Human Rights Archive

At the beginning of June, around 1,000 Syrian refugees found themselves stranded in the desert just inside Jordan, with precarious access to food and water. Their flight from Syria was driven by the desire to escape that country’s ongoing civil war, which has helped generate the largest refugee crisis since the aftermath of World War II. But their plight in the desert was the immediate result of Jordan gradually tightening its border to Syrian refugees, even as it remains officially open to them. It may be a sign of things to come, as the governments bordering Syria tire of hosting […]

Over the past month, Myanmar’s multiple domestic crises have spilled over its borders and into South and Southeast Asia, setting back the country’s reforms just before Myanmar’s highly anticipated national elections this fall. Rohingya Muslims fleeing violence and discrimination in western Myanmar have attracted the most global news coverage. Their plight in rickety boats with little food or water has sparked international calls for Myanmar’s government to take stronger measures to end discrimination against the Rohingya and address the crisis at its source. But the flight of the Rohingya is just one issue undermining Myanmar’s stability. Fighting has flared again […]

Nearly 60 million people last year were displaced by war, conflict and persecution, the highest number ever on record, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) annual report today. The largest source of refugees is Syria, with 3.9 million Syrian refugees in 107 countries. Syria overtook Afghanistan in the U.N.’s ranking; Afghanistan had previously held that position for more than 30 years. As U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonia Guterres said, “We are witnessing a paradigm change, an unchecked slide into an era in which the scale of global forced displacement as well as the response required […]

The Philippines’ labor export system is a potential model for other developing countries. But there are concerns about how Filipino migrants are treated abroad, as well as the potential effects of a skills drain at home. In the 1970s, in order to address an escalating unemployment rate and balance of payments crisis, the Philippine government adopted a comprehensive range of policies that, among other things, systematically encouraged the export of contract labor from throughout the country. The program, developed during the long military dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, was rationalized as a temporary measure to address the country’s immediate problems. Four […]

Last month, Costa Rica announced an initiative that aims to eradicate child labor by 2020. In an email interview, Noortje Denkers, a program official for the International Labour Organization’s International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour, discussed the fight against child labor in Central America. WPR: How widespread is child labor in Central America, and in what sectors is child labor most common? Noortje Denkers: According to global estimates on child labor from 2012, the broader regional figures show that Latin America and the Caribbean, including Central America, has shown the greatest progress in the fight against child labor […]

The plight of migrants and refugees has made headlines around the world in recent months. Despite the globalized economy, governments remain stubborn about the movement of human beings across national borders. This report covers ongoing migration crises from the Mediterranean to Africa to Southeast Asia. For the next two weeks, all of the articles linked below are free for non-subscribers. Europe: Thousands of African and Middle Eastern migrants fleeing to Europe in unsafe boats have drowned in the Mediterranean in high-profile incidents this year. The European Union has drawn much criticism for its inability to prevent these tragedies. Not the […]

Over the past month, as many as 8,000 migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh found themselves adrift at sea off the coasts of Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia without adequate water, shelter and food. They were primarily Rohingya refugees seeking asylum from persecution in Myanmar and impoverished Bangladeshis searching for economic opportunities. The plight of these men, women and children was the result of a short-lived but dramatic crackdown by Southeast Asian states in early May on the movement of refugees and migrants into their territory by smuggling networks. That resulted in what one observer from the International Organization for Migration described […]