Dr Shafi Bhuiyan is pictured here with a team of ITMDs. Foreign-trained doctors are underutilized in Canada despite shortages of trained personnel.

By Shafi Bhuiyan and team of ITMDs
Toronto, Canada, Aug 20 2021 (IPS)

Canada is ranked number one out of 78 countries globally, with the highest marks in social purpose indicators, emphasizing human rights, social justice, and racial equity commitment, according to a recent U.S. News & World Report survey.

The country follows the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) principles, incorporating them into research and workplace environments, and it acknowledges challenges vulnerable populations face. Adopting these principles in every aspect of people’s lives makes Canada one of the most attractive places for numerous immigrants worldwide, with more than 13 000 internationally trained medical doctors (ITMDs) calling Canada home.

Canada’s health care is based on social equity fundamentals, having universal health coverage for essential medical services free of charge. Nevertheless, in 2019, about 4.6 million Canadians claimed that they do not have regular medical practitioners to seek advice or help.

In 2020, the highest record of 10.5 weeks waiting time from a family physician referral to specialist consultation was documented, with additional 12.1 weeks interval before treatment was initiated.

The COVID-19 pandemic aggravated these issues resulting in about 16 million healthcare services backlogs in Ontario alone. These will need up to almost two years to be resolved.

At the same time, Canada possesses significantly underutilized skilled healthcare professional resources trained abroad. According to the survey conducted among recent ITMDs graduates, 35% have passed the required licensing exams, including Medical Council of Canada Qualifying Examination Part I (MCCQE1), the National Assessment Collaboration Objective Structured Clinical Examination (NAC OSCE). This means they are eligible to enter the residency.

Very few will secure a residency position. The residency quotes retrieved from the Canadian Resident Matching Service (CaRMS) website showed that only 325 out of 3,365 (less than 10 %) spots were available for international medical graduates (IMGs) for the first iteration of the 2021 matching process.

Out of 1,358 IMGs participants, 948 (almost 70%) were unmatched this year partly due to a lack of transparency and understanding of the process rules.

Not to mention the cost associated with licensing examination, the CaRMS application process is a significant financial burden and even a barrier in many cases for the newcomers. According to Statistics Canada report, 47% of foreign-educated health professionals are either unemployed or employed in non-health-related positions that required only a high school diploma.

Nevertheless, internationally trained medical doctors play a significant role in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, supporting the vaccination clinics, working as contact tracing managers and mental health advisors.

Another issue that needs an urgent solution is physician wellbeing. A recent study in Vancouver showed that the burnout rate reaches 68% among doctors, with 63% feeling emotionally exhausted and 39% depersonalized. Moreover, 21% of them had resigned or have thoughts about leaving their career.

On top of that, the aging population required complex care, along with a growing diverse population of Canada, underserved racialized, and newcomers’ communities need a considerate strategy to encompass community-based, culturally sensitive approaches to health care.

The ITMDs is a culturally diverse group with rich experience in different fields of medicine and research. Thus, foreign-educated health care professionals are fit perfectly to engage underprivileged communities, promote health and disease prevention, and manage multiple health priorities. Hence, the integration of internationally trained health care professionals could be a turning point to solve the current and prospective issues.

Moreover, 80% of Canadians stated that they feel comfortable being cared for by doctors who obtained mainly their training outside Canada, with 83% claimed that it should be more action to ensure fairness and opportunities for IMGs to practice medicine.

The question is: Why are internationally trained medical doctors still sidelined? The action is for the government to bring Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) principles into the Canadian health care system.

Thus, a clear roadmap to integrate internationally trained healthcare professionals is necessary to address all existing challenges and strengthen Canada’s health care system. A move considered to be highly beneficial for all stakeholders (patients, physicians, ITMDs, government).

Collaboration is vital to move forward and make the ‘no one left behind ‘strategy a reality.

• The authors are from Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and South American countries.   
• The co-authors are: Drs Bhuiyan S, Krivova A, Orin M, Azam S., Shalaby Y, Tasnim N, Badran H, Al-Chetachi W, Radwan E, Tazrin T, Biswas M, Min K. S, Mehrotra M, Anuradha, Quintanilla E, Begum N, Adhikary I, Fatima N

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Scenes from the Apollo 11 television restoration press conference held at the Newseum in Washington, DC on July 16, 2009. Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/cc by 2.0

By Nora Happel
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 29 2015 (IPS)

Although the United States as a whole is becoming more ethnically diverse, newsrooms remain largely dominated by white, male reporters, according to a recent investigation by The Atlantic magazine.

