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BANGKOK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Global brands and small firms are providing aid to migrant workers in Thailand after a jump in coronavirus cases, a move backed by activist groups on Thursday who urged businesses to help pay for testing and access healthcare.

In Samut Sakhon, a province south of Bangkok where an outbreak began at a shrimp market late last year, seafood companies are providing assistance to migrant workers - mostly from Myanmar - who are a major source of labour for the industry in the area.

Companies that have donated food and drinks in Samut Sakhon included Charoen Pokphand Foods (CPF), Thailands largest agriculture business, Thai Union Group, the worlds biggest producer of tuna, and drinks giant Osotspa.

Kimberly Rogovin, a coordinator for Global Labor Justice International Labor Rights Forum, a workers rights organisation, welcomed the aid but said more needed to be done to address the current crisis and prevent future disasters.

While it is positive to see big brands giving aid and food to migrant workers, the private sector must also ensure workers are paid decent wages, have access to healthcare, and do not bear the burden of paying for COVID-19 tests or new registration requirements, she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Thailand is dealing with its worst coronavirus outbreak, with more than 200 new infections each day, raising the total so far to more than 11,000 cases, including 69 deaths.

The current crisis has left many migrant workers unable to find jobs and struggling to survive in Samut Sakhon, which has an estimated 400,000 migrant workers according to activists, and has been under lockdown since last month.

Migrant worker charities say they have received complaints from workers who had been asked by employers to obtain medical certificates showing negative COVID-19 test results - which can be expensive - in order to return to their jobs.

We are well aware of the hardships that Thai and migrant people are facing ... and have offered a helping hand to Myanmar people (by providing them with food), CPF chief executive Prasit Boondoungprasert said in a statement.

Thailands second-largest mobile operator True Corporation has donated mobile phone SIM cards to provide internet access, while rival operator Total Access Communication has bolstered its network near migrant worker housing in Samut Sakhon.

The Raks Thai Foundation, a legal aid charity that has an office in Samut Sakhon, said it had received donations from three local companies since December.

Global brands such as food and drink giant PepsiCo, chocolate maker Mars and consumer goods company Colgate-Palmolive also provided support last year, it added.

At the end of the day, migrant workers help support the Thai economy and they should be given equal rights, said Phumjai Krisintu, director of resources development at the foundation.

Reporting by Nanchanok Wongsamuth @nanchanokw; Editing by Michael Taylor. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers the lives of people around the world who struggle to live freely or fairly. Visit news.trust.org

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Big brands, small firms offer pandemic aid to Thailand's migrant workers - Reuters

Yet another migrant caravan is forming in Honduras, the latest driven by hope that an incoming Joe Biden presidency will open gates closed by the outgoing Trump administration.

According to fresh media reports, this caravan hopes to leave San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on January 15, which in the unlikely event it can get past Guatemala and Mexican pandemic-related border closures, seems timed to reach the U.S. southern border by Biden's January 20 inauguration. Reuters reports that the caravan is being organized on social media, including one Facebook group that boasts more than 5,500 members who exchange tips and advice on how to reach "paradise" in their journeys north.

Caravan formations and dispersals have increased as the incoming Biden administration promises to undo Trump's deterrence-focused illegal immigration policies and to immediately propose an immigration reform bill to the new Democratic Congress that likely would provide amnesty for millions of illegally present immigrants. Such talk has energized the universe of aspiring illegal immigrants, such as up to 400 Cubans who stormed the international bridge between Juarez and El Paso on December 29, chanting "Biden! Biden! Biden!" while demanding to be let in.

However, like those Cubans already in the U.S.-Mexico border vicinity and a failed caravan that Honduran police broke up in December, this new-forming one may also still have picked a premature departure date, as it will still face pandemic-related border closures in Central America and Mexico, and a U.S. border that will still be under the sway of President Trump's tough policies for some weeks or months.

As I have often noted, at issue with the caravans is that when a first one finally succeeds in crossing the American border, many more will no doubt follow through the breach and quickly lead to another mass surge and humanitarian crisis there.

The mass-migration caravans that first came into vogue in late 2018 are favored because for a time (long before any hurricanes) they successfully delivered thousands of Central Americans over the U.S. border by overwhelming authorities, detention facilities, and normal asylum system processes.

In addition to their successful human deliveries onto the U.S. side of the border, the caravans were far cheaper and safer for the migrants than hiringsmugglers. Eventually, though, a variety of Trump's policies forced Central American governments and Mexico to break up at least five large caravans in late 2019 through December 2020 and posed a credible threat that any who reached the southern border would be promptly pushed back into Mexico.

