Renters struggle to survive in Portugal housing crisis

Renters struggle to survive in Portugal housing crisis
An 80 year old retired kitchen assistant, uses a board to block the entrance of the abandoned house where he lives, in Belem, Lisbon. (AFP)
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Updated 27 June 2025
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Renters struggle to survive in Portugal housing crisis

Renters struggle to survive in Portugal housing crisis
  • Housing prices in Portugal have jumped 124 percent since 2015, well above the EU average of 53 percent, according to Eurostat
  • The current government has made tackling the crisis a priority

LISBON: With sky-high rents beyond his modest pension, Antonio Lemos has no choice but to live in an abandoned house in Lisbon without electricity or running water as Portugal’s perennial housing crisis spirals.

The former kitchen assistant, 80, has never found a stable home since foreign investors bought his apartment and has placed his hopes on a charitable institution to find a solution.

“How can you pay a rent of 400 or 500 euros for a room?,” asked Lemos, whose monthly pension barely amounts to 500 euros ($580). “Age is catching up, and I’m scared.”

Successive governments of all political stripes have tried and failed to solve the problem, according to Luis Mendes, a researcher at the University of Lisbon’s Institute for Geography and Territorial Organization.

“Year after year, real estate breaks new records,” Mendes told AFP.

The market spike began during the eurozone financial crisis in 2011, when the country attempted to resuscitate its stricken economy by attracting foreign capital through so-called “golden visas.”

The scheme offered visas to foreigners who invested in real estate and tax advantages to retirees or globe-trotting digital nomads but is viewed as having contributed to the problem.

Housing prices in Portugal have jumped 124 percent since 2015, well above the EU average of 53 percent, according to Eurostat.

The current center-right government has made tackling the crisis a priority, but in the first three months of 2025 prices spiked by more than 16 percent, according to the Portuguese national statistics institute.

Falling interest rates and public guarantees for young people’s mortgages, a measure introduced by the government last year, has driven the latest increase.

A group campaigning for the right to housing has called for protests this weekend in a dozen cities.

Similar to neighboring Spain, public housing only represents two percent of households and many properties are converted into short-term holiday lets in the popular tourist destination.

Renters like Carlos are bearing the brunt.

The municipal gardener, who declined to give his surname, has been living for five years in a freight container surrounded by building sites in the Portuguese capital.

A basic mattress, a handful of personal belongings and some birds in a cage to keep him company make up the interior of his humble abode.

The 55-year-old used to live with his mother, but after her death the lease was canceled and he found himself homeless overnight.

“I have found nothing at less than 800 euros. To have a salary and not be able to pay rent is unacceptable!” Carlos, whose income reaches around 1,000 euros, told AFP.

In a country where more than 70 percent of the population own their home, the new center-right government that emerged victorious from May’s snap election intends to build almost 60,000 new social homes.

It also plans to simplify public aid for renters, convert vacant public buildings and offer fiscal advantages in a bid to accelerate renovation and construction.

But for Mendes, “it is not with more homes that this crisis will be solved” because it risks “overheating the market.”

The Lisbon renters’ association has criticized “the illusion of supply as the only solution” and singled out a “lack of regulation and political courage.”

The European Commission has suggested Portugal regulate rents to protect the most affected groups of people or introduce more controls for short-term tourist lets.


UN warns of ‘chaotic’ Afghan refugee-return crisis and calls for urgent international action

UN warns of ‘chaotic’ Afghan refugee-return crisis and calls for urgent international action
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UN warns of ‘chaotic’ Afghan refugee-return crisis and calls for urgent international action

UN warns of ‘chaotic’ Afghan refugee-return crisis and calls for urgent international action
  • More than 40,000 people arriving from Iran each day, reaching a high of 50,000 on July 4, as more than 1.6m refugees return from there and Pakistan so far this year
  • ‘Handled with calm, foresight and compassion, returns can be a force for stability. Handled haphazardly, they will lead to instability, unrest and onward movements,’ agency says

NEW YORK CITY: With more than 1.6 million Afghans returning to their home country from Iran and Pakistan so far this year, the UN Refugee Agency warned on Thursday that the scale and intensity of the mass returns are creating a humanitarian emergency in a country already gripped by poverty, drought and insecurity.