It found that just 22.4 percent of television journalists, 13 percent of radio journalists, and 13.34 percent of journalists at daily newspapers came from minority groups in 2014.

Another new census, by the American Society of News Editors (ASNE), found just 12.76 percent minority journalists at U.S. daily newspapers in 2014.

While the percentage of minority groups in the U.S. has been steadily increasing, reaching a recent total of 37.4 percent of the U.S. population, the number of minority journalists, by contrast, has stayed at a constant level for years.

This is particularly true for the share of minority employment at newspapers, which has been staggeringly low – between 11 and 14 percent for more than two decades, as illustrated in a graphic by the Pew Research Center and ASNE.

Many say it is a major problem for a field that strives to represent and inform a diverse public, and worrisome for a medium that has the power to shape and influence the views and opinions of mass audiences.

“Journalism must deliver insight from different perspectives on various topics and media must reflect the public they serve. The risk is that by limiting media access to ethnic minorities, the public gets a wrong perception of reality and the place ethnic minorities have in society,” Pamela Morinière, Communications and Authors’ Rights Officer at the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), told IPS.

Under-representation of minority journalists has negative effects on the quality of reporting.

Speaking to IPS, Alfredo Carbajal, managing editor of Al Dia (The Dallas Morning News) and organiser for the ASNE Minority Leadership Institute, said, “The consequence [of ethnic minority groups’ under-representation] is that news coverage lacks the perspectives, expertise and knowledge of these groups as well as their specific skills and experiences because of who they are.”

ASNE President Chris Peck added: “If newsrooms cannot stay in touch with the issues, the concerns, hopes and dreams of an increasingly diverse audience, those news organisations will lose their relevance and be replaced.”

Commenting on the underlying reasons, both Carbajal and Peck underscored the lack of opportunities for minority students compared to their white counterparts.

“Legacy journalism organisations have relied too long on an established pipeline for talent. It’s a pipeline dominated by white, mostly middle class and upper middle class connections – schools, existing journalism leaders, media companies. It’s something of a self-perpetuating cycle that has been slow to evolve,” Peck said.

This argument is echoed in a recent analysis by Ph.D. student Alex T. Williams published in the Columbia Journalism Review. Confronted with the claim that newspapers cannot hire more minority journalists due to the lack of university graduates, Williams took a closer look at graduate and employment statistics provided by Grady College’s Annual Graduate Surveys.

He found that minorities accounted for 21.4 percent of graduates in journalism or communication between 2004 and 2013 – a number that is “not high” but “still not as low as the number of minority journalists working in newsrooms today.”.

The more alarming trend, he says, is that only 49 percent of graduates from minority groups were able to find full-time jobs after their studies. Numbers of white graduates finding employment, by contrast, amounted to 66 percent. This means the under-representation of ethnic minorities in journalism must be traced back to recruitment rather than to graduation numbers, he concluded.

A main reason why minority graduates have difficulty finding jobs, according to Williams, is that most newsrooms look for specific experiences such as unpaid internships that many minority students cannot afford. Also, minority students are more likely to attend less well-appointed colleges that might not have the resources to keep a campus newspaper or offer special networking opportunities.

Another reason is linked to newspapers’ financial constraints. Peck told IPS: “There is a challenge within news organisations to keep a diverse workforce at a time when the traditional media are economically challenged, even as new industries are actively looking to hire away talent that represents the changing American demographic.”

Further, union contracts favour unequal employment, according to Doris Truong, a Washington Post editor and acting president of Unity, who was quoted in 2013 article in The Atlantic.

“One piece of this puzzle is layoff policies and union contracts that often reward seniority and push the most recent hires to leave first. Many journalists of color have the least protected jobs because they’re the least senior employees.”

Different ideas and initiatives have been put forth to increase the representation of minority journalists.

Amongst the ideas expressed by Pamela Morinière are the inclusion of diversity reporting in student curricula, dialogues in newsrooms on the representation of minority groups, making job offers available widely and adopting equal opportunity and non-discrimination policies.

Chris Peck emphasises the importance of “home-grown talent”: “Identifying local students who have an interest in journalism and that have a connection to a specific locale will be a critical factor in the effort to diversify newsrooms. It’s a longer term effort to cultivate local talent. But it can pay off.”

“Second, I think it is important to tap social media to explain why journalism is still a dynamic field and invite digital natives to become part of it,” he said.

