- In The New York Times, a new report and photoessay offers a glimpse of life for asylum seekers in Indonesia awaiting resettlement. UNHCR has started to inform nearly 14,000 refugees and asylum seekers that finding a new home is highly unlikely, and that they should consider living permanently in Indonesia or returning home.
- As the monsoon season approaches in Bangladesh, approximately 800,000 Rohingya refugees gathered in camps along the Myanmar border face the risk of disease and flooding, The Guardian reports.
- A new Center for Migration Studies report examines revoking citizenship as a response to the threat of terrorism. The report covers recent actions by the governments of Australia, Canada, and the UK, finding that “these three governments are increasing the stateless or semi-stateless population and altering what it means to be a citizen in their liberal democracies”.
- Following the publication of the “Cabinet Files” – a collection of classified documents obtained by the ABC – it has been revealed that in 2013, then-immigration minister Scott Morrison directed ASIO to delay the security clearances of refugee and asylum applicants. Malcolm Turnbull has defended Morrison, stating he did an “outstanding job” to slow the people-smuggling trade. But refugee advocates have blasted Morrison’s “utter disregard for the law”, saying the minister was legally obliged to decide applications within 90 days, but delayed them for between three and five years.
- A new report from the International Crisis Group investigates hostility between Syrian refugees and Turkish host communities. Compassion from Turkish society is waning and intercommunal violence rising, with at least 35 people killed in 2017.
- A Lowy Institute report released last week looks at the importance of international migration to Australia’s remote and northern communities.
- Refugees Plus, a new website run by a group of refugee journalists, shares video reports about the challenges for and successes of refugees and asylum seekers. Early stories cover the reality of detention camps in Libya, and the experiences of a female Somali refugee, now a soccer referee, in England. In the video below, Abdiaziz, a young man from Somalia, discusses his harrowing crossing of the Mediterranean.
