Courtesy of Sylviane Diouf.

On the occasion of Africa Day and the Asian-Pacific American heritage month of May, IPS correspondent Sudeshna Chowdhury interviewed Sylviane A. Diouf, a renowned historian who studies the African diaspora, about the presence of Africans in India and the rest of Asia.

Diouf is also one of the curators of an exhibition called “Africans In India: From Slaves to Generals and Rulers” which is on display at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: How different is the story of Asian Africans from the African diaspora in the rest of the world, such as in America or Europe?

A: Not all Africans arrived in Asia as slaves. Some were traders, artisans, and religious leaders. India had an abundance of local slaves to perform hard labour, so the Africans and foreign slaves were mostly employed in specialised jobs as domestics in wealthy households, in the royal courts, and in the armed forces.

Africans were regarded as exceptional warriors and they fought in armies all over India, alongside Arabs, Turks, Indians and Afghans. They could rise through the ranks and become “elite slaves”, amassing wealth and power and even becoming rulers in their own right.

Elite slavery was often a frontier phenomenon, often found in areas that underwent instability due to struggles between factions and where hereditary authority was weak. Rulers considered Africans reliable because they were outsiders with no family, clan or caste connections to the indigenous populations, so they promoted them as court officials, administrators, and army commanders.

These elite slaves were frequently at the centre of court disputes and sometimes seized power for themselves. Slave soldiers, guards, and bodyguards were routinely freed after a few years of service, often married local women, and were integrated into the larger society.

Q: Why do you think Africans were able to distinguish themselves so easily in countries like India, unlike say in Western countries? Is there a greater story of assimilation here that made it possible for Africans to rise from slaves to generals and then rulers?

A: Due to Islamic laws, enslaved Africans tended to have much greater social mobility than West Africans did in the Americas. One distinctive trait of slavery in the Islamic world was that, contrary to what happened in the West, bondage and “race” were not linked. Instead, factors such as religion, ethnicity, and caste were often more influential than colour.

The Africans’ success in India was theirs but it is also a strong testimony to the open-mindedness of a society in which they were a small religious and ethnic minority, originally of low status. As foreigners and Muslims, Africans ruled over indigenous Hindu, Muslim and Jewish populations. It would have been unthinkable in the West.

Today, in a country of 1.2 billion people, there are about 50,000 to 70,000 African descendants. It is thus not surprising that most Indians have never heard of them. Many people know of the famous 16th century Malik Ambar, a former Ethiopian slave who became a prime minister and regent and was a bitter foe of the Moghuls, but some are not aware he was African.

Our exhibition will travel to India and this will help put the Africans’ place in India history in more people’s consciousness.

Q: What is the current state of these Africans in India? In most cases, why do you think they continue to live in poverty?

A: A majority of Sidis (Africans in India are called Sidis) live in poverty or are part of the working class: drivers, domestics, security guards, etc. Others are farmers and some belong to the middle class. According to their own organisations, the lack of education and of strong leadership is an impediment.

Some Sidis are recognised as “scheduled tribes” and benefit from affirmative action programmes, but others are denied the status or are not given the opportunity to make use of it.

Q: Any interesting observations during your visit to India? Was the African community in India aware of their roots and identity? Did they care?

A: It’s a diverse community. Some people are aware and do care, others are not and perhaps would not care. The people I met were very conscious of their identity as descendants of Africans and as Muslims. They were also very conscious of being Indians.

For the past several years, Western and Indian scholars have been doing research on the communities for books, photographs, articles, exhibitions, and documentaries and that has led some Sidis to learn about and value their own past and history.

Q: Do you see the image of Africa changing in today’s world? Has it managed to move beyond its stereotypical image of poverty, hunger and deprivation?

A: I think the image has already changed positively in some circles: the arts world, among younger generations, for instance, thanks to the extraordinary crop of writers, painters, musicians, designers, architects, and other artists who are producing wonderful work.

Over 120,000 Afghan women and 60,000 children admit to being addicted to drugs. Credit: Anand Gopal/IPS

Located on a narrow street in a quiet neighbourhood in Kabul, the Sanga Amaj Women’s Treatment Centre is the only one of its kind in Afghanistan: named after the 22-year-old journalist who was assassinated in 2007, the facility caters exclusively to Kabul’s massive population of female drug addicts.

Out of respect for its residents’ privacy, the centre does not disclose its location and strictly monitors all visits. Here, a kind and professional staff dressed in white aprons attend to 25 women and an equal number of children between the ages of five and 11who spend most of their time in a cosy playroom filled with toys.

The entire facility is split between two floors, housing dormitory-style rooms with 12 beds each and an array of common rooms.

The clean, pleasant settings belie the desperate circumstances of the building’s occupants.

Most of the women here say they started out using opium and hashish, but turned to harder drugs like heroin in order to cope with “economic hardships, family violence, or psychological problems,” Storai Darinoor, one of the young coordinators at the facility, told IPS.

“In many cases husbands introduce their wives to drugs, often forcibly. When either one of the parents are addicts, the children generally become addicts, too,” she added. Women and children tend to favour oral intake of drugs, either eating or smoking their fix, but one 11-year-old in the centre was found to have been using injections.

Though the female residents declined to speak with IPS, staff members said that patients have admitted to taking heroin as “medicine” to ease the stresses of daily life.

“Young children are fed opium by their mothers to keep them quiet, while older children, in addition to consuming drugs themselves, provide drugs for their mothers,” according to Storai.

She says 80 percent of female addicts turned to drugs upon returning to the country from Iran and Pakistan, where they lived as refugees during the Taliban’s reign from 1996 to 2001.

The Sanga Amaj Centre receives funding through the drug advisory programme of the Colombo Plan – a U.S.-backed regional initiative designed to coordinate strategies for reducing demand and supply of narcotics in Asia – but only enough to provide the most basic therapy.

“Treatment typically lasts 45 days,” Dr. Huma Mansouri, director of the facility, tells IPS, beginning with a 10-day period of detoxification.