Civil society organisations such as UNITY Journalists for Diversity, a strategic alliance of several minority journalist associations, aim at increasing the representation of minority groups in journalism and promoting fair and complete coverage about diversity, ethnicity and gender issues.

The Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) is part of the alliance. It seeks to advance specifically Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) journalists. Its president, Paul Cheung, told IPS: “AAJA believes developing a strong pipeline of talents as well as diverse sources are key to increase representation.”

“2015 will mark some significant milestones in AAJA’s history. AAJA will be celebrating 15 years of training multi-cultural high school students through JCamp, 20th anniversary of […] our Executive Leadership programmes and 25 years of inspiring college students to enter the field of journalism through VOICES.”

Ethnic minority journalists are not the only under-represented group at news outlets in the U.S. and around the world. The Global Report on the Status of Women in the News Media states that women represent only a third of the journalism workforce in the 522 companies in nearly 60 countries surveyed for the study. Seventy-three percent of the top management jobs are held by men, while only 27 percent are occupied by women.

“When it comes to women’s portrayal in the news, the situation is even worse,” Pamela Mornière told IPS.

“Women make up only 24 percent of people seen, heard or read about. They remain quite invisible, although they represent more than half of the world’s population. And when they make the news they make it too often in a stereotypical way. The impact of this can be devastating on the public’s perception of women’s place and role in society. Many women have made their way on the political and economic scene. Media must reflect that.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

A visitor looking at a panel at the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool, England. Credit: A.D. McKenzie/IPS

By A. D. McKenzie
LIVERPOOL, England, Jul 21 2015 (IPS)

An exhibition on modern-day slavery at the International Slavery Museum in this northern English town is just one example of a museum choosing to focus on human rights, and being “upfront” about it.

“Social justice just doesn’t happen by itself; it’s about activism and people willing to take risks,” says Dr David Fleming, director of National Museums Liverpool, which includes the city’s International Slavery Museum (ISM).

The institution looks at aspects of both historical and contemporary slavery, while being an “international hub for resources on human rights issues”.

It is a member of the Liverpool-based Social Justice Alliance for Museums (SJAM), formed in 2013 and now comprising more than 80 museums worldwide, and it coordinated the founding of the Federation of International Human Rights Museums (FIHRM) in 2010.

Dr David Fleming, director of National Museums Liverpool, which includes the city’s International Slavery Museum. Credit: National Museums Liverpool

The aim of FIHRM is to encourage museums which “engage with sensitive and controversial human rights themes” to work together and share “new thinking and initiatives in a supportive environment”. Both organisations reflect the way that museums are changing, said Fleming.

“Museums are not dispassionate agents,” he told IPS. “They have a role in safeguarding memory. We have to look at the role of museums and see how they can transform lives.”

The International Slavery Museum’s current exhibition, titled “Broken Lives” and running until April 2016, focuses on the victims of global modern-day slavery – half of whom are said to be in India, and most of whom are Dalits, or people formerly known as “untouchables”.

The display “provides a window into the experiences of Dalits and others who are being exploited and abused through modern slavery in India”, say the curators.

“Dalits still experience marginalisation and prejudice, live in extreme poverty and are vulnerable to human trafficking and bonded labour,” they add.

Presented in partnership with the Dalit Freedom Network, the exhibition uses photographs, film, personal testimony and other means to show “stories of hardship” that include sexual servitude and child bondage. It also profiles the activists working to mend “broken lives”.“Museums [in Liverpool, Nantes, Guadeloupe and Bordeaux ] hope that they can play a role in global citizenship, educating the public and encouraging visitors to leave with a different mind-set – about respect for human rights, social justice, diversity, equality, and sustainability”

The display occupies a temporary exposition space at the museum, which has a permanent section devoted to the atrocities of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the legacy of racism.

Along with the Memorial to the Abolition of Slavery in the French city of Nantes and the recently opened Mémorial ACTe in Guadeloupe, the Liverpool museum is one of too few national institutions focused on raising awareness about slavery, observers say.

But it has provided a “vital source of inspiration” to permanent exhibitions on the slave trade in places such as Bordeaux, southwest France, according to the city’s mayor Alain Juppé. Here, the Musée d’Aquitaine hosts a comprehensive division called ‘Bordeaux, Trans-Atlantic Trading and Slavery’ – with detailed, unequivocal information.

These museums hope that they can play a role in global citizenship, educating the public and encouraging visitors to leave with a different mind-set – about respect for human rights, social justice, diversity, equality, and sustainability.

