News Digest

Global refugee crises will hinder resettlement of Asian ‘boat people’: UNHCR

Resettling asylum seekers who are among the thousands of boat people in temporary shelters in Indonesia and Malaysia will prove “extremely difficult” due to the mounting refugee crises around the world, a U.N. official said. Responding to international concern about thousands of migrants adrift at sea, Indonesia and Malaysia on Wednesday said they would offer shelter to 7,000 migrants, provided they were repatriated or resettled in third countries within a year. Many migrant boats have been pushed back to sea by Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia this month. The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR estimated on Friday that some 3,500 migrants are still stranded on boats with dwindling supplies, and repeated its appeal for the region’s governments to rescue them.

Those places are very, very precious. There are perhaps 100,000 people a year who manage to be referred for third country resettlement.

Alistair Boulton, UNHCR’s assistant regional representative

Meanwhile, the head of the Myanmar state from which thousands of Rohingya Muslims are fleeing denied that persecution had prompted the exodus after the United States called on the country to deal with its root causes. Many Rohingya have become prey to human traffickers on the journey south to Thailand, Malaysia and beyond as they flee what U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday were “the desperate conditions they face in Rakhine State." Also on Friday, Myanmar’s navy found a boat carrying more than 200 migrants, a government spokesman said.