This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
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Undocumented migrants arriving in Spain with hopes for a better life get trapped into a life of informality. Their undocumented status prevents them from accessing jobs in the formal economy, and, as a result, they cannot get healthcare or contribute to the social security system.
According to the International Labour Organization’s Recommendation 204 on the Transition from the Informal to the Formal Economy, “most people enter the informal economy not by choice but as a consequence of a lack of opportunities in the formal economy and in the absence of other means of livelihood.”
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The deportation flight was in the air over Mexico when chaos erupted in the back of the plane, the flight attendant recalled. A little girl had collapsed. She had a high fever and was taking ragged, frantic breaths. The flight attendant, a young woman who went by the nickname Lala, said she grabbed the plane’s emergency oxygen bottle and rushed past rows of migrants chained at the wrists and…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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The prominent Grupo Ortega law firm filed a habeas corpus petition on Tuesday before El Salvador’s Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ). The legal action seeks the immediate release of 238 Venezuelan migrants currently detained at the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT).
In an official statement, the firm argued that these detentions may violate fundamental rights, including personal liberty, due process, and protection against cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. They emphasized that these rights are protected under both El Salvador’s Constitution and international treaties ratified by the country.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Thousands of Venezuelans rallied in Caracas on Tuesday, March 18, to protest the deportation of Venezuelan migrants from the United States to a high security prison in El Salvador. Family members of the deported migrants addressed Venezuelan officials and fellow citizens to demand the immediate return of their loved ones, with many insisting that their relatives are not criminals or members of the infamous Tren de Aragua as Donald Trump claims.
The mobilization occurred days after the deportation of over 200 migrants to El Salvador in one of the most controversial acts by the administration of Donald Trump during his two months in office.
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The for-profit prison company GEO Group has surged in value under President Donald Trump. Investors are betting big on immigration detention. Its stock price doubled after Election Day. But despite its soaring fortunes, the $4 billion company continues to resist having to pay detainees more than $1 a day for cleaning facilities where the government has forced them to live. At the 1,575…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Venezuelan National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez declared Monday that the government will mobilize multilateral organizations and international law firms to repatriate citizens detained abroad. He accused the United States of “kidnapping” Venezuelan migrants and collaborating with El Salvador in a “modern slave trade.”
The announcement came after reports that more than 200 Venezuelan migrants were transferred from U.S. custody to prisons in El Salvador based on unproven allegations of ties to the Aragua Train criminal gang.
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Venezuela has categorically condemned the United States government’s persecution of Venezuelans in the US, calling it an “infamous and unjust criminalization of Venezuelan migrants.” The Venezuelan government’s official statement in this regard, issued on Sunday, March 16, likens Washington’s position to “the darkest episodes in human history, from slavery to the horrors of Nazi concentration camps.”
The statement condemned in strong terms the persecution of Venezuelan citizens in the US, including the expropriation of their personal property, assets, businesses, vehicles, and bank accounts.
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This past weekend marked a major escalation in the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts, with the dramatic detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist who played a prominent role in the protests against Israel on Columbia University’s campus last year. Khalil, a Columbia graduate student, is a permanent legal resident in the US. The Trump administration says it detained Khalil for what it described, without evidence, as his support for Hamas, and President Donald Trump promised “this is the first arrest of many to come” in a Truth Social post. In the meantime, a federal court in New York prevented the federal government from deporting Khalil while it hears his case. He’s currently being held at an immigration detention facility in Louisiana.
Khalil’s arrest—and the Trump administration’s reimagining of immigration writ large—are in many ways a product of decades of dysfunction within the US immigration system itself. On this week’s episode of More To The Story, Reveal’s new weekly interview show, host Al Letson talks with The New Yorker staff writer Jonathan Blitzer about the 50-year history of the country’s inability to deal with migrants at the southern border and why the Trump administration’s approach to immigration is much more targeted—and extreme—than it was eight years ago.- Support our journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow
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Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Interim executive producers: Brett Myers and Taki Telonidis | Host: Al Letson
Dig Deeper/Related Stories:
Did the US Cause Its Own Border Crisis? (Reveal)
https://revealnews.org/podcast/did-the-us-cause-its-own-border-crisis/
Immigrants on the Line (Reveal)
https://revealnews.org/podcast/immigrants-on-the-line/
The Forgotten Origins of a Migration Crisis (Mother Jones)
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choicesThis post was originally published on Reveal.
