Vanessa Mae Rodel and her seven-year-old daughter touch down in Toronto and prepare to settle in Montreal.

Vanessa Rodel and her seven-year-old daughter, asylum seekers from the Philippines, were due to land in Toronto. Rodel was among a group of vulnerable asylum seekers who sheltered NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden while he hid in Hong Kong in 2013.

The law firm of Michael Vidler, who was assisting the pair, announced on Monday evening that Reem, 20, and Rawan, 18, left Hong Kong last week.

A group of them protested outside the government headquarters on Wednesday. One asylum seeker from Sri Lanka said her family had been stuck in limbo for eight years.

Ravaged by the 2004 tsunami, the Moken sea gypsies have lost nearly everything again in a fire that has ripped through their settlement on Thailand’s Surin Islands.

Immigration Department acknowledges application for extension as Amnesty International urges local government not to return pair to their country of origin as they will be “in grave danger”.

With just one day to go before the asylum they were granted in December expires, the two sisters – now living in Hong Kong – still hope for the best. They fled their family while on holiday in September and say the Saudi consulate in the city tried to abduct them and put them on a flight to Riyadh.

Sirul Azhar Umar, who was sentenced to death in 2015 for murdering Altantuya Shaariibuu, could be deported after Australia rejected his bid for asylum.

Hakeem al-Araibi, who fled Bahrain in 2014 and received refugee status in Australia, was arrested in November on his honeymoon in Thailand.

Crime statistics belie the notion, often fed by media reports, that asylum seekers of certain races are contributing to a wave of violence.

Thailand has described the case of a refugee footballer as “involving two countries competing for custody” of Hakeem al-Araibi, and it had become involved “by chance”.

Behrouz Boochani, a Kurdish-Iranian journalist, has been held on Manus Island since 2013 after being plucked off a boat bound for Australia.

The UN refugee agency’s “2 Billion Kilometres to Safety” campaign calls for people to cover the distance travelled by world’s refugees, with participants able to use their fitness apps to log kilometres and add to the global total.

There has been growing domestic and international pressure on the Australian government to move children held in the offshore island camps, following reports of serious health problems.

Human rights activists believe Hakeem al-Araibi, who was granted refugee status in Australia, is at risk of torture or death if repatriated to Bahrain.

• Newly appointed head of immigration said refugees would no longer be returned home ‘involuntarily’

Principal Assistant Secretary for Security Billy Woo says new scheme paying lawyers a fixed rate per case instead of by hour has helped speed up process.

There are more than 97,000 refugees in the camps, half of them children, and they have been there for decades

Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun, who fled alleged abuse by her family, will transit through South Korea before landing in Canada.

• Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun is being evaluated by the UN refugee agency to assess her need for protection, while Human Rights Watch says a return to her home country would put her in danger as she has renounced Islam

Security Bureau suggests raising maximum penalty for hirers from three years in prison to 10, while overstayers caught working could face a three-year jail term, up from the current two.

Four-year-old Shazee was born in Bangkok to parents who fled persecution in Pakistan for singing Christmas songs. They live in one room padlocked from the outside, in constant fear of detention. So do thousands of others.

US, Australia and several other countries have pulled out of the pact, which has split governments and sparked resignations.

The United Nations and a doctors group recently warned of alarming levels of depression, with many suicide attempts and children living in despair

Hakeem Al-Araibi fled the Middle Eastern nation in 2014 after he was arrested and tortured, and has since been granted refugee status in Australia. But was seized in Bangkok last month during a family holiday.

Medecins Sans Frontieres reported that almost a third of the people they had treated on Nauru before being expelled by the government in October had reported attempted suicide

Actor Sam Neill and others slam Canberra’s detention of asylum seekers on island camps and want refugee children taken to Australia.

International enforcement agencies have ‘disrupted’ 10 alleged attempts to transport 300 people over the past 14 months