SIHMA Press Review for February 2026
Africa
Amnesty International
26 January 2026
Algeria/Tunisia: Forced return of asylum seeker and political dissident a violation of international law
Amnesty International has condemned Algeria's forced return of former Tunisian parliamentarian and government critic Seifeddine Makhlouf to Tunisia on 18 January 2026 as a violation of the principle of non-refoulement, since he was a registered UNHCR asylum seeker who had fled to Algeria in July 2024 after facing arbitrary detention and military-court prosecution in Tunisia following President Kais Saied's dissolution of parliament; despite his protected status, Algerian authorities imprisoned him for irregular entry, later placed him in arbitrary detention while denying him access to UNHCR appointments, and ultimately handed him to Tunisian police without notice, denying him any chance to contest the decision, after which he was immediately detained in Tunisia to serve sentences issued in his absence. Amnesty's Sara Hashash called this a breach of Algeria's obligations under international human rights and refugee law and an act of collusion with Tunisia's escalating crackdown on dissent, urging Tunisia to drop the charges and grant a fair retrial, while the organisation situates the case within a broader pattern of Algeria's collective expulsions and arbitrary detentions of migrants and asylum seekers, a gap in protection linked to Algeria's lack of a comprehensive national asylum framework despite ratifying the 1951 Refugee Convention, and highlighted close Algeria-Tunisia security cooperation, citing the 2021 forced return of another UNHCR-registered refugee, Slimane Bouhafs, as a precedent.
Info Migrants
13 January 2026
Sudan: Massive displacement after more than 1,000 days of war
The conflict between Sudan's Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which erupted in Khartoum on 15 April 2023 after former military allies turned on each other, has now raged for more than 1,000 days and stands as one of the world's most severe yet least-reported humanitarian crises, worsened by global cuts to humanitarian aid that the Migration Policy Institute warns have reduced support for displaced people and may prolong the conflict. The toll has been staggering: an estimated 150,000 lives were lost within the first year alone, and by July 2025 around 12 million people had been forced from their homes, including 7.7 million internally displaced, more than half of them children, while approximately 4.1 million others fled the country entirely, among them roughly 3.2 million Sudanese nationals and about 800,000 refugees from other countries who returned home or relocated elsewhere, prompting aid agencies to warn that ignoring the crisis would represent "a failure of our core humanity."
Aljazeera
07 January 2026
Refugees return to ruined Nigerian town despite threats from armed groups
After a decade of displacement following a deadly Boko Haram attack, 65-year-old farmer Isa is among thousands who have returned to Malam Fatori, a Nigerian border town on Lake Chad, as part of a government resettlement programme that local authorities call a success (with over 5,000 returnee households and a population exceeding 20,000), even though the town remains scarred by conflict, with damaged homes, choked irrigation canals, and farmland that residents can only cautiously cultivate near town due to nearby ISWAP fighters. Life in Malam Fatori is shaped by what one resident calls "two pressures," Boko Haram's threat and strict military control, with heavy security, checkpoints, curfews, and permit requirements restricting farming, fishing, and movement, contributing to soaring food prices, malnutrition concerns, and most families eating only twice a day, while the UN has cautioned that returns must be voluntary, safe, and sustainable rather than premature. Despite these hardships, inadequate schools and healthcare, and residents describing feeling "trapped" between insecurity and restriction, community rebuilding continues through women's cooperatives, fishermen repairing boats, bricklayers reconstructing homes, and even reformed former Boko Haram members helping protect farmers, with returnees like Bulama Shettima and Isa framing their return not as a guarantee of safety but as an act of belonging and hope, determined to reclaim their land and rebuild a future for their children.
South Africa
CDH
19 Jan 2026
Proposed amendments to South Africa's immigration laws and policies
South Africa's revised draft White Paper on immigration aims to attract and retain skills and investment, modernise and regularise mobility, ensure universal civil registration, and maintain a humane refugee regime, and it proposes moving citizenship applications to a points-based system assessing skills, economic and social contribution, overseen by a new Citizenship Advisory Panel, while preserving non-economic pathways (e.g. for spouses and refugees) with stricter anti-abuse measures, ministerial discretion in exceptional cases, affirmed dual citizenship, and a shift toward an Intelligent Population Register with biometrics and a National Digital ID. On visas and residence, it proposes a non-work renewable visitor's visa (with limited exceptions), a standalone start-up visa, converting the business visa into an investment visa with quotas, an age threshold for retirement visas, replacing financial-independence permanent residence with investment-based residence, and a new points-assessed skilled worker visa replacing the general work and critical skills visas, offering a path to permanent residence without employer sponsorship, work rights for spouses of relative's visa holders, a new sports and arts visa, and a quota-and-window system for permanent residence approvals. On governance and enforcement, it proposes creating an Immigration Advisory Board, reintroducing regulated immigration practitioners, establishing an independent Home Affairs review/appeals authority and specialised immigration courts to speed up adjudication, and replacing blanket undesirability bans for overstayers with administrative fines.
The Guardian
18 January 2026
Smuggled to suburbia: no end to danger for Ethiopians looking for better life in South Africa
Ethiopian migration to South Africa along the perilous "southern route" has been ongoing since Nelson Mandela opened the country to other Africans in 1994, driven by a mix of political repression, economic hardship, and comparisons with wealthy returnees, and has recently drawn attention after 12 young Ethiopian men were arrested in Johannesburg's Mulbarton suburb, allegedly having been held captive by smugglers demanding ransom from their families, a scheme reflecting how the roughly 3,000-mile journey through Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, and Mozambique, now largely originating from the Hosanna region, has grown increasingly dangerous and extortionate, with rival smuggling gangs intercepting and trading migrants and past incidents including 64 deaths in a Mozambique truck in 2020. Personal accounts illustrate both the risks and evolving nature of the route: Aseged Yohannes, who fled political persecution in 2012, found relatively safe passage and now runs a store in Johannesburg, while Sahlu Abebe, who left in 2015 seeking economic opportunity, lost a friend to illness on the journey, was jailed for six months in Malawi, and was later robbed twice in South Africa, leading him to warn others against making the same journey; researchers note that as many as 200,000 Ethiopians now live in South Africa, with tens of thousands arriving annually.