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Alejandro and his fiancée first arrived in the U.S. in November 2022, as part of the first batch of beneficiaries of the Biden administration’s Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela (CHNV) parole program. Leaving behind their life in Venezuela, they were overjoyed to be reunited with Alejandro’s parents, who first arrived in 2017 seeking life-saving cancer treatment for his mother. As of 2024…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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By Nayrein Kyaw and Gemunu Amarasinghe
Dec. 21, 2022
Forced to flee her Magway village in southeast Myanmar during a junta attack, Theingi Soe spent a “terrible” month living in makeshift shelters in the jungle during the rainy season. In her misery, she began to plot another escape – to a life in a country beyond the conflict.
An acquaintance put her in touch with a hiring agent in Yangon who promised work in Dubai. She paid 1 million kyats (U.S. $476) upfront to be connected to a family in need of domestic help, bought her own plane ticket, and arrived in her new home on Dec. 26, 2021, nervous but hopeful she would find a measure of stability among the city’s gleaming high rises and shining shopping malls.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Nayrein Kyaw and Gemunu Amarasinghe.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Human Rights Watch and was authored by Human Rights Watch.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Family members of José Medina Andrade, a 29-year-old Venezuelan migrant and father of two, learned of his transfer to Guantanamo Bay through an article in the New York Times, revealing the latest chapter in what supporters describe as a pattern of family separation and human rights abuses in the US immigration system.
At a press conference held Sunday, February 16, outside the courthouse building in downtown Seattle, José’s wife and sister joined community organizers to demand his immediate release. They contested his designation as a “high-threat” migrant, describing him instead as a family man who fled Venezuela and had become an active member of Washington’s migrant community.
The post Family, Supporters Demand Release Of Venezuelan Migrant In Guantanamo appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Flatbush, New York — Shelves of weathered shoes line the purple basement walls of the Bridge, a nonprofit, on Dec. 14, 2024. Used coats hang from rolling racks. Residents of Floyd Bennett Field, a remote former airport-turned-migrant-shelter in Brooklyn, queue up with slips of paper in their hands, listing the ages and genders of their children. Kids weave among parents’ legs before moving to the second floor for childcare.
Waiting is part of the ordeal for migrant families in shelters. But now the stakes have increased. The 2,000 Floyd Bennett Field residents will soon be moved to other shelters, and questions loom: Do other shelters have space?
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As Trump’s administration escalates immigration enforcement raids across the United States, detaining around 1,000 immigrants on a daily basis in sweeping arrests, the movement against harsh measures has grown. Protests have been called for the weekend of February 7 through 9 to oppose Trump’s mass deportation agenda. Demonstrations have been scheduled in cities across the country including Riverside, California; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; San Antonio, Texas; Anchorage, Alaska; Chicago, Illinois; New York City; Phoenix, Arizona; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Indianapolis, Indiana.
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On January 20, as Donald Trump took office for the second time, it seemed that the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, which had recently marked the 23rd anniversary of its opening, might become as marginalized and generally forgotten as it was in his first term in office, when he largely sealed it shut for four years.
Last Wednesday, however, and seemingly out of the blue, Trump suddenly announced that he had just issued a new executive order, “Expanding Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantánamo Bay to Full Capacity”, to expand an existing migrant detention facility at the naval base.
The post How Does Trump Propose To Redefine Immigrants So They’re Beyond The Reach Of The Law? appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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Guantánamo represents a place beyond the reach of morality and the law, where America’s most dangerous enemies can be thrown, never to be seen again.
This post was originally published on Dissent Magazine.
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U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he will sign an executive order instructing the departments of Defense and Homeland Security to prepare the U.S. naval base on Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to hold tens of thousands of migrants.
“We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people,” Trump said at the White House at a ceremony to sign the Laken Riley Act, an immigrant detention bill, into law.
“Some of them are so bad we don’t even trust the countries to hold them because we don’t want them coming back. So we’re going to send them out to Guantánamo,” he said.
