Venezuelan migrants stranded in Guatemala after their journey to Mexico was cut short by new restrictions issued by the United States. Most of them, unable to afford to return to their home country, await possible humanitarian return flights. CREDIT: IMG

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Oct 28 2022 (IPS)

Thousands of Venezuelans who have crossed the treacherous Darien jungle between Colombia and Panama, or who have made the perilous journey through Central America and Mexico to reach the United States, have found themselves stranded in countries that do not want them, unable to continue their journey or to afford to return to their country.

Unexpectedly, on Oct. 12, the U.S. government announced that it would no longer accept undocumented Venezuelans who crossed its southern border, would deport them to Mexico and, in exchange, would offer up to 24,000 annual quotas, for two years, for Venezuelan immigrants to enter the country by air and under a new set of requirements.

“We were already in the United States when President Joe Biden gave the order, but they put us in a van and sent us back to Mexico. It’s not fair, on the 12th we had already crossed into the country,” a young man who identified himself as Antonio, among the first to be sent back to the border city of Tijuana, told reporters in tears.

He was one of approximately 150,000 Venezuelans who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border this year to join the 545,000 already in the U.S. by the end of 2021, according to U.S. authorities.

Raul was in a group that took a week to cross the jungle and rivers in the Darien Gap, bushwhacking in the rain and through the mud, suffering from hunger, thirst, and the threat of vermin and assailants. When he arrived at the indigenous village of Lajas Blancas in eastern Panama, he heard about the new U.S. regulation that rendered his dangerous journey useless.

There he told Venezuelan opposition politician Tomás Guanipa, who visited the village in October, that “the journey is too hard, I saw people die, someone I could not save because a river swept him away, and it was not worth it. Now what I have to do is return, alive, to my country.”

In Panama, as in Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala and of course Mexico, there are now thousands of Venezuelans stranded, some still trying to reach and cross the U.S. border, others trying to get the funds they need to return home.

They fill the shelters that are already overburdened and with few resources to care for them. Sometimes they sleep on the streets, or are seen walking and begging for food or a little money, abruptly cut off from the dream of going to live and work legally in the United States.

That aim was fueled by the fact that the United States made the possibility of granting asylum to Venezuelans more flexible, as part of its opposition to the government of President Nicolás Maduro, which U.S. authorities consider illegitimate.

In addition, it established a protection status that temporarily allowed Venezuelans who reached the U.S. to stay and work.

Venezuela has been in the grip of an economic and political crisis over the last decade which, together with the impoverishment of the population, has produced the largest exodus in the history of the hemisphere: according to United Nations agencies, 7.1 million people have left the country – a quarter of the population.

Venezuelan migrants walk in Mexico’s Ciudad Juarez between the Rio Grande and the wall that separates them from the United States, a border that they will no longer be able to cross on foot but only by air and with express permission from Washington. CREDIT: Rey R. Jáuregui/Pie de Página

Caught up in the elections

The flood of Venezuelan immigrants pouring across the southern border coincided with the tough campaign for the mid-term elections for the U.S. Congress in November, which could result in the control of both chambers by the Republican Party, strongly opposed to Democratic President Biden.

Republican governors and candidates from the south, strongly opposed to the government’s immigration policy and flexibility towards Venezuelans, decided to send busloads and even a plane full of Venezuelan asylum seekers to northern localities governed by Democratic authorities.

Thus, through misleading promises, hundreds of Venezuelans were bussed or flown and abandoned out in the open in New York, Washington, D.C. or Martha’s Vineyard, an island where millionaires spend their summers in the northeastern state of Massachusetts.

Human rights groups such as Amnesty International denounced the use of migrants as political spoils or as a weapon in the election campaign.

Against this backdrop, the Biden administration changed its policy towards Venezuelans, closing the country’s doors to them at the southern border, reactivating Title 42, a pandemic public health order that allows for the immediate expulsion of people for health reasons, and reached an agreement with Mexico to return migrants to that country.

The 24,000 annual quotas provided as a consolation, for migrants who have sponsors responsible for their support in the United States, plus requirements such as not attempting illegal border crossings or not having refugee status in another country, is almost equivalent to the monthly volume of Venezuelans who tried to enter the U.S. this year.

A family of migrants reaches the end of their journey through the dangerous Darien jungle, between Colombia and Panama, on their long journey to reach the border between Mexico and the United States. But a new U.S. immigration measure prohibits access to the U.S. for Venezuelans. CREDIT: Nicola Rosso/UNHCR

What happens now?

In the immediate future, those who were on their way will be left in limbo and will now have to return to their country, where many sold everything – from their clothes to their homes – to pay for their perilous journey.

Hundreds of Venezuelans have begun to arrive in Caracas on flights that they themselves have paid for from Panama, while in Mexico and other countries they await the possibility of free air travel, of a humanitarian nature, because thousands of migrants have been left destitute.

There are entire families who were already living as immigrants in other countries, such as Chile, Ecuador or Peru – where there are one million Venezuelans in Lima for example – but decided to leave due to a hostile environment or the difficulties in keeping jobs or finding decent housing, in a generalized climate of inflation in the region.

This is the case told to journalists by Héctor, who with his wife, mother-in-law and three children invested almost 10,000 dollars in tickets from Chile to the Colombian island of San Andrés, in the Caribbean, from there by boat to Nicaragua, and by land until they were taken by surprise by the U.S. government’s announcement, when they reached Guatemala.

Now, in contact with relatives in the United States, he is considering the possibility of returning to the country he left three years ago for Chile, or trying to continue on, while waiting for another option to enter the U.S.

The United States has reported that crossings or attempts to cross its border by undocumented migrants have decreased significantly since Oct. 12.

Among the justifications for its action at the time, Washington said it sought to combat human trafficking and other crimes associated with irregular migration, and to discourage dangerous border crossings in the Darien Gap.

According to Panamanian government data, between January and Oct. 15 of this year, 184,433 undocumented migrants reached Panama from the Darien jungle, 133,597 of whom were Venezuelans.

After his return to the country on Oct. 25, Guanipa the politician told IPS that at least 70 percent of the migrants who crossed the Darien Gap in the last 12 months were Venezuelans, along with other Latin Americans and people from the Caribbean or African nations.

And, after collecting personal accounts of the death-defying crossing, he urged his fellow Venezuelans to “for no reason risk their lives” on this inhospitable stretch that is the gateway from South America to Central America.

At every Latin American border, migration rules are becoming more restrictive and Venezuelans wait patiently to be allowed access, often to try to reach the farthest destinations in the hemisphere, such as Chile or the United States. CREDIT: Gema Cortés/IOM

The Venezuelan government blames the massive exodus and the dangers faced in the Darien Gap on its political and media confrontation with the United States, while claiming that the numbers of reported migrants are wildly inflated and that, on the contrary, more than 360,000 Venezuelans have returned to the country since 2018.

Heads of United Nations agencies and international humanitarian organizations believe that given the ongoing crisis in Venezuela, the flow of migrants will continue, and they therefore call on host countries to establish rules and mechanisms to facilitate the integration of the migrants into their communities.