“After that we proceed to administering daily doses of buprenorphine (a semi-synthetic opioid) since we do not have access to methadone.” When this is inadequate to stop severe withdrawal symptoms – crying, screaming or beating their heads against a wall – staff members resort to “water therapy”: short, cold showers that help patients to relax.

After the first 10 days, medication is limited to daily doses of vitamins. The rest of the time in the facility is spent on rehabilitation, attending awareness sessions on the harmful effects of drug use and classes on different subjects including health, psychology and religion, “because drug use is forbidden in Islam,” Mansouri said.

The women then move into a three-month vocational programme, learning sewing and computer skills, which open up employment opportunities once they leave the centre.

One of the facility’s 12 staff members is then assigned to “follow” the women for a two-year period, making weekly house visits, offering support or advice, and providing counselling free of charge.

Not all of the women have a place to go after being discharged. Some are abandoned by their families as a result of their addiction and have no way of supporting themselves. Whenever possible, the centre hires its old patients to work as cleaners in the facility.

To date, the centre has treated over 1,100 women, of which “only 145 have relapsed,” according to Storai.

But the vast majority of women in Afghanistan have no access to such treatment, and often live out their days in a cycle of violence and poverty made worse by their addiction.

According to a survey conducted by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in 2010, the last time such data were gathered, roughly one million Afghans between the ages of 15 and 64 were addicted to drugs, or three percent of the population of 35 million.

An estimated 120,000 of these addicts are women, and over 60,000 are children.

Experts attribute these dismal figures to numerous factors, including a 40-percent unemployment rate and an increase in poppy cultivation: in 2012, an estimated 154,000 hectares of farmland were dedicated exclusively to poppy.

The UNODC 2013 Afghanistan Opium Risk Assessment says cultivation in the main poppy growing areas – like the southern regions of Helmand and Kandahar, and northern provinces like Herat, Faizabad and Badakhshan – is expected to rise even further in the coming years.

The country, which used to supply about half of Europe’s heroin in 2001, now accounts for a full 90 percent of the global supply of opiates, making it the world’s largest producer by far. An estimated 26 percent of the country’s GDP comes directly from the narcotics trade, which the U.N. report says is “strongly” linked to economic insecurity and a lack of agricultural aid.

Though Afghanistan has a long history of opium use, with many families in the north taking moderate doses in order to work longer hours, addiction levels did not reach such heights until the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 forced warring mujahideen groups out of the cities and into rural areas, where they took over vast poppy fields and established “production centres and laboratories along the northern border,” Dr. Tariq Suliman, director of ‘Nejat’, one of the few drug rehabilitation centres in Kabul, told IPS.

Located in the impoverished Karte Char neighbourhood in western Kabul, Nejat sits in the middle of a huge concentration of drug users, who congregate in parks, crouch under bridges or trees, or even just sit in the middle of the road to get their fix.

While heroin is the most widely used drug – available at virtually every street corner for six dollars a gramme – hashish and opium are also readily available. For a population with an average income of just 500 dollars a year, this is a steep price to pay, and often pushes families deeper into poverty.

The government’s ministry of counter narcotics has no funds with which to implement prevention, treatment or rehabilitation programmes, leaving the onus for this work entirely on the shoulders of civil society, laments Suliman.

Experts say women bear the brunt of addiction, partly because religious and cultural taboos preventing women from consuming drugs mean that few actively seek treatment for fear of being stigmatised.

Female drug addicts here are a kind of “hidden population”, secreting themselves away in their homes, which, in turn, breeds a culture of violence against children and pushes the latter closer towards addiction.

Experts say that unless the government allocates more money for the creation of facilities like the Sanga Amaj Centre, the thousands of female addicts have no hope of a better future.

“There are cases of undocumented pregnant women and children running into difficulties getting health care at hospitals and health centres. There are quite a number of instances,” Sylvia Koniecki, the head of Andalucía Acoge (Andalusia Welcomes), an NGO that works on behalf of immigrants, told IPS.

Immigrants in Spain have little access to public healthcare. Credit: Bigstock/IPS

Royal decree-law 16/2012, enacted Apr. 20, 2012 by the government of the rightwing People’s Party (PP), stipulates that foreign women have the right to public health care during pregnancy, childbirth and the post-partum period, regardless of their legal status in the country.

It also states that all undocumented immigrants under 18 shall receive free health care “in the same conditions as Spanish citizens,” and those over 18 shall receive “emergency health care in cases of serious illness or accident due to any cause, until they are medically discharged.”

As a result, most undocumented immigrants have limited access to health care. They can purchase state health insurance for 710 euros (913 dollars) a year, excluding medicines, but many of them cannot afford it, human rights groups say.

Alpha Pam, a 28-year-old undocumented Senegalese immigrant, died Apr. 21 at the Inca Hospital in Majorca, one of the Balearic Islands off the east coast of Spain, from tuberculosis. His family complained of negligence, while the authorities claim that he received proper care. However, the hospital’s director, Fernando Navarro, was removed from his post on Wednesday May 22.

The case was reported to the European Commission – the EU executive – on May 17 by the Communist Party-led Izquierda Unida (United Left) coalition.

As part of its fiscal austerity policies, the government of conservative Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy estimated savings of 500 million euros (645 million dollars) as a result of cancelling the health cards of 873,000 undocumented immigrants as of September 2012.

But “there will be no such savings,” said Gabriel Ruiz, who is in charge of the migrants’ programme for the southern city of Málaga’s branch of Doctors of the World, an international humanitarian organisation. He said exclusion from primary health care would only mean more users coming to the emergency services “which are more expensive to provide.”

Ruiz told IPS that the immigrant population is generally in a state of social exclusion and is therefore more vulnerable to diseases propagated by overcrowding or inadequate nutrition. “Excluding immigrants from the public health system not only puts their health at risk, but also that of the rest of society because of the possible spread of illnesses,” he stressed.

The government justifies the measures by claiming that undocumented immigrants were overloading the health system. But a 2012 report by the Ecology and Development Foundation (ECODES) concluded that Spanish citizens were the main users of the public health system.

The Málaga branch of Doctors of the World and Málaga Acoge (Málaga Welcomes) have met with immigrants who show them bills to be paid for emergency health care, which is against the decree-law. “They come to us in desperation, with invoices for huge sums that are accumulating interest because they have not been paid,” said Ruiz.

