#myanmar-refugees

#myanmar-refugees

When Israeli missiles destroyed entire homes in my neighborhood in southern Lebanon's city of Tyre, we decided it was time to save our lives again. More than 227,549 people had crossed the three official border points from Lebanon into Syria, according to the latest numbers from the United Nation's International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Tom Fletcher, the UN humanitarian chief, stated that hunger is tightening its grip in South Sudan, with emergency levels of food insecurity expected across all 10 states during the lean season.

Safety is never guaranteed, says Khun Sue Reh, 23, who on Monday was among the group graduating with the specially designed three-year nursing qualification. Alongside the usual coursework and exams, the students face airstrikes on the hospitals where they are training, government spy drones overhead, roadblocks and internet blackouts.

Recently, as the world becomes increasingly hostile to my community, I have been haunted by the feeling that every horizon is a wall. Last Thanksgiving, when the Trump administration terminated Temporary Protected Status for Burma, a temporary immigration pathway that over 3,000 Burmese immigrants are relying on, a friend of mine remarked that we fled a tyrant only to run into the arms of a worse one.

Scam compounds have flourished in Myanmar's lawless borderlands, part of a multibillion-dollar illicit industry. The centres are typically staffed by foreigners including many Chinese with many saying they were trafficked and forced to swindle people online. Beijing has stepped up cooperation with Southeast Asian nations in recent years to crack down on the compounds, and thousands of people have been repatriated to China.

The group had established industrial parks in Myanmar's Kokang region bordering China, from where they allegedly ran gambling and telecom scam operations involving abductions, extortion, forced prostitution, and drug manufacturing and trafficking. They defrauded victims of more than 29 billion yuan ($4.2bn) and caused the deaths of six Chinese citizens and injuries to others, the court said. The defendants appealed the verdict, but the Guangdong Provincial High People's Court dismissed their applications, it added.

Albanese said that while it is unfortunate that children have been affected, Australia is not providing any support. As my mother would say, you make your bed, you lie in it, he said. We have no sympathy, frankly, for people who travelled overseas in order to participate in what was an attempt to establish a caliphate to undermine and destroy our way of life, he added.

In the full glare of the world's media spotlight, Israel has been conducting its genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza while the mass killing of civilians in Sudan has not stopped since the outbreak of that country's war in 2023. Violence is ongoing elsewhere from Myanmar's civil war to conflict in Nigeria. Drone attacks targeting noncombatants have become commonplace in Ukraine while massacres of civilians across multiple conflicts continue, including in Ethiopia, Haiti, Myanmar, Yemen all with apparent impunity.

In 2025, the administration of US President Donald Trump ordered the US Agency for International Development to be closed; this year, it withdrew the country from 66 international organizations. Other Western nations that are plagued with high levels of debt and pressure to prioritize domestic challenges have slashed their foreign aid, too. According to projections, official development assistance dropped by 9-17% in 2025, amounting to some US$55 billion.

Official Fadi al-Qassem says all residents have left al-Hol camp, which long housed relatives of alleged ISIL (ISIS) members. Syrian authorities say they have fully evacuated and shut down a remote camp that once kept thousands of relatives of alleged members of the armed group ISIL (ISIS). The last residents were sent out in a convoy Sunday morning, according to Fadi al-Qassem, the Syrian government official overseeing the camp.

At least 7,667 people went missing or died on migration routes worldwide last year, according to the UN's International Organization for Migration (IOM). The IOM has called for improved financial support for rescue organizations, as well as the dismantling of smuggling networks that put lives at risk.

On 1 February 2021, Myanmar's democratically elected government was overthrown in a military coup. There were mass protests against the military seizing power and many people were arrested for criticizing the new leadership. Frequent military airstrikes killed civilians and destroyed schools, hospitals and places of worship. According to the UK government, nearly 20 million people in Myanmar now need humanitarian aid.