Arafat Jamal, UNHCR’s representative in Afghanistan, on Friday described the situation as “evolving and chaotic,” as he urged countries in the region and the wider international community to urgently commit resources, show restraint and coordinate their efforts to avoid further destabilization of Afghanistan and the region.

“We are calling for restraint, for resources, for dialogue and international cooperation,” he said.

“Handled with calm, foresight and compassion, returns can be a force for stability. Handled haphazardly, they will lead to instability, unrest and onward movements.”

According to UNHCR figures, more than 1.3 million people have returned from Iran alone since the start of this year, many of them under coercive or involuntary circumstances.

In recent days, arrivals at the Islam Qala crossing on the border with Iran have peaked at more than 40,000 people a day, with a high of 50,000 recorded on July 4.

Jamal warned that many of the returnees, often born abroad and unfamiliar with Afghanistan, arrive “tired, disoriented, brutalized and often in despair.” He raised particular concern about the fate of women and girls who arrive in a country where their fundamental rights are severely restricted.

Iran has signaled its intention to expel as many as 4 million Afghans, a move UNHCR predicts could double the number of returnees by the end of the year. Jamal said the agency is now preparing for up to 3 million arrivals this year. Afghanistan remains ill-equipped to absorb such large numbers.

“This is precarity layered upon poverty, on drought, on human-rights abuses, and on an unstable region,” Jamal said, citing a UN Development Programme report that found 70 percent of

Afghans live at subsistence levels, and a recent drought alert from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

UNHCR’s humanitarian response is severely underfunded, with just 28 percent of its operations financed so far this year. Jamal described agonizing decisions being made in the field, including reductions of food rations and other aid supplies: “Should we give one blanket instead of four to a family? One meal instead of three?”

Despite the strained resources, Jamal said the agency is still providing emergency food and water, shelter and transportation at reception centers, and working with partners such as UNICEF to address the needs of unaccompanied children, about 400 of whom were reportedly deported from Iran in just over two weeks.

Pressed on how the UN can support peace and development in a country where women face widespread discrimination, and access to education and healthcare is limited, Jamal acknowledged the severe challenges but defended the organization’s continued engagement.

“Yes, this is the worst country in the world for women’s rights,” he said. “Yet with adequate funding, the UN is able to reach women. We’ve built women-only markets, trained midwives, and supported women entrepreneurs.

“We must invest in the people of Afghanistan, even in these grim circumstances.”

He added that the Taliban, despite their own restrictions and resource constraints, have so far welcomed the returnees and facilitated UN operations at the border.

UNHCR is now appealing for a coordinated regional strategy and renewed donor support. Jamal highlighted positive examples of regional cooperation, such as trade initiatives by Uzbekistan, as potential models for this.

He also welcomed a recent UN General Assembly resolution calling for the voluntary, safe and dignified return of refugees, and increased international collaboration on the issue.

“Billions have been wasted on war,” he said. “Now is the time to invest in peace.”


Philippine president to meet Trump in Washington this month

Philippine president to meet Trump in Washington this month
Updated 11 July 2025
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Philippine president to meet Trump in Washington this month

Philippine president to meet Trump in Washington this month
  • Security, tariff issues will be priorities when Marcos meets Trump, expert says
  • Manila, Washington have increasingly boosted defense engagements in recent years

MANILA: President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. will visit Washington this month, the Philippine Foreign Ministry said on Friday, making this the first trip of a Southeast Asian leader since Donald Trump took office.

The trip, which follows Trump’s tariffs announcement earlier this week, will take place from July 20 to 22, the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs said in a statement, adding that details of the visit are not yet finalized.

