As Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s recent comments about Taiwan retaliates, China is advising its citizens against visiting the country. Katrina Yu from Al Jazeera explains.
Published On 17 Nov 2025
Before proposals for major government changes that would end refugees’ automatic right to permanent residency in the UK, home secretary Shabana Mahmood claimed the country’s asylum system is “not working” and is “putting communities under enormous strain.”
Speaking to the BBC on Sunday, Mahmood said undocumented migration is “tearing the country apart”.
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The government’s proposals, to be unveiled on Monday, will have two main prongs. First, they would put an end to refugees’ automatic transition to settled status after five years. Second, they would forbid those who have the right to work and are able to provide for themselves from receiving state benefits.
After a summer of fierce protests outside , hotels , housing asylum seekers and an anti-immigration march in London, Mahmood also announced new plans to curb small-boat crossings from France as well as to return refugees to their home countries once it is safe to do so.
Net migration, or the number of people entering a nation minus the number leaving, has increased by 200, 000 to 300, 000 people annually since 2011, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
However, after Brexit was enacted in 2020, there was a large increase in the number of undocumented immigrants entering the UK. According to ONS data, net migration increased to 906, 000 over the course of the 12-month period until June 2023.
However, more recent statistics revealed a sharp decline in those figures since then. Net migration figures dropped by more than half in 2024 – to 431, 000. The decrease in the availability of student visas and healthcare was largely attributable to this.
Despite the media’s coverage of people entering the UK in small boats from France, this group only accounts for a small portion of the country’s total population. In 2024, for instance, the Home Office found that 36, 816 people who arrived in the UK came via small boats.   ,
Last year, 108 out of 138 people applied for asylum. Of those, only one-third came via small boats. As a result, the majority of asylum applications were processed formal (and included some of the people’s dependents).
Despite the declining numbers, there is still a lot of unease with the ruling Labour Party. In an August YouGov poll, 38 percent of respondents said they believed Reform UK, an anti-immigration party, would be more effective at handling asylum cases than Labour, who secured just 9 percent of the tally.
On Monday, the government is expected to , announce , a shift from permanent settlement for refugees to a temporary-protection model.
The current regulations allow for an “indefinite leave to remain” request, allowing for the right to citizenship, for refugees who have been granted asylum to remain in the UK for five years.
However, under the new regulations, those seeking permanent residency in the UK must first apply for asylum for up to 20 years.
In addition, people granted asylum would have to renew their status every 30 months to see if the situation in their home country has changed such that UK residence is still required.
Mahmood said she intends to end the government’s legal obligation to provide all asylum seekers with basic financial support.
The government is expected to withdraw support from asylum seekers deemed able to work as well as from those people who commit offences, ignore removal orders or work illegally.
If their asylum claim has been delayed for at least a year, or longer, asylum seekers may now apply for employment.
Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council charity, said that instead of deterring migrants, the 20-year path to citizenship would “leave people in limbo and experiencing intense anxiety for many, many years”.
He stated on Sunday on BBC Breakfast that “we need a system that is controlled and fair, and the way you do that is you make decisions fairly, in a timely manner, and they go on and contribute to our communities and give back.”
According to Mahmood’s suggestion for 30-month checks, refugees could be returned to their home countries once the government believes the situation has improved, a move that was inspired by Denmark’s much-discussed policy.
Although research by the Danish Foreign Policy Yearbook has found that deterrence has limited influence on where asylum seekers travel to, a 2017 study did suggest that Denmark’s “negative branding” had led to fewer asylum applications.
The opposition home office minister, Matt Vickers, claimed the government’s new plans to reform the asylum system contain “lots of gimmicks” while Oxford University’s Migration Observatory predicted that Mahmood’s overhaul would place the UK’s immigration system among the most restrictive nations in Europe.
He told the BBC that a “deterrent” is what is needed: “If people arrive in this country and know they’re going to get sent back, they won’t get in those boats in the first place”.
