Day: March 13, 2022

IOM Yemen DTM’s Flow Monitoring Registry (FMR) monitors migrant arrivals on the southern coastal border and Yemeni return locations on Yemen’s northern border with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Enumerators placed at Flow Monitoring Points (FMPs) record migrant arrivals and returning Yemeni nationals in order to identify dierent patterns of migration, and to provide quantitative estimates to help define the population of irregular migrants entering the country. FMR is not representative of all flows in Yemen and should be understood as only indicative of migration trends of the unknown total number of migrants arriving in Yemen at FMPs during the time frame indicated.

Access constraints limit the ability to collect data at some migrant arrival points.

In February 2022, IOM Yemen DTM recorded 8,358 migrants entering Yemen, compared to 5,940 migrant arrivals in January 2022. This increase is likely due to improved weather conditions and the deteriorating security situation in Ethiopia.

The Eastern Route, one of the busiest maritime migration routes in the world, witnessed a decrease in migration flows due to COVID19-related movement restrictions. With the recent loosening of restrictions on international movements, there has been a steady increase in the number of migrant arrivals into Yemen.

Due to the deteriorating humanitarian crisis in Yemen and the challenges in moving onwards towards KSA, many migrants have opted to return to the Horn of Africa. DTM teams in Djibouti and Somalia recorded that during February 2022, a total of 668 migrants took the risky return by boat form Yemen to travel home. Moreover, DTM recorded 4,685 Yemeni returns from KSA during the month of February 2022, compared to 5,760 in January 2022. Between 1 January and 28 February 2022, an estimated 14,298 migrants and 10,445 Yemeni migrant returnees arrived in Yemen.

Source: International Organization for Migration

KINSHASA, A train crash in the southeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo has killed at least 60 people, the state rail company said.

“[Currently] the toll is 61 dead, men, women and children [and] 52 injured who have been evacuated,” Marc Manyonga Ndambo, director of infrastructure at the SNCC train operator, said on Saturday.

Local media quoted the provincial governor, Fifi Masuka, as saying 60 people had been killed.

It was a freight train which was carrying “several hundred stowaways”, said Manyonga.

“Some of the bodies were still trapped in the wagons that had fallen into the ravines,” he added.

Manyonga said the train was made up of 15 wagons, 12 of which were empty. It was coming from Luen in a neighbouring province destined for the mining town of Tenke, close to Kolwezi, the capital of Lualaba province in southern DRC.

It derailed at 11:50pm on Thursday near the village of Buyofwe, about 200km from Kolwezi, “at a place where there are ravines”, into which seven of the 15 wagons fell, he said.

“My team is working hard to clear the track by Monday,” Manyonga added. He did not say how the crash had happened.

Another provincial official, Jean-Serge Lumu, told reporters “seven bodies were recovered by the families, 53 others are still at the accident scene”.

Train derailments are common in the DRC, as are shipwrecks of overloaded boats on the country’s lakes and rivers.

Due to the lack of passenger trains or passable roads, people use goods trains to travel long distances.

Last October, nine people died after a train derailed in the city of Kenzenze in the territory of Mutshatsha in the same province.

In 2019, at least 24 people were killed and 31 injured in an accident when a freight train carrying stowaways derailed in the Bena Leka settlement in Kasai province.

Source: Bahrain News Agency

OUAGADOUGOU, BURKINA FASO — Gunmen killed at least 13 gendarmes in an ambush Sunday at Taparko, a mining town in northern Burkina Faso regularly targeted by jihadist fighters, security sources said.

“A team from the gendarmerie at Dori fell into an ambush set by armed individuals this afternoon near Taparko,” a security source told AFP. As well as the 13 confirmed dead, a number of other gendarmes were missing, the source added.

Another security source said reinforcements had been called in and were searching the sector for eight missing gendarmes.

An additional eight gendarmes were wounded in the attack, two of them seriously, and they had been evacuated for treatment in Tougouri.

The attack came as two people were killed and several others injured when a bus hit a landmine Sunday, also near Taparko.

Source: Voice of America

WASHINGTON — Russia may default on its debts in the wake of unprecedented sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine, but that would not trigger a global financial crisis, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Sunday.

Georgieva told CBS’s “Face the Nation” program that sanctions imposed by the United States and other democracies were already having a “severe” impact on the Russian economy and would trigger a deep recession there this year.

The war and the sanctions would also have significant spillover effects on neighboring countries that depended on Russian energy supplies and had already resulted in a wave of refugees compared to that seen during World War II, she said.

Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a “special operation.”

The sanctions were also limiting Russia’s ability to access its resources and service its debts, which meant a default was no longer viewed as “improbable,” Georgieva said.

Asked if such a default could trigger a financial crisis around the world, she said, “For now, no.”

The total exposure of banks to Russia amounted to around $120 billion, an amount that while not insignificant, was “not systemically relevant,” she said.

Asked if Russia could access the $1.4 billion in emergency IMF funding approved for Ukraine last week if Moscow won the war and installed a new government, Georgieva said the funds were in a special account accessible only by the Ukrainian government.

An IMF official said that referred to the “internationally recognized government of Ukraine.”

The IMF last year blocked access to Afghanistan’s funds by the Taliban after they seized control of the government, citing lack of clarity over recognition of the Taliban rulers within the international community.

Georgieva last week said the IMF would downgrade its previous forecast for 4.4% global economic growth in 2022 as a result of the war, but said the overall trajectory remained positive.

Growth remained robust in countries like the United States that had been fast to recover from COVID-19 pandemic, she told CBS.

The impact would be most severe in terms of driving up commodity prices and inflation, potentially leading to hunger and food insecurity in parts of Africa, she said.

Source: Voice of America