Philippine Ambassador to the US Jose Manuel Romualdez told reporters that Marcos is the “first ASEAN head of state invited by Trump,” referring to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Trade and security will likely be the focus of discussions, according to Prof. Ranjit Sing Rye, president of OCTA Research.

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“I think it’s a very significant meeting of both leaders of the Philippines and the US, especially at this time when there’s so much dynamics in the … South China Sea,” Rye told Arab News.

“It signifies and symbolizes the broadening and deepening of US-Philippine relations under the Trump administration.”

Tensions have continued to run high between the Philippines and China over territorial disputes in the South China Sea, a strategic waterway through which billions of dollars of goods pass each year.

Manila and Beijing have been involved in frequent maritime confrontations in recent years, with China maintaining its expansive claims of the area, despite a 2016 international tribunal ruling the historical assertion to it had no basis.

The US has a seven-decade-old mutual defense treaty with the Philippines and Washington has repeatedly warned that a Chinese attack on Filipino ships could trigger a US military response.

Philippine and US forces have increasingly upped mutual defense engagements, including large-scale combat exercises in the Philippines.

Manila is also sending trade officials to the US next week to hold further negotiations on tariffs, after Trump raised a planned tariff on Philippine exports to the US to 20 percent from 17 percent.

It is not immediately clear if the Marcos visit will coincide with that of Manila’s tariff-negotiating team.

“Over the next three years, there will be, in my view, a broadening and deepening of US-Philippine relations on many levels, not just economic, not just socioeconomic, but also in trade, but also in security relations,” Rye said.

“And maybe some of these details will be threshed out during that meeting.”

This will be Marcos’ third visit to the US since he became president in 2022.

His last trip was in April 2024, when he met with then President Joe Biden and former Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in the first trilateral summit among the treaty allies. 


Thousands gather in Srebrenica to mark 30 years since genocide against Bosniak Muslims

Thousands gather in Srebrenica to mark 30 years since genocide against Bosniak Muslims
Updated 11 July 2025
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Thousands gather in Srebrenica to mark 30 years since genocide against Bosniak Muslims

Thousands gather in Srebrenica to mark 30 years since genocide against Bosniak Muslims
  • Thousands gather to mark massacre of more than 8,000 Muslim boys and men in Europe’s only genocide since WWII
  • Seven newly identified victims of the 1995 massacre, including two 19-year-old men, were laid to rest

SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina: Thousands of people from Bosnia and around the world gathered in Srebrenica to mark the 30th anniversary of a massacre there of more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim boys and men — an atrocity that has been acknowledged as Europe’s only genocide after the Holocaust.

Seven newly identified victims of the 1995 massacre, including two 19-year-old men, were laid to rest in a collective funeral at a vast cemetery near Srebrenica Friday, next to more than 6,000 victims already buried there. Such funerals are held annually for the victims who are still being unearthed from dozens of mass graves around the town.

Relatives of the victims, however, often can bury only partial remains of their loved ones as they are typically found in several different mass graves, sometimes kilometers (miles) apart. Such was the case of Mirzeta Karic, who was waiting to bury her father.

“Thirty years of search and we are burying a bone,” she said, crying by her father’s coffin which was wrapped in green cloth in accordance with Islamic tradition.

“I think it would be easier if I could bury all of him. What can I tell you, my father is one of the 50 (killed) from my entire family,” she added.

July 11, 1995, is the day when the killings started after Bosnian Serb fighters overran the eastern Bosnian enclave in the final months of the interethnic war in the Balkan country.

After taking control of the town that was a protected UN safe zone during the war, Bosnian Serb fighters separated Bosniak Muslim men and boys from their families and brutally executed them in just several days. The bodies were then dumped in mass graves around Srebrenica which they later dug up with bulldozers, scattering the remains among other burial sites to hide the evidence of their war crimes.

The UN General Assembly last year adopted a resolution to commemorate the Srebrenica genocide on the July 11 anniversary.

