – Plus d'un demi-million de personnes ayant fui les violences et les violations des droits humains, principalement au Soudan du Sud, au Burundi et en République démocratique du Congo, bénéficient désormais d'une protection en Ouganda, où ils vivent dans la sécurité.

Début décembre, l'Ouganda hébergeait près de 511 000 réfugiés et demandeurs d'asile. C'est le plus grand nombre jamais observé dans l'histoire de ce pays. Plus de 100 000 d'entre eux sont arrivés depuis début 2015, ce qui fait de l'Ouganda le troisième pays hôte de réfugiés en Afrique, après l'Ethiopie (736 000) et le Kenya (594 000).

L'Ouganda est largement reconnu pour ses politiques progressistes et avant-gardistes concernant les questions de réfugiés et d'asile. A réception de leur statut de réfugié, les réfugiés se voient allouer de petits carrés de terrain dans les villages et ils sont insérés au sein de la communauté d'accueil. Cette approche novatrice génère la cohésion sociale et permet à la fois aux réfugiés et aux communautés hôtes de cohabiter pacifiquement.

Les réfugiés ont accès aux mêmes services que les ressortissants ougandais, ils ont le droit de travailler et de créer leurs propres entreprises. Ils bénéficient de la liberté de mouvement et ils reçoivent des terres à usage agricole, ce qui réduit leur dépendance à l'aide humanitaire.
​
Le gouvernement a également inclus la gestion et la protection des réfugiés au sein de sa propre planification dans le Plan national de développement (PND II), via l'Agenda pour les installations de [réfugiés]. Cette approche signifie que l'Ouganda a créé un environnement propice pour planifier le développement à long terme dans l'aide humanitaire pour les réfugiés et leurs communautés hôtes.

Pour consulter l'article en entier : http://www.unhcr.fr/5677d4e8c.html

BAMBERG, Germany — Faced with an unprecedented influx of refugees and growing anxiety among voters, German authorities have stepped up the deportation of failed asylum-seekers.

New figures show that the number of deportations almost doubled this year from 2014. By the end of November, authorities had deported 18,363 people whose asylum request had been rejected, compared to 10,884 in all of last year.

“(The increase) can be explained on the one hand simply by the increasing number of people who are getting negative (asylum) decisions,” Interior Ministry spokesman Johannes Dimroth said Monday.

But the trend is also affected “by the states’ increasing willingness to carry out these procedures,” he said.

The task of handling asylum requests falls to Germany’s 16 states and some have been more rigorous in applying the law than others.

Bavaria, the state that most asylum-seekers first set foot in, more than trebled its deportations to 3,643 in the first 11 months of 2015 from 1,007 last year. The conservative government there has been particularly forceful in pushing to limit the number of refugees coming to Germany — estimated at about one million this year — and speed up deportations of those already in the country.

Earlier this year, Bavaria opened a special center for people unlikely to get asylum. Situated on a former U.S. Army barracks in Bamberg, 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of Nuremberg, the Arrival and Return Facility II currently houses about 850 people.

Almost all are from western Balkan nations, chiefly Albania, followed by Kosovo, Serbia, Bosnia and Macedonia.

Germany considers them to be safe countries where individuals are unlikely to face the kind of persecution that would warrant asylum. Some were sent to the center straight from the border, others have been in Germany for more than a year. Most said economic hardship made them travel to Germany.
​
“In Serbia there's no work,” said Elvis Asani, a Roma from Serbia who is being sent back with his wife and children. “So we thought we go to Germany and work a little bit.”

Pour lire l'article en entier : https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/german-steps-up-deportation-of-failed-asylum-seekers/2015/12/21/e422fb12-a7fc-11e5-b596-113f59ee069a_story.html

AMMAN, Jordan — The Jordanian authorities on Friday deported hundreds of Sudanese asylum seekers, most of them from the war-afflicted Darfur region, according to the United Nations and human rights groups.

The decision comes one month after the Sudanese began camping in front of the United Nations refugee agency building in Amman, demanding more aid from the United Nations and an acceleration of the process to resettle them in other countries.

“We have appealed and we continue to appeal to the government to stop the deportations from Jordan of Sudanese nationals who are registered with U.N.H.C.R. as refugees and asylum seekers,” Ariane Rummery, a spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva, said by telephone on Friday.