The post Trump To Order Gitmo Prepared As Offshore Prison For Migrants appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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The threatened deportations from Thailand of a Vietnamese ethnic minority activist and 48 Uyghurs detained after trying to flee China have cast a harsh spotlight on Bangkok.
But a flood of war refugees from Myanmar poses a bigger test for Thailand’s relatively generous policies toward migrants.
The Uyghurs, held in Thailand since 2014 after attempting to use the Southeast Asian nation to escape persecution in China, have said they fear they are about to be repatriated and staged a hunger strike to highlight their plight.
Vietnamese ethnic minority rights activist Y Quynh Bdap, who Hanoi wants to extradite and jail for terrorism, denies Vietnamese accusations that he committed 2023 attacks on government offices that resulted in nine deaths.
A Thai Immigration Bureau spokesperson said Thailand has “no policy” to deport the Uyghurs, while enforcement of a Bangkok court ruling calling for Bdap’s extradition to Vietnam is still pending.
These high-profile rights cases are playing out amid a bigger crackdown on hundreds of thousands of Myanmar citizens who have taken refuge in Thailand since a military takeover four years ago.
The displaced Myanmar citizens include junta opponents, but are largely ordinary people who seek safety and work as the civil war at home grinds into its fifth year, say those who help migrants in Thailand.
Many have been subject to arrest, involuntary repatriation and arrest again back in Myanmar as Thailand moves to regulate labor migration flows with stricter registration policies and stringent inspections.
“While all nationalities face similar risks, Myanmar nationals face dual risks – both political opposition groups and ordinary workers uninvolved in politics. If deported, they might be drafted into military service, risking their lives,” said Roisai Wongsuban, policy advocacy advisor for the Migrant Working Group, an NGO in Thailand.
Mecca for migrants
Along with scrutiny from rights and labor groups, Thailand gets plenty of credit from the United Nations and others for hosting more than 5 million non-Thai nationals.
“Because of its relatively prosperous and stable economy, Thailand has attracted millions of migrants from neighboring countries looking for a better standard of living,” said the International Organization for Migration, or IOM.
However, Thailand is not a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, meaning it doesn’t recognize refugees, and those who seek asylum can face detention and deportation.
But it is a main base of humanitarian U.N. agencies and NGOs that help refugees in the region.
“The country has also traditionally hosted hundreds of thousands of nationals from neighboring countries, who have fled their homelands due to war, internal conflict or national instability,” the IOM, a UN agency, said in a statement.
“Khaing,” a former teacher with the Civil Disobedience Movement folds clothes at her current home in Bangkok, Thailand, June 4, 2024, after fleeing Myanmar to avoid conscription by the military junta. (Lillian Suwanrumpha/AFP)Thai law has since 2016 recognized the principle of non-refoulement, or not deporting people to places where they face torture and other abuse.
But in practice, politically sensitive cases involving neighboring authoritarian states are handled differently, and Bangkok has cooperated with the rendition of Vietnamese, Lao and Cambodian dissidents by those nations’ security agents.
A middle-income country with more than a fifth of its 67 million people over 60 and a low birth rate, fast-aging Thailand needs the workers.
“We must maintain a balance between providing employment for Thai nationals and managing migrant workers to meet business needs, enabling efficient operations across the manufacturing, agricultural and industrial sectors,” Thai Labor Minister Phiphat Ratchakitprakarn told reporters in Bangkok last month.
Thailand’s neighbors need the jobs and money.
Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar –- poorer states that border Thailand and have endured war, political violence and economic stagnation -– provide the “vast majority of Thailand’s migrant stock,” the IOM noted.
Laos said it took in more than US$600 million in remittances in 2023 from 400,000 migrant workers, mostly in Thailand.
Vietnamese ethnic minority rights activist Y Quynh Bdap in an undated photo. (Y Quynh Bdap via Facebook)An IOM report last month estimated that 5.3 million non-Thai nationals were living in Thailand as of December 2023, up from 4.9 million five years earlier.
The Thai Ministry of Labor says that more than 3 million Myanmar nationals were legally living in Thailand as of March 2024, while 286,000 Lao workers were legally working there as of last November.
The tally of registered Cambodians was 460,000 as of January 2024. Cambodia’s labor ministry published a figure of 1.2 million last year.
