#refugees

#refugees

Around 42.5 million refugees worldwide have been forced to flee their own states and are unable to return because of severe threats to their lives, human rights, or basic needs. Having fled these threats, the vast majority have by no means found protection. Instead, most refugees live either in squalid refugee camps or face destitution in urban areas in regions close to their own states in the Global South. A small minority risk their lives on journeys to reach asylum in the Global North; many thousands lose them.

Since early 2025, clashes have intensified in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), displacing hundreds of thousands of people across the region.

Mahmood stated, 'Claims I was chasing Reform votes were just a way of delegitimising the point of view that I bring to the table. It's also a way of delegitimising the perfectly valid, legitimate views of millions of people in this country, including ethnic minorities in this country.'

"They told me they just needed to verify the fingerprints for our oldest son, but he would not be detained," he said. The family asked to use only their initials for fear of retaliation from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. J.J. and his wife, A., didn't understand why one child's fingerprints would need checking, but they opened the door. And then they watched as their 20-year-old son was, in fact, arrested and driven away in a black SUV.

Selina Hales has a thing about pineapples. She is talking in a quiet office, set aside from the bustle of Refuweegee, the charity she founded 10 years ago, and the walls are festooned with tissue paper cutouts of the fruit, which is an international symbol of hospitality. Refuweegee its name a combination of the words refugee and Weegee, local slang for Glaswegian has expanded exponentially over the decade into an operation that supports hundreds of asylum seekers and refugees in the city every day.

Former Iraqi President Barham Salih is on course to become the next head of the United Nations refugee agency after Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recommended him for the job. A signed letter from Guterres, dated Thursday and addressed to Atsuyuki Oike, Japan's top diplomat in Geneva and chair of UNHCR's executive committee, that was seen by news agencies, confirmed the appointment pending formal approval.

It was when I met St Mungo's that I received the support I needed. I have now accessed both my private and state pension, received legal support in resolving the issues relating to my previous home and am waiting to move into my next property.

Nauru may seek to return refugees from the NZYQ cohort to their home countries, the Nauruan president has said, in an interview officially translated into English for the first time, and which the Australian government sought to keep hidden. David Adeang's interview erroneously claimed those being sent to Nauru were not refugees and said Nauru may seek to return them to their countries of origin where possible.

The state's government - made up of the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) - has announced it will halve its funding for integration services for international residents, dropping from €6 million to just €3 million in 2026. This means that only 21 out of 91 integration projects applying for funding will receive support in the coming year, according to the Saxony Refugee Council ( Sächsischer Flüchtlingsrat - SFR).

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

We are more than a national team, we represent a story of pain but also hope, Ihab Abu Jazar said, and we are not alone. At 8.26pm on Saturday the Palestine coach, whose father was killed in the Israel-Gaza war and whose siblings now live in tents in Khan Younis, emerged from the tunnel and took his place by the bench at San Mames, Bilbao.

"The proportion of municipalities that see themselves in emergency mode and describe themselves as overburdened has visibly decreased to 11%," said Boris Kuhn from the Migration Policy Research Group at the University of Hildesheim. "At the same time, however, more than 70% of municipalities continue to say that the situation is challenging. It would therefore not be accurate to talk about a relaxed situation across the board," he added.

When I step on to the pitch everything else is automatically erased from my mind, says the captain of Afghan Women United, Fatima Haidari, when asked how football helps her cope with the traumas she has suffered. I train, I play, and a fire inside me is lit, not just because of the power that I feel at that moment as a player, but because I feel I have many other girls with me.

Residents living in the refugee and asylum centre describe what the past week has been like behind a garda cordon. Protests outside the Citywest Hotel are not unusual. For more than a month before last week's unrest, local residents had demonstrated two or three times a week against the State's purchase of the hotel. "But they just walked around near the entrance with a loudspeaker and placards, shouting slogans. We had got used to that," said Ukrainian resident Svitlana (not her real name; she and the other residents quoted asked for anonymity).