One of the most effective Trump arrangements was his push to force Mexico'sPresident Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to station 6,000 Mexican national guard troops on that country's southern border with Guatemala. The deployment has broken up several major caravans and deported their participants back home on buses.

But President-elect Biden and Obrador in December discussed a new more "humane strategy" to address regional migration. Little in the reporting of this meeting suggests what may become of this key troop deployment.

But while many American news outlets now ascribe migrant motivations to recent hurricanes that struck Central America, the truth is that, long before those fall 2020 weather events, aspiring border-crossers like the Cubans have often cited as their main motivation an acute awareness that U.S. Democrats under a Biden White House would undo Trump's deterrence policies and swing wide open the gates to them.

Furthermore, untold thousands of aspiring "extra-continental" U.S. border-crossers are coming from countries further south and from around the world that those hurricanes did not strike, but who have found themselves slowed by pandemic border closures.

For instance, the Havana Times newspaper quoted a Cuban migrant couple in the "Por la Libertad" caravan temporarily stopped in Suriname as saying it formed as a result of Biden's November 3election win.

Media coverage of any predicted mass-migration crisis at the southern border will no doubt choose the hurricane narrative, rather than the fact that Biden's campaign promises on immigration have excited and animated the vast world of aspiring migrants to charge the border in caravans or from Mexico. But that explanation is disingenuous in the face of chants like "Biden! Biden! Biden!"

To be continued . . .

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Yet Another Caravan Forming to Test American Border Resolve - Immigration Blog

Panama/Geneva, 15 January 2021 The Red Cross is preparing to provide humanitarian assistance to migrants ready to depart Honduras for Guatemala as part of a migrant caravan. More than 4,000 thousand people are expected to join the caravan that will depart from the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula today at 5:00 am local time.

The Honduran Red Cross will support up to 6,000 migrants departing from the northern and southern zones of the country. Humanitarian Service Points will be enabled at the point of departure in the city centre of San Pedro Sula, as well as along the migration route. These spaces will provide access to essential services, such as water, face masks, pre-hospital care, information about safety, security and COVID-19 prevention, as well as means of communication for migrants to keep in touch with their families.

During their journey, people are exposed to dehydration, injuries, and fainting. Often, they also lose contact with family members. Providing support and protection is a humanitarian imperative, especially to vulnerable migrants, such as children, youth, women, indigenous populations, elderly, disable, and LGBTQI people.

At the Guatemalan side of the border, ten Humanitarian Service Points are currently being set up along the border and the migration route. Red Cross volunteers specially trained to work in this context are ready to provide protection and holistic humanitarian assistance to 4,000 people, including psychosocial support, higyene kits, clean water, and information on self-care and COVID-19 prevention.

Martha Keays, Regional Director for the Americas at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), said: The potential exclusion of migrants from the COVID-19 prevention plans is concerning. It isourduty, as the worlds largest humanitarian network, toensure thattheyare not forgotten. The authorities in the places of origin, transit and destination, as well as international organisations, civil society and the migrants themselves should work hand in hand to ensure that no one is left behind.

Migrants have been disproportionately affected by the impact of COVID-19. Many of them have been unable to comply with the preventative measures necessary to keep them healthy and safe during the COVID-19 outbreak, due to limited access to essential services such as health, water, sanitation and hygiene as well as poor and unsafe living and working conditions. They have also been hit the hardest by the economic fallout of the pandemic.

The combination of COVID-19, social exclusion, discrimination, violence, and climate-related disasters happening at the same time, with a magnitude rarely seen before in Central America, poses new humanitarian challenges. Eta and Iota have destroyed livelihoodsacross a region that was already facing an economic crisis and where the income of thousands of families had already been severely depleted due to the pandemic. People are at risk of resorting to coping strategiessuch as selling their animals and properties,eating less food, andabandoning their hometowns to look for new ways of generating income.

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Red Cross: Providing services and protection to migrants in Central America is a humanitarian imperative - International Federation of Red Cross and...

BIHAC, Bosnia (Reuters) - More than a thousand migrants from Asia, the Middle East and North Africa were left to sleep in the cold after their camp in northwestern Bosnia burned down amid a dispute among Bosnian politicians over where to house them.

On Wednesday, a fire destroyed the camp in Lipa housing about 1,200 people. Police and UN officials have said the blaze was probably started by migrants unhappy at the temporary closure of the camp, scheduled for the same day, and uncertainty about where they would be relocated in Bosnia.

Dozens of men spent the night at a damaged metal container near the site of the fire, where only a ghostly steel construction remained. Smoke was still rising from some burned patches of ground on Thursday morning.