The IOM says that more than a third of the 5.2 million migrants estimated to be in Thailand as of July 2024 are in “irregular” situations, without proper documents and not captured in ministry statistics.
Such migrants suffer abuses such as unpaid wages, excessive working hours, and unsafe working conditions – or get trafficked to work scam centers in compounds neighboring states’ borders with Thailand, advocates say.
Conscription law exodus
What makes a Thai crackdown on illegal migrants dangerous for Myanmar ‘s war-displaced citizens are policies the Myanmar junta and the Thai government adopted in 2024, migrant advocates say.
After a military offensive launched across northern Myanmar by ethnic armies in late 2023 started to turn the tide against the junta, the regime last February passed a law imposing mass conscription.
Fear of getting drafted by the unpopular junta drove so many young men to flee to Thailand in 2024 that they set a record for the highest annual number of undocumented Myanmar migrants to arrive in Thailand.
This sparked anti-migrant protests in several Thai cities and waves of mass arrests for illegal cross-border entry.
Migrant labor advocates who tracked a 120-day Thai government crackdown on illegal workers from June to September said the drive led to the arrest of 300,000 people, including about 210,000 Myanmar nationals.
“When illegal immigrants entered Myanmar due to the conscription law, hundreds of thousands were arrested,” said Min Oo, a labor official at the Thailand-based Federation of Education and Development.
People from Myanmar cross the Moei river on the Thai-Myanmar border on April 11, 2023. (Royal Thai Army /AFP)As a result of repatriations of migrants from prisons in Ranong, a Thai border town near the southern tip of Myanmar, about 800 people were handed over to the junta for conscription last year, said Thar Kyaw, head of the Meikta Thahaya Self Administrated Funeral Welfare Association.
According to Ranong locals, young men under the age of 35 were sent to three different Myanmar military units in the next-door Tanintharyi region. Disabled people were also arrested and their families had to pay ransoms to free them.
“Deporting Myanmar nationals is a violation of human rights and effectively a handover to the oppressors of the Myanmar people,” Thar Kyaw told RFA.
Tightening Thai policies
The surge in migrants from Myanmar prompted other Thai measures, including limits on daily entry visa applications at its embassies, elimination of visa renewal options and university places for students, and inspections and closures of migrant schools in southern Thailand.
“Although we pay taxes to Thailand in accordance with their laws, we still feel a sense of inferiority,” said Aung Kyaw, a Burmese student in Chiang Mai, the biggest city in northern Thailand. “And we constantly live on the brink of becoming illegal residents.”
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Wongsuban of the Migrant Working Group said Thailand wants short-term workers but doesn’t want Myanmar war refugees to stay permanently – “which is why they don’t make it easy to apply for refugee status or get residence permits.”
Thailand is fine-tuning the “MOU system” it uses to manage the employment of migrant workers through bilateral Memoranda of Understanding with Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and others.
“Managing migrant workers in Thailand must consider employment opportunities for Thai citizens, national security and prevention of labor trafficking or forced labor,” said Ratchakitprakarn, the labor minister.
The minister called on businesses employing migrant workers whose work permits are set to expire in mid-February to submit renewal applications or face “strict legal action against illegal migrant workers, as well as migrant workers and employers and businesses.”
Migrant workers and activists from Laos and Myanmar told RFA the high cost – often many months’ pay – and long wait for work permits under the MOU system drives workers to try illegal entry and work in Thailand. Illegal workers keep trafficking profitable, they add.
Myanmar nationals cross over into Thailand at the Tak border checkpoint in Thailand’s Mae Sot district on April 10, 2024. (Manan Vatsyayana/AFP)Phyo Ko Ko, who works legally at a garment factory in Thailand, told RFA Burmese the military junta back in Myanmar is now collecting taxes on registered migrant workers’ earnings, in another hit to her income.
“Workers only get a basic salary, so the money is spent on these visas and documents all year round,” said Phyo Ko Ko.
Thai media have reported on some promising developments for migrants, such as cabinet approval in October of a plan to grant citizenship to nearly half a million people, including long-term migrants and children born in Thailand, and new visas for digital, medical and cultural pursuits.
Despite the protests and crackdown of 2024, Wongsuban says the same economic priorities and necessities behind Thailand’s decision to accept migrant workers during the COVID-19 pandemic will ensure the flow of workers continues.