The government of the autonomous community of the Balearic Islands, also in the hands of the PP, said on May 8 that it would cancel all improperly issued bills and repay the money that immigrants have shelled out for emergency health services.

Each one of the 17 autonomous communities that make up Spain has applied the decree-law differently. Andalusia, Catalonia, Asturias, the Basque Country and the Canary Islands have refused to enforce it.

Social organisations in Andalusia – where the province of Málaga is located – are drawing attention to the many cases they encounter, and solving most of them by acting as intermediaries between immigrants and the authorities.

According to Ruiz, “there is a lack of clear guidelines from the local government for the health facilities in Andalusia.

“In a single week we have had two or three cases of undocumented immigrants who have been refused primary care or have been directed to other bodies like the National Institute of Social Security, when it was the responsibility of the health centre itself to provide assistance,” Ruiz said.

The provincial health authority in Málaga admitted that there have been instances, even before the decree-law came into force, but said they were “isolated cases” that they were trying “to solve as soon as possible,” a spokesperson told IPS.

But “there should not be a single case,” Alejandro Cortina, the head of Málaga Acoge, told IPS. “Precise instructions from the provincial authority to the hospitals and health centres are needed in order to keep this from happening.”

A study carried out by Málaga Acoge from Sept. 1 to Dec. 17, 2012, found 42 cases at 20 health centres in six Andalusian provinces, affecting 69 immigrants, of whom 77 percent were undocumented.

The report says 38 percent of those affected were denied a new health card, 23 percent were refused an appointment with a primary health care doctor, and another 23 percent were billed for the health care they received. Among those affected were eight children under 18 and three pregnant women.

Ruiz said he believes these cases are just the tip of the iceberg, and that the number of undocumented immigrants facing difficulties in accessing health care or being wrongly charged for services is much higher.

In a tour of primary care health centres in Málaga, employees confirmed to IPS that there was a marked decline in the number of undocumented immigrants seeking care, which they attributed to a lack of information among users about the continuity of services for immigrants in Andalusia in spite of the decree-law.

However, some receptionists have turned immigrants away. The report by Málaga Acoge concludes that most instances of denial of health services to undocumented immigrants were the responsibility of public health centre staff in direct contact with the public.

Passengers wait at Nyugati (“Western”) train station in Budapest, Hungary. Credit: Zoltán Dujisin/IPS

Observers agree that ever since the conservative party Fidesz won a two-thirds majority in parliament in 2010, the government has taken many steps to concentrate power, including by limiting the independence of the judiciary as well as freedom of speech.

The government also approved a new constitution that enshrines the values of Christianity, family and patriotism, having drafted it without consulting other parties or civil society groups.

“We are thinking of leaving the country,” says Sára, a young mother in her thirties who lives in Újlipotváros, one of Budapest’s preferred districts among the liberal intelligentsia and middle classes. “My partner, my fourteen-month-old child and I are no longer considered a family under the new constitution,” she explains.

“It’s not just that we can’t pay taxes together. The feeling also makes us mad – with what right does this government say we are not a family? While the rest of Europe is enlarging the definition of family to even include homosexuals, we are going in the opposite direction.”

Many have already made the decision Sára is now considering, but the real reasons behind the emigration phenomenon remain the object of a heated political debate.

While official estimates state that 300,000 Hungarians live abroad, Gyorgy Matolcsy, governor of the Central Bank, recently spoke of half a million Hungarians leaving their homeland in recent years, which would constitute 5 percent of Hungary’s population of 10 million.

Currently about 250,000 Hungarians are registered abroad, although real numbers are likely higher because many migrants do not want authorities to know they left in order not to preclude current or future state benefits.

Austria, Germany and the United Kingdom are the preferred destinations for these immigrants. London may be home to up to 200,000 Hungarians, so many that it is popularly referred to as the second largest Hungarian city.

Yet unlike other countries in the post-communist region, Hungarians have traditionally resisted migrating, partly due to the strength of Hungary’s social safety net, but also for cultural reasons.

Politicians are struggling to explain why this tendency has suddenly changed. The debate has erupted around the worrisome 56 percent of students who consider leaving Hungary, a group that has often participated in international programs and can easily integrate in Western European labour markets.

“The issue has become politicised, but it is underlined by economic and structural factors,” Béla Soltész, a migration researcher at Corvinus University in Budapest, told IPS.

“There is an opposition discourse which blames the phenomenon on bad management by the government, particularly in the education sector, whereas the government pushes the view that those leaving the country are becoming unfaithful to it, putting their individualistic and materialistic needs in front of the good of the country,” Soltész says.

“Both are simplifying the issue,” he adds. “This is a 10-year phenomenon that began gradually with the opening of the European Union’s labour market. In some ways Hungary is catching up with the region.”

Although reliable data on them are lacking, many of the emigrants are well-educated opposition sympathisers with access to social media, which gives greater visibility to the “best and brightest” in the debate.

Some in this group have been affected by recent educational reforms – especially since students now have to sign contracts in order to benefit from state support as they go through their education and must pay back this support if they move abroad.

But in a country where doctors make an average of 700 euros per month, the role of high unemployment and a lack of economic and professional prospects may be more significant than political discontent.

Hungary’s gross domestic product decreased by 1.7 percent in 2012 and no growth is expected in 2013. Unemployment now exceeds 10 percent and is three times higher in the case of the younger generation.

“People with technical formation can nowadays very easily compare their salary with that of their peers in Norway, the UK or Holland, where pay can be ten times higher. And then they may blame the government for these differences,” Soltész told IPS.

While recent youth migration may be short-term, the growth in Hungarian professional networks abroad might turn it into a more permanent phenomenon in the future, Soltész warned. “The most skilled and bright are leaving and the remittances are not that high.”

“Reinsertion could be difficult because the labor market is very informally structured,” Soltész noted. “Qualifications obtained abroad are less important or understood than personal contacts.”

“And we don’t know what will happen to the people who do their whole education abroad and build their professional contacts there.”