The government wants to introduce artificial intelligence-based assessments to determine the age of people who arrive without documentation. According to ministers, errors in the current system could lead to mistreatment of minors as adults or the introduction of adult-oriented care.
However, rights organizations warned that automated systems could instill prejudice, unfairly classify children as adults, and harm them.
Earlier this year, Solomon told the BBC that he was “not convinced” that using AI tools was the government’s correct approach on age identification because he has concerns about children being put in unsafe situations. He continued, “These AI] technologies continue to raise serious questions about accuracy, ethics, and fairness.”
The Home Office has said visa applications from Angola, Namibia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo will be refused unless their governments improve collaboration with the UK regarding the deportation of their nationals.
The department’s “unacceptably low cooperation and obstructive return procedures” was cited as the potential penalty in a statement.
They would be subject to restrictions “unless they consent to the return of their criminals and irregular migrants.”
The government’s interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in regard to family law is also being covered by the UK media.
According to the government, Article 8 of the ECHR, which guarantees the right to a family and private life, will be reinterpreted “to better reflect the expectations of the British public.”
The new law would likely clarify that a “family connection” refers to immediate relatives only, such as a parent or child, and not to extended family members.
When asked about Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s invasion, Mahmood said they would continue to be admitted under a “bespoke scheme” and would be expected to return once the conflict was over. She stressed that many arrivals from Ukraine have expressed a desire to return home.
Ukrainian refugees have access to healthcare, education, and benefits under the current arrangement. Ukrainian nationals are largely exempt from the new 20-year settlement rules for asylum seekers because these visas are only temporary.
Through the UK’s Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme, vulnerable Afghan citizens from Afghanistan are granted legal residency, employment, education, and healthcare in addition to Ukrainians.
Additionally, the BNO visa, which provides a pathway to settled and eventual citizenship, grants Hong Kong BNO status holders and their dependents the right to reside, work, and study in the UK.
Mahmood also told the BBC that new “safe and legal” avenues will be introduced to try to reduce the number of people attempting perilous crossings of the English Channel.
Organisations like Amnesty International have repeatedly emphasized that many people have no choice but to enter illegally because of strict laws and restricted visa programs.
To reduce people smuggling and fatalities, Amnesty International has called on Westminster to expand legal avenues, including family reunification, and community sponsorship.
One option would be to allow individuals and charities in the UK to sponsor refugees, echoing the Homes for Ukraine scheme, which endows local communities with housing responsibilities.
A Bangladeshi tribunal has sentenced former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to death for crimes against humanity. She was found to be the “mastermind and principal architect” of a violent crackdown on protests that killed some 1,400 people last year. Hasina is currently in exile in India.
South Korea has proposed talks with North Korea to avoid border clashes, the first such offer in seven years as Seoul seeks to ease military tensions with its nuclear-armed neighbour.
Citing recent incursions by North Korean troops, Kim Hong-cheol, deputy minister for national defence policy, told a news briefing on Monday that military-to-military channels can help avert an escalation.
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“To prevent accidental clashes and ease military tensions, our military officially proposes that the two sides hold inter-Korean military talks to discuss the establishment of a clear reference line for the MDL,” he said, referring to the military demarcation line on their border.
Seoul and Pyongyang technically remain at war because the 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement, which halted the conflict between them, was never followed by a peace treaty.
The MDL lies inside the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ), a buffer zone that runs for 250km (160 miles) across the Korean Peninsula with a width of 4km (2.5 miles).
An estimated 2 million mines are peppered inside and along the border, which is also guarded by combat troops, barbed-wire fences and tank traps
Kim said North Korean soldiers have repeatedly crossed the demarcation line “while installing tactical roads, fences and laying mines”.
South Korean soldiers have fired warning shots and issued broadcasts to encourage the North Koreans to retreat, he said.
The proposed military talks follow South Korean President Lee Jae Myung’s offer of broader discussions with the North without conditions, a sharp reversal from the hawkish stance taken by his conservative predecessor.