While the United States has slammed the door shut on Venezuelan migrants, in countries such as Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Mexico and some Central American nations, new rules are also being prepared to modify the policy of extending a helping hand to Venezuelans.

For example, Ecuador overhauled the Human Mobility Law to increase the grounds for deportation, such as “representing a threat to security”, and Colombia – which has received the largest number of Venezuelans – eliminated the office for the attention and socioeconomic integration of the migrant population.

Panama will require visas for those deported from Central America or Mexico, Peru is working to change regulations for the migrant population, and the government of Chile, which in the past has expelled hundreds of migrants on flights, announced that it will take measures to prevent unwanted immigration.

Of the 7.1 million Venezuelans registered as of September as migrants by U.N. agencies, the vast majority of them having left the country since 2013, almost six million were in neighboring Latin American and Caribbean countries.

Entire families have not only sought to reach the United States or Europe, but have traveled thousands of kilometers, in journeys they could never have dreamed of, with stretches by bus but often on foot, through clandestine jungle passes or cold mountains, to reach Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina or Chile.

Others tried their luck in hostile neighboring Caribbean islands and dozens lost their lives when the overcrowded boats in which they were trying to reach safe shores were shipwrecked.

Faced with the explosive phenomenon, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) established a platform for programs to help migrants in the region and host communities, which is coordinated by a former Guatemalan vice-president, Eduardo Stein.

Of their budget for 2022, based on pledges from donor countries and institutions, for 1.7 billion dollars, they have only received 300 million dollars, in another sign that Venezuelan migrants have ceased to play a leading role on the international stage.

Yenire (27) and Leonardo (23), together with their children Yeimar (10) and Yemberlin (1), came from Caracas where Leonardo worked sporadically with Loro, his 74-year-old carpenter grandfather. "We went through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. I didn't know it was this difficult to migrate. I lived with my family. Even though it was a difficult country, I was able to support myself. Now I value things a lot," said Leonardo. Venezuelan migrants travel long distances on foot, sometimes through different countries and with few belongings, in search of a place to settle. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Feb 23 2022 (IPS)

The failure of Chile’s immigration policy, with its toll of deaths, xenophobic sentiments but also shows of solidarity, will be a pressing matter for the incoming administration of Gabriel Boric, who takes office on Mar. 11, and for the drafters of the new constitution, who will include the issue in the text that is to be ready in July.

Twenty-year-old Brenda, who is 38 weeks pregnant, Jaiden, 23, and their young son are a Venezuelan family who arrived in Santiago on Feb. 3 in one of four buses from the port of Iquique, 1800 kilometers north of Santiago. They came with 200 other migrants who crossed through the Colchane border post from Bolivia without visas.

“The only thing I want is a job to pay our expenses,” Jaiden said at the time. Eleven days later, Brenda delivered her baby in a Santiago hospital while Jaiden traveled to the town of Melipilla, 68 kilometers southwest of the Chilean capital, on his first day of agricultural work.

The death of 19 migrants in 2021 and three so far in 2022 while trying to reach the town of Colchane highlights the risk of a journey where they face a “Bolivian winter” with rain and sub-zero temperatures.

The influx from Bolivia – estimated at between 600 and 1000 immigrants per day in January by Colchane’s mayor, Javier García – overwhelmed the small town of 1,384 inhabitants, located at an altitude of 3,600 meters in the Andes mountains.

There has also been a rise in xenophobic reactions. In September, in the northern port city of Iquique, demonstrators set fire to tents and personal belongings in a camp where migrants were staying.

“We were there, it was terrible,” said Yenire, 27. She and Leonardo, 23, are originally from Caracas and they have two children, 10-year-old Yeimar and one-year-old Yemberlin. In Iquique, Yenire, who was two months pregnant, had a miscarriage, she told IPS.

Tensions flared again on Feb. 10 when a truck driver died at the intersection of the highways linking the northern city of Antofagasta and the city of Mejillones, allegedly at the hands of three migrants. The incident led to a strike and road blockade that lasted several days. Protesters held banners and signs demanding that the borders be closed to immigrants.

On Feb. 12 the outgoing government of right-wing President Sebastián Piñera published an immigration law that replaced the one in force since 1975, during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).

“The State must push for safe migration, manifested in actions aimed at preventing, combating and punishing the smuggling of migrants and trafficking in persons,” states the law, which gives greater powers to the government and the courts to deport those who enter the country through unregulated border crossings.

Jana (16) and Diego (18) are the parents of Diosmar, who was born on Jan. 13, 2022 at the San Juan de Dios hospital in Santiago de Chile. They are temporarily staying at the Ward Foundation shelter in Estación Central, a municipality in the western part of the capital. “I received very good care at the hospital and at no cost,” said Jana whose son is registered in the Civil Registry. The couple could not register as undocumented immigrants, necessary to initiate the procedures to apply for residency, because they are minors. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

Interior Minister Rodrigo Delgado announced that the mass deportations would continue: “We have at least one flight scheduled between now and Mar. 11 and it will take place specifically in the northern zone, carrying people detained in these operations that we are conducting.”

The worsening climate for immigrants in Chile was reflected by Venezuelan journalist Lorena Tasca, a professor at the University of Chile, in Santiago, who said: “I no longer feel at ease as a foreigner in Chile.”

Tasca, who arrived in 2014, wrote that she feels “very ashamed of how the Chilean media has handled the issue in recent years. My stomach clenches and I avoid news about migration or homicides and/or robberies involving foreigners.”

Pressure on Boric

This environment puts pressure on the future president, the leftist Boric, who during his campaign announced “a policy for regular, orderly and safe migration, aligned with international agreements, that recognizes the benefits of interculturality and promotes true inclusion and recognition of migrants and refugees in society.”

Luis Eduardo Thayer, a researcher at the Silva Henríquez Catholic University who was a member of Boric’s campaign team, said “the first thing will be to recover control of information and the border, which are two very weakened issues.”

“We don’t know how many migrants have entered, who they are, what their situation is, their background or if they have relatives here,” he told IPS.

“The situation has to be urgently rectified, to enable temporary entry. Some can be regularized, others cannot because they have a criminal record or have committed crimes,” he said.

Thayer said “the issues faced by local territories must be addressed to resolve tensions and conflicts in the places where migrants arrive or transit.” He also proposed “rational management of migration that takes the labor market into consideration.”

“Today the market operates by supply and demand, but this does not work because people have no information, no offers, no networks. We have to do what they do in Brazil, Spain or Canada, which combine migration with the labor market,” he said.

In addition, he remarked, “the protection of children and refugees must be a priority.”

Chile increasingly became a destination for migrants from other countries in the region starting in 1993. They began arriving from Peru and later from Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Haiti and finally – and en masse – from Venezuela.

Egli Managua (26), originally from Caracas, is the mother of Norelis Pedríquez, (10), and Katerine Gutiérrez (22) originally from the city of Puerto La Cruz, “a beautiful place,” is the mother of Kalanis Marumar (1). They are cousins and travel companions of Brenda, who had her baby on Feb. 14 in Santiago. “It was a month and four days of hard travel. On Jan. 16 we entered the country through Colchane,” Managua said at a shelter where they are staying in the Chilean capital. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

María Emilia Tijoux, a professor at the University of Chile’s School of Sociology, told IPS that “this is not a migration crisis but rather a crisis of migration policies.”

