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Sally Hayden

Sally Hayden is a journalist focusing on migration and humanitarian crises, and author of My Fourth Time, We Drowned: Seeking Refuge on the World’s Deadliest Migration Route

April 2022

  • A water distribution point in a camp for internally displaced people in Baidoa, Somalia, February 2022

    Droughts in Somalia are partly our fault. We could at least let more migrants in

    Sally Hayden
    Global heating has left millions at risk of starvation, and reliant on relatives who have made the journey to Europe, says journalist Sally Hayden

October 2021

  • Security forces in Gargaresh (Tripoli) apprehended undocumented migrants incl. women and children.

    Rights and freedom
    Reports of physical and sexual violence as Libya arrests 5,000 migrants in a week

    Raids by the security forces leave at least one man dead, as official observers decry ‘inhumane’ detention conditions

April 2021

  • Witnesses gather following a hearing in the smuggling trials in Addis Ababa’s federal court in October.

    Rights and freedom
    ‘Cruel’ trafficker accused of torturing refugees found guilty in Ethiopia

  • Lovely Joy de Castro, 11, takes part in at an online class in the Manila cemetery where her family lives.

    Rights and freedom
    ‘I miss school’: 800m children still not fully back in classes

July 2020

  • A woman salvages her belongings after the airstrike

    Refugee victims of Tajoura bombing still lie in unmarked graves one year on

    Coronavirus thwarts plan by survivors to light candles for dozens of detainees who died in airstrike on detention centre during Tripoli fighting

May 2020

  • Alanyo Joyce

    'I realised my body was burning': police brutality in Uganda lockdown

    Street vendor Alanyo Joyce says she was about to close her fried chicken stall for curfew when an official kicked a pan of boiling oil over her

April 2020

  • The entrance to the Gashora transit centre

    Rwandan police chief accused of sexual assault of child refugee at UN centre

    16-year-old boy evacuated from Libya under EU scheme alleges physical and abuse at Gashora transit centre when returning post coronavirus curfew

March 2020

  • A screen shows passengers’ temperature, as part of precautionary measures against coronavirus, at Misrata international Airport, in Misrata, Libya, 15 March, 2020.

    Libya’s refugees face being cut off from aid due to coronavirus

    Fear of being left without money or food following suspension of some NGO activities adds to already desperate situation

February 2020

  • A soldier sprays desert locusts in Bilayolo village, in Kitgum district, Uganda.

    Uganda's 'locust commander' leads the battle against a new enemy

    The army has been called in to eliminate the insect swarms, but their mission is dangerous and unending

January 2020

  • Adal Debretsion who died at Sabaa detention centre Teenager latest to die in Libya's migrant detention centres A 16-year-old is the latest person to die in a network of Libyan detention centres where refugees and migrants are locked up indefinitely after they are returned to the wartorn North African country by the EU-funded coastguard. Fellow detainees in Sabaa detention centre, Tripoli, named the boy as Adal Debretsion, an Eritrean who had been locked up for more than a year. They said the teenager died on January 12 of an unknown illness and a lack of medical care. “We really feel sad and we are scared,” said another Eritrean who is among roughly 400 people still being held there.

    Teenage boy the latest to die in Libyan refugee detention centre

  • Rescued migrants look at a map of Europe onboard the Ocean Viking ship as it sails in the Mediterranean

    'They don't help': refugees condemn UN over failures that drove them to sea

November 2019

  • A guard closes the door of a cell in Abu Salim detention centre, in the Libyan capital Tripoli.

    Refugees being 'starved out' of UN facility in Tripoli

    Aid worker claims refugees are being denied food to motivate them to leave

July 2019

  • FILE PHOTO: A migrant picks up clothes from among rubble at a detention centre for mainly African migrants that was hit by an airstrike in the Tajoura suburb of the Libyan capital of Tripoli<br>FILE PHOTO: A migrant picks up clothes from among rubble at a detention centre for mainly African migrants that was hit by an air strike in the Tajoura suburb of the Libyan capital of Tripoli, July 3, 2019. REUTERS/Ismail Zitouny/File Photo

    'I saw hell': under fire inside Libya's refugee detention centres

    As deadly airstrikes prompt plans to close detention centres, fears rise for those trapped in the country amid claims of serious abuses

June 2019

  • A woman throws stones at the welcome sign for the UNHCR refugee camp in Dadaab, Kenya.

    ‘If you pay, you’ll go’: Dadaab residents claim bribery is price of getting home

    Somali people at Kenya’s sprawling refugee camp allege that UN staff want money for everything from food to repatriation

May 2019

  • Migrants sit in a rubber dinghy

    Today in Focus
    Fortress Europe: what happens to the refugees sent back to Libya?

    The EU’s efforts to stem the flow migration from Africa across the Mediterranean has meant assisting the Libyan coastguard to intercept boats. But what happens when asylum seekers are returned to war-torn Libya? Sally Hayden has spent months investigating conditions in the detention camps

April 2019

  • Migrants hold placards during the visit of António Guterres, the UN secretary general, to Ain Zara detention centre for migrants in the Libyan capital Tripoli

    Exploitation in focus
    Fear and despair engulf refugees in Libya's 'market of human beings'

    Long the target of reported abuses, refugees in Libya now claim they are being recruited by militias – a potential war crime

February 2019

  • A detention camp in Gheryan, outside Tripoli.

    The EU’s deal with Libya is sentencing refugees to death

    Sally Hayden
    Any hope that Libya might be a safe haven has gone, says Sally Hayden, a journalist focusing on migration

October 2018

  • Migrants in the Ganzour shelter after being transferred due to fighting in the Libyan capital Tripoli

    Libya is a war zone. Why is the EU still sending refugees back there?

    Sally Hayden
    Libya is treated as a ‘safe’ country, but in Tripoli refugees are starving and desperate – and the UN can’t get to them, writes journalist Sally Hayden
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