HIAS
15 January 2026
Medical Xenophobia in South Africa and Around the World
Medical xenophobia, discrimination against refugees, migrants, and displaced people in healthcare settings, has escalated sharply in South Africa, where vigilante groups like Operation Dudula and March for March have taken to physically blocking non-South Africans from hospitals and clinics despite healthcare being a constitutionally protected right, even though migrants make up only about four percent of the population and systemic issues like staff shortages and underfunding are unrelated to this exclusion; real-world consequences include people with diabetes, HIV, and other chronic conditions, including HIAS-served refugees and asylum seekers such as Claudine, Lailia, and Console, being turned away from care, though South Africa's Supreme Court has since reaffirmed refugees' and migrants' constitutional right to healthcare and called for action against the vigilante groups.
Southern Africa
IOL
20 January 2026
Two Zimbabwean nationals charged after 33 undocumented children found at Beitbridge
Two Zimbabwean nationals, Decent Chokuwamba, 32, and Risenga Makhenza, 23, appeared before the Musina Magistrate's Court after Border Management Authority officials caught them on 13 January 2026 loading 33 undocumented minors, aged four to 15, into a vehicle at the Beitbridge Port of Entry with the apparent intent of taking them from South Africa to Zimbabwe; the children were handed to the Department of Social Development for care, and the accused, charged with aiding illegal immigrants and contravening immigration laws, remain in custody with the case postponed to 22 January 2026 for profiling. This incident follows a similar interception just days earlier of more than 20 undocumented minors, aged five to 17, near the Limpopo River, where only one of ten accompanying adults was confirmed to be a parent of any of the children, prompting BMA Commissioner Michael Masiapato to vow zero tolerance for child exploitation and illegal border crossings as authorities describe a growing pattern of such cases at Beitbridge and tighten controls in response.
SOS Media Burundi
08 January 2026
Nduta–Nyarugusu : when Tanzania razes camps to force the return of Burundian refugees
Tanzania has continued demolishing Burundian refugee camps, with more than 4,000 homes, including schools and health centres, razed across two sections of the Nduta camp since 6 January 2026, following a similar operation days earlier that destroyed over 3,000 houses in the Nyarugusu camp, leaving hundreds of families homeless, sparking arrests of resisting youth, and causing trauma-related hospitalisations among women, according to a Médecins Sans Frontières source. Authorities frame the demolitions as encouragement for "voluntary" return, timed to coincide with mass registrations for repatriation in more compliant sections while targeting more resistant ones, but refugees and human rights organisations argue the destruction, lack of alternatives, and climate of fear amount to coercive, disguised forced repatriation that would breach Tanzania's obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention, a claim sharpened by UNHCR's and the Tanzanian and Burundian governments' assertion that over 97% of Burundian refugees no longer need protection given Burundi's stability, an assessment refugees themselves dispute. With the camps set for permanent closure by 31 March 2026, some refugees are fleeing toward Kenya, Uganda, and Zambia to seek asylum elsewhere, even as Tanzania continues to host more than 110,000 Burundian refugees who fled the 2015 political crisis under former president Pierre Nkurunziza.
Africa News
03 December 2025
Mozambique violence forces 100,000 to flee as displacement crisis deepens
Close to 100,000 people in northern Mozambique's Nampula Province have fled in recent weeks as armed groups linked to the so-called Islamic State stormed villages, burning homes and attacking civilians, marking the fourth major displacement wave in recent months and straining already fragile host communities where schools, churches, and open spaces are now crowded with newly arrived families. This insurgency, which began in Cabo Delgado in 2017, has displaced more than 1.3 million people to date and has recently spread into Nampula and Nissa Provinces, bringing violence into areas that had previously been hosting the displaced; with UNHCR funding for the region only at 50% of what's needed this year and an estimated $40 million required next year, overcrowded shelters and inadequate response are reportedly forcing some people back into unsafe areas.
Categories:
Tags:
- African Migration News.
- Islamic State In Africa
- Nampula Province
- Cabo Delgado Insurgency
- Mozambique Displacement
- Forced Repatriation
- Burundian Refugees
- Nyarugusu Camp
- Nduta Camp
- Tanzania Refugee Camps
- Zimbabwe
- Child Trafficking Prevention
- Undocumented Minors
- Beitbridge Border
- Healthcare Access Rights
- Operation Dudula
- Medical Xenophobia
- Johannesburg
- Human Smuggling
- Southern Route
- Ethiopian Migration
- Immigration Advisory Board
- Points-based Citizenship
- Draft White Paper
- South Africa Immigration Laws
- Lake Chad Resettlement
- Malam Fatori
- ISWAP
- Boko Haram
- Nigeria
- Refugee Returnees
- Internal Displacement
- Humanitarian Crisis
- Rapid Support Forces
- Sudanese Armed Forces
- Sudan War Displacement
- Slimane Bouhafs
- Seifeddine Makhlouf
- Tunisia
- Algeria
- Arbitrary Detention
- Political Dissidents
- UNHCR Asylum Seekers
- Non-refoulement
- Forced Return