A port of entry into Myanmar (Burma) from Thailand. Credit: Preethi Nallu/IPS

Nangnyi Foung reaches into the dryer, pulls out another pair of pants and places it on the ironing board. “I still have several more loads to go,” she says as the clock strikes nine p.m., marking the start of her 14^th hour on the shift.

She has been on her feet in this laundromat in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai since seven in the morning and had been hoping to call it a day when two more customers walked in.

She is not in a position to turn anyone away: “I need the money. My family needs me to work,” she tells IPS, her voice tinged with desperation as she begins yet another load.

Six do-it-yourself washing machines stand like sentries at the entrance of this storefront-turned-laundromat. A flight of stairs leads to Nangnyi Foung’s living quarters, where she retires late at night only to collapse in exhaustion before waking up and beginning all over again.

Originally from the Shan State in neighbouring Myanmar (formerly Burma), Nangnyi Foung came here saddled with debt.

Fleeing persistent violence in her home country, she took out loans and paid middlemen hefty sums in order to win safe passage to Thailand, where, she had heard, employment opportunities awaited.

Ten years later Nangnyi Foung is still working to pay off her debt, awaking daily to a rigorous fourteen-hour shift of washing and ironing. Her earnings after seven days’ work without a single day off amount to little over six dollars, much of which is remitted back home.

Reaching for the steaming iron Nangnyi Foung tells IPS she saves on living expenses by sleeping in the basement of this facility. If she also had to pay for lodging she would not be able to send money home to her family of four.

Accounting for over 80 percent of Thailand’s 2.5-million-strong migrant labour force, Burmese migrants like Nangnyi Foung provide a lifeline to cash-strapped families back in Myanmar, one of Southeast Asia’s poorest countries that is struggling to recover from decades of economic stagnation.

Today, the minimum wage in Myanmar – about 180 dollars a month – buys eight to 10 times fewer daily consumption commodities like rice, salt, sugar and cooking oil than it did twenty years ago. The average Burmese lives on less than a dollar per day.

Though Myanmar is the world’s largest exporter of teak, jade, pearls, rubies and sapphires, and boasts lucrative extractive industries such as mining, timber and power generation, very little of the country’s natural wealth trickles down to the masses: approximately 32 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, while unemployment is at 5.4 percent.

According to a 2006 survey of migrant workers from Myanmar, conducted by the Asian Research Centre for Migration, more than two-thirds of the 600 respondents admitted to being unemployed before migrating to Thailand.

Remittances jump hurdles

While migrant workers fill crucial gaps in Thailand’s labour market, and their remittances account for five percent of Myanmar’s gross domestic product (GDP), neither government has attempted to make the flow of money between workers and their families any easier.

Despite the existence of commercial banks or official ‘Xpress Money’ outlets, most migrants prefer to use the informal remittance channel known as the “hundi” system.

These unauthorised transactions involve dealers in Thailand relaying messages to members of their network in Myanmar, who then deliver the necessary amount to the family.

Some migrants rely on friends and loved ones who travel between the neighbouring countries to act as conduits, thereby circumventing costly bank transfers.

“The banks can’t be trusted and they require a work permit, a letter of recommendation from our employer and a passport,” Nangnyi Foung says, documents very few migrants have access to.

Migrants with families in rural areas go through brokers, who deliver cash to the recipient’s doorstep, eliminating the hassle of them having to locate cash points.

According to a new report released Monday by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Asian countries dispatched over 60 million migrants into the world, “who sent almost 260 billion dollars to their families in 2012. This represented 63 percent of global flows to developing countries.”

Yet the continent seems ill equipped to deal with the influx of remittances, which benefit one in 10 Asian households.

“Although the clear majority of the region’s population lives in rural areas, 65 percent of payment locations are in urban areas,” the report found. In most Asian countries, only banks are authorised to deal with foreign currency transactions, making it difficult for poor rural communities to access funds coming in from abroad.

The report stressed the urgent need to provide remittance-receiving families with “more options” to secure and spend this money, especially since nine Asian countries currently receive remittances “exceeding 10 percent of GDP.”

The report has particularly vital policy implications for Southeast Asia, where 13 million migrants are currently living and working abroad. Thailand has become a “net importer” of migrant labour – attracting more than double the number of migrants to work in its expanding economy than it is sending abroad.

Women forfeit rights for employment

Constituting nearly 49 percent of the global population of 214 million migrant workers, women are responsible for the lion’s share of remittances flowing around the world.

Acutely aware of their families’ needs, like food, housing costs, education for children or younger siblings, and healthcare – women often endure extreme conditions in order to remit money back home.

The town of Mae Sot, located along the Thai-Myanmar border, hosts the largest number of women migrant workers in Thailand, who toil over fifteen hours a day in garment factories. In 2012, this sector netted estimated profits of 6.3 billion, while labourers who keep the industry running earned between 66 and 100 dollars per month.

Kyoko Kusakabe, associate professor of gender and development at the Asian Institute of Technology and co-author of ‘Thailand’s Hidden Workforce’, told IPS that most female migrants in Mae Sot “avoid labour strikes and forfeit their rights in favour of (continued employment).”

She says this is part of a culture that forces women to be “responsible” from a very young age, while their male counterparts have few obligations.

According to Kusakabe, this culture is reflected in remittance patterns: when the economy is booming, remittances from men increase, falling again when the economy enters a slump. Remittances from women, on the other hand, remain steady regardless of the overall economic climate, suggesting that women save more, or forego their own needs during times of economic austerity in order to preserve their family’s lifeline.

Her research found that even if women are not paid their salaries, or lose their jobs, they borrow money in order to send home, fearful that their children or parents will starve without financial support.

At the UN Forum of Mayors on Crime Prevention and Security in Urban Settings, from left to right: Dong Min Ki, Jonathan Lucas, Cecilia Andersson, Martin Xaba, Bilal S. Hamad, and Marin Casimir Ilboudo. Credit: Silvia Giannelli/IPS

As people around the world continue to migrate into cities, swelling urban populations, they have sparked growth in another area: crime and security issues.

