The South African government should end its sole reliance on an overburdened asylum system that protects only a tiny fraction of the more than a million Zimbabweans who cannot return to the humanitarian disaster in their home country, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch renewed its call on the South African government to stop deporting Zimbabweans and, in recognition of their protection needs, to grant them temporary status and work rights.

Israel and Egypt should open their borders to permit humanitarian aid to reach Gaza and to allow civilians to seek safety from the conflict on the occasion of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, addressing the United Nations Security Council.

Pirates have put Somalia back on the international agenda, but Somalia's people have yet to receive as much protection as the international tankers off-shore. The brutal, widely ignored conflict in Somalia has crept back into the headlines only after spawning a massive humanitarian crisis and Islamist extremism, as well as piracy. But to deal with these issues, the Obama administration will have to break with failed policies that have helped push Somalia into calamity.

Egypt should under no circumstances deport Eritrean asylum seekers now in detention without first allowing the UN refugee agency access to assess their refugee claims.

United States asylum policy falls short of protecting women fleeing abusive relationships whose own governments have already failed to protect them.

As the Security Council considers adopting a resolution on arrangements for the follow-on by the United Nations of the European operation in eastern Chad and the northeastern Central African Republic, Human Rights Watch offers further concrete and practical measures that the Security Council can take now to reduce abuses and enhance the protection of civilians.

Greece systematically rounds up and detains Iraqi asylum seekers and other migrants in dirty, overcrowded conditions and forcibly and secretly expels them to Turkey.