“We try to overtly encourage the public to get involved in the fight for human rights,” Fleming told IPS in an interview. “We’ve often said at the Slavery Museum that we want people to go away fired up with the desire to fight racism.

“You can’t dictate to people what they’re going to think or how they’re going to respond and react,” he continued. “But you can create an atmosphere, and the atmosphere at the Slavery Museum is clearly anti-racist. We hope people will leave thinking: I didn’t know all those terrible things had happened and I’m leaving converted.”

Despite Liverpool’s undeniable history as a major slaving port in the 18th century, not everyone will be affected in the same way, however. There have been swastikas painted on the walls of the museum in the past, as bigots reject the institution’s aims.

“Some people come full of knowledge and full of attitude already, and I don’t imagine that we affect these people. But we’re looking for people in the middle, who might not have thought about this,” Fleming said.

A poster sign for the ‘Broken Lives’ exhibition under way at the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool. Credit: A.D. McKenzie/IPS

He described a visit to the museum by a group of English schoolchildren who initially did not comprehend photographs depicting African youngsters whose hands had been cut off by colonialists.

When they were given explanations about the images, the schoolchildren “switched on to the idea that people can behave abominably, based on nothing but ethnicity,” he said.

Fleming visits social justice exhibitions around the world and gives information about the museum’s work, he said. As a keynote speaker, he recently delivered an address about the role of museums at a conference in Liverpool titled ‘Mobilising Memory: Creating African Atlantic Identities’.

The meeting – organised by the Collegium for African American Research (CAAR) and a new UK-based body called the Institute for Black Atlantic Research – took place at Liverpool Hope University at the end of June.

It began a few days after a white gunman killed nine people inside the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, in the U.S. state of South Carolina.

The murders, among numerous incidents of brutality against African Americans over the past year, sparked a sense of urgency at the conference as well as heightened the discussion about activism – and especially the part that writers, artists and scholars play in preserving and “activating” memory in the struggle for social justice and human rights.

“Artists, and by extension museums, have what some people have called a ‘burden of representation’, and they have to deal with that,” said James Smalls, a professor of art history and museum studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC).

“Many times, artists automatically are expected to speak on behalf of their ethnic group or community, and some have chosen to embrace that while others try to be exempt,” he added.

Claire Garcia, a professor at Colorado College, said that for a number of academics “there is no necessary link between scholarship and activism” in what are considered scholarly fields.

Such thinkers make the point that scholarship should be “theoretical” and “universal,” and not political or focused on “the specific plights of one group,” she said. However, this standpoint – “when it is disconnected from the embattled humanity” of some ethnic groups – can create further problems.

The concept of museums standing for “social justice” is controversial as well because the issue is seen differently in various parts of the world. The line between “objectifying and educating” also gives cause for debate.

Fleming said that National Museums Liverpool, for example, would not have put on the contentious show “Exhibit B” – which featured live Black performers in a “human zoo” installation; the work was apparently aimed at condemning racism and slavery but instead drew protests in London, Paris and other cities in 2014.

“Personally I loathe all that stuff, so my vote would be ‘no’ to anything similar,” Fleming told IPS. “And that’s not because it’s controversial and difficult but because it’s degrading and humiliating. There are all sorts of issues with it, and I’ve thought about that quite a lot.”

He and other scholars say that they are deeply conscious of who is doing the “story-telling” of history, and this is an issue that also affects museums.

Several participants at the CAAR conference criticised certain displays at the International Slavery Museum, wondering about the intended audience, and who had selected the exhibits, for instance.

A section that showed famous individuals of African descent seemed superficial in its glossy presentation of people such as American talk-show host Oprah Winfrey and well-known athletes and entertainers.

Fleming said that museums often face disapproval for both going too far and not going “far enough”. But taking a disinterested stand does not seem to be the answer, because “the world is full of ‘faux-neutral’ museums”, he said.

The most relevant and interesting museums can be those that have a “moral compass”, but they need help as they can “do very little by themselves,” Fleming told IPS. The institutions that he directs often work with non-governmental organisations that bring their own expertise and point of view to the exhibitions, he explained.

Apart from slavery, individual museums around the world have focused on the Holocaust, on apartheid, on genocide in countries such as Cambodia, and on the atrocities committed during dictatorships in regions such as Latin America.

“Some countries don’t want museums to change,” said Fleming. “But in Liverpool, we’re not just there for tourism.”