“Big cities are…where the greatest opportunities are, but also where more criticalities concentrate,” said Piero Fassino, mayor of Turin, Italy, at the plenary session of the Forum of Mayors on Crime Prevention and Security in Urban Settings, held in Turin from May 20 to 21.

“While the quality of services to citizens are usually higher in those centres, they also present more problems of social alienation, youth unrest and crime,” Fassino added.

The forum, organised by United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) with the United Nations Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) and the municipality of Turin, sought to reduce inequality and injustice in urban settings and address the dynamics of security and crime preventions.

The challenge for the future is to take advantage of opportunities offered by urbanisation while reducing episodes of crime and violence that hinder sustainable development, particularly for the most vulnerable people: women, youth and marginalised groups.

“From 1960 to 1990, urbanisation was accompanied by a severe increase [in] crime and violence, which affected the majority of cities and towns in both the developed and the developing world,” explained Cecilia Andersson, human settlements officer of the Safer Cities Programme of UN-HABITAT, during her opening speech.

“This situation required change. It required the cities and towns themselves to take responsibility to deal with these issues,” she added.

Mayors and representatives of 18 municipalities around the world from Cape Town to Bangkok, from Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) to Seoul, discussed the biggest challenges they encountered and the best measures to take to address them.

Martin Xaba, head of the Safer Cities and I-Trump Department of Durban, South Africa, explained how the local municipality decided in 2000 to adopt the Safer Cities strategy.

“The strategy requires the implementation of both reactive and proactive approach,” Xaba explained. While adequate responses to crime are always needed, “prevention remains the most effective tool, and this is where community involvement becomes critical”.

Such tools, in the case of Durban, include campaigns for crime awareness and against the abuse of women and children, workshops on drug abuse, and the active participation of the community in ward safety committees.

It was “upon the request of African mayors, who were having an issue with regards to safety in their cities” that the programme Safer Cities began in Africa, Andersson explained to IPS, with Johannesburg, South Africa and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania as pilot cities. The programme has since gone global.

Meanwhile, local leaders say that exchanging ideas among cities does work. Antonio Frey, director of local security in Santiago del Chile, told IPS, “The experience of Cape Town, South Africa, is very interesting for us. They managed to recover public spaces, thanks to the involvement of citizens from marginalised areas.”

“This strategy has positive effects in the long run, because those people recover that space, and then take care [of] and manage it.”

Despite the substantial differences between cities in terms of crime rates and types of crimes, a key requirement to enhance safety and security is the decentralisation of policies from the national to local level.

When policies are not decentralised, improving circumstances becomes very difficult, as Bilal S. Hamad, mayor of Beirut, could attest during his speech at the plenary session.

In Beirut, a lack of decentralisation is hindering the municipality’s ability to intervene on crime and safety issues. “The central government has its hand in the affairs of the municipality,” Hamad lamented. The city is not in charge [of] a police force, and the central government put someone in the role of governor, “taking all the executive power in the city of Beirut”.

In another example, inadequate housing is a problem indirectly connected to crime, but “we don’t have full power [over] it, because it’s the central government which controls that”, insisted Hamad.

According to Andersson, apart from decentralisation, cooperation is also essential. “The best results come when all the various departments in a municipality [understand] that they have a role to play with regards to providing safety and security for the inhabitants of the city,” she told IPS.

Interestingly, crime and violence differ significantly from city to city, and developed and developing countries do not necessarily face separate types of crimes.

“In developing countries, the biggest challenge is always finding resources,” Andersson told IPS, particularly moving resources from national to local governments. Some problems, however, affect most cities, regardless of the country in which they are located. “Across borders, in all regions, the issue of women and girls’ safety…comes out quite clearly,” Andersson said.

This issue, by limiting the freedom of women and girls, prevents them from participating in and contributing to their communities. As Andersson clarified during the conference, “Communities where all citizens are empowered to participate in social, economic and political opportunities…are instrumental [in reducing] poverty.”

Migrants employed as construction workers in Thailand receive little training or safety equipment. Credit: Kalinga Seneviratne/IPS

On the outskirts of the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai, a group of twelve migrant families lives in a makeshift camp comprised of houses constructed from scrap metal.

They share three toilets between them, and each home consists of nothing more than a single room, whose flimsy walls and roof provide little privacy, and are no match for the heavy monsoon rains that lash northern Thailand between the months of May and November.

Sounds of splashing water fill the air as both male and female migrants, returning from a long day’s work, unwind with a shower in the rudimentary, open-air structures that contain nothing more than a rap connected to a water tank.

Most of these workers are employed on a residential construction site just north of here, where they pour cement, plaster walls, build roofs or install electrical wiring from seven in the morning until six in the evening, seven days a week. They do not have much to show for these gruelling hours on the job, returning home with as little as six dollars a day.

One of this shantytown’s residents, Nang Soi Sat, tells IPS the long working hours and paltry income are not even her biggest concerns: she is more worried about maintaining her legal status in the face of multiple challenges.

Thailand is home to an estimated 2.5 million migrant workers. The country’s economic boom – which has seen an 18.9 percent growth in gross domestic product (GDP) since 2011 – relies heavily on a constant influx of labour from neighbouring countries. Over 82 percent of the workers hail from Myanmar (Burma), 8.4 percent from Laos and 9.5 percent from Cambodia.

Those from Myanmar say ethnic strife and civil conflict sent them fleeing in search of better opportunities in the region. A network of garment and furniture factories housed in Special Economic Zones (SEZs) that dot the Thai-Myanmar border quickly absorb incoming migrants to work for a pittance.

Other key areas of employment for migrants include the seafood and agricultural sectors.

For migrants like Sai Sun Lu, the search for better opportunities did not end with his arrival here. Originally from Myanmar’s volatile Shan State, Lu works over nine hours a day at a site in Chiang Mai, constructing high rise buildings that will likely be converted into commercial centres, residential condos or offices, without a single day off.

He tells IPS he did not want to come to Thailand, but was forced to as a result of intense fighting in his home. His hopes for greener pastures on the other side of the border have been dashed and he now finds himself living in a kind of daily nightmare, toiling in what rights groups have called “appalling” conditions.