Even critics and activists work with the understanding that “Thailand is the only country in the region that accepts a high number of migrant workers, war refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants,” he said.
Reported by Nontarat Phaicharoen and Jon Preechawong for BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service, RFA Burmese and Phouvong for RFA Lao. Translated by Aung Naing and Phouvong. Written by Paul Eckert.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Paul Eckert.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Philadelphia is what’s known as a sanctuary city. While the term has no fixed definition, it usually refers to a city that has declared its refusal to cooperate – or even works at odds – with federal immigration enforcement. Will living in a sanctuary city safeguard Philly’s roughly 50,000 undocumented immigrants and their families if President-elect Donald Trump delivers on his promise to…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Authorities in southwestern Laos’ Champassak province are forcing migrants from other parts of the country to hand over “staying fees,” according to residents who say they are a form of exploitation by corrupt officials.
Last week, residents of other provinces living in Champassak took to social media to complain that local authorities are making them pay nearly 55,000 kip (US$2.50) per month — a substantial amount in a nation in the midst of an economic downturn with a minimum wage of 1.6 million kip (US$73) per month — to live in their villages.
When asked about the payments, a village-level official who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on condition of anonymity due to security concerns, told RFA Lao that such “staying fees” are “part of local rules to ensure authorities can provide security” in their communities.
But a migrant from another province living in Champassak, who also declined to be named, told RFA that “there should be no staying fee collection” for Lao nationals, suggesting that “authorities just want to make some extra money” to pad their salaries.
“If they collect a staying fee from foreigners or visitors from other countries, that is something justified,” he said. “What I’ve observed is that authorities try to collect as much as they can for this fee … but residents can only afford to pay around US$2.50 per month.”
Power distribution lines originating from a hydro power plant that runs through Pak Se district, Champassak province, Laos, July 25, 2018. (Ye Aung Thu/AFP)The migrant said that while authorities have no right to collect such high fees, people end up paying them because they want to avoid trouble and have no way to lodge a formal complaint.
“Residents can’t say anything and simply have to pay the fee as ordered,” he said.
An official from Champassak’s Pakse district told RFA that she believes public frustration with the staying fees is due to some corrupt officials asking for more than what local laws allow.
According to the law, she said, officials can only collect staying fees of 40,000 kip (US$1.80) per month for up to three consecutive months, and are required to provide documentation certifying temporary residency.
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But government salaries start at 1.85 million kip (US$84.50) per month, or only slightly above minimum wage, so many officials are looking for ways to supplement their pay, she said.
“Not all officials perform their duties as prescribed in the policy,” she said. “It’s because their salaries are so low — that’s why they want to earn extra money.“
The official said that provincial police “are investigating this issue,” as it falls under their jurisdiction.
“If authorities are found to have abused their power to take money from residents, they will … face punishment according to the law,” she added.
Village-level officials in other provinces told RFA that they do not charge Lao migrants a staying fee to reside in their communities.
“There is no such policy for us to do so,” said one official from a village in Savannakhet province. “We only collect money from businesses in the amount they are comfortable to donate when we need funds to build roads, schools, and small hospitals.”
Attempts by local officials to collect staying fees from Lao migrants have been shut down by central authorities in the past.
In 2018, authorities in some villages in Vientiane’s Sikhottabong district required residents from other provinces to pay 55,000 kip per family or 48,000 kip (US$2.20) per individual for three months to live there.
Shortly after the staying fees were announced, the central government ordered local authorities to end the policy.
Translated by Phouvong. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Phouvong for RFA Laos.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Since the escalation of violence in Lebanon, female migrant domestic workers face heightened vulnerability, especially with regard to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). In this article, Jasmin Lilian Diab reveals the results of the Institute for Migration Studies at the Lebanese American University’s needs assessment of 24 shelters in Lebanon that expose how SRHR remains under-prioritised, leaving women without essential health care, contraception, or protection from gender-based violence.
