aid workers

On Tuesday, the Catalan Government approved the International Protection Plan of Catalonia, which aims to protect people forced to leave their country for being persecuted. It is the first time Catalonia has its own legal instrument to face the issue of asylum seekers, displaced people and human trafficking victims. This new tool establishes the principles, measures and funding schemes to host and offer protection to people who fled their country due to a grounded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, membership of a social group, gender or sexual orientation. Among other things, the Plan encourages issuing new proposals to improve the legal status of these people, offer them better training, improve their reception, integration and participation.

Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) has stated it does not have “any truthful information” about the two Spanish aid workers kidnappers and their objectives. Therefore, MSF has dissociated itself from any “statement or presumption of responsibility related with this case”. After the latest armed actions in Southern Somalia, MSF wanted to clarify that they are not at all involved and that they fear these attacks may put the life of the two MSF workers kidnapped in Dadaab (Kenya) in danger. One of the two women kidnapped is Catalan and the other is from Madrid.

One of the two workers is Catalan. The two women were working as logistics officers for Médécins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Dadaab, in the Ifo refugee camp, near the Somali border. Armed men took the two women away around 1pm (CEST). Kenyan police think they might belong to the Shabaab group, linked to Al-Qaeda. The Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs has confirmed the kidnapping.

wo hundred and fifty-two days later, aid workers Albert Vilalta and Roque Pasqual are still being held in the northern region of Mali by a Magreb Islamist terrorist group