Scores of international officials and dignitaries attended the commemoration ceremonies and the funeral. Among them were European Council President Antonio Costa and Britain’s Duchess of Edinburgh, Sophie, who said that “our duty must be to remember all those lost so tragically and to never let these things happen again.”

Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp said he felt “humbled” because UN troops from the Netherlands were based in Srebrenica when Bosnian Serbs stormed the town.

“I see to what extent commemorating Srebrenica genocide is important,” he said.

In an emotional speech, Munira Subasic, who heads the Mothers of Srebrenica association, urged Europe and the world to “help us fight against hatred, against injustice and against killings.”

Subasic, who lost her husband and youngest son in Srebrenica along with more than 20 relatives, told Europe to “wake up.”

“As I stand here many mothers in Ukraine and Palestine are going through what we went through in 1995,” Subasic said, referring to ongoing conflicts. “It’s the 21st century but instead of justice, fascism has woken up.”

On the eve of the anniversary, an exhibition was inaugurated displaying personal items belonging to the victims that were found in the mass graves over the years.

The conflict in Bosnia erupted in 1992, when Bosnian Serbs took up arms in a rebellion against the country’s independence from the former Yugoslavia and with an aim to create their own state and eventually unite with neighboring Serbia. More than 100,000 people were killed and millions displaced before a US-brokered peace agreement was reached in 1995.

Bosnia remains ethnically split while both Bosnian Serbs and neighboring Serbia refuse to acknowledge that the massacre in Srebrenica was a genocide despite rulings by two UN courts. Bosnian Serb political and military leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, along with many others, were convicted and sentenced for genocide.

Serbia’s populist President Aleksandar Vucic expressed condolences on X while calling the Srebrenica massacre a “terrible crime.”

“There is no room in Europe — or anywhere else — for genocide denial, revisionism, or the glorification of those responsible,” European Council President Costa said in his speech. “Denying such horrors only poisons our future.”


NATO needs more long-range missiles to deter Russia, US general says

NATO needs more long-range missiles to deter Russia, US general says
Updated 11 July 2025
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NATO needs more long-range missiles to deter Russia, US general says

NATO needs more long-range missiles to deter Russia, US general says
  • The war in Ukraine has underscored Europe’s heavy dependence on the United States to provide long-range missiles

BERLIN: NATO will need more long-range missiles in its arsenal to deter Russia from attacking Europe because Moscow is expected to increase production of long-range weapons, a US Army general told Reuters.

Russia’s effective use of long-range missiles in its war in Ukraine has convinced Western military officials of their importance for destroying command posts, transportation hubs and missile launchers far behind enemy lines.

“The Russian army is bigger today than it was when they started the war in Ukraine,” Major General John Rafferty said in an interview at a US military base in Wiesbaden, Germany.

“And we know that they’re going to continue to invest in long-range rockets and missiles and sophisticated air defenses. So more alliance capability is really, really important.”

The war in Ukraine has underscored Europe’s heavy dependence on the United States to provide long-range missiles, with Kyiv seeking to strengthen its air defenses.

Rafferty recently completed an assignment as commander of the US Army’s 56th Artillery Command in the German town of Mainz-Kastel, which is preparing for temporary deployments of long-range US missiles on European soil from 2026.

At a meeting with US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Monday, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius is expected to try to clarify whether such deployments, agreed between Berlin and Washington when Joe Biden was president, will go ahead now that Donald Trump is back in the White House.

The agreement foresaw the deployment of systems including Tomahawk missiles with a range of 1,800 km and the developmental hypersonic weapon Dark Eagle with a range of around 3,000 km.

Russia has criticized the planned deployment of longer-range US missiles in Germany as a serious threat to its national security. It has dismissed NATO concerns that it could attack an alliance member and cited concerns about NATO expansion as one of its reasons for invading Ukraine in 2022.

