The International Organization for Migration laments one of the deadliest starts to a year since record keeping began, with more than 180 people feared dead or missing in shipwrecks across the Mediterranean over the past 10 days.
Millions of people in Sudan are surviving on just one meal a day, as the country's food crisis deepens and threatens to spread. The war has caused widespread hunger and displaced millions amid one of the world's largest humanitarian crises.
Project Play, an NGO that has worked with 2,192 children hoping to cross the Channel from northern France to the UK to claim asylum in the last two years, has documented the impact of the hostile conditions in northern France due to regular teargassing, evictions and dinghy-slashing by the French police. During that period the NGO documented the deaths of 22 children trying to cross the Channel, including five last year.
At least 7,667 people went missing or died on migration routes worldwide last year, according to the UN's International Organization for Migration (IOM). The IOM has called for improved financial support for rescue organizations, as well as the dismantling of smuggling networks that put lives at risk.
Germany has no equivalent of the US' specialized Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, though that would change if the Bavarian branch of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) had its way. Apparently directly inspired by the actions of ICE under President Donald Trump's administration, an internal paper from the far-right party seen by the German newspaper taz this week proposed that a new authority be created within the Bavarian state police named the Asyl-, Fahndungs- und Abschiebegruppe (AFA), or the "Asylum, Tracing and Deportation group."
Investigators discovered the gangs were brazenly offering to transport migrants from Calais to Dover in the back of trucks and touting it as a "taxi service". In one promotional video, three migrants are seen reclining on a mound of soft white packages inside a truck. One of the young men gives a thumbs-up to the camera. "By truck, Safe reach London UK in 2 hours," reads the caption.
The bodies in Libya were found on Saturday by residents of the coastal town of Qasr al-Akhyar, according to a police officer. list of 4 itemsend of list Hassan Al-Ghawil, head of investigations at the Qasr Al-Akhyar police station, told the Reuters news agency that the bodies were all of dark-skinned people. Two of them were women. He said people in the area had reported seeing a child's body wash ashore before the waves returned it to sea.
French authorities rescued more than 6,000 migrants attempting to reach Britain in small boats last year, while 25 people died and two remain missing, the maritime prefecture said Friday in its annual report. France has long been a launchpad for migrants hoping to cross the Channel and start a better life in Britain, where the centre-left Labour government is under pressure from the anti-immigration hard right to curb arrivals.