“Migrations could almost be called the new barbarism, because they imply a permanent punishment against thousands of people who move around the world, not only to Chile, but mainly to countries considered safer and more economically successful,” she said.

In her view, “migration policies worldwide are in crisis because it is a generalized displacement that is pulled by the strings of global capital. We are talking about cheap labor, mass expulsions for ecological reasons, wars, persecutions, political conflicts.”

Tijoux said “Venezuelan migrants come to Chile for different reasons. One was the invitation made by the president in Cúcuta,” a Colombian city bordering Venezuela, where Piñera offered “visas of democratic responsibility” for Venezuelans, in February 2019.

The Venezuelan exodus, mostly to other Latin American countries, became uncontainable since 2014, a year after the start of Nicolás Maduro’s government, according to data from the United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR, which estimates that more than six million people have left the country since then.

“Then, since the 1990s, Chile began to be touted as a country that is supposed to be economically secure, with more work and possibilities for residence,” said the sociology professor.

Chile, with a population of 19.4 million people, hosted 1.46 million migrants as of 2020. Of these, 455,494 (30.7 percent) are Venezuelans, followed by Peruvians (16.3 percent), Haitians (12.5 percent), Colombians (11.4 percent) and Bolivians (8.5 percent).

Rodolfo Noriega, a Peruvian immigrant who is president of the Fundación Defensoría Migrante, told IPS that “visas should be granted so that people do not come as undocumented immigrants and children do not come clandestinely or through minefields to join their parents.”

“Fortunately, one path that the next administration seems to be preparing to take is regularization in combination with labor insertion,” said Noriega.

He said he expects the Boric administration “to be guided by principles….There will be dialogue and we will insist that the rights of migrants be respected. That is part of our struggle in the constitutional reform. What happens in the constituent assembly will be fundamental.”

Mane, Daniela, Sebastián, Plácida and Cecilia are Chileans staffing a shift at the Ward Foundation’s shelter in Santiago de Chile, which serves Venezuelan migrants who can stay there for a month while they find a way to support themselves, a job or rented housing. They receive three meals a day and accommodation and assistance to register as undocumented immigrants and begin the paperwork to regularize their status. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

The 154 members of the constituent assembly have the floor

On Jan. 27, several members of the Constitutional Convention, which will draft a new constitution to replace the one in force since the dictatorship, presented a “Migrant Agenda” to recognize and guarantee rights to all those living in Chile, “regardless of their nationality.”

The constituent assembly’s 154 members, half of whom are women and 17 of whom are representatives of indigenous peoples, were elected in a plebiscite in October 2020, and began their work on Jul. 4, 2021.

Most of them are progressive activists and leaders not linked to political parties, but to independent organizations and movements. They have until Jul. 4 to draft the new constitution, which will be endorsed or rejected by voters later this year in a referendum.

One of the promoters of the initiative on migrants, Benito Baranda, told IPS that “the right to asylum, which is in our legislation but not in our constitution, and the right to migration, that people must be welcomed in a dignified manner, must be taken into consideration in the constitution.”

“Last year only seven people were granted asylum while, given the situation of those leaving Venezuela, it is most likely that the requirements for asylum were met by a large number of the applicants. The government has been resistant,” he said.

He proposed recognition of a third principle: “That if you are born in Chile you are not stateless.”

“Boys and girls born in Chilean territory are left without a nationality because their parents are undocumented. A person cannot be left without a nationality…it is a right recognized in the San José pact signed and ratified by Chile,” he said.

According to Baranda, there is a “favorable” opinion among the constituents regarding these reforms.

“We will get support from two thirds of the members and then we will have to work with the community to get them to understand the substance and vote to endorse the constitution,” he added.

Tijoux said “the refusal to regularize leads to many problems, among them that people are left stranded and without rights. Our concern is for families with children, for pregnant women, in extremely precarious and in some cases subhuman conditions.

“There are thousands of migrants working in Chile, paying their taxes. But they suffer from xenophobia and racism that negatively target their origins, color, economic condition, nationality. Because of the negative view of Venezuelans we are facing extremely serious situations. Some do not want to speak out so as not to be identified and mistreated,” she said.

According to Tijoux, migration “cannot only be addressed by Chile but must also be addressed by the countries involved. Both from where they leave, are expelled or flee, but also where they pass through on terrible journeys during which we do not know how many have died.

“My great hope is the constitution. The constituents are aware of the problem and I trust that a door of humanity will open there,” she said.

Dr Shafi Bhuiyan with colleagues. He and his colleagues argue that COVID-19 has exposed gaps in the Canadian healthcare system.

By Shafi Bhuiyan and team of ITMDs
Toronto, Canada, Sep 3 2021 (IPS)

Access to quality healthcare is a basic human right, but for many, especially those in vulnerable communities, the right is not fully realized.

The Covid-19 pandemic exposed this systemic inequality and gaps in the Canadian healthcare system.

While surgical backlogs and delayed appointments may be prominent features of the healthcare crisis, the indirect impacts of Covid-19 must be considered. These include a halt in preventive programs, such as cancer screenings, declining health among Indigenous and aging people and for those with chronic illnesses, as well as worsening mental health among health care workers, to name just a few.

Canada already possesses a significant number of educated, qualified, and experienced Internationally Trained Medical Doctors (ITMDs) who can help fill gaps in the healthcare system. For example, Immigration Refugee Citizenship has reported that over 5,000 physicians came to Canada between 2015 and 2021, and this number does not include ITMDs who immigrated via a different method.

Many ITMDs possess much-needed cultural diversity, linguistic skills, and cross-cultural patient care talents. These can be utilized in the long-term care sector, for chronic disease prevention, and with Indigenous peoples and ethnic-racial groups, especially those residing in remote and rural areas across the country. Although 20% of the Canadian population lives in rural areas, only 8 percent of physicians work cfin these areas. Many ITMDs are well suited to provide quality healthcare for some of these communities.

Canada’s annual immigration intake plan is to welcome more than 400 000 immigrants per year in 2021-23, in keeping with the national plan for population growth. Based on data trends from Immigration, Refugee, Citizenship Canada (IRCC), this will likely include at least 900-1000 physicians each year. The need for diversity among physicians will continue to rise to provide culturally sensitive and quality care for all Canadians. ITMDs can provide culturally sensitive care and in-demand language skills to Canada’s increasingly diverse population.

Although the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRCC) Calls to Action were created in 2014, most healthcare calls have yet to be addressed. ITMDs can help address the long-standing shortcomings for this communities’ access to equitable healthcare and could contribute to rebuilding trust in the healthcare system.

The underutilization of immigrants’ education and qualifications has been reported to cost Canada $3 billion per year. Supporting the incorporation of internationally educated health professionals into the healthcare system would benefit Canada’s healthcare system and positively impact the economy.

Integration of internationally educated health professionals / ITMDs into the healthcare system requires a national strategy with a multi-stakeholder approach that focuses on scalable solutions. This strategy needs the engagement of governmental policymakers, regulatory bodies, employers, educational and training entities, service delivery agencies, and ITMDs themselves.

