As Covid-19 continues to spread around the world, allegations of migrant smuggling networks evolving, changing, and undergoing drastic transformations as a result of the pandemic are starting to emerge.

In the aid sector, the onset of ‘digital humanitarianism’  has produced a significant amount of hype with frequent promises that the latest digital device or platform will be a ‘game changer’. 

As the Covid-19 pandemic is spreading across the globe, its impact touches all corners of society. What happens when the pandemic reaches areas that were already dealing with various sorts of humanitarian challenges? How are humanitarian operations being impacted both directly and indirectly?

A reflection on motivations and impacts of international volunteering.

While much attention has been given to the securitisation of global health responses – also in the case of Corona – less systematic focus has been given to the partial criminalisation of infectious diseases as a strategy of global health governance.

With increasing enthusiasm, European states are reviving the Refugee Convention’s cessation provisions in service of their return-oriented refugee policies. This practice threatens the careful balance established by refugee law between the security of refugee status, on the one hand, and its impermanence on the other.

In 2015, more than one million migrants reached Europe in the largest movement of people since WWII. In order to seize control of “irregular migration,” the EU and Schengen countries instituted a new policy of regional containment that targeted migrants arriving via major land and sea routes.

On November 22nd 2019 the Cartagena Declaration on Refugees (Cartagena Declaration) turns 35. It is a paramount document on refugees’ protection in Latin America, setting both normative standards and the regional tone for policies and actions in this area, thus, being a cornerstone of Refugee Law in the region.

Why are local communities so often targeted in South Sudan’s civil wars? How do their attackers justify violence against people defined as civilians in international law?

While localisation is high on the agenda for humanitarian actors, at present, humanitarian governance does not support the localisation agenda.

On October 23, 2019, 39 bodies were found inside a refrigerator lorry on an industrial estate in Essex. The vehicle was registered in Varna, Bulgaria, had entered the UK four days before and was driven by a man from Northern-Ireland. The victims – 38 adults and a teenager – were identified as Vietnamese. This incident is just the latest example of vehicle-induced migrant mass fatalities.

Reflections on some of the new directions in humanitarian governance and the ambiguity of some of the principal techniques.