Lee has taken several steps to ease tensions since taking office in June, including removing propaganda loudspeakers along the border and banning the dropping of anti-Pyongyang leaflets.
North Korea has yet to respond to Lee’s overtures, and if it accepts the latest proposal, it would mark the first military talks between the two sides since 2018.
Lee’s attempts to advance dialogue with Pyongyang have replaced former South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s hardline approach to the North.
Yoon’s hawkish policies were halted when he was impeached and removed from office over his declaration of martial law in December.
This year marks three decades since the end of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in which an estimated 100,000 people lost their lives. The war culminated in the Srebrenica genocide in July 1995, in which the Bosnian Serb forces, led by General Ratko Mladić, known as the “Butcher of Bosnia”, massacred more than 8,000 men and boys in a United Nations-designated “safe area”.
In the following decades, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia heard hundreds of witnesses and sentenced dozens of high-ranking Bosnian Serb political and military leaders, including those convicted of genocide. Meanwhile, the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina and foreign donors put significant funds into the study, victim recovery and remembrance of the genocide.
When the genocide in Gaza began, many Bosnians who survived the 1992-1995 war saw striking parallels between their own experiences and the suffering of Palestinians. Many took to the streets and spoke out against the genocidal war in Palestine.
However, many Bosnian intellectuals, especially those researching war crimes and genocide, have remained silent. Their refusal to speak out harms not just efforts to deliver justice for Gaza but also undermines the field of genocide studies.
Before we explore why Gaza has become such a taboo topic for Bosnian genocide scholars, it is important to point out that not all have remained silent. A relatively small group of Bosnian scholars who are not only academics but also active advocates for Palestine and human rights have chosen to speak up.
University professors and researchers, such as Lejla Kreševljaković, Sanela Čekić Bašić, Gorana Mlinarević, Jasna Fetahović, and Sanela Kapetanović have underscored that there is moral responsibility not to remain silent. They have led by example, participating in protests and speaking out in public.
Belma Buljubašić, a professor at the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Sarajevo, has criticised European and other political leaders who express sympathy for Srebrenica while justifying Israel’s actions in Gaza as acts of “self-defence”. Such double standards, she has argued, reveal a troubling pragmatism that undermines both solidarity and accountability.
In a recent interview, Edina Bećirević, a genocide scholar at the University of Sarajevo’s Faculty of Criminalistics, Criminology and Security Studies, said the genocide in Gaza clearly mirrors the dynamics seen in Srebrenica, defined by dehumanisation, ideological mobilisation and international complicity.
Ahmet Alibašić, the director of the Center for Advanced Studies and professor at the Faculty of Islamic Studies at the University of Sarajevo, has also been outspoken. Last year, he co-organised a seminar called From the Balkans to Gaza: A Critical Analysis of Genocide, which examined contemporary dynamics of mass violence through a “comparison between the Srebrenica genocide, the Sarajevo siege and the unfolding genocide in Gaza”.
Nidžara Ahmetašević, a Sarajevo-based journalist and media scholar, has also not hesitated to draw parallels between Gaza and the experiences of Bosnian survivors from besieged Sarajevo and Srebrenica.
For months, members of the Sarajevo Feminist Anti-Militarist Collective have been conducting demonstrations in downtown Sarajevo in which they read the names of children killed in Gaza, juxtaposing war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territory to Sarajevo’s own war horrors.
These individuals have all responded in various ways to the late Palestinian scholar Edward Said’s enduring exhortation that intellectuals must claim the space to speak truth to power, connect local memory to global justice and resist the politics of convenient truth-telling. Silence remains not a neutral stance but a political choice that sustains harm.
Still, Said’s call has not stirred everyone to action. Paradoxically, many Bosnian genocide scholars have remained conspicuously silent, even as their colleagues abroad, among them Israeli genocide scholars Omer Bartov, Amos Goldberg and Shmuel Lederman, have publicly accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. This did not change even after the International Association of Genocide Scholars, the world’s largest academic body in the field, passed a resolution in August declaring that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute a genocide.