According to the United Nations, more than 3,500 Sudanese had registered with the agency and as such had international protection. Ms. Rummery said 70 percent of those registered were from the Darfur region of Sudan, and their return there might put them at risk.
Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director for Human Rights Watch, said, “Jordan should not punish these Sudanese merely because they protested for better conditions and for resettlement considerations.”
A government spokesman, Mohammad Momani, confirmed on Friday that deportations were underway, saying that “430 of them have traveled to Sudan and the rest will follow.” He added that the asylum seekers initially entered the country for medical treatment, “but then asked for refugee status.”
​
At 4 a.m. on Wednesday, the police rounded up about 800 Sudanese from the encampment they had set up in front of the refugee agency and told them to board 14 buses to Queen Alia International Airport, according to Human Rights Watch.

Pour lire le reste de l'article : http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/19/world/middleeast/jordan-deports-sudanese-asylum-seekers-spurring-outcry.html

BUDAPEST — Like most members of Hungary’s liberal intellectual elite, George Konrad, a distinguished novelist, loathes his country’s stridently illiberal prime minister, Viktor Orban.

“He is not a good democrat and I don’t believe he is a good person,” said Mr. Konrad, a veteran of communist-era struggles against dictatorship.

All the same, he thinks Mr. Orban, the self-declared scourge of mainstream elites across Europe, was right and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany was wrong about how to respond to the chaotic flood of migrants seeking refuge from war and poverty — perhaps Europe’s most serious crisis since World War II.

“It hurts to admit it, but on this point Orban was right,” Mr. Konrad, 82, said, lamenting that in the absence of a joint European effort to control the flow, Hungary was wise to seal its borders and sound the alarm over the perils of allowing hundreds of thousands of migrants, mostly Muslims, to enter Europe willy-nilly.

Quietly, and often with similar misgivings, a growing number of people in Hungary and beyond are wondering whether, despite his shrill and often bigoted message, Mr. Orban had a clearer view of the scale of the migration crisis and its potential hazards than technocrats in Brussels and leaders in Berlin and other European capitals.

Pour lire l'article en entier : http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/21/world/europe/hungary-viktor-orban-migrant-crisis.html

This is a summary of what was said by UNHCR spokesperson Adrian Edwards – to whom quoted text may be attributed – at the press briefing, on 18 December 2015, at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.

UNHCR is today releasing guidance aimed at helping States deal with security concerns while maintaining vital standards of refugee protection.

The recommendations are contained in a paper presented at an inter-governmental meeting by Assistant High Commissioner for Protection Volker Türk. The paper argues that national security and international protection for refugees are not mutually exclusive, and calls for an integrated approach that ensures both goals are being met. Currently, with growing polarization of political debate concerning refugees in some countries, the concern is that asylum-seekers and refugees could be victimized, and refugee protection – which has saved the lives of millions of people since World War Two – could be endangered.

Two important points to bear in mind here are that refugees are themselves fleeing persecution and violence, often including terrorist acts; and that the 1951 Refugee Convention explicitly excludes people who are combatants or who have committed serious crimes.

With border controls, UNHCR understands the need of States to identify security concerns at the point of entry, for example through increased checks, including the use of biometrics such as fingerprints and iris scans. Its recommendations include practical guidance on ensuring that these and other measures are carried out properly and proportionately and subject to judicial control, and avoiding discrimination, for example based on nationality, race, ethnicity, or religion. Applications for asylum must be looked at individually.

With cases involving the exclusion of people for serious criminal or terrorist acts, the paper recommends that a factual and legal assessment be done, if needed, by specialized exclusion units. Guidance is provided on this and related measures, including handling of extradition requests, and detention. It also notes that people providing funds to terrorist organizations could themselves be excluded from refugee status, depending on the individual circumstances.

Registration is a crucial part of the refugee protection process, and UNHCR believes that proper systems for this, plus identity and security screening are essential – including in situations of large-scale refugee influxes. As refugees are people at risk of their lives, information-sharing between States has to be done in line with established principles and standards on data protection.
​
Pour lire l'article en entier : ​http://www.unhcr.org/5673f1176.html

GENEVE, 18 décembre (HCR) – Près d'un million de personnes – réfugiés et migrants – ont déjà traversé la Méditerranée cette année. Par ailleurs, les conflits en Syrie et ailleurs continuent de générer des niveaux alarmants de souffrance humaine. Dans un nouveau rapport statistique paru aujourd'hui, le HCR prévient que l'année 2015 sera sans doute le théâtre d'une hausse sans précédent en matière de déplacements forcés dans le monde.