European plans

Fabian Hoffmann, a doctoral research fellow at Oslo University who specializes in missiles, estimated that the US provides some 90 percent of NATO’s long-range missile capabilities.

“Long-range strike capabilities are crucial in modern warfare,” he said. “You really, really don’t want to be caught in a position like Ukraine (without such weapons) in the first year (of the war). That puts you at an immediate disadvantage.”

Aware of this vulnerability, European countries in NATO have agreed to increase defense spending under pressure from Trump.

Some European countries have their own long-range missiles but their number and range are limited. US missiles can strike targets at a distance of several thousand km.

Europe’s air-launched cruise missiles, such as the British Storm Shadow, the French Scalp and the German Taurus, have a range of several hundred km. France’s sea-launched Missile de Croisiere Naval (MdCN) can travel more than 1,000 km.

They are all built by European arms maker MBDA which has branches in Britain, France, Germany and Italy.

France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Britain and Sweden are now participating in a program to acquire long-range, ground-launched conventional missiles known as the European Long-Range Strike Approach (ELSA).

As part of the program, Britain and Germany announced in mid-May that they would start work on the development of a missile with a range of over 2,000 km.


‘Everybody is tired’ of war in Ukraine, UN migration chief says

‘Everybody is tired’ of war in Ukraine, UN migration chief says
Updated 11 July 2025
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‘Everybody is tired’ of war in Ukraine, UN migration chief says

‘Everybody is tired’ of war in Ukraine, UN migration chief says
  • Russia’s invasion has triggered Europe’s biggest refugee crisis this century, with 5.6 million Ukrainian refugees globally and 3.8 million uprooted in their country

ROME: Fatigue over the war in Ukraine and US-led foreign aid cuts are jeopardizing efforts to support people fleeing hardship, the head of the UN migration agency warned in an interview on Friday. International Organization for Migration (IOM) Director General Amy Pope was speaking a day after a Ukraine recovery conference in Rome mobilized over €10 billion ($11.69 billion) for the country.

“It’s three-and-a-half years into the conflict. I think it’s fair to say that everybody is tired, and we hear that even from Ukrainians who’ve been experiencing the ongoing attacks in their cities and often have been displaced multiple times,” she said.

“The response to it, though, has to be peace, because ultimately, without peace, there won’t be an end, not only to the funding request, but also to the support for the Ukrainian people.”

Russia’s invasion has triggered Europe’s biggest refugee this century, with 5.6 million Ukrainian refugees globally and 3.8 million uprooted in their country, according to UN data. The IOM and other UN agencies are hampered by major funding shortages as US President Donald Trump slashes foreign aid and European donors like Britain shift funds from development to defense.

US decisions will give the IOM a $1 billion shortfall this year, Pope said, saying budget reductions should be phased gradually or else Trump and others risk stoking even worse migration crises.

“It doesn’t work to have provided assistance and then just walk away and leave nothing. And what we see happening when support falls is that people move again … So (the cuts) can ultimately have a backlash,” she said.

Warning for US, praise for Italy

Pope, 51, is the first woman to lead the IOM and a former adviser to the Obama and Biden administrations who is now working with Trump’s White House on so-called “self-deportations.”

She said the IOM has decades of experience of such programs in Europe and they take time to implement, especially to prepare returnees and check they are going voluntarily.

“That doesn’t always move as quickly as governments would like,” Pope said.

Asked whether the IOM would stop working with the US if the returns turned out to be forced, she said: “We’ve made clear to them what our standards are, and as with every member state, we outline what we can do and what we can’t do, and they understand that, and it is part of the deal.”

After Rome, Pope was on her way to Washington to meet with Trump administration officials and US lawmakers. Turning to Europe, she praised Italy’s decision to increase migrant work permits to nearly 500,000 for 2026-2028, coming from a right-wing government otherwise pursuing tough border policies.

“What Italy is doing is taking a realistic look at what labor they need, what skills they need, what talent they need. And then they’re designing a system to allow people to come in through a safe and legal channel,” Pope said.