Edited by Phil Harris

The writer can be followed on Twitter: @mckenzie_ale   

IFAD President Kanayo F. Nwanzwe (centre) joins in a traditional Fijian dance at the opening ceremony of the second Global Meeting of the Indigenous Peoples' Forum, February 2015. Credit: IFAD

By Valentina Gasbarri
ROME, Feb 17 2015 (IPS)

“We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children” – an ancient Indian saying that encapsulates the essence of sustainability as seen by the world’s indigenous people.

With their deep and locally-rooted knowledge of the natural world, indigenous peoples have much to share with the rest of the world about how to live, work and cultivate in a sustainable manner that does not jeopardise future generations.

This was the main message brought to the second Global Meeting of the Indigenous Peoples’ Forum, organised by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) last week in Rome.“We have learned the relevance of the diversity and distinctiveness of peoples and rural communities and of valuing and building on their cultural identity as an asset and economic potential. The ancient voice of the natives can be the solution to many crises” – Antonella Cordone, IFAD

The Indigenous Peoples’ Forum represents a unique initiative within the U.N. system. It is a concrete expression of IFAD’s recognition of the role that indigenous peoples play in economic and social development through traditional sustainable practices and provides IFAD with an institutional mechanism for monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of the agency’s engagement with indigenous peoples.

This engagement includes achievement of the objectives of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of the Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).

Despite major improvements in recent decades, indigenous and tribal peoples – as well as ethnic minorities – continue to be among the poorest and most marginalised people in the world.

There are over 370 million indigenous peoples in some 70 countries worldwide, with the majority living in Asia. They account for an estimated five percent of the world’s population, with 15 percent of these peoples living in poverty.  Various recent studies show that the poverty gap between indigenous peoples and other rural populations is increasing in some parts of the world.

“IFAD is making all efforts to ensure that the indigenous peoples’ voice is being heard, rights are respected and well-being is improving at the global level,” said Antonella Cordone, IFAD’s Senior Technical Specialist for Indigenous peoples and Tribal Issues.

“We have learned the relevance of the diversity and distinctiveness of peoples and rural communities and of valuing and building on their cultural identity as an asset and economic potential,” she continued. “The ancient voice of the natives can be the solution to many crises.”

As guardians of the world’s natural resources and vehicles of traditions over the years, indigenous peoples developed a holistic approach to sustainable development and, as the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, highlighted during an Asia-Pacific working group session, “indigenous peoples’ livelihoods are closely interlinked with cultural heritage and identities, spirituality and governance systems.”

These livelihoods have traditionally been based on handing down lands and territories to new generations without exploiting them for maximum profit. Today, these livelihoods are threatened by climate change and third party exploitation, among others.

Climate change, to which indigenous peoples are particularly vulnerable, is posing a dramatic threat through melting glaciers, advancing desertification, floods and hurricanes in coastal areas.

Long-standing pressure from logging, mining and advancing agricultural frontiers have intensified the exploitation of new energy sources, construction of roads and other infrastructures, such as dams, and have raised concerns about large-scale acquisition of land for commercial or industrial purposes, commonly known as land grabbing.

In this context, the Forum stressed the need for the free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) of indigenous peoples whenever development projects affect their access to land and resources, a requirement which IFAD President Kanayo F. Nwanzwe said should be respected by any organisation engaging with indigenous peoples.

Poverty and loss of territories and resources by indigenous peoples due to policies or regulations adverse to traditional land use practices are compounded by frequent discrimination in labour markets, where segmentation, poor regulatory frameworks and cultural and linguistic obstacles allow very few indigenous peoples to access quality jobs and social and health services.

Moreover, indigenous peoples suffer from marginalisation from political processes and gender-based discrimination.

These are among the issues that participants at the Forum said should be taken into account in the post-2015 development agenda. They said that this agenda should be designed to encourage governments and other actors to facilitate the economic and social empowerment of poor rural people, in particular, marginalized rural groups, such as women, children and indigenous peoples.

A starting point for the architecture of the agenda for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which will replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that expire at the end of this year was seen as the recommendations adopted during the two-day Forum (Feb. 12-13).

These included the need for a holistic approach to supporting and strengthening indigenous peoples’ food systems, recognition of traditional tenure, conservation of biodiversity,  respect for and revitalisation of cultural and spiritual values, and ensuring that projects be designed with the FPIC of indigenous peoples.

Participants said that it is important to emphasise the increasing need to strengthen the participation and inclusion of indigenous peoples in discussions at the political and operational level, because targets in at these levels can have a catalytic effect on their social and economic empowerment.