Once ITMDs have proven their expertise, they still require a bridging program to integrate their skills and expertise into the healthcare labor force. A recent survey of selected ITMDs who had participated in a career bridging program showed one-third had passed their licensing exams. These exams assess candidate’s clinical knowledge and skills to ensure they are comparable to Canadian medical graduates. Despite this achievement, another hurdle remains, to secure licensure. This is the residency program, which ranges from 3 to 5 years depending on the field of specialty.

The residency application process is complicated, but to describe it simply, medical students apply – via the Canadian Resident Matching Service, or CaRMS – for residency positions at universities across the country in one or more specialties of their choice. Not only are the total number of residency slots limited, but there are caps on the number of slots reserved for internationally trained versus Canadian medical graduates. The available slots for ITMDs are considerably smaller.

With the 2021 residency match results, data clearly illustrates the inequity i.e. a total of 2,852 Canadian medical graduates were matched. On the other hand, 410 internationally trained medical doctors were matched to residency positions. Over 90% of ITMD’s who have passed their qualifying exams cannot secure a residency due to their limited number and inequitable distribution of the residency slots.

An immediate solution is developing and delivering bridging programs, including in-class training and practicum placements, to support ITMDs’ employment in work commensurate with their skills, training, and experience, such as clinical assistant, research associate, and healthcare manager. Incorporating ITMDs into the healthcare system as licensed physicians can be further achieved via Practice Ready Assessments, increased residency opportunities, and increased post-graduate public health education and training.

Developing a clear roadmap will facilitate ITMDs’ integration into the Canadian healthcare system and foster diversity and equity in health research, management, and patient care.
There is a worldwide health crisis. If we cannot save a life despite having a huge pool of foreign-trained physicians ready to serve any time, we are neglecting untapped human resources to the detriment of our health.

The inclusion of ITMDs in the health system will benefit the healthcare system, patients, and the community and have a positive impact on society by reducing wait times and ensuring a better quality of life.

ITMDs are here, ready, willing, and qualified to serve Canadians as we work together to strengthen our healthcare system. There is no better time than NOW! Let’s work together to make healthcare more available and accessible to all Canadians so that no one is left behind.

• The authors are from Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and South American countries.  
• The co-authors are Drs Bhuiyan S, Orin M, Krivova A, Fathima S, Walters J, Uzonwanne G, McGuire M, Mohammad A, Alamgir AKM, Radwan E, Tasnim N, Tazrin T, Parungao J, Saad W, Shalaby Y.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Today 164 countries agreed to adopt the first-ever inter-governmentally negotiated agreement to cover all dimensions of international migration. Courtesy: Steven Nsamaza

By Steven Nsamaza
MARRAKECH, Morocco, Dec 10 2018 (IPS)

Safe, orderly and regular migration received support today, Dec. 10, with the adoption by 164 countries of the first-ever inter-governmentally negotiated agreement to cover all dimensions of international migration.

After a few last-minute hitches, including more international tension and argument than was welcome, the intergovernmental conference taking place in the Moroccan city of Marrakech agreed to a Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM), a proactive document that will guide States on all matters related to migration.

Well timed to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the historic adoption of the GCM was presided over by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres who urged countries to treat the Compact as an obligation to human rights that will benefit all.

“We are not establishing a new right to migrate. No. There is not a right for anyone to go anywhere at any time according to his or her whim,” Guterres said during the official ceremony to adopt the Compact. “What we are establishing is the obligation to respect the human rights of migrants—which of course is absolutely obvious when we at the same time celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It would be unconceivable to exclude migrants from the scope of the Universal Declaration.”

The conference was preceded by increasing concerns about certain U.N. member States not supporting the Compact. Some declined outright to participate and adopt the Compact, while others said their final decision must await further internal deliberation. The United States was the most notable and voluble naysayer, condemning the compact and labelling it a violation of national sovereignty.

“We believe the Compact and the process that led to its adoption, including the New York Declaration, represent an effort by the United Nations to advance global governance at the expense of the sovereign right of States to manage their immigration systems in accordance with their national laws, policies, and interests,” the U.S. government said in a national statement released on the eve of the conference.

Other countries who bridled against the compact or refused to sign it include Hungary, Australia, Israel, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Latvia, Italy, Switzerland and Chile.

“It will make an enormous positive impact in the lives of millions of people—migrants themselves, the people they leave behind and the communities that will then host them,” said Louise Arbour, the U.N. Special Representative for International Migration.

“This of course will depend on capturing the spirit of today’s event to move to the implementation of the multiplicity of initiatives that this Global Compact will permit member states to put in place. I am delighted to echo the words of the Secretary-General: it is a wonderful occasion, really a historic moment and a really great achievement for multilateralism.”

The adopted Compact lays out 23 objectives covering all aspects of migration, with each having a general goal and catalogue of possible actions that can be implemented by member states. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has drawn enormous criticism for her decision to welcome hundreds of thousands of refugees from places like Syria and Afghanistan to her country. It is a decision that may well have cost her another term in power as she recently announced she will not seek re-election. However,  Merkel remarked that the adopted Compact is “about nothing less than the foundation of our international cooperation.”

Such potential significance has attracted to the conference, in addition to high-powered diplomats and officials, approximately 400 non-governmental organizations from civil society, the private sector and academia, and over 700 registered press.

The ceremony adopting the Compact also included speaker Cheryl Perera, a prominent representative of migrant communities, and founder of OneChild, a non-governmental organization which seeks to eliminate the commercial sexual exploitation of children abroad. She called for an end to the drivers of irregular migration on the large scale, and for better protection of migrants on the smaller scale.

“We must do better together,” Perera said. “It is important that we involve the private sector, specifically the national airlines, hotels and others to protect children from trafficking.”

• This story was brought to you by IPS with support from the United Nations Foundation . IPS organized capacity building workshops for media in Marrakech.

Cubans wait in line outside the Colombian embassy in Havana, to obtain a visa for Colombia in order to apply for a U.S. visa at the U.S. embassy in Bogotá, due to the reductions in staff in the U.S. embassy in the Cuban capital. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Apr 2 2018 (IPS)

Cuba’s tense relations with the United States under the administration of Donald Trump reflect a scenario of conflict that is not alien to the generation that will take over the country on Apr. 19, when President Raúl Castro is set to step down.

Since the 1960s, Cuba’s nationalist stance has drawn on the animosity with the U.S., and the likely successors of the country’s current leaders, most of whom were born around the time of the 1959 revolution or afterwards, were educated in a culture of “anti-imperialist resistance”.

According to the official figures on the outcome of the Mar. 11 general elections, the average age of the new members of parliament fell to 49 years, compared to 57 years for the outgoing lawmakers.

The single-chamber National Assembly of People’s Power elects from among its members the 31 members of the Council of State, which according to the constitution is the highest representative of the Cuban state, whose president is the head of state and government."Reconciliation and rapprochement occur on a human level. States can facilitate it, but they can neither impose it nor stop it…Even during the most tense moments of relations between Cuba and the United States, we Cubans have remained in touch with our families, friends and collaborators." -- Lillian Manzor

The most likely candidate to succeed Castro is the current first vice president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, 57, although there is no official confirmation.

