According to the World Health Organisation, it is estimated that more than 200 million girls and women alive today have undergone Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), with three million at risk every year. FGM is defined as the removal of the external female genitalia for non-medical reasons (whether complete or incomplete)… Read more
With a population of around 7.6 million, Togo is one of the smallest countries in Africa, bordered by Benin, Ghana and Burkina Faso. Agriculture accounts for about 30% of its economy and it enjoys a well-developed export sector due to valuable phosphate deposits. Despite this, the country is suffering an… Read more
Research by Amnesty International exposes the inhumane and unsafe conditions that women refugees suffer in the course of transit to Europe and once they arrive. Interviewing 40 women and girls who had travelled from Turkey to Europe through Greece, the organisation recounted the consensus among them of feeling threatened or… Read more
On 10 December 2018, which marks seventy years since the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on the same day in 1948, Amnesty International issued its annual review of the state of the world’s human rights. One area on which it focused was refugee rights in 2018 and… Read more
Last month, UNICEF issued a statement calling for children stranded in Moria on the island of Lesbos to be transferred to accommodation on mainland Greece. Many of the children are traumatised and vulnerable; they are in need of psychosocial support and at risk of violence in the camp. Conditions have… Read more
On 3 September 2018, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) released a new report showing that migrants making the journey across the Mediterranean are encountering a more perilous crossing than ever before. Thus far in 2018, more than 1,600 individuals forced to flee their homes have lost their lives in transit. … Read more
As at 1 August 2018, close to one million Rohingyas have fled from Myanmar to Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, seeking refuge from a military campaign described as “ethnic cleansing” by the UN. 52% among this number are women and girls; 55% are under the age of 18. Alongside Action Against… Read more
The European Commission has approved a new assistance package of €400 million for the education of Syrian refugees in Turkey. The action to approve the aid is the first following the decision by EU Member States on how to finance the second trance of €3 billion for the EU Facility… Read more
In 2011, 769 indigenous families were accused of occupying land belonging to Chabil Utzaj (a sugar mill) and evicted by force from Polochic Valley in Guatemala. Years went by and nothing came of the commitment made by Otto Perez Molina, President of Guatemala at that time, to restore the land… Read more
In late 2015, Spain, along with other European countries, agreed to accept more asylum seekers in order to reduce the strain on Greece and Italy. It made a commitment to accept at least 16,000 asylum seekers within the next two years. Since that time, the crisis has increased in scale… Read more