The Forum agreed that giving the voice to indigenous people and their concerns and priorities in the post-2015 agenda represents an invaluable window of opportunity for development.

Edited by Phil Harris    

Young inclusion leaders participating in a workshop session to discuss the setting up of a diversity and inclusion network for future leaders from among Germany’s ‘people of color’, Berlin 2014. Credit: Ina Meling/Integration Commissioner Büro Tempelhof-Schöneberg

By Francesca Dziadek
BERLIN, Dec 23 2014 (IPS)

A unique initiative – the Network Inclusion Leaders (NILE) project – has just held its second workshop here to set up a diversity and inclusion network for future leaders from among Germany’s ‘people of color’, or persons from different ‘non-white’ cultural backgrounds.

The event was held from Dec. 9 to 13in Berlin’s Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy delivered his iconic “Ich bin ein Berliner” freedom and solidarity speech to 400,000 West Berliners in 1963.

The workshop brought together 15 talented game changers aged between 18 and 28 from Afro-German, Turkish, Kurdish, Latin American and German-Asian backgrounds, selected from across the country to engage with illustrious key speakers from Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom in sessions designed to discuss instruments for promoting anti-racism, diversity and migrant-friendly agendas."Democracy needs strong, well-networked minorities. When you look around Germany, from parliament to media, public and private sectors, well it's still pretty white, there's a lot of work to be done" – Gabriele Gün Tank, Commissioner for Integration in Berlin Tempelhof-Schöneberg and co-founder of Network Inclusion Leaders (NILE)

The speakers  included Simon Woolley, Director of Operation Black Vote (UK), Mekonnen Mesghena, Director of Migration and Diversity at Berlin’s Heinrich-Böll Foundation, Kwesi Aikins, Policy Officer at the Centre for Migration and Social Affairs, Nuran Yigit, expert in anti-discrimination and board member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Migration Council, Terri Givens, Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin and a specialist in the politics of race, and Professor Kurt Barling, a BBC special correspondent.

NILE is the brainchild of two alumni of the 2013 German Marshall Fund’s (GMF) Transatlantic Inclusion Leaders Network (TILN) – 35-year-old Gabriele Gün Tank, Commissioner for Integration in Berlin Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and 28-year-old researcher and social activist Daniel Gyamerah, head of Each One Teach One (EATO), a black literature and media project in Berlin.

“Democracy needs strong, well-networked minorities. When you look around Germany, from parliament to media, public and private sectors, well it’s still pretty white, there’s a lot of work to be done,” Tank told a GMF alumni reception.

NILE was set up through collaboration with NGOs, top institutions including federal ministries and assistance from the influential Heinrich-Böll Foundation which is affiliated with the Green Party, the U.S. embassy and the Eberhard-Schultz-Stiftung (Foundation for Human Rights and Participation).  

“We are moving forward with inclusive governance, inclusion best practices and empowerment training,” said Tank.  “This is of critical importance if we are to bridge the migration gap for a fairer, social and political representation of minorities at all levels.”

Engaging young Muslims within a climate of hostility

Mersiha Hadziabdic, aged 25, said that she joined the NILE initiative confident that networking and coalition building plays a crucial role in steering change relevant to her generation.

Born in Sarajevo, Bosnia, she came to Berlin as a three-year-old refugee when her family fled the Prijedor massacre, one of the worse war crimes along with the Srebrenica genocide perpetrated by the Serbian political and military leadership’s ethnic-cleansing drive, which killed 14,000 civilians.

“My background means a lot to me, and for this reason I am involved with the Bosnian community in Berlin, my home town,” she told IPS.

Wearing a headscarf in Berlin, Mersiha is often mistaken for a Turkish woman, with its attendant stereotypes of submissiveness and low expectations.

But, like 25-year-old Soufeina Hamed, a Tunisian-born graduate in intercultural psychology from the University of Osnabrück, who is active in Zahnräder Netzwerker, an incubator for Muslim social entrepreneurship, Mersiha is an internet savvy and project team member of JUMA (Young Active and Muslim), which offers management, rhetoric and media skills training to young German Muslims.

”I see myself as part and process of this vibrant, committed and capable Muslim youth which has something important to contribute and wants to be involved in the conversation,” she said.

Just like Ozan Keskinkilic, an MA student in international relations from a Turkish-Arab background who is active in the Muslim-Jewish Conference (MJC) for peaceful inter-religious dialogue, she noted that this conversation involves engaging in a climate of anti-migrant and refugee hostility.