The return to the tension that existed before the détente agreed by Raúl Castro, 86, and Barack Obama (2009-2017) on Dec. 17, 2014, which led to the restoration of diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana, brings additional difficulties to the weakened Cuban economy and puts a brake on the changes required by its socialist model of development.

“Unfortunately, reform in Cuba becomes more difficult when the United States is more aggressive and negative,” said John McAuliff, executive director of the Fund for Reconciliation and Development, a U.S.-based non-governmental organisation that supports efforts for reconciliation with Cuba.

In his opinion, a new generation of leaders “opens a door, but it does not guarantee” how quickly change will come. “If the new leaders expand opportunities for the self-employed and small businesses, especially in tourism and other professional sectors, the economy will improve,” he told IPS from the U.S. by e-mail.

In the same vein, he said that “if the public dialogue incorporates all the sectors that are not explicitly counterrevolutionary inside and outside the country, politics will expand, evolve and be strengthened along with Cuba’s history and culture.”

Trump’s adverse policy towards Cuba since his arrival at the White House in January 2017 has kept bilateral ties at their lowest level, with a skeleton staff at the two embassies, which are unable to carry out their consular and business duties, while it has restricted travel by U.S. citizens to the Caribbean island nation, among other limitations.

Senator Patrick Leahy (centre), and four other U.S. Democrat lawmakers give a press conference in Havana on Feb. 21, at the end of their visit to Cuba, in violation of the U.S. travel advisory against Cuba issued by Republican President Donald Trump. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

Washington justifies the reduction of personnel and the recommendation to U.S. citizens to refrain from traveling to Cuba by citing mysterious attacks – apparently linked to high-pitched sounds – that affected the health of U.S. and Canadian diplomats in Cuba between November 2016 and August 2017.

Havana has denied any involvement in the incidents.

In a Dec. 22 speech in the Cuban parliament, Castro accused the United States of fabricating “pretexts” to justify the return to “failed and universally rejected policies.”

U.S. lawmakers who visited Cuba between Feb. 19-21, led by the Democratic Senator for the state of Vermont, Patrick Leahy, said the measures ordered by Trump were a serious mistake, harmful to the governments and people of both nations.

In defiance of the travel advisory against Cuba, the legislators flew here with their wives, and in the case of Leahy, with his 13-year-old granddaughter. The group met with Castro and other local authorities.

“Cuba is changing. Soon you will elect a new president and likely experience a generation shift in leadership, and regrettably at this historic moment in Cuban history, the U.S. engagement is limited,” Jim Mcgovern, a Democrat member of the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Massachusetts, lamented in a press conference.

In turn, Senator Ron Wyden, of Oregon, reported that there is a legislative proposal against the embargo brought forward by him and other senators, which has strong bipartisan support. “After the November elections, we will have more support to end the embargo,” he said.

Meanwhile, migrants are among the biggest losers in the embassy conflict, although the Cuban embassy in Washington, with 17 fewer staff members, says it has maintained its usual services, including consular services for Cubans and Americans.

A classic 1957 convertible Chevrolet Bel-Air, used by private drivers for sightseeing tours, drives through the historic centre of Old Havana in search of customers, now that the boom of visits by U.S. citizens has ceased. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

But the reduction of personnel in the U.S. embassy in Havana forces Cuban immigrants to travel to Colombia to process their visas, which will prevent Washington in 2018 from meeting its commitment to issue 20,000 visas a year, as established in the migration agreements of 1994 and 1995.

The main recipient of Cuban emigration is the United States, where over two million people of Cuban origin reside, of whom almost 1.2 million were born in Cuba, according to official data from the U.S. A good part of that population has not cut its umbilical cord with Cuba.

Lillian Manzor, interim chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Miami, told IPS by e-mail that currently, most Cubans in the U.S. support rapprochement between the two countries, while U.S. foreign policy is going in the opposite direction.

“Reconciliation and rapprochement occur on a human level. States can facilitate it, but they can neither impose it nor stop it,” she said, recalling that “even during the most tense moments of relations between Cuba and the United States, we Cubans have remained in touch with our families, friends and collaborators.”

In that sense, Manzor, a Cuban resident in the United States, does not underestimate the strength that this majority sector of Cuban migrants can represent in order to stop the setback imposed by the Trump administration on the normalisation of bilateral ties between Washington and Havana, restored in July 2015.

“That’s the big challenge. How can this need to stay connected with our family and friends be turned into an electoral force. In the meantime, we must continue with what we have always done: cope with adverse policies and fight for our rights as American citizens,” she said.

The academic also said that among immigrants favourable to “closer political and human relations” there are many who hope that “the new president of Cuba will continue with the necessary migratory changes to facilitate travel for Cubans residing abroad.”

Whoever it will be, Castro’s successor has the stage set to move in that direction. On Jan. 1, four Cuban government measures came into force, aimed at relaxing the country’s migration policy and improving its relation with the Cuban exile community. The provisions followed the new Migration Law in force since 2013.

“The Cuban passport is still one of the most expensive in the world especially considering the payment that must be made every two years to maintain the validity of the passport,” said Manzor. The document, valid for six years, costs 400 dollars plus 200 dollars for the biannual extension.

One of the most significant aspects of the international conference on climate change, concluded in Paris on December 12, is that food security and ending hunger feature in the global agenda of the climate change debate.

The text of the final agreement adopted by the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change recognizes “the fundamental priority of safeguarding food security and ending hunger and the special vulnerability of food systems production to the impacts of climate change.”

Indeed, of the 186 countries that presented voluntary plans to reduce emissions, around a hundred include measures related to land use and agriculture.

The approved programme of measures constitutes a sector-by-sector program to be implemented by 2020, which implies there will be ongoing focus on agricultural issues and not just about energy, mitigation or transportation, which drew so much of the attention in Paris.

In the next years the commitments must be implemented, which will require helping developing countries make necessary adaptations through technology transfer and capacity building.

The Green Climate Fund, comprising 100,000 million per year provided by the industrialized countries, will be a key contributor to this process. Contributions of additional resources to the Fund for the Least Developed Countries and the Adaptation Fund, among others, have also been announced.

The issue of future food production, long saddled with a low profile in the media, is increasingly a major concern and poses a challenge to governments.

A recent World Bank report estimated that 100 million people could fall into poverty in the next 15 years due to climate change. Agricultural productivity will suffer, in turn causing higher food prices.

According to Jose Graziano da Silva, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), “climate change affects especially countries that have not contributed to causing the problem” and “particularly harms developing countries and the poorer classes.”

The facts speak for themselves. The world’s 50 poorest countries combined, are responsible for only one per cent of global greenhouse emissions, yet these nations are the ones most affected by climate change.

Approximately 75 per cent of poor people suffering from food insecurity depend on agriculture and natural resources for their livelihoods. Under current projections, it will be necessary to increase food production by 60 per cent to feed the world’s population in 2050.

Yet crop yields will, if current trends continue, fall by 10 to 20 per cent in the same period, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and higher ocean temperatures will slash fishing yields by 40 per cent.