According to the U.S. State Department’s report on migration and refugees, Thailand ranks alongside some of the worst offenders of migrants’ rights, including Afghanistan, Chad, Iran and Niger.

Because migrant labourers are typically unskilled, with little awareness of occupational safety, they are easy prey for employers looking to cut corners by dismissing safety concerns.

In the construction sector, inadequate training in the proper use of machinery and a lack of protective equipment such as body harnesses or guardrail systems pose a grave threat to those who work on buildings as high as 27 to 69 stories.

On Sai Sun Lu’s construction site, “there have been many accidents and deaths. Some workers have slipped and fallen from the high rises but we receive very little or no compensation,” he said.

“As Burmese we have to be extra careful because if we make any mistakes then our employers can terminate our work without any explanation.”

Fear of this last consequence is, for many workers, second only to the fear of death, and a very common one among migrants from Myanmar who account for 75 percent of Thailand’s one million undocumented workers, according to the Institute for Population and Social Research at Mahidol University.

The 2008 National Verification Programme (NVP) was intended to legalise the status of incoming migrants and provide them with basic protections under Thai labour laws, such as access to social security schemes, official work accident compensation and the ability to apply for driving licences.

However, rights activists contend that the NVP’s registration fees are “extortionate”, often requiring three times the average worker’s monthly salary of between 100 and 167 dollars.

According to this year’s World Report, published annually by Human Rights Watch (HRW), Thai employers frequently seize migrant workers’ documents, thus rendering them bonded labourers, while government policies – like the Thai cabinet’s 2010 resolution to fine employees if their papers carry outdated information – impose severe restrictions on migrant workers’ ability to change jobs.

Even migrants with all their legal papers in hand often go to pains to avoid encounters with the police for fear of being harassed, physically abused, or arrested.

In desperation, many have turned to personal networks of friends and family members to gain access into the country.

In rural Myanmar, where most migrants come from, informal transporters linked to smugglers with networks along the border facilitate entry into Thailand. This system has led to the proliferation of so-called recruiters, or agents, who charge exorbitant fees in exchange for providing such services as remitting money, establishing communication channels between families, or securing employment.

Following allegations of rampant corruption among recruitment agencies, the Labour Ministry of Myanmar recently banned 12 agencies from sending migrant workers to Thailand, according to an internal memo obtained by ‘The Myanmar Times’.

Earlier this month, Myanmar’s Deputy Labour Minister Myint Thein assured labour activists and migrants that the state was doing everything possible to rein in illegal actors and ensure safe, affordable passage between the two countries. It has a vested interest in doing so: a 2010 ILO report found that the average migrant worker in Thailand sent home about 1,000 dollars every month, with total remittances from Thailand accounting for about five percent of Myanmar’s annual GDP.

Trafficking turns people into merchandise. Credit: Amnesty International

In contravention of international law, in Brazil trafficking in human beings remains invisible and unpunished, which encourages the practice of trafficking for sexual exploitation, forced labour, illegal adoption and the trade in human organs, according to experts.

Local laws punish drug trafficking more severely than human trafficking. The sale of drugs carries penalties of between five and 15 years, while trafficking of persons for sexual exploitation is punished with a maximum sentence of eight years, with work release allowed.

“Human trafficking is still an invisible crime. What we have here now is real impunity,” judge Rinaldo Aparecido Barros, a member of the National Council of Justice’s working group on human trafficking, told IPS.

An average of 1,000 persons a year are recruited in Brazil and sent abroad, the public prosecutor’s office said at a public hearing on “Tráfico de pessoas: prevenção, repressão, acolhimento às vítimas e parcerias” – Trafficking in persons: Prevention, repression, care of victims and (illegal) associations – that it held in this city on Friday, May 17.

The goal was to gather and share information about combating human trafficking and to organise joint action to prevent and crack down on the crime. The meeting focused on Brazil’s role as a source country of victims for other parts of the world.

Brazil is also a destination country for victims of human trafficking, and there is internal trafficking of Brazilians for exploitation within the country’s borders as well.

In the last three years, 3,000 Brazilians were transported abroad and subjected mainly to sexual exploitation and slave labour, participants at the meeting described.

“This is a significant number. A large group of people have been deprived of their dignity. The thousands of cases documented every year do not represent the total, because we do not know how many cases escaped our notice,” said federal deputy attorney-general Raquel Elias Ferreira Dodge.

The actual number of victims sent abroad by human trafficking rings is unknown, participants at the meeting agreed.

“We have to work more effectively so that these crimes are condemned without delay. The crime of trafficking in persons injures human dignity,” said Dodge, who is a member of the Higher Council of the federal public prosecutor’s office (MPF).

She said, “Slave labour negates the personhood of the individual and converts the victim into merchandise that can be smuggled and trafficked.”

But hindering the fight against human trafficking in Brazil is the fact that it is only a crime when it leads to sexual exploitation or slave labour, Erick Blatt, the representative of the federal police in Rio de Janeiro, told IPS.

“It is very hard to identify the crime; investigations can only be initiated on the basis of reports, without the certainty that illegality can be proved,” said Blatt, who is also the representative of Interpol, the international criminal police organisation, for the state of Rio de Janeiro.

Moreover, when it comes to international trafficking, “most people go voluntarily to the place where they are exploited: the majority do not know that their passports are going to be taken away,” he said.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) defines human trafficking as “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, for the purpose of exploitation.”

The forms of coercion cited are “abduction, fraud, deception, the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person.”

People smuggling, on the other hand, is limited to profiting from covertly transporting migrants, at their request, from one country to another where legal entry would normally be denied at the border. This is illegal, but no deception may be involved.

Article 231 of Brazil’s criminal code defines the crime of sexual exploitation, and article 149 describes subjection to slave-like conditions. Both crimes are punished relatively leniently, with lighter sentences than for other offences.

The United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime, adopted in 2000 and ratified by Brazil in 2003, specifically identifies human trafficking crimes and proposes wide-ranging punishments, which Brazil has still not incorporated in its laws.

“We are going against the flow of international legislation. In Brazil, the issue has been inadequately treated. Human trafficking is a crime against humanity that robs people of their human dignity,” Judge Barros complained.