That hostility is currently finding expression in populist rallies, such as the Dresden march on Dec. 8, where 15,000 anti-immigrant protesters, mostly from PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West), marched to the former 1989 freedom rallying cry of “Wir Sind das Volk” (We are the People).

Young, talented and ambitious, Mersiha, Soufeina and Ozan are part of Germany’s four million Muslims residents and citizens, about five percent of the country’s population, of whom 45 percent have German citizenship.

According to the Verfassungsschutz, Germany’s intelligence agency, approximately 250,000 Muslims live in Berlin, 73 percent of whom are of Turkish background and one-third of whom have German citizenship. They belong to that population sector whose qualifications and skills are raising inclusion and access expectations which demand more level playing fields.

Creating a critical mass for change

The NILE initiative aims to channel personal issues relating to emotional damage inflicted by racism, discrimination or the traumas of fleeing from conflict zones into a process of empowerment towards common, personal and professional goals.

Empowerment and leadership tools are taught as means of engaging with the world as it is, gaining an understanding that ‘persons of color’ are neither powerless nor invisible.

Kurt Barling, who has carved a role of influence for himself by exposing stories which shape communities but too often remain hidden by a majority oblivious to the perspectives of others, had a clear mentoring message:

Group photo of participants in the Network Inclusion Leaders (NILE) 2014 workshop held in Berlin’s Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy delivered his iconic “Ich bin ein Berliner” freedom and solidarity speech to 400,000 West Berliners in 1963. Credit: Ina Meling/Integration Commissioner Büro Tempelhof-Schöneberg

“Take control, shape your narratives with the new digital space available and build trust relationships with the authorities to change how the media frames and reflects our communities and our issues.”

Participants learned to be part of a critical mass for change, a “majority complex”, to build strategic coalitions to reduce marginalisation, reframe the migration debate as a socio-economic asset, and challenge discrimination and racism with the tools provided by human rights instruments such as the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), a monitoring body of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD).

“Freedom of speech definitely stops at racial slander and incitement,” explained Kwesi Aikins, “and you can challenge that in the courts. Even human rights education is a human right.”

“Martin Luther King did not just have a dream, he had a plan,” said Simon Woolley of Operation Black Vote (UK). Woolley was invited by NILE to explain to the young participants how they can take advantage of the torch handed to them all the way back from the civil rights movement, including harnessing their own electoral muscle because the black vote counts. “The bottom line,” he said, “is that power talks to power”.

NILE workshop participants agreed that the challenge facing young leaders is to find their role within the constraints of conflicting choices on offer between blending, assertiveness and the tiring fight for a fair share.

Maria-Jose Munoz a native of Bolivia, whose research interests focus on the Madera river energy complex on the Bolivia-Brazil border, knows she has an uphill struggle ahead of her – emerging in a white, male-dominated energy policy field.

Wrapping up her experience at NILE, she said: “We are all just looking for belonging and a way to engage in a personal and public dialogue, building bridges between our often conflicting identities.”

“As minority communities, we often find a blocked path towards common goals. NILE helped me understand that I can be strong and that, by coalescing with others, I can tear down these walls.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

South Africa is a country rich in culture and diversity but its Africa Day awareness seems to be lagging behind.

By Siphosethu Stuurman
May 22 2013 (IPS)

As the continent prepares to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the founding of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) on Africa Day, 25^th of May, IPS Africa speaks to ordinary South Africans to hear how they plan to celebrate this important day.

However the responses we received were rather disappointing.

Africa Day is an annual commemoration of the historic 1963 meeting of leaders of 32 independent African states to form the OAU, now simply known as African Union (AU).

[podcast]http://traffic.libsyn.com/ipsaudio/SA_Africa_Day_Awareness_Lagging_Behind.mp3[/podcast]

An open-air exhibition entitled 'Berlin: City of Diversity' pays tribute to the city's diverse history. Credit: Francesca Dziadek/IPS

By Francesca Dziadek
BERLIN, Dec 7 2012 (IPS)

With a persistent undercurrent of discrimination against foreigners, ‘Gastarbeiter’ (guest workers) and citizens of colour, despite the fact that 20 percent of its population – roughly 16 million residents – are from an immigrant background, Germany is faced with the urgent task of rethinking its ambivalence towards diversity.

Demographic forecasts suggest that 25 percent of the population under 25 years of age are of immigrant descent. This group, increasingly referred to as the ‘new Germans’, are demanding visibility, representation and participation in social and political life, while an older generation of immigrants is quickly losing patience with the state’s inability to atone for racially motivated crimes and years of racial exclusion.

