Strategic Thinking on East Africa

From The Guardian Giles Fraser Irrespective of the politics of immigration, the big issues of global fairness have come to our door and building higher fences is no answer Members of the Eritrean community at the Sunday service in the migrant church in Calais. ‘As I sat in the corner, a succession of worshippers came […]

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By Paula Dupraz-Dobias AUG 6, 2015 - 15:05 Sommaruga: “Not a single European country sends people back there” (Keystone) Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga has defended the government’s policy for processing asylum requests from Eritrean refugees, following a critical letter she received from the Lucerne cantonal government. Sommaruga said on Thursday it was “unthinkable” that Switzerland would […]

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© UNHCR/A.Nasrullah Somali refugees board a plane to return to Mogadishu from Dadaab camp in Kenya. MOGADISHU, Aug 5 (UNHCR) –More than 100 Somali refugees from Kenya flew into the Somali capital Mogadishu on Wednesday, marking a new chapter in the voluntary return process. Earlier in the day, two planes, carrying 116 people, took off from […]

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From BBC Adam was forced to serve as a child soldier before he escaped – his story is one of many in a totalitarian state where citizens are afraid to leave their homes Mebrahtu, a former Eritrean soldier, covers his face to hide his identity as he poses for a photograph at an asylum camp […]

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JAMAL OSMANReporter Jamal Osman reports on the boom in Somaliland attracting migrants seeking jobs and opportunities from Yemen, Ethiopia - and London. Faisal Kiber used to be an estate agent in Wembley, now he is a camel herder: “Over there, I worried about the letters, council tax, electricity bills, water bills. [In London] you worry […]

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Migrants from Eritrea eat a meal they received from aid workers at the Milan train station on June 11, 2015 (AFP Photo/Olivier Morin) Addis Ababa (AFP) - Eritrea on Saturday called on the United Nations to investigate the “abhorrent” flood of refugees from its borders to Europe, an exodus attributed to gross human rights violations […]

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From Sky News Play video “”They Beat Us And Insulted Us”” By Lisa Holland, Senior News Correspondent An Eritrean woman who is claiming asylum in the UK has described the trauma of making the journey here with people smugglers. Fyori Habtay says men and women were indiscriminately raped and beaten at holding camps in Libya […]

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Eritrean translators are deliberately mistranslating the testimonies of refugees during their hearings, according to dissidents’ groups in Germany. Some are even intimidating them into hiding human rights abuses. “He asked us, ‘Wait, where’s the part where I was tortured in prison?’ And we said, ‘that’s not in here.’ He was completely horrified,” Rut Bahta, co-founder […]

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By Emmanuel Igunza BBC Africa, Tigray, Ethiopia A 20-year-old man from Eritrea is nursing serious leg wounds after being shot twice by people he says were Eritrean soldiers stationed near the border with Ethiopia. “Even after I fell down, I could hear the bullets whizzing past me,” Weldab tells me from a clinic bed in Mai-Aini […]

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From the Council on Foreign Relations by Guest Blogger for John Campbell July 2, 2015 This is a guest post by Amanda Roth, a former intern for the Council on Foreign Relations Africa Program. She is a recent graduate from the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs, where she studied international security policy. According […]

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