One of the least-mentioned problems associated with climate change are the effects of droughts and floods, which have become a near constant reality. On top of the destruction of resources and huge losses brought by these phenomena, they also cause increases in food prices which in turn affects mainly the poor and most vulnerable.

Rising food prices have a direct relation to “climate migrants”, as the drop in production and income is one of the factors that triggers displacement from rural areas to cities, as well as from the poorest countries to those where there are potentially more opportunities to work and have a dignified life.

For example, migration in Syria and Somalia are not driven by political conflicts or security issues alone, but also by drought and the consequent food shortages.

This is why FAO argues that we must simultaneously solve climate change and the great challenges of development and hunger. These two scenarios go hand-in-hand. The dilemma is to make sure that measures adopted to address the former do not generate a constraint on the latter. Production capacity, particularly of developing countries, must not be jeopardized.

This is why developing countries argue that, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they need technologies and support that they cannot fund with their own resources without hobbling their own development plans.

And since the most responsible for greenhouse gas emissions are the industrialized nations, the countries of the South insist, and have done so long before the COP21, that richer nations contribute to funding the changes needed to preserve the environment.

It was therefore natural that this dilemma was at the center of discussions in Paris and that efforts were made to find an agreement.

The creation of the Green Climate Fund was one of the keystones for an agreement that practically binds the whole world to the goal of keeping average temperatures at the end of the century from rising more than two degrees Celsius. The agreement will enter into force in 2020 and will be reviewed every five years. In that period, many problems will arise and need to be resolved.

Yet beyond the difficulties we will face on the way, it now seems legitimate to expect that the big problem will be addressed and the future of the planet will be preserved.

(End)

With the worldwide numbers of displaced people at all-time highs, migration has become the watchword for humanitarian crises.

Given the cost in economic, political and moral terms of coping with mass migration – and particular the experience of what has been unfolding this year in Europe – the need for a universal set of rules and principles is increasingly evident. So is the desire to keep people safely in their homes.

Several European politicians have insisted that greater aid and investment in the originating countries can stem the tidal movements of people. Even Matteo Salvini, an opposition leader in Italy who is hostile to refuge being offered by his own country, is a stated believer in the idea of that development will keep people from coming.

But few understand how practically difficult it has proven to fund such development. First, increasing amounts of official aid flows are tagged to humanitarian crises, reducing the funds available for sustainable development plans. Second, much of the promised aid never materializes, for a host of reasons.

Take Nepal. Less than half the reconstruction aid pledged in the wake of that country’s earthquake in April has been delivered, according to UN officials. Controversies over the Himalayan nation’s new draft constitution are hardly encouraging to donors. The result is that the disaster may translate into a longer-lasting catastrophe than it had to be, ultimately crimping economic opportunity and food security.

Or take Yemen. Saudi Arabia announced a large donation for humanitarian operations there, even though it is engaged in the military conflict that has exacerbated displacement and poverty.

Meanwhile, amid the horror stories of refugee mistreatment in Europe, Tunisia is now building a moat along its border with Libya, demonstrating fears of its own.

It’s pretty evident that the combined sums spent on deterring migration and humanitarian aid to refugees makes talk of encouraging growth in the source countries an exercise in pure optimism.

That may now change. The global community today gathered at the Rome headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and voted to approve the Framework for Action for Food Security and Nutrition in Protracted Crises. The agreement, brokered by the Committee for World Food Security (CFS), aims to stitch together the increasingly dysfunctional separation of humanitarian and development aid budgets.

As the signatories represent state and non-state donors and actors, the agreement should make it much easier to ensure resources can push past political and bureaucratic barriers to get where they are direly needed.

Take Syria, where more than half the population is displaced, conflict is rampant and the European Union took months to agree to accept less than 5 per cent of the refugees than are now camped in Lebanon and Turkey. Many refugees, terrified that dismal conditions in neighboring countries will become permanent and discouraged from seeking protection further west, are in fact returning to Syria despite the dangers.

That may be an international diplomatic failure – and many of the returnees say they blame the United Nations for their plight.

But it is a practical issue, and that is where the new Framework may help.

FAO, for its part, has already begun acting as if the agreement were in place. This summer it partnered with the International Organization for Migration to help smallholder agricultural production in Syria by around 500 families who returned. The aid consists of seeds, farm tools and ready-made poultry farms, all aimed at providing for the families themselves but also helping pre-empt the agricultural desertion of a conflict-racked country.

The budget resources here are going to what has long been a no man’s land. It’s a small step towards keeping development alive amid an overriding humanitarian emergency.

“Supporting agricultural based livelihoods can contribute to both helping people stay on their land when they feel safe to do so and to create the conditions for the return of refugees, migrants and displaced people,” says FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva.

To be sure, the Framework was devised to deal with protracted crises – places where food insecurity has been reported on a nearly perpetual basis for at least a decade. There are 21 such places today. But most such crises take place in fragile states, where conflict is rife either as a cause or an effect.

As things stand, a third of the world’s hungry outside of India and China live amid protracted crises. And while agriculture accounts for a third of GDP in those countries, it receives less than 4 per cent of external assistance funding, according to Luca Alinov, a FAO officer based in Kenya. Thus the Framework paves the way for resources to flow to the agricultural sector – where returns in terms of food security are highest – precisely where it is most neglected.

It is widely felt to be high time to break down the increasingly archaic distinction between humanitarian and development assistance – and with it the distinct official channels through which resources are doled out.

“Rural development and food security are central to the global response to the refugee crisis,” Graziano da Silva said.

To be sure, how to carry this out in practice may vary, but the Framework’s genesis as the fruit of multi-stakeholder dialogue is likely to broaden the toolkit. Again, FAO has already been doing spadework, such as partnering with MasterCard to provide people in refugee camps in Kenya with prepaid cards allowing them to purchase local goods, a scheme that lends itself to adaptation to varying circumstances.

While state-backed social protection programs such as the Productive Safety Net Program, which helped Ethiopia become the only protracted-crisis country to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of halving the share of populating suffering from hunger, are ideal, the institutional and political stability required for that is often lacking.

That is perhaps where the new Framework may prove most innovative, according to Daniel Maxwell of Tufts University. In line with the universal bent of the Sustainable Development Goals, it suggests going beyond reliance on state building as the sanctioned channel of intervention and points to consensus that strengthening livelihoods should be the priority.
(End)

By Andreas Sieber
STRASBOURG, Sep 10 2015 (IPS)

Climate change has been held responsible many of the social and economic woes affecting mainly the poorest in the global South and now many are seeing it as one of the root causes of refugee crises.

In his State of the Union speech here Sep. 9 to the European Parliament, even European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker said that an “ambitious, robust and binding“ climate treaty is needed to prevent another refugee crisis.Climate change has been held responsible many of the social and economic woes affecting mainly the poorest in the global South and now many are seeing it as one of the root causes of refugee crises

Climate change is one the root causes of a new migration phenomenon,” said Juncker. “Climate refugees will become a new challenge – if we do not act swiftly.”

Calling on the European Union and its international partners to be more ambitious about climate protection, Juncker warned that “the EU will not sign just any deal” at the United Nations climate change conference (COP21), scheduled to be held in Paris in December.