He said the best measures for fighting human trafficking were those that block the assets of the trafficking rings, in order to attack their economic flank.

Trafficking in persons is run by complex international crime syndicates that, in Brazil, recruit poor women who have no opportunities for a better life, lawyer Michelle Gueraldi of the Trama Project, an umbrella group for NGOs that combat human trafficking, told IPS.

These women emigrate voluntarily, often out of the desire to improve their lives, and end up being exploited in Spain, the United States, Portugal and Caribbean countries, among others, she said.

Blatt added that Brazil, in turn, is a destination country for women victims of human trafficking from Eastern Europe, especially Hungary and Poland.

“Trafficking in persons is a violation of human rights. The Trama Project is working on prevention and on victim protection. We also receive denunciations of cases, and we find that the majority of recruiters are persons known to and trusted by the victims,” Gueraldi said.

In February the Brazilian government established its Second Plan to Combat Trafficking in Persons, but the challenge is to put these policies into practice, she said.

Blatt admitted that tracing victims of human trafficking across borders is difficult for the local police and for Interpol.

“If communications between the police and the prosecutors are slow here in Brazil, imagine what communications are like between police forces internationally,” he said.

Human trafficking is extremely lucrative. In Europe alone it generates some 3.2 billion dollars a year, according to speakers at the meeting.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) says there are at least 2.5 million victims of human trafficking worldwide. A survey by UNODC found that 58 percent of respondents were victims of sexual exploitation and 36 percent of slave labour.

Despite the staggering human cost of the war, however, the international community is very close to failing these refugees, warns Panos Moumtzis, UNHCR regional coordinator for Syrian refugees.

Panos Moumtzis, UNHCR regional coordinator for Syrian refugees. Photo courtesy of UNHCR.

All sides “appear to be committed only to military means for resolving the conflict”, Moumtzis told IPS, a decision that is leading to what he called “a massive exodus of people”.

Moumtzis has extensive experience in crisis management, having worked in Gaza, Iraq, Bosnia and Kosovo, and other countries with humanitarian emergencies. He describes the Syrian crisis as one of the most acute crises he has ever seen.

IPS correspondent Apostolis Fotiadis spoke with Moumtzis about the situation in and surrounding Syria and the role of the international community in this crisis.

Q: What are the characteristics of the Syrian refugee population?

A: Most of the refugees are Sunni Muslim. Three quarters of those crossing the border are women and children. More than half are children. A large percentage of the men you see in Iraq are mainly Kurdish and wanted to escape conscription, which is a concern of many Syrians as well.

The father in one family I met told me, “In a few months my son will be 18, so we decided to take him out of school and leave the country, before it is too late and he is called to serve.”

Tens of thousands of soldiers have also left the Syrian army. A camp in Jordan, specially assigned for them, holds 20 to 30 thousand of them. But these are not refugees. Anyone who crosses the border with a gun needs to pass a period of six months without a gun or uniform before we accept him as a refugee.

Q: How many people have moved out of Syria so far, and what is the size of your regional operation?

A: Out of approximately 1.25 million refugees, 25 percent of them are in camps. This means another 75 percent is in cities and villages.

There are 17 camps in Turkey with 196,000 people, with three more being built now. Each of those is to host another 10 to 20,000. There, UNHCR advises the government, and we also try to monitor legal issues that occur for refugees and monitor registration in order to keep track of people’s special needs.

We also try to ensure that no recruitment of guerillas takes place in the camp or any kind of military activity happens there.

We run two camps in Iraq and another three in Jordan. Turkey provides things we are unable to offer in our camps, like hot water, three meals per day, and whoever gets married goes on a month holiday. It is very important that camps strictly maintain a civilian character.

Q: How fluid is population movement? Do people return to Syria while others escape the country?

A: We have had spontaneous returns in the last three months. Very often people want to go back and see their houses. Men bring the family out of Syria and then return to check on their property.

Q: If the situation in Syria calms down, how easy would be for refugees to return there?

A: We would suggest that people stay outside Syria for some time until we know an agreement or deal is implemented.

The ones close to the borders whose houses have not been destroyed would return first, whereas people living in Baba Amr at Homs would be the last to return, since the area is devastated.

We are interested in that returns are voluntary, that no one pressures people to return, and that people know what they will face when they return.

Still, in every conflict there are people that cannot return. If the regime changes, for instance, we would see Sunnis going back and ethnic minorities leaving the country.

Q: Has the international community stood up to the task of dealing with the humanitarian disaster in Syria?

A: U.N. agencies estimate that meeting these refugees’ needs requires 1 billion dollars for surrounding countries and another 500 million for those inside Syria. We now have 30 percent of this budget, so we must assess the most urgent needs.

One should also consider the failure of the international community to give a political solution to the Syrian civil war.

Q: Has the international community failed Syria because of the many different geopolitical interests involved in this crisis?

A: It is better to say that the international community has failed politically until now. Humanitarian assistance is an alternative, so we can say they are offering something for this failure.

But there are so many forces inside Syria right now that make the resolution of this conflict a very complicated task. The uprising against a family regime has turned into a war that increasingly resembles a fight between Sunni and Shia, a fight of Hezbollah and Iran against Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United States, as well as a war in which Al Qaeda has intervened.

Q: Many voices warn about a domino effect, with the war spreading into Lebanon. Are these warnings valid?

A: This is not a theoretical danger. It’s a real threat. Overall, Lebanon seems very unstable at the moment, and the bad economic situation in the country does not help. Many times we have to ask our personnel not to do certain things because of the uncertainty.

In Tripoli, people have been killed in armed incidents. A bomb was placed in Beirut three months ago. There is also tension at Sirte, in the south, due to the Hezbollah presence there and in the Beqaa valley as well.

The Shuafat refugee camp can be seen across the separation wall from the Israeli settlement Pisgat Ze'ev. Credit: Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/IPS.

Amidst a new U.S. effort to revive the long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process, healthy pluralities of both peoples want U.S. President Barack Obama to play a stronger role in resolving their conflict, according to a major new poll released here Thursday by the Pew Research Center.