Since the escalation of armed conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, Lebanon has been plunged into yet another humanitarian crisis, displacing citizens, migrants and refugees alike. Amidst this turmoil, the country’s migrant domestic workers (MDWs), already vulnerable due to systemic inequities, find themselves in a precarious position. Many have taken refuge in informal or community-led shelters, often organised by the migrants themselves. These spaces, while offering immediate safety, have also brought to light a severe gap in the provision of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), which continues to fall behind more immediate survival needs such as food, water, and sanitation.
Given that 90 percent of MDWs in Lebanon are women, this gap in SRHR is especially concerning in their current displacement context. Their specific health needs are overlooked, exacerbating the challenges they already face as women in a patriarchal system and as migrants in an unstable country. Domestic migrant workers’ isolation within employers’ homes has also often meant that their SRH has been neglected. One Ethiopian woman sheltering in Baabda shares: “My employer never even asked me if I needed a check up, let alone any specific care if I had a particularly painful period, an infection or an irritation.”
As we, the research team at the Institute for Migration Studies at the Lebanese American University, conducted a needs assessment across 24 shelters housing MDWs in Lebanon, the under-prioritisation of SRHR became glaringly apparent. This reflects a pattern not only in local humanitarian responses but also mirrors global displacement trends, where SRHR consistently ranks low on the list of emergency responses. Despite its critical importance, particularly in times of crisis, SRHR continues to be treated as secondary—reinforcing harmful gaps in care for women in displacement.
“Every day, we ask for more sanitary pads, but we are given excuses,” says another domestic worker from Ethiopia sheltering in Baabda. “We need more than just food and a place to sleep. What about our bodily health and intimate hygiene?”
Her plea is echoed by migrant women across informal shelters, where a significant portion of humanitarian aid has been limited to food, basic hygiene materials, and some sanitation kits. While these contributions are vital for immediate survival, they fail to address the broader needs of the women residing in these spaces.
The importance of SRHR in displacement settings is not merely about contraception or sanitary products; it is about ensuring that women have access to sexual health services, safe maternal care, and protection from gender-based violence. These are rights—not privileges— yet in the hierarchy of humanitarian needs, they are often seen as non-urgent.
Lebanon’s shelters for MDWs, many of which are self-organised or community-led, offer a stark glimpse into the neglect of SRHR in these spaces. While we have found that NGOs, embassies, and humanitarian actors have provided various forms of aid, the basic hygiene kits provided only a limited number of sanitary pads women describe as “thrown in as an afterthought.”
For these women, living in crowded, low-privacy spaces without access to sexual health services, the neglect of their reproductive health is not only negligent but dangerous, as many have reported menstrual complications, untreated infections, and anxiety over pregnancy.
The absence of a coordinated, rights-based approach to SRHR for MDWs across shelters in Lebanon underscores a larger problem: the invisibility of marginalised women in global humanitarian responses. “I’ve been using the same pad for days because we don’t have enough,” says a Sierra Leonean woman in a shelter in Beirut. “It’s causing irritation, but what can we do? No one checks on these aspects of our health. The pads we get aren’t enough. We are mostly women here with limited running water.”
As we assess the needs of MDWs in these shelters, it is crucial that humanitarian organisations and local actors step up to fill the gaps. Lebanon is not an isolated case— globally, SRHR for women in displacement settings is consistently treated as secondary, only addressed “once everything else is taken care of.” This de-prioritisation is not just harmful—it is a violation of fundamental human rights. Comprehensive SRHR services, including sexual health clinics, contraceptive options, and protection for survivors of conflict, must be central to humanitarian efforts, not an afterthought.
Lebanon’s crisis is part of a broader global failure to prioritise the health and rights of displaced women. For MDWs in Lebanon, this neglect is yet another layer of systemic marginalisation that pushes their needs to the periphery. By integrating SRHR into our humanitarian frameworks, we can begin to address the deep-rooted inequalities that have long rendered MDWs invisible and ensure their rights are protected, especially in the midst of a displacement crisis.
All articles posted on this blog give the views of the author(s), and not the position of the Department of Sociology, LSE Human Rights, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image credit: Photo by Jasmin Lilian Diab, Baabda Migrant Shelter, Lebanon, October 2024.
This post was originally published on LSE Human Rights.
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This content originally appeared on VICE News and was authored by VICE News.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on VICE News and was authored by VICE News.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on VICE News and was authored by VICE News.This post was originally published on Radio Free.