The COP21 meeting is expected to come up with a climate treaty with the aim of keeping global warming below 2°C.

Climate change marked by longer-lasting droughts, more violent storms and rising sea levels is worsening the living conditions of hundreds of millions. Particularly in the poorest countries, climate change has the effect of forcing people who are unable to adapt to leave their homes.

In the Sahelian countries, Bangladesh and in the South Pacific people have already had to flee because of climate impacts.

According to Jan Kowalzig from Oxfam, “climate change is already causing a lot of damage in the global South. It could ruin all progress which has been made in the fight against global poverty over the last decades.”

However, it is the relationship between climate change and the refugee phenomenon that is attracting the attention of many experts.

Earlier this year, a study by a research team from Columbia University and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) held global warming partly responsible for the civil war in Syria.

The study noted that between 2006 and 2010, Syria faced the “worst drought in the instrumental record”, leading to crop failures and mass migration within the country. According to climate models, this drought would have been highly improbable without climate change.

“For Syria, a country marked by poor governance and unsustainable agricultural and environmental policies, the drought had a catalytic effect, contributing to political unrest,” the study concluded.

The number of refugees entering Europe this year is the highest on record and Syrians are by far the largest group – an estimated nine million Syrians have left their homes so far.

Besides the Syrian crisis, the United Nations warns that, worldwide, climate change could increase the number of refugees dramatically.

Srgjan Kerim, president of the United Nations General Assembly, has estimated that global warming could cause up to 200 million refugees until 2050. “Tomorrow we will have climate refugees and we have to know that,” Juncker told the European Parliament.

Oxfam’s Kowalzig explains what needs to be included in a climate treaty to mitigate a potential refugee crisis: “Climate change expels people from their homes and this is where a potential climate treaty in Paris comes in: first, we need to cut emissions and keep global warming below two degrees; secondly, people in poor countries need support to adapt to climate change; and thirdly, a climate treaty in Paris has to lay down rules for damages and losses caused by global warming where adaption is not possible.”

In his speech in Strasbourg, Juncker also admitted that the European Union “is probably not doing enough” to tackle climate change. The EU has announced greenhouse gas emission cuts of 40 percent by 2030 as part of its ‘Intended Nationally Determined Contribution’ (INDC).

INDCs are the commitments every country is supposed to announce before the climate conference in Paris.

However, because a treaty in Paris based on the INDCs will not be enough to keep global warming below 2^oC, many organisations and countries from the global South are demanding a five-yearly “review and improve” process to make climate commitments more ambitious over time.

Any agreement reached in Paris should at least offer a perspective for effective climate protection and this depends heavily on the process of creating a regular built-in review that would enable countries to improve that agreement.

Last week, formal negotiations ahead of COP21 in Paris were held, but while there was support for long-term goals, short-term commitments seemed to be far less popular.

An agreement in Paris with short-term commitments and five-year cycles without a concrete long-term goal might not be perfect. It would lack a perspective beyond 2030, but it would enhance climate protection and greenhouse gas reduction in the next 15 years.

On the other hand, an agreement with an ambitious long-term goal but no effective short-term measures would allow countries to fall far behind with their greenhouse gas reductions and many would just not be able to catch up after 2030.

Edited by Phil Harris   

Excerpt:

Urban farming is mushrooming in Africa as starvation hits even town and city dwellers. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE, Sep 2 2015 (IPS)

There is a scramble for unoccupied land in Africa, but this time it is not British, Portuguese, French or other colonialists racing to occupy the continent’s vacant land – it is the continent’s urban dwellers fast turning to urban farming amid the rampant food shortages that have not spared them.

Inadequate wages have aggravated the situation of many, like Agness Samwenje who lives in Harare’s high density Mufakose suburb, and they have found that turning to urban farming is one way of supplementing their supply of food.

Samwenje, a pre-school teacher who took over an open piece of land to cultivate in vicinity to a farm, told IPS that “this mini-farming here is a back-up means to feed my family because the 200 dollars I earn monthly is not enough to support my family after becoming the breadwinner following the death of my husband four years ago, leaving me to care for our three school-going children.”“There is increased rural-to-urban migration in Africa as people seek better employment opportunities which, however, they rarely find and subsequently turn to farming on open pieces of land in towns in order for them to survive because they have no money to buy foodstuffs” –Zambian development expert Mulubwa Nakalonga

“I now spend very little money buying food because crops from my small field here in the city supplement my food,” she added.

For others, like jobless 34-year-old Silveira Sinorita from Mozambique who now lives in the Zimbabwean town of Mutare, urban farming has become their job as they battle to feed their families.

“Without employment, I have found that farming here in town is an answer to my food woes at home because I grow my own potatoes, beans, vegetables and fresh maize cobs, whose surplus I then sell,” Sinorita told IPS.

Pushed to the edge by mounting food deficits, urban farmers in other African countries have even gone beyond mere crop farming. In cities such as Kampala in Uganda and Yaoundé in Cameroon, many urban households are raising livestock, including poultry, dairy cattle and pigs.

Urban farming is mushrooming in Africa’s towns and cities at a time the United Nations is urging nations the world over to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger in line with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), more than 800 million people around the world practise urban agriculture and it has helped cushion them against rising food costs and insecurity, although the U.N. agency also warns that the number of hungry people has risen to over one billion globally, with the “urban poor being particularly vulnerable.”

However, urban farming in Africa is often met with opposition from the authorities where land is owned by local municipalities and agricultural experts say that opposing it makes no sense in the face of growing food insecurity.

“Poverty is not sparing even people living in the cities because jobs are getting scarce on the continent and as a result, farming in cities is fast becoming a common trend as people battle to supplement their foods, this despite urban farming being prohibited in towns and cities here,” government agricultural officer Norman Hwengwere told IPS. Zimbabwe’s local authority by-laws prohibit farming on vacant municipal land.

FAO has also reported that Africa’s market gardens are the most threatened by the continent’s growth spurt because they are typically not regulated or supported by governments, and a recent study has called for governments to become more involved.

In a 2011 research study titled ‘Growing Potential: Africa’s Urban Farmers’, Anna Plyushteva, a PhD student at University College London, argues that greater government involvement is needed for urban agriculture to emerge out of marginality and illegality and deliver greater environmental and social benefits.

“Without official regulation, urban farming can create some serious problems. At present, informal farmers and their produce are exposed to contamination with organic and non-organic pollutants, which is a serious threat to public health,” said Plyushteva.

For independent Zambian development expert Mulubwa Nakalonga, the more people flock to cities, the more pressure they add to the limited resources there.

“There is increased rural-to-urban migration in Africa as people seek better employment opportunities which, however, they rarely find and subsequently turn to farming on open pieces of land in towns in order for them to survive because they have no money to buy foodstuffs,” Nakalonga told IPS.

“Often when people migrate from rural areas anywhere here in Africa, they cling to their agricultural heritage of practices through urban agriculture which you see many practising in towns today to evade hunger,” Nakalonga added.

In the Tanzanian capital of Dar es Salaam, for example, urban gardens in some communities resemble those found in the country’s rural areas from which people migrated.