Other migrants tried to erect nylon tents and slept fully dressed on the frozen ground. Most of them walked through the woods towards the town of Bihac, near the Croatian border, avoiding areas marked with warnings about landmines remaining from the Bosnian war in the 1990s.

About 10,000 migrants from Asia, the Middle East and North Africa are stuck in Bosnia, hoping to reach wealthier countries in the European Union.

I couldnt sleep last night, I sat all night, said Bylal from Pakistan, adding that he would wait to see if the government would provide them with a new shelter.

The Lipa camp, which was opened last spring as a temporary shelter for the summer months 25 km away from Bihac, was set to be shut on Wednesday for winter refurbishing. But Bosnias authorities failed to find alternative accommodation for residents.

The central government wanted the migrants to temporarily return to the Bira camp in Bihac, which was shut down in October, but local authorities disagreed saying that other parts of Bosnia should also share the burden of the migrant crisis.

Please open the Bira camp so everybody goes there, its very good there, said Yasin, also from Pakistan. Here its cold, we cant stay here, we dont have food, we are hungry.

The European Union, which had supported Bosnia with 60 million euros to manage the migrant crisis and pledged 25 million euros more, has repeatedly asked the authorities to find an alternative to the unsuitable Lipa camp, warning of an unfolding humanitarian crisis.

We urge ... the authorities to rise above political considerations and temporarily reopen the centre Bira in Bihac, the EU said in a statement on Wednesday.

Reporting by Dado Ruvic; Additional reporting and writing by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Alexandra Hudson

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Thousands of migrants left without shelter after Bosnia camp burned down - Reuters

A 1,500-page black book documenting hundreds of illegal pushbacks against asylum seekers by authorities on Europes external borders was released last week and handed over to the EU commission.

Compiled by the watchdog organisation Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN), the Black Book of Pushbacks is a collection of 892 group testimonies, detailing the experiences of 12,654 victims of human rights violations along the Balkan migration route, one of the most gruelling in the recent migrant crisis given the alleged violence of border police officers.

Every day, thousands of people, mainly from south Asia, the Middle East and north Africa, attempt to cross the Balkans to reach Europe. It is an arduous journey with virtually no welcoming facilities for migrants, who are forced to spend most of the trip in makeshift camps or in train stations.

For years, charities have denounced the abuses, particularly in Croatia, as asylum seekers are systematically beaten, robbed and pushed back. Between January and November 2020, the Danish Refugee Council recorded 15,672 pushbacks from Croatia to Bosnia-Herzegovina, with more than 60% of these reportedly violent.

This book which brings together four years of work points to a gaping hole in accountability for perpetrating authorities, including member states and EU agencies, like Frontex, Simon Campbell, field coordinator for BVMN, told the Guardian. The testimonies, committed here to paper, represent a definitive archive of evidence, detailing systematic violations against people on the move, such as breaches of international law on asylum and returns, as well as the prohibition of torture.

More than 15 organisations have contributed to the book, which contains maps, data, photos and other key information and was made in collaboration with the United Left block of the European parliament.

Last Friday, Malin Bjrk, a member of the parliaments committee on civil liberties, justice and home affairs and Miguel Urbn, co-founder of Spanish political party Podemos, presented and handed over the Black Book to the EU commissioner for asylum, Ylva Johansson, in Brussels.

Speaking about the launch of the Black Book, German MEP Cornelia Ernst said: We have been so shocked by endless accounts of merciless, sadistic and degrading violence reminiscent of brutal dictatorships. The Black Book sheds some much-needed light on this dark chapter of the EU. Our hope is that it will contribute to bringing an end to these crimes and holding the governments that are responsible accountable.

Although these accusations are met with denial from the perpetrating countries, what we provide within these pages is an analysis of patterns and photo evidence that reveal an ongoing, systematic practice, said Hope Barker, spokesperson for BVMN.

And these are just the stories that the network has managed to record. The reality is much wider and more far-reaching.

We call for an end to impunity and a renewed commitment to accountability, both of which will work towards ending such brutal human rights violations, she said.

In Bosnia-Herzegovina about 1,200 migrants and asylum-seekers are living in squalid conditions in the Lipa tented camp in Una-Sana canton, a site unsuitable for winter. The International Organization for Migration said it would close the camp as Bosnian authorities had ignored its appeals to help supply basic services.

Thousands of migrants in Bosnia-Herzegovina could soon face an impossible choice: fend for themselves in abandoned buildings and squats, or attempt to cross the border into Croatia and the EU in the hope of escaping the violence of border police.

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'Black book' of thousands of illegal migrant pushbacks presented to EU - The Guardian