Around the world, 79.5 million people have been forcibly displaced. That’s the most since World War II, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR). Since most people remain displaced within their home country, how many refugees are there in the world? About 26 million people worldwide have fled to other countries as refugees. Another 4.2 million people have applied for refugee status, but not received it yet. More than half of refugees are children. In 2018, 11 million people were newly displaced, either as refugees or internally displaced people. Now, it’s unknown how border closings and travel restrictions due to COVID-19 will affect the number of new refugees in the world. Conflict and insecurity in other countries, including Iraq, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and Myanmar have also caused millions to flee their homes. Here are top seven countries of origin that account for the most refugees in the world today. About two-thirds of today’s refugees (68%) come from the ...

  In early April, Rekha Sharma, chairperson of the National Commission for Women, drew attention to the disturbing phenomenon of a reported increase in violence against women during the first phase of the nationwide lockdown in India. Even as the period of lockdown in India came to be extended, increase in domestic violence continued to be reported from India and across the world. National dailies in India, apart from the New York Times, the Guardian and others have tracked some of these developments, reporting on the spurt in incidents and women’s frantic calls to helplines. News reports have pointed to the added stress of being locked in with abusers, and being cut off from support groups while being confined at home in times of social distancing. The issue flagged merits serious attention from all concerned, be it the media or activists and, more so, from agencies of the state, charged with formulating and implementing policies to stem the tide of this violence. There is also a ...

Barely 24 hours after the remains of the 19-year-old-Dalit woman were consigned to flames by the police in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras without the consent of the family, another sexual assault and death of a 22-year-old Dalit woman has surfaced from Balrampur in the same state. Reflective of widely pervasive casteist mindsets, these brutal sexual assaults against Dalit women are being framed as isolated incidents of crime rather than atrocities which are the outcome of systemic and deep-rooted casteism and misogyny. It is important to acknowledge that there are several intersecting factors such as identities, institutions and hierarchies that result in this kind of structural violence. Women are not a homogenous group and are differentially impacted by forces of caste, class, religion, ethnicity, race, among others. The social location of Dalit women at the lowest rung of caste, class and gender hierarchies results in them facing multiple forms of discrimination and targeted violence. We h...

  A rape is reported every 15 minutes in India. In the last two months more than 25 rapes made headlines, of this some were reported as heinous acts of violence and gang rapes, mostly from the state of Uttar Pradesh, where the girl was strangled, her tongue was cut, or she was raped and her body was thrown away.  The Hathras gang rape case has left the nation shocked, not just by the brutality of it but with the grim reminder how deep rooted and rampant caste based violence is in the country. Women are asking, why does India fail its daughters every single day? Women are neither safe at home (India has no laws against marital rape and domestic violence cases are on the rise), nor on the streets. A Thomson Reuters Poll 2018 called India the most unsafe country in the world. Women reported nearly 34,000 rapes in 2018 (these were reported, every day many go unreported). Of these, over 85 per cent led to charges, and 27 per cent to convictions, according to the National Crime Bure...

Jewher Ilham has not heard from her father since 2017. Her dad, Ilham Tohti, is an economics professor and prominent Uighur intellectual in Xinjiang, China. He ran a website, UighurOnline, that focused on issues pertaining to the Muslim ethnic minority group. Chinese authorities repeatedly shut down the website. Jewher says the family received death threats. Chinese authorities also disappeared her father multiple times before detaining him in 2014 and quickly finding him guilty on separatism charges. He was sentenced to life in prison. At first, Jewher told me, because her father was a political prisoner, the family could visit him every few months. But then the Chinese government cut off access entirely. Jewher is in the United States; she still has extended family in Xinjiang, the northwestern region in China where most Uighurs live. She does not talk with them, either. “If they talk to me or if they receive a phone call from me, I don’t think anything good will happen to them,” she...

  Most of these abuses are from Caregivers and even immediate family members. It is a repeated conscious act without proper action from authorities simply because the elderly themselves are afraid to report the incident when it happens.  Aside from their lack of physical ability to fight back, there are also other reasons why the elderly people are vulnerable to all forms of abuse: Depression in the Caregiver Not all caregivers are the same but some of them has a different way of coping up with the overwhelming responsibility of Caregiving. When depression strikes, the caregiver can no longer respond to reason and develop a projection of anger towards his/her patient. This oftentimes leads to verbal and physical abuse. The elderly’s illness Because of their illness, like dementia or alzheimer’s disease, the elderly themselves are capable of inflicting injuries to their caregivers. This will often consider as aggression to caregivers who doesn’t fully understand the condition o...

  Nebane “Neba” Abienwi fled five armed conflicts in Cameroon and trekked across eight South, Central and North American countries to try to save his life.  He thought the United States was a beacon of hope that would offer him and his family a future. Instead Neba died of an unknown cause after being jailed at a privately run center in California. He became the first black person ever to die in immigration jail. Neba’s only breaths of free air were taken en route to the hospital, where immigration officials took him after he suffered an unexplained illness, USA Today reports. There, he died, the ventilator removed against the wishes of his family, who were still in Africa. They wanted a chance to say goodbye.  The number of asylum-seekers from Cameroon has more than doubled in recent years, as the Cameroonian government committed human rights atrocities and burned over 500 villages, including Neba's native Bafut. Neba, a brother, father, husband and “Chopchair” (a Bafut ...

For asylum seekers, trying to find work in another country is very difficult. Not only is there often a language barrier and reams of paperwork, but there is also the fact that government systems can encourage exploitation. Asylum seekers in the UK receive £37.75 a week to live on, and most are prohibited from working. But this small amount of money often fails to allow people to meet their basic needs. This leads some to search for work to supplement their income. But herein lies the problem, as the only people willing to employ them are those happy to do so illegally. This leaves asylum seekers with no bargaining power to negotiate reasonable pay or working conditions. Yet the risk of exploitation does not end with a positive asylum decision. Refugees are often dispersed out of London and the south-east to other areas in the UK. The areas of dispersal are determined by the availability of temporary housing. In many cases, this is concentrated around areas of economic deprivation. Thi...