Ce rapport statistique du HCR, intitulé Tendances mondiales, premier semestre 2015, couvre la période de janvier à fin juin. Il fait état des déplacements forcés dans le monde qui résultent des conflits et de la persécution ; il révèle des indicateurs fermement ancrés dans le rouge pour chacune des trois principales catégories de personnes déracinées : les réfugiés, les demandeurs d'asile et les personnes déplacées au sein de leur propre pays.

Le nombre total de réfugiés dans le monde s'élevait à 19,5 millions il y a un an. Il a franchi le seuil des 20 millions (20,2 millions) au milieu de 2015 pour la première fois depuis 1992. Les demandes d'asile sont en hausse de 78 pour cent (993 600) par rapport à la même période en 2014. Et le nombre de personnes déplacées dans leur propre pays a bondi d'environ deux millions pour atteindre un total estimé de 34 millions.

Tout laisse à penser que 2015 pourrait être l'année où le nombre de déplacements forcés dans le monde dépassera 60 millions pour la première fois ; Un être humain sur 122 est aujourd'hui une personne qui a été forcée de quitter son foyer.

« Les déplacements forcés affectent profondément notre époque. Ils affectent la vie de millions de nos semblables, aussi bien ceux qui sont obligés de fuir que ceux qui les abritent et les protègent. Jamais le besoin de tolérance, de compassion et de solidarité envers les personnes qui ont tout perdu n'a été aussi grand », a déclaré le Haut Commissaire pour les réfugiés, António Guterres.

Au-delà de ces chiffres clés, le rapport révèle une dégradation des indicateurs de tendance dans plusieurs domaines. Le nombre des retours volontaires, qui constitue une mesure du nombre de réfugiés pouvant rentrer chez eux sans risque et un baromètre de l'état des conflits dans le monde, est à son niveau le plus bas depuis trois décennies (avec un nombre estimé de 84 000 personnes par rapport à 107 000 sur la même période il y a un an). Par conséquent, si vous êtes réfugié aujourd'hui, vos chances de pouvoir rentrer dans votre pays d'origine sont plus faibles qu'à tout moment depuis plus de 30 ans.

Pour lire la suite : ​http://www.unhcr.fr/5673c0dfc.html

When city council designated Toronto a sanctuary city in 2013, its intention was to guarantee all residents access to municipal services, regardless of citizenship status. People without legal status are often denied those services, or don’t seek them out for fear of being reported to the Canadian Border Services Agency. The fear forces vulnerable people to go without basic services such as primary health care and education.

Years before the sanctuary city effort, Toronto’s police board recognized that victims of crime, and witnesses to it, may not come forward if they feared deportation or other immigration sanctions. The force agreed that, unless it was necessary, officers would not ask about the legal status of the people they interact with. Unfortunately, police seem to be regularly violating this promise to serve and protect the most vulnerable residents.

According to a freedom of information request by the migrant advocacy group No One Is Illegal, police have been making thousands of calls to CBSA to check on the status of individuals they stop, even when a resident is not wanted under an immigration or criminal warrant. NOII interviewed residents who claim they were victims of crimes, or witnesses to criminal activity, but were reported by police to CBSA all the same.

Torontonians have long identified and railed against racial profiling and unnecessary documentation by police. Police carding, the practice of stopping and documenting residents who are not suspected of a crime, is especially heinous because it has targeted racialized groups in the city, particularly black men. Police have routinely robbed residents of their individuality and presumption of innocence by making one’s appearance a justification for stopping and questioning them.

Knia Singh, who has launched a Charter challenge against the police for being repeatedly carded and, in his view, racially profiled, says police suspected him to be a foreigner because of his black skin. Although Singh was born in Toronto, a freedom of information request about his carding interactions revealed that police had, on more than one occasion, documented Jamaica as his birthplace.

When Singh challenged an officer during one such interaction, he claims the officer asked him, “Would you like me to put you in handcuffs in the back of the cruiser, and we can call immigration to find out if you’re here legally or not?” Singh sees his treatment as a clear pattern of racial profiling. “Police seem to assume that if you're not white, you're born somewhere else, and my contact cards confirm that.”
​
When a resident’s lack of permanent status in Canada is an added factor, an already precarious situation becomes even worse. A man in the NOII report claims he was separated from his family by CBSA and detained for three months after helping the police with an investigation. The man, whose name was withheld from the report to protect his identity, told advocates that “if I could do it all over again, I would do it differently … if I see someone getting killed on the road, I’m not going to say nothing to the police.”

