The following is a conversation with Rasha Jarum, founder and director of Peace Track Initiative, on the efforts to secure more meaningful involvement and representation for women in the process to restore peace in Yemen. Ms. Jarum is from South Yemen and has more than 16 years’ experience working on human rights and gender issues. Sonal Marwah spoke with her in August. …
With 25.4 million refugees, the world is experiencing the worst refugee crisis since the Second World War. Until recently, the United States was the world’s most generous donor of humanitarian assistance to displaced persons and had the largest resettlement program. But the Trump administration’s new immigration policies appear to be making the United States increasingly less safe and inaccessible for …
In March 2015, following a long political crisis in Yemen in which all parties resorted to violence, Houthi rebels seized the capital Sana’a, triggering the collapse of President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi’s internationally recognized government. Hadi fled into exile. On March 24, Hadi requested external military intervention from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). A coalition of Gulf Arab states, led …
By Sonal Marwah and Deborah Mebude On July 5, the Canadian Council for Refugees (CCR); The Canadian Council of Churches (CCC), of which Project Ploughshares is an operating division; and Amnesty International (AI) launched a case in the Federal Court of Canada to challenge the designation of the United States as a “safe third country” for refugees as this designation …
On June 8, Minister of International Development Marie-Claude Bibeau released Canada’s “first feminist international assistance policy.” This bold policy has received praise and applause from Canadian civil society and international development actors. What is a feminist approach? A common misconception is that it focuses exclusively on women and girls. On the contrary, such an approach seeks to address systemic and …
The arrival of recent irregular migrants to Canada in context Frightened people are showing up in border towns in Manitoba, Québec, and British Columbia. They have braved freezing temperatures to venture across snowy fields or uncharted brush. Some arrive with severe cases of frostbite or other injuries and end up in hospitals. A potential crisis? The number of irregular migrants …
On January 27, President Trump signed an executive order, “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States,” which prohibits entry by nationals of seven Muslim-majority states (Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Iran, Somalia, Libya, and Yemen) for 90 days, bans Syrian refugees indefinitely, and suspends the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program for 120 days. The new order allows exemptions “when …
This year is turning into the “deadliest year yet” for migrants and refugees. Deaths and drownings in the Mediterranean have climbed, even though fewer people are crossing to reach Europe. While in 2015, 1,015,078 people crossed the sea, only 327,800 did so in 2016. But, according to UN refugee agency UNHCR, “from one death for every 269 arrivals last year, …
Mobility is a defining characteristic of our time. Worldwide, there are 244-million international migrants—persons living in a country other than the one they were born in—who have migrated for complex reasons, including a search for safety and a better life and reunion with family. More than 65.3-million of these migrants have been forcibly displaced. Some scholars call all people who leave their country …
Human displacement has reached record levels as old wars continue and new conflicts emerge. The second half of the 20th century saw a decline in wars between states, but a steep rise in the number of internal armed conflicts and other violent situations that caused mass displacement across borders. These internal wars have proven to be more protracted and complex. …
