Tag Archives: refugee camps

US Court Orders Transfer of Migrant Children From ‘Profoundly Inhumane’ Open-Air Sites

“But it remains a tragedy that a court had to direct the government to do what basic human decency and the law clearly require,” said one advocate.

By Brett Wilkins. Published 4-5-2024 by Common Dreams

*An open-air detention site in California. Photo: Al Otro Lado/X*

Migrant rights defenders on Thursday cheered a federal court ruling ordering U.S. Customs and Border Protection to stop holding undocumented minors in squalid open-air detention sites in Southern California and to transfer all children held in such locations to “safe and sanitary” spaces.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) contended that people held in the open-air detention sites (OADS) are not yet in U.S. custody. However, Judge Dolly Gee of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles issued a 12-page ruling that found migrant children are entitled to protection under the Flores Settlement Agreement, which established national minimum standards for the treatment of detained minors.

Continue reading →

Why aren’t child soldiers treated as human trafficking ‘survivors’?

Child soldiers are often shunned when they return from war. This is no way to treat ‘survivors’

By Benedetta Wasonga. Published 2-22-2023 by openDemocracy

Child soldiers in South Sudan. Photo: UNMISS/flickr/CC

What happens to child soldiers once the fighting is over? How do they re-integrate into society, and who supports them to find a new place in civilian life? These questions are not as easy to answer as one might think. In post-conflict settings in Africa, former child soldiers return traumatised. Warring parties have used them not only as fighters, but also in many other jobs. Some, especially girls, have also been subjected to gender-based violence.

Yet, for the most part, they are not greeted warmly by those back home. International organisations do not trip over themselves to provide them with services. They are instead met, for the most part, with suspicion. And because they are not seen as ‘survivors’, there are few places they can turn to for help. Continue reading →

A wave of grassroots humanitarianism is supporting millions of Ukrainian refugees

Leave a reply

*Women offering Ukrainian refugees a place to stay in Berlin on Mar. 4, 2022.*
*Fabian Sommer/picture alliance via Getty Images*

Elizabeth Cullen Dunn, Indiana University

Along the Poland-Ukraine border, Polish volunteers have been driving Ukrainian refugees to local train stations, or directly to cities like Warsaw.

Other Poles are doing their volunteer work online or at train stations and airports, matching Ukrainian refugees with perhaps the most generous volunteers of all: those who are hosting some of the more than 2 million Ukrainians had fled their beseiged country, in their own homes.

The largest refugee flow in Europe since the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s – has elicited an enormous volunteer humanitarian effort in Europe, particularly in Poland, as well as in Germany, Moldova and Romania. Continue reading →

Occupy World Writes

The Movement Continues – Globally

Tag Archives: refugee camps