Links I like

• As the post-Khmer Rouge generation of Cambodians grows up, they’re producing a flurry of films that mimic the vintage style of the 1960s – widely considered the country’s golden era. Much of the revival is owed to educated filmmaker refugees who are repatriating to Cambodia from France and the United States and opening the country’s first film institutes at local universities.
• Hundreds of Somali refugees are being forced at gunpoint to join rebels fighting in northern Yemen
• Paddington Bear is launching a campaign to to highlight the British Government's continued arrest and detention of hundreds of child asylum-seekers in prison-like conditions.
• A disabled athlete who has won five gold medals for Britain was set to be deported to Nigeria after losing his legal battle to live in the UK.
• British Muslims feel a greater sense of patriotism than their counterparts living in mainland Europe, according to a study by the Open Society Institute
• Rather than living in rows of neatly pegged white canvas UN tents set up in fields as the public might imagine it, aid officials have revealed that more than 50 per cent of the planet's 10.5 million refugees are now battling to get by in urban areas.
• The proportion of the population that is foreign-born has almost doubled in the past two decades to 11 per cent, or 6.7 million people.

HBO Documents Child Migrants In 'Which Way Home'

Via NPR:

Filmmaker Rebecca Cammisa's new documentary, Which Way Home, follows child migrants as they leave their families behind and follow a perilous trail, train-hopping and hiking their way across the U.S.-Mexico border.

Missing Somalis in Minneapolis

Approximately two dozen Somali boys (mostly teenagers) have gone missing in Minneapolis. It has been confirmed that they were recruited by terrorist groups. All of the men were from families with single mom's and are told that they must prove their dedication to Somalia and Islam. Once they get to the camps, they are threatened about being forced into Guantanamo by Americans. It is unclear how they are recruited. Somalis have had a difficult time assimilating into the United States. From Talk of the Nation:

The FBI believes the young men were radicalized and recruited here in the U.S., then sent to Somalia. There's concern they'll return to the U.S. to carry out attacks. It started about two years ago. Somali-American youth in Minneapolis would suddenly go missing, telling their parents they were going out with friends or just off to do some laundry — only to board planes to Africa. About 20 young men have disappeared so far, and they are believed to have traveled to Somalia to join a terrorist group.

American counterterrorism officials' worst fears are personified by a young Somali-American named Shirwa Ahmed. He left Minneapolis about 18 months ago to join an Islamic militia in Somalia called al-Shabab. Then, last October, he drove a car full of explosives into a crowd in Somaliland, killing 27 people.

The disappearance of these Midwestern Somali-Americans comes at a time when counterterrorism officials are watching the growing alliance between al-Shabab and al-Qaida. One of the questions at Wednesday's hearing was whether the young men were actually being recruited by the Somali terror group.

A security risk because the young men coming from the States arrive in the middle of Somalia's civil war armed with little more than their faith and a desire to help.

US System for Immigrant Children is Improving

Conditions have improved for unaccompanied children, but some still face inadequate services and overly harsh discipline. This is according to a new report by the Womens Commission and the law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP. The AP reports:

Researchers visited more than 30 facilities around the country to examine the effects of a 2003 change in the federal system for overseeing the thousands of children who arrive alone.

More than 90,000 such children were apprehended in 2007 along the country's southern border. Most were immediately sent back to their homeland — Mexico, in many cases — but about 8,000 were placed in U.S. custody, the report said.

Those children must be transferred to HHS' Division of Unaccompanied Children's Services, created in 2003. Before that, the former Immigration and Naturalization Service handled the apprehension and custody of unaccompanied immigrant minors.

The division has placed some children in foster care, housed others in child-friendly shelters or group facilities, and reunited many more with parents or relatives while awaiting the outcomes of their immigration cases, the report said.

Children have gotten better medical care, psychological treatment and education under the division's oversight than they did before, said Brane, director of the refugee commission's detention and asylum program.

But the study also found that as the number of children in custody surged, some facilities became more restrictive of the children's activities and behavior, and there were few therapeutic programs for those who were victims of gang violence, sexual abuse or abandonment. Some children also lacked legal representation, the study said.

Researchers also found some children weren't transferred into the division's care within the required 72 hours and were treated like criminals.

Children and staffers reported that some children arrived at shelters and homes in handcuffs. One girl said she was thrown to the ground and accused of being a drug smuggler; a boy with a broken shoulder said a Border Patrol agent twisted his arm when he did not raise it.

The study authors visited facilities in Arizona, California, Florida, Indiana, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Washington state between April 2007 and February 2008.

Protecting Unaccompanied Minors

At a three day conference hosted by the US State Department's Bureau for Population Refugees and Migration and George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, UNHCR has called for the creation of asylum and migration practices which take greater account of the specific needs of children. The conference was aimed at improving the timeliness and effectiveness of protection for the more than 1.6 million children who – either as refugees, internally displaced persons or migrants – have become separated from their parents or guardians.

Many unaccompanied children have survived arduous and dangerous journeys to escape persecution, human rights violations and violence. An estimated 1.2 million children are the victims of exploitation by human traffickers, while an unknown number have been sent by care givers, willingly or otherwise, to countries that offer the promise of a better future.

But the procedures in place to respond to separated or unaccompanied children vary wildly from country to country. The lack of government appointed counsel or guardians for unaccompanied children was noted as a perennial problem around the globe. The system should be guided by what is in the best interest of the child.

Kudos to Microsoft

While I am a mac user, I have to congratulate Microsoft on its new initiative to provide free legal help to hundreds of illegal-immigrant children who are on their own and facing deportation.

Through Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), the Redmond company and a group of law firms in nine cities will spend about $14.5 million over the next three years on an immigration legal-defense program for children. Actress Angelina Jolie is the spokesperson for the initiative.

The Seattle Times Reports:

Last year, about 8,000 illegal-immigrant children with no official adult supervision were processed in immigration court. They came from all over the world — the majority from Central America — some fleeing untold horror and abuse. Unlike adults, they are not placed in U.S. detention centers but in juvenile shelters scattered across the country. The youngest — sometimes just 3 or 4 years old — are placed in foster care. In the end, some are reunited with family members here in the U.S., but many are deported back to their home countries.

Microsoft already helps to fund a program called Volunteer Advocates for Immigrant Justice, which screens adults and children to determine their eligibility for asylum or other legal status, and trains attorneys to represent them as they work through the system.

Unaccompanied Children in UK lack support

Unaccompanied children who have fled persecution to seek asylum in Britain are being deprived of the support they need as a funding shortfall drives councils to save money, according to a report by the children's commissioner for England. There are about 6,035 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in England, of which the majority are in London.

Unaccompanied Children: Protection Denied

Last month, the British government announced that unaccompanied children who are denied the right to stay can be deported back to their home country before reaching the age of 18. (See the BBC) This clearly denies children protection by sending them back to situations of forced conscription, sexual violence, and other conflict related traumas, when as children under the age of 18, they are much more vulnerable to these situations.

Moreover, children have particular needs that are not addressed during the asylum process, which is designed for adults. Though this law supposedly tried to take a more "compassionate" approach to asylum for children, the system is still set up in a way that denies children their rights under the CRC. The law also highlights issues surrounding age assessment. On the one hand, children have to come across as "children" in order to get more benefits, but at the same time they are forced to play down their own competencies.

It appears that Europe is increasingly homogenizing its policies with that of the US which has had a history of returning unaccompanied children to their home country regardless of age.