The survey, which also covered attitudes towards Israel and Palestine in 11 other countries, found that Israeli confidence in Obama has increased since his visit to the Jewish state in March, while Palestinians retain little confidence in the U.S. president despite their desire for his greater involvement in peace-making efforts.

And while half of Israelis believe a two-state solution can still be achieved peacefully through negotiations, Palestinians by a large margin believe that is a delusion.

Indeed, a plurality (45 percent) of Palestinian respondents said the best way to achieve statehood was through armed struggle, while only 15 percent said negotiations were the best course. Another 15 percent cited non-violent resistance, while 22 percent more said some combination of these tactics offered the greatest chance for success.

The new Pew survey, which interviewed nearly 15,000 people in 12 countries, as well as the Palestinian Territories (PT), also found strongly unfavourable opinions of Israel, particularly among its predominantly Muslim neighbours.

The United States was the only country where a majority (57 percent) expressed positive views of the Jewish state, although a plurality in Russia also registered more favourable (46 percent) opinions than unfavourable (38 percent).

Nearly two-thirds of respondents in France, Germany, and China, however, said they held unfavourable views of Israel, while in the predominantly Muslim countries covered by the poll – Egypt, Tunisia, PT, Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon – negative views were overwhelming, ranging from 86 percent in Tunisia to 99 percent in Lebanon.

“This is consistent with other polling,” noted Steven Kull, director of the University of Maryland’s Program of International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), who has designed multinational surveys for BBC and his own worldpublicopinion.org in which Israel has repeatedly placed among the world’s least popular nations, along with North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan.

The new survey as released as Secretary of State John Kerry visited the region, including Israel, this week in hopes of injecting renewed momentum into his efforts to reconvene peace talks between Israel and Palestinians.

In what was widely considered an important step in those efforts, Kerry persuaded Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr Al-Thani and Arab League officials to amend the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative (API), which offers full recognition of Israel by all League member states in exchange for its withdrawal to the 1967 Green Line, to include the possibility of “comparable and mutually agreed minor swaps of land” that would presumably permit Israel to absorb major Jewish settlement blocs on the West Bank in any final peace agreement.

While the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu greeted the statement as an “important concession” – and has quietly frozen, at Washington’s request, the issuance of new building permits for Israeli settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem through next month, most analysts believe the chances for serious progress on the peace front – or even the resumption of direct Israeli-Palestinian talks – remain quite low.

They point in particular to the persistent split on the Palestinian side between Fatah, which controls the Palestinian Authority headed by Mahmoud Abbas, and Hamas, which controls Gaza and has reportedly rejected, along with several other Palestinian factions, the Arab League’s amendment to the API.

As for Israel, the same analysts note that Israel’s leadership is unlikely to agree to the kind of far-reaching concessions necessary for a breakthrough, particularly given the continuing political turmoil in its neighbours – including the civil war in Syria, growing political tensions in Jordan, and the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government in Egypt.

And the fact that major figures in the settlement movement now head key ministries in Netanyahu’s new government also dims prospects for significant progress on the peace front, according to this view.

Nonetheless, Kerry, who said Thursday he plans to return to the region in less than two weeks reportedly in hopes of nailing down a June summit with Abbas and Netanyahu in Jordan, appears determined to overcome the reigning scepticism.

The new poll suggests that Israelis may be somewhat more open to his efforts than Palestinians, particularly following Obama’s visit, during which he spent far more time wooing Israeli public opinion, to the region in March.

Sixty-one percent of Israeli respondents said they had either “a lot” of “some” confidence in the U.S. president to do the right thing in world affairs; that was up from just 49 percent two years ago. On the other hand, 82 percent of Palestinian respondents in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem said they either had “not too much” or “no confidence at all” in Obama.

Similarly, 47 percent of Israelis said U.S. policies in the Middle East were “fair”, while another 35 percent said they favoured Israel “too much”. Palestinian respondents, on the other hand, were virtually unanimous in asserting that Washington favoured Israel too much.

Nonetheless, pluralities of 49 percent of Israeli respondents (including 54 percent of Arab Israelis) and 41 percent of Palestinians said they favoured a “larger” role for Obama in resolving the conflict, according to the survey, which noted that there was considerably more support for a larger U.S. role among Palestinians in the West Bank (47 percent) than in Gaza (30 percent).

Fifty percent of Israeli respondents said they thought a two-state solution could be achieved, while only 14 percent of Palestinians agreed (although an additional 22 percent said “it depends).”

The more positive Israeli results contrasted with a survey taken last year by Shibley Telhami, an expert on Arab public opinion at the Brookings Institution and author of a forthcoming book, “The World Through Arab Eyes.”

In that poll a majority of Israelis said they believed a two-state solution could not be achieved. “This suggests that Israelis are somewhat more optimistic,” he told IPS. On the other hand, he added, the Palestinian results suggested increased pessimism on their part.

The poll found that respondents in France Germany and Britain were significantly more optimistic about a two-state solution than respondents in other countries and that publics in those countries, especially Britain, had become more sympathetic toward the Palestinians in recent years.

That could prompt European leaders to take a more active role in efforts to bring the two parties together, as recently recommended by the European Eminent Persons Group (EEPG).

In a recent letter to the foreign affairs chief of the European Union, Catherine Ashton, the group — consisting of seven former foreign ministers, four former prime ministers, and one former president, among others – called the current U.S. position “unproductive” even if Washington’s role in a peace process remained “indispensable.” Among other steps, it called for exerting more pressure on Israel, especially with regard to settlements and recognising the 1967 border as the basis for any solution.

In a report released Thursday, the European Council on Foreign Relations amplified that message, calling for the EU to pursue “a more independent policy in the region that would include encouraging reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, acquiescing in – rather than opposing – the PA’s recourse to the International Criminal Court, and ensuring that goods produced by Jewish settlements in the PT are denied trade preferences.

“A harder-nosed and more indpendent policy from Europe will strengthen Washington’s hand in Israel and improve the chances for a decisive U.S. peace initiative before Obama leaves office and before the occupation enters its fiftieth year,” according to the report.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.