Who are the Sahrawi People? The Sahrawi people are a primarily nomadic cultural and ethnic group of Arab and Amazigh (also known as Berber) descent. Many Sahrawi people trace their lineage to Beni Hassan Arabs, who settled in North Africa between the 11th and 14th centuries. They share cultural ties with other ethnolinguistic groups in […]
Category: Policy and Advocacy
Displacement in Sudan
On April 15, 2025, Sudan entered its third year of war. The following snapshot uses information from USCRI’s April 2025 Sudan Situation Update, as well as information as of April 16, 2025. The Largest Displacement Crisis in the World There are over 11.3 million internally displaced people (IDPs) in Sudan. Over 8 million of these […]
50 Years After the Fall of Saigon: Refugee Stories From Vietnam
Photo credit: Les Bird, Along the Southern Boundary On April 30, 1975, Saigon fell. In the years that followed, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese fled the country. Families were separated in the chaos. At least 800,000 took to the seas in search of safety. Many would spend weeks at sea, denied rescue by passing ships. […]
2025 Country Conditions: Ecuador
Ecuador, wedged between Colombia and Peru, was once known as an island of peace in the Andes. In 2020, its homicide rate was 6.7 per 100,000 inhabitants, one of the lowest in the region. Today, drug trafficking and associated gang violence have fractured this peace. In January 2024, cartel members, armed with explosives, took television […]
From Libya to Syria: Navigating Displacement Crises Post-Regime
Background The First Libyan Civil War and the Syrian Civil War were part of the broader Arab Spring uprisings that began in Tunisia in late 2010 and spread across the Middle East and North Africa. Both civil wars began in 2011 and emerged from a wave of protests demanding economic and social dignity, democracy, and […]
Situation Update: Sudan April 2025
The situation in Sudan continues to deteriorate as the country approaches two years in a civil war that has caused humanitarian catastrophe. War between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) erupted on April 15, 2023. Both sides have committed atrocities. In January 2025, the U.S. Department of State determined that […]
What is Climate Migration?
In 2024, extreme weather events forced more than 800,000 people from their homes—the highest year on record. Climate-related environmental disasters are becoming only more common. Despite this mounting crisis, there remains no reliable humanitarian immigration pathway for people seeking safety from environmental disaster. People forced to move because of climate-related environmental disasters lack legal […]
Refugee Litigation – Where Things Stand
Litigation is ongoing, and this brief will not be updated to reflect future events and updates. The facts and events of this brief are current, as of 8:50 AM EDT on April 2, 2025. On January 20, 2025, the Administration put an indefinite pause on refugee admissions and processing through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program […]
When Accounting for War Crimes, Include Refugee Voices
Lessons from Colombia to Reckon with the Syrian Civil War What Came Before In March of 2011, the Syrian Civil War began. Bashar al-Assad’s government responded to anti-regime protests with a campaign of cruelty, razing the city of Deraa and torturing dissidents. Defectors from Assad’s forces mounted the Free Syrian Army (FSA) while jihadist […]
Shifts in Gender-Related Refugee Protection Eligibility Guidelines
Refugee and asylum eligibility is largely determined using the “refugee” definition from the 1951 Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol (“Refugee Convention”), which defines a refugee as a person who, “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country […]