Various experts on genocide at the University of Sarajevo’s Institute for Research of Crimes Against Humanity and International Law, lecturers at the Faculty of Law of the University of Sarajevo and genocide scholars at the Institute for Islamic Tradition of Bosniaks have been reluctant to comment on Israeli war crimes in Gaza.
As an institution, the Institute for Research of Crimes Against Humanity and International Law publicly addressed Gaza only after it was clear a ceasefire was soon to take effect. On October 8, it issued an evasive statement that did not mention Israel as the perpetrator of atrocities. This prompted some observers to accuse the institute, led by Muamer Džananović, of a calculated and opportunistic approach to the issue.
However, probably the most notable is the case of Emir Suljagić, genocide survivor and director of the Srebrenica Memorial Center. When asked about his stance on Gaza in late 2023, Suljagić told Haaretz: “This is not our battle.”
Many Bosnia-watchers swiftly condemned his remarks, pointing at the double standards of his position, given that just a year earlier Suljagić published an op-ed urging Ukrainians “not to lay down their arms”.
Furthermore, under his leadership, the Srebrenica Memorial Center produced a series of case studies funded by the United Kingdom government on Ukraine, Syria, South Sudan and Ethiopia, highlighting early warning signs of mass violence and genocide.
When the Palestinian community in Bosnia and Herzegovina expressed surprise over the lack of solidarity from Srebrenica with the people of Gaza, questioning whether the Srebrenica Memorial Center’s ties to the World Jewish Congress had something to do with its silence, Suljagić responded by accusing them of anti-Semitism.
He went even as far as to compare Hamas members to Chetniks, Serb nationalist and royalist forces that collaborated with German, Italian and at times Croatian fascists during World War II. Chetniks were responsible for some of the most brutal atrocities, including acts of genocide, against the Bosnian Muslim population. Almost half a century later, their enduring ideology fuelled war crimes and genocide against Bosniaks during the war in Bosnia.
The silence of many of Bosnia’s genocide scholars is not accidental. Some of them fear professional repercussions in Western academia and feel that accusing Israel of genocide would be unfavourable for their careers. Many are reluctant to jeopardise external financial support from foreign embassies, particularly funding provided by American, British and European Union donors to their projects and “side hustle” NGOs. Others are reluctant to alienate diplomatic partners who still wield influence over Bosnia’s fragile peace.
None of this, of course, justifies the silence of scholars working at institutions funded by Bosnian taxpayers rather than foreign donors. As genocide researchers whose work is sustained by public funds, they have an obligation to serve the public interest, which entails upholding scientific integrity, defending evidence-based genocide research and contributing to the global scholarly consensus without fear of professional repercussions.
When scholars, genocide researchers and lecturers at public institutions fail to speak out on war crimes or humanitarian crises, they contribute to legitimising a discourse that conceals harm. Such a discourse frames certain acts of mass violence as unworthy of the same scrutiny applied to other cases, creating a hierarchy of victimhood that serves political interests rather than universal principles and scholarly integrity.
Said’s universal call on intellectuals to speak out remains relevant and urgent. It reminds us that we need to move beyond comfortable silence, expose distortions of power and advocate for justice, transparency and accountability. In his view, silence is a form of complicity that undermines the very pursuit of truth that academia claims to uphold.
In this sense, public intellectuals must never allow themselves to slip into the realm of political bargaining where silence about one genocide is traded for recognition of another. If their advocacy becomes selective, then they risk turning genocide studies into a political tool. If that happens, genocide scholars will cease to be independent academics and instead become an interest group, stripped of the moral pedestal they so readily claim.
By foregrounding Gaza within the Bosnian context, we argue for a renewed ethic of intellectual responsibility and integrity, one that aligns scholarly discernment with public accountability and humane justice.
A court in Bangladesh has sentenced former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to death, over a violent crackdown on protests. As Al Jazeera’s Saif Khalid explains, there are concerns the court’s ruling serves only to continue the kind of political persecution it sought to address.