Pour lire l'article au complet : http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2015/12/17/non-status-residents-need-police-protection-too-cole.html

More so even than the euro crisis, the refugee crisis and the threat of terrorism have raised fundamental questions about how much sovereignty European states are prepared to cede for the sake of greater unity and security.

This week, the European Commission — the executive arm of the European Union — gave one fundamental answer, calling for the creation of a standing border and coastal authority with the extraordinary power to dispatch border guards to porous frontiers even if they belong to a member state that doesn’t want the help.

The commission is right: Given the chaos and ugly bickering that have marked so much of Europe’s handling of the huge influx of refugees from the Middle East and northern Africa over the past year, it is clear that the problem requires pan-European solutions.

The 26 countries that have abolished internal controls on their common borders, the so-called Schengen area, already function effectively as a single state, so there is no reason they should not share responsibility for the entire outside border. The focus is primarily on Greece, which has resisted European Union offers of help in patrolling its borders or registering refugees even though Greek authorities have not been able to cope with the hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern refugees entering Europe through many Greek Aegean islands.

The debate on the proposal will begin at a European Union summit meeting on Thursday and will be prolonged and contentious. Nationalist governments in Poland and Hungary are zealously opposed to ceding any powers to Brussels, while countries like Germany, which has taken in the most refugees, and France, which endured a terrorist attack last month (two of whose perpetrators entered Europe posing as refugees), are eager to toughen border controls.

Many of the commission’s proposals, like closer checks of European travelers and doubling the size of the staff of the existing border agency, Frontex, are not likely to create much friction.

Pour consulter l'article en entier : http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/17/opinion/toward-a-stronger-european-border.html?_r=0

L'année 2015 devrait se solder par un nouveau nombre record de déplacés et de réfugiés dans le monde, supérieur à celui de 2014, qui était de 59,5 millions, selon un rapport du HCR (Haut-commissariat des Nations unies pour les réfugiés), publié vendredi.

«L'année 2015 sera sans doute le théâtre d'une hausse sans précédent en matière de déplacements forcés dans le monde», écrivent les experts du HCR à la lumière des chiffres du 1er semestre, qui font l'objet du rapport publié vendredi.

Ces chiffres montrent, indiquent les experts, «qu'étant donné que le nombre de réfugiés, de demandeurs d'asile et de personnes déplacées a continué à croître en 2015, il est probable que le chiffre va de beaucoup dépasser» le seuil des 60 millions.

Au cours du 1er semestre 2015, au moins 5 millions de personnes supplémentaires considérées comme déplacées ont été comptabilisées. Quelque 4,2 millions ont été déplacées à l'intérieur de leur pays et 839 000 ont franchi la frontière.

Toujours au 1er semestre, l'Europe a été confrontée à une arrivée sans précédent de migrants via la mer Méditerranée, dont une grande majorité venait de Syrie et d'autres pays affectés par des guerres.

Et comme de très nombreux migrants sont arrivés après juin 2015, ils ne sont pas pris en considération dans ce rapport du HCR.

Le nombre de réfugiés dans le monde a progressé de 45 % depuis 2011.

Les pays d'Afrique subsaharienne accueillent le plus de réfugiés (4,1 millions), suivis par l'Asie et le Pacifique (3,8 millions), l'Europe (3,5 millions), le Moyen-Orient et l'Afrique du Nord (3 millions). Au moins 753 000 réfugiés vivent sur le continent américain.

Par ailleurs, près d'un million de personnes ont demandé l'asile dans 155 pays dans le monde au 1er semestre 2015, soit presque deux fois plus qu'au 1er semestre 2014 (558 000).

Pour lire la suite : ​http://www.lapresse.ca/international/crise-migratoire/201512/18/01-4932515-vers-un-nouveau-nombre-record-de-refugies-et-de-deplaces.php

L'équipe du projet de recherche Réfugié(e)s et Déplacé(e)s : Droit, Littérature et Migration est heureuse de vous inviter à soumettre vos propositions pour notre colloque La figure du réfugié : représentations littéraires, artistiques et médiatiques.

Vous trouverez toutes les informations nécessaires en vous rendant sur notre page Appel à contributions et en suivant ces liens :

http://www.refugieesetdeplacees.com/appels-agrave-contribution/la-figure-du-refugie-representations-litteraires-artistiques-et-mediatiques-montreal

http://www.fabula.org/actualites/colloque-international-la-figure-du-refugie-representations-litteraires-artistiques-et-mediatiques_71653.php​