As civilians in Afghanistan pay a high price for the fighting between the Taliban and Western forces, FRANCE 24's reporters went to the southern provinces of the country to discover what their living conditions are like.
Tokyo has announced it will soon grant refugee status to displaced people in foreign refugee camps with no prospects of repatriation. But the lucky few will number just 30 a year.
Somalia and Iraq were at the top of the 2008 list of countries with the most people seeking asylum elsewhere, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
A first group of 122 Iraqi refugees coming from Syrian camps landed in Hanover, Germany on Thursday. The European Union decided back in November to take in 10,000 of the most vulnerable refugees from war-torn Iraq.
Amid mounting international concern over the fate of refugees from neighbouring Burma, French Secretary of State for Human Rights Rama Yade visited a refugee camp in northern Thailand. Yade has been an outspoken critic of the Burmese junta.
Today, thousands of Afghani refugees live in Pakistan. Some of them fled the Russians, others fled from the Mujahideen or the Taliban. Divided during various Afghan conflicts, these groups now co-exist in a foreign country.
A number of US-born children of refugees who fled the Khmer Rouge grew up in US ghettos. But under American law, they are sent back to Cambodia if they are convicted twice as felons. Their return back in their own unknown country can be nightmarish.
A Tamil Tiger suicide bomber targeted a refugee camp for civilians fleeing Sri Lanka's war zone, millitary officials said on Monday. The blast killed several soldiers and injured at least 45 people.
At least 10,000 civilians have fled the battle zone in northern Sri Lanka over the past four days as a government onslaught threatens to deal a death blow to the Tamil Tiger rebels' 30-year campaign for independence.