At an exhibition celebrating Berlin’s 775^th anniversary, entitled ‘Berlin: City of Diversity’, Turkish migrant workers – who spent their lives toiling day and night on the assembly lines of German industrial giants like Siemens and Telefunken – recalled being lured to the country during a labour shortage caused by the 1961 erection of the Berlin Wall.

Today, their grandchildren continue to grapple with German society’s age-old mentality that the “boat is already full”.

After the fall of the Wall in 1989, ‘integration’ became the rallying cry of German reunification. But as East and West Berlin collapsed into one another’s arms, less visible minorities – like the Vietnamese ‘boat people’ in the west and contract workers in the east – found themselves facing a double hurdle, with a glass wall of access and inclusion proving tougher to dismantle than the cement one.

“I never liked the word ‘integration’,” Hatice Akyün, a popular German-Turkish columnist for Berlin’s daily ‘Der Tagesspiegel’ and winner of Berlin’s 2011 Integration Prize, said on public radio. “It begs the question: who is integrating who, how and why?”

In 2005, in response to concerns that an ageing population and a low birth rate threatened to skew the country’s demographics, Germany revised its immigration law, stretching entry criteria to include highly skilled professionals, granting foreign graduates from local universities a year to search for work and welcoming self-employed immigrants.

Shortly after the reforms were enacted, the far-right National Socialist Underground (NSU) terror cell shot their third victim, a 50-year-old Turkish food vendor in Nuremberg named Ismail Yasar, in a series of murders between 2000 and 2006.

Akyün personally experienced this frightening escalation of the profiling of Turkish citizens as Islamists.

“The lowest point for me was around the time of the ‘Sarrazin debate’,” she told IPS, referring to the surge of Islamophobia and populist demagoguery that followed the publication of Thilo Sarrazin’s ‘Germany is doing away with itself’ in 2010.

The book, which quickly became the most popular piece of literature in decades, selling 1.5 million copies, exposed a deep anti-migrant sentiment in German society.

According to Dilek Kolat, senator for work, integration and women, who spoke at the recent ‘Diversity 2012’ conference sponsored by Germany’s Diversity Charter, “a Turkish name and photograph in a job application still reduces an applicant’s chances by 14 percent”.

Kolat pleaded for a concrete, top-down process to implement an agenda of equal opportunities and social inclusion, such as her brainchild ‘Berlin needs you’, a campaign designed to attract minority applicants into the public sector.

“A neutrality approach is no longer relevant or helpful,” said Kolat in an address to human resources personnel and diversity managers from all over Germany.

Unsurprisingly, corporations have been among the most active proponents of a self-regulating policy on diversity, as large companies eye new global markets.

“Diversity is our daily bread, our key strategic approach as a global player,” Ederer said. “A diverse workforce simply makes economic sense…mixed teams are more effective problem-solvers.”

According to the federal ministry of labour and social affairs, Germany is looking at a labour shortfall of six million workers by 2025.

In response to this looming crisis, the EU Blue Card for immigration came into effect this August, along with the Welcome to Germany portal, a project of the Qualified Professionals Initiative that “bundles together all the key information about making a career and living in Germany”.

Germany’s public sector also needs to urgently address diversity within its ranks. With only 13 percent of employees from minority backgrounds, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows that Germany is lagging behind France and the UK’s 20 percent.

“The police force still has no diversity strategy to speak of, the dominant approach is assimilationist – awareness of difference is not part of the mindset and it is my goal to change this,” Margarete Koppers, Berlin’s deputy police superintendent, told IPS.

Her comments come at a critical time, when the entire police apparatus is under close scrutiny for failing to book those responsible for the NSU’s nine “serial” murders of migrant shop owners from September 2000 to August 2006.

Experts claim this amounts to an acceptance of pervasive structural racism, and that a formal acknowledgement, along the lines of the UK’s MacPherson report of 1994, is long overdue in Germany.

Kien Nghi Ha, a professor at Tübingen University, arrived in the country as one of the so-called ‘boat people’ of 1979.

In his study on Asian-German relations, Kien recalls a painful moment that defined his childhood: an attack on a Hamburg refugee asylum that left two young Vietnamese refugees, aged 18 and 22 years, dead in August of 1980.

No formal enquiry ensued and no statistical information was ever filed. The murders were not even registered under the politically motivated criminality (PMC) category.

Acknowledging these past crimes will be a crucial step in moving towards a more diverse and inclusive Germany.

(END)