MIGRATION

Eritreans who have completed their military service can safely be sent home from Switzerland if their requests for asylum are rejected, a Swiss court has ruled. Eritreans are the biggest group of asylum seekers in Switzerland, with nearly 14,500 citizens in the asylum process as of the end of July 2017, government data showed. Nearly 9,000 of them have won …

Europe and the Africa intend to step up co-operation in the fight against criminal human traffickers – Europe is to provide more support for the African countries. That is the outcome of a meeting between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris with leaders of other European and African states. “We must fight illegal migration and …

An information campaign to raise public awareness of the dangers of irregular migration will kick off  at the Centre for Management Development in Lagos on 12 September. Initiated by African-German Information Center (AGIC), Hamburg, and The African Courier Verlag, Berlin, with the support of Germany’s Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the campaign under the aegis of the “Migration Enlightenment Project in Nigeria (MEPN)” …

Who orders and who carries out deportations? And why do some people who get told to leave get to stay anyway? Jefferson Chase of Deutsche Welle (DW) untangles Germany’s complex and multilayered rules about who can be deported under what circumstances. ———————— Who decides whether someone should be deported? You might think that would be the task of the Federal Ministry of …

A group of Tunisian fishermen blocked the boat of far-right movement ‘Generation Identity’ from docking at the port of Zarzis in the southeast of Tunisia , dealing the latest blow to a controversial mission aimed at disrupting the flow of migrant boats from North Africa to Europe. The Identitarians had chartered the vessel C-Star to run their anti-migrant mission ‘Defend …

A battery of new technological innovations has been unveiled by Germany’s refugee agency to help it determine more accurately the country of origin of asylum seekers and detect those who make multiple applications using different names. Jefferson Chase reports. No more Franco A.’s – that’s the motto at the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge …

Louise Hunt, freelance journalist specialising in social affairs and international development, writes on the situation of Gambian migrants in Europe whose case for asylum has been weakened by the overthrow of their country’s long-reigning autocratic leader. The Gambia’s leader of 22 years, Yahya Jammeh, used to give Gambians good cause for claiming asylum, even if the majority were fleeing poverty …

More than 40 migrants from Nigeria and Ghana died in the Sahara desert this week after their truck broke down in arid northern Niger, the Red Cross told news agency Reuters on Wednesday (31 May). Six survivors walked to a remote village where they said that 44 people, mostly from Ghana and Nigeria and including three babies and two other …

In response to the many reports of the maltreatment of sub-Saharan migrants in Libyan detention centres, the International Organization for Migration, IOM, has begun training officials in five facilities on human rights. These are “the first trainings inside detention centres since 2014”, the United Nations Support Mission for Libya (UNSMIL) announced. In the pilot project, IOM is targeting five centres …

The African Network of Germany (TANG) has launched a project, christened  ‘Lost Dreams’, about the dangers of illegal migration to Europe. It’s currently being presented to young people in Cameroon. Moki Kindzeka reports. In the Nlonkak neighborhood of Cameroon’s capital Younde, the “Cameroon Center Band” is playing songs encouraging young people from rural areas to come to the capital to …

Applying for asylum can be a long, complicated process. This is what you need to do...

Some 35,000 deportations took place in Germany in the last 18 months. More than 600 were abandoned, however. Pro-free movement groups are offering information on how to successfully hinder a deportation.