A couple facing imminent deportation to Cameroon have been unexpectedly released from detention this week after a campaign by leading writers to halt their removal from the UK.
A week ago, leading writers and barristers wrote to the home secretary, Theresa May, to condemn the UK Border Agency’s decision to deport Lydia Besong, a playwright, and her husband, Bernard Batey.
The former …

The United Nations refugee agency today announced new strategies to ensure uninterrupted assistance and services in its largest complex in Kenya, including training and mentoring of refugees as well as involving them in the day-to-day running of the Dadaab camps.
“Refugees have always had a role in making camps work. However, at Dadaab that role is being expanded,” said Andrej Mahecic, …

Much of Dawood Boy’s village in northern Afghanistan is empty.
More than 1,000 families from Alburz in Balkh Province abandoned it 4-6 months ago after a drought affecting nearly half the country left 2.8 million people in need of food assistance, according to the World Food Programme.
The drought destroyed the crops Boy had planted, killed his livestock which no longer had …

Forced child labour remains rampant in Central Africa, where poverty fuels the trafficking of children from poorer countries to oil-rich states such as Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and the Republic of Congo, according to experts.
“Trafficking in children is real,” said Gabon’s social affairs director-general, Mélanie Mbadinga Matsanga. “Gabon, for example, is considered an Eldorado and draws a lot of West African …

The marginalized western Ugandan Basua community is fighting extinction; forcibly removed from their forest home two decades ago, they have struggled to cope with modern life and have been ravaged by health crises, including HIV.
Uganda has two indigenous forest communities – the Batwa people of the southwest, a larger group originally from Rwanda and Burundi, and the Basua in the …

Unauthorised, potentially lethal restraint techniques may still be being used to carry out immigration deportations despite assurances from the UK Border Agency and its private contractors, MPs warn.
A Commons home affairs select committee inquiry into the treatment of people being deported also found evidence of a racist culture among private security escort staff and a “too cosy relationship” between UKBA …

Private security guards employed to forcibly remove people from the UK have used racist language and inappropriate force, a report by MPs has said.
The Commons’ Home Affairs Committee said the UK Border Agency should challenge unacceptable behaviour by some of its contractors.
The report comes 15 months after a deportee died on a flight.
A spokesman for the UKBA said that all …

A UNHCR programme to provide lighting and fuel-efficient stoves in African refugee camps has helped children with their studies and and improved safety for women and girls.
UNHCR launched the five-year Light Years Ahead campaign in January 2011, aiming to raise funds to improve the basic cooking and lighting needs of more than 450,000 refugees in seven African countries.
To date, …

Britain’s statistics watchdog has issued a strong rebuke to ministers who rushed out figures last Friday purporting to show that there are 371,000 migrants claiming welfare benefits in the country.
Sir Michael Scholar, the head of the UK Statistics Authority, wrote on Wednesday to the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, telling him that the figures that were published were …

By Mark Easton (BBC)
When employment minister Chris Grayling and immigration minister Damian Green gave the Daily Telegraph an exclusive last week on foreign nationals who claim benefits they brought together two of the most combustible ingredients in popular political debate: illegal immigrants and benefit cheats.
Their article revealed how a new and “complex research exercise” had identified some 371,000 foreign-born residents …