MIGRATION

France has called an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council over slave-trading in Libya as President Emmanuel Macron condemned the auctioning of Africans as a crime against humanity. “France decided this morning to ask for an urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss this issue,” Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told parliament on Wednesday (22 November). …

Some 250 Cameroonian migrants have been repatriated from Libya following the CNN video footage that showed the sale of migrants in the war-torn country. They arrived at the Yaoundé Nsimalen airport on Tuesday night with tales of woe and suffering. They described a “total hell” that they wouldn’t wish on their “worst enemy” as global outrage grows over footage showing …

Deportees from Libya reveal the horrors of the migrant slave trade as they arrive home. Ivorian migrants returning from Libyan detention centres have confirmed the sale of slaves in the North African country. A total of 155 returned to Abidjan on Monday night, each with a tale to tell. Trying to make their way to a new life in Europe, …

The United Nations will investigate the existence of slave markets in Libya following the CNN report showing that sub-Saharan Africans are being sold as slaves for as little as $400, reports Sertan Sanderson UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said that recent reports of African migrants being sold as slaves in Libya were “appalling” and could amount to crimes against humanity. …

Organisations of people of African descent have called for a public protest against the trade in sub-Saharan migrants in Libya on Saturday, 25 November. The event, named ‘Demonstration to End the Enslavement, Rape, Torture and Killings of Blacks in Libya’, will take place in front of the Libyan Embassy in Berlin. Organised by, among other organisations, Black Community Hamburg, Lampedusa …

Legendary Ivorian reggae musician, Alpha Blondy, known in private life as Seydou Kone, has waded into the debate for sub-Saharan African leaders to help protect their citizens wherever they find themselves. His recent call is on the African Union and the West African regional bloc, ECOWAS, to take decisive action on migrant abuse in the North African country of Libya, …

CNN report showing trade in sub-Saharan migrants in Libya has sparked outrage in Africa and the global Black community, Sola Jolaoso reports. A grainy cell phone video showing unidentified African men being sold in an auction in Libya was obtained by CNN last month. One of the ‘slaves’ being sold is a Nigerian, whom the American news channel estimated to …

Italy’s southern city of Salerno held a mass funeral on Friday for 26 young women from Nigeria who drowned earlier this month trying to cross the Mediterranean. Twenty-six coffins were laid out in Salerno’s Monumental Cemetery on Friday morning, watched by a military guard, local politicians, rescue workers and journalists. A Catholic archbishop and a Muslim imam both said prayers. …

The head of human rights at the United Nations has lashed out at the EU’s migration policy towards Libya. In a statement on Tuesday (14 November), UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said forcing rescued people at sea to return to Libya for detention was inhuman. “The suffering of migrants detained in Libya is an outrage to the …

Beginning from 2018 France is set to adopt a new migration law, which will include tougher rules for people whose asylum applications have been rejected. The bill is currently being debated in France’s lower house of parliament. Anne-Diandra Louarn/InfoMigrants takes a look at the main points of the new law. Addressing the lower house of parliament on Wednesday, 8 November, …

A recent study by Link Campus University of Rome confirms that 70 per cent of migrants who travel from Libya to Italy have been victims of human trafficking. The first results of a study conducted by Rome’s Link Campus University and the War and Peace Studies Centre reveal that about 70 per cent of migrants who arrived on Italian shores …

The Federal Statistical Office has revealed that 2 percent of the people who lived in Germany at the end of 2016 had lodged asylum applications. That’s more than double the figure for 2014. Ben Knight reports. On Friday, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) revealed that 1.6 million people were officially registered as “seeking protection for humanitarian reasons” in Germany at …

Edo State gets tough on people smuggling as increasing numbers of its indigenes drown in the Mediterranean. The government of Edo State, Nigeria, has announced its intention to make a law criminalizing human trafficking. The intention of the legislation, according to the state’s commissioner for justice, Prof. Yinka Omorogbe, is to curb the activities of persons engaged in the irregular …

Two men, one of them an Egyptian and the other a Libyan, have been arrested and charged in Italy as investigators look into the deaths of 26 Nigerian women and girls, who are suspected to have been murdered while attempting to cross the Mediterranean. The bodies of the women were brought to the southern Italian port of Salerno by the …

The remains of 26 Nigerian women believed to be migrants have been recovered from a Spanish warship in the Italian coast city of Salerno. A report by the British Broadcasting Corporation on Monday said a Spanish warship, Cantabria, which docked in the city, was found to be carrying 375 rescued migrants and the dead women. According to the report, 23 …

What happens when officials refuse an applicant’s request for asylum? In Germany, applicants have recourse to administrative courts and can even approach the European Court of Human Rights. Here is a short explanation. Types of rejection The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees or BAMF can reject applications for asylum if its officials believe that the individual concerned does not …

The number of asylum cases being dealt with by German courts has risen by almost 500 percent in the past year, according to a report. Courts are said to have been overwhelmed by the volume of cases. The number of cases being heard in Germany’s administrative courts rose to about 320,000 in the first half of this year, from just …

The German government has admitted that it does not always know the whereabouts of rejected asylum seekers, but argues that the number doesn’t tell the whole truth. The government’s asylum agency faces a file backlog. Ben Knight reports. Around 30,000 rejected asylum seekers have simply disappeared from Germany’s records, a German newspaper has claimed, though the government and refugee organizations …

In 2016, there were five million documented migrants living in Italy, according to the 2017 Immigration Statistics Dossier prepared by the IDOS and Confronti research and study centres. The report, presented in Rome recently, said estimates show the number will reach more than 20 million by the year 2065. There were more than five million documented migrants living in Italy …

Applying for asylum in France can quickly become an administrative nightmare if you’re not familiar with how the process works. Charlotte Boitiaux Louise Nordstrom/InfoMigrants guides you through the main points.