The Whatsapp Wedding
Kept apart by war, two young Syrians fired up their smartphones and found love against the odds. With no end in sight to the human suffering inflicted by the war in Syria, it can feel like there is never any good news to tell. So when a colleague mentioned a young...
The Sea Route to Europe
A large majority of the thousands of people who made dangerous sea journeys across the Mediterranean into Europe in the first six months of 2015 were fleeing war, conflict or persecution. This makes the current Mediterranean crisis primarily a refugee crisis,...
The Nun and the Bakery
For nearly a decade, the small and dusty town of Dungu, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has been under attack. But while many women and girls throughout the region have been kidnapped and terrorised by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), others have survived...
Acclaimed photo-journalist and refugee records his harrowing sea journey to Australia
As he stepped onto a boat on the Indonesia coast, Barat Ali Batoor knew he might not survive the voyage to Australia. But it was a risk he says he had to take. “It was not an easy decision for me,” says Batoor, 31, who proved luckier than many who brave the high seas...
2014 becomes the deadliest year at sea off Yemen
There’s been a sharp increase this year in the number of migrants and asylum seekers losing their lives in attempts to get to Yemen, mainly from the Horn of Africa, with more deaths in 2014 than in the last three years combined. In the latest tragic incident on...
Treacherous Crossings
Most refugees undertake a perilous journey to escape persecution, violence or death. But escape by sea is particularly dangerous as people confront unpredictable weather, unsafe and over-crowded vessels, unscrupulous human traffickers and smugglers. And even if they...Angelina Jolie Pitt on World Refugee Day 2015
“We are here for a simple reason: This region is at the epicentre of a global crisis. Nearly 60 million people are displaced from their homes. That is one in every 122 people on our planet. Our world has never been richer or healthier or more advanced. Yet never...
Millions mark World Refugee Day at events across the globe
GENEVA, June 20 (UNHCR)—Across the world millions marked World Refugee Day on Saturday with joyful and celebratory events in sharp contrast to gloomy statistics showing spiraling global conflict and persecution have led to record numbers of people fleeing their homes....