-The Indian Express India has welcomed refugees in the past, and on date, nearly 300,000 people here are categorised as refugees. But India is not a signatory to the 1951 UN Convention or the 1967 Protocol. Nor does India have a refugee policy or a refugee law of its own. Last week, the Supreme Court appeared to accept the Centre’s contention that the Rohingya people in India are illegal immigrants when it...
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The nowhere people -Ameen Jauhar
-The Hindu People migrating due to environmental disasters should be accorded ‘refugee’ status in international law An increasing number of people globally are facing displacement due to droughts, famines, rising sea levels and other natural disasters caused by climate change. This class of migrants has been labelled as ‘environmental refugees’ in popular literature. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, an international body reviewing trends of internal displacement, an estimated 24 million...
More »Still holding onto the hope of a better future-Smriti Kak Ramachandran
-The Hindu It's been a year since the Indian Government announced the long-term visa facility for refugees, but many like Zaw Zaw's family, hailing from Myanmar, are yet to benefit. Three metal trunks and a few peeling leather bags are all it takes to hold together Zaw Zaw's 25 years. A hand-spun, bright, red and yellow peacock flag, discoloured sheets of papers and a few mementos from friends are all squeezed in...
More »The wait for a new passport -Sweta Dutta
-The Indian Express Ten kilometres from Jodhpur city, on a sultry afternoon under a flapping tent, a baby girl is born to Sadhu and Radha. People crowd around and peer into the tent to congratulate the couple. Someone in the crowd says, “The first Indian among us, she should be named Bharati.” The suggestion is met with nods of approval and cheers of “Bharati”. Over the last one month, the makeshift tent...
More »Asylum-seeker numbers fall to almost half levels of a decade earlier, UN reports
The number of asylum-seekers seeking to live in the industrialized world continues to fall and is now almost half the level it was a decade ago, the United Nations refugee agency reported today as it released its annual snapshot of asylum trends. The report from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) finds that 358,800 applications for asylum were lodged last year in 44 developed countries – a drop of 5...
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