Despite the opposition elsewhere, some African cities are nevertheless supporting the urban farming trend. The Cape Town local authority in South Africa, for example, introduced its first urban agriculture policy document in 2007, focusing on the importance of urban agriculture for poverty alleviation and job creation.

As FAO projects that there will be 35 million urban farmers in Africa by 2020, it is supporting programmes in some countries to capitalise on the benefits. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), for example, FAO’s Urban Horticulture Programme is building on the skills of rural farmers who have come to the cities.

The FAO programme in DRC started in response to the country’s massive rural-to-urban exodus following a five-year conflict and now helps local urban farmers to produce 330,000 tons of vegetables each year, while providing employment and income for 16,000 small-scale market gardeners in the country’s towns and cities.

The country’s urban farmers sell 90 percent of what they produce in urban markets and supermarkets, according to FAO, helping to feed a swelling urban population as Congolese flee the countryside in search of security.

Meanwhile, in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, various groups and agencies have helped popularise the “vertical farm in a bag” concept in which city dwellers create their own gardens using tall sacks filled with soil from which plant life grows.

With hunger hitting both rural and urban African dwellers hard, an increasing number of them believe that urban farming is the way to go.

Edited by Phil Harris   

By Emma Bonino
ROME, Jul 24 2015 (IPS)

“A serious political and social crisis will sweep through the euro countries if they do not decide to strengthen the integration of their economies. The euro zone crisis did not begin with the Greek crisis, but was manifested much earlier, when a monetary union was created without economic and fiscal union in the context of a financial sector drugged on debt and speculation.”

Emma Bonino

These words, which are completely relevant today, were written by a group of federalists, including Romano Prodi, Giuliano Amato, Jacques Attali, Daniel Cohn-Bendit and this author, in May 2012.

Those with a federalist vision are not surprised that the crisis in Greece has dragged on for so many years, because they know that a really integrated Europe with a truly central bank would have been able to solve it in a relatively short time and at much lower cost.

In this region of 500 million people, another example of the inability to solve European problems was the recent great challenge of distributing 60,000 refugees among the 28 member countries of the European Union. Leaders spent all night exchanging insults without reaching a solution.

Unless the federalist programme – namely, the gradual conversion of the present European Union into the United States of Europe – is adopted, the region will not really be able to solve crises like those of Greece and migration.

It can be stated that European federalism – which would complete Europe’s unity and integration – is now more necessary than ever because it is the appropriate vehicle for overcoming regional crises and starting a new phase of growth, without which Europe will be left behind and subordinated not only to the United States but also to the major emerging powers.“Unless the federalist programme – namely, the gradual conversion of the present European Union into the United States of Europe – is adopted, the region will not really be able to solve crises like those of Greece and migration”

Furthermore, its serious and growing social problems – such as poverty, inequality and high unemployment especially among young people – will not be solved.

Within the federalist framework there is, at present, only the euro, while all the other institutions or sectoral policies (like defence, foreign policy, and so on) are lacking.

Excluding such large items of public spending as health care and social security, there are however other government functions which, according to the theory of fiscal federalism (the principle of subsidiarity and common sense), should be allocated to a higher level, that of the European central government.

Among them are, in particular: defence and security, diplomacy and foreign policy (including development and humanitarian aid), border control, large research and development projects, and social and regional redistribution.

Defence and foreign policy are perhaps considered the ultimate bastions of state sovereignty and so are still taboo. However, the progressive loss of influence in international affairs among even the most important European countries is increasingly evident.

To take, for instance, the defence sector: as Nick Witney, former chief executive of the European Defence Agency, has noted: “most European armies are still geared towards all-out warfare on the inner-German border rather than keeping the peace in Chad or supporting security and development in Afghanistan.

“This failure to modernise means that much of the 200 billion euros that Europe spends on defence each year is simply wasted,” and “the EU’s individual Member States, even France and Britain, have lost and will never regain the ability to finance all the necessary new capabilities by themselves.”

It should be noted that precisely because the mission of European military forces has changed so radically, it is nowadays much easier, in principle, to create new armed forces from scratch (personnel, armaments, doctrines and all) instead of persisting in the futile attempt to reconvert existing forces to new missions, while at the same time seeking to improve cooperation between them.

Why should it be possible to create a new currency and a new central bank from scratch, and not a new army?

Common defence spending by the 28 European Union countries amounts to 1.55 percent of European GDP. Hence, a hypothetical E.U. defence budget of one percent of GDP appears relatively modest.

However, it translates into nearly 130 billion euros, which would automatically make the E.U. armed forces an effective military organisation, surpassed only by that of the United States, and with resources three to five times greater than those available to powers like Russia, China or Japan.

It would also mean saving an estimated 60 to 70 billion euros, or more than half a percentage point of European GDP, compared with the present situation.

Transferring certain government functions from national to European level should not give rise to a net increase in public spending in the whole of the European Union, and could well lead to a net decrease because of economies of scale.

Taking the example of defence, for the same outlay a single organisation is certainly more efficient than 28 separate ones. Moreover, as demonstrated by experiences with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) during the Cold War, efforts to coordinate independent military forces always produced disappointing results and parasitic reliance on the wealthier providers of this common good. (END/COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Translated by Valerie Dee/Edited by Phil Harris    

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

We are witnessing a shift in the original rationale behind the unique relationship between the European Union and the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries of the ACP group, which goes beyond the logic of “unilateral aid transfer”, “donor-recipient approach” and “North-South dialogue”.

“The [ACP] Group will have to transform itself if it wants to realise its ambition of becoming a player of global importance, beyond its longstanding partnership with the EU” – Dr Patrick I. Gomes, ACP Secretary General
In November last year, in his mission letter to the newly appointed European Commissioner for International Cooperation and Development, Neven Mimica, European Commission President Jean-Claude Junker said: “The first priority is the post-2015 framework and the second priority of my mandate is the future of EU’s strategic partnership with African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries.”

With the agreement for that partnership coming to an end in 2020, both the European Union and the ACP group are currently stimulating intense debates on a critical review of the past and future perspective as well as challenging issues for the future “acquis” between the ACP countries and Europe under the umbrella of the Cotonou Agreement.

Last month’s Joint Session of the ACP-EU Council of Ministers held in Brussels (May 28-29) May offered an occasion for discussing innovative options to outline new bases of common interests, needs and difficulties, and to forge forthcoming cooperation, particularly in terms of the post-2015 agenda, financing for development, migration, international trade, climate change and democratic governance.

At ACP level, there is a growing awareness among members that “the Group will have to transform itself if it wants to realise its ambition of becoming a player of global importance, beyond its longstanding partnership with the EU,” said ACP Secretary General, Dr Patrick I. Gomes.

“There is the need to re-balance the ACP-EU partnership in favour of the ACP Group” was one of the key messages from the 101^st ACP Council of Ministers held on May 27-28 to re-align ACP positions before the Joint Session with the European Union.

Within the European Union, there is also recognition of the relevance of the EU-ACP relationship. “Our exchanges of view on a number of key issues such as the post-2015 development agenda and migration once again underlined the importance of our partnership,” said Zanda Kalniņa-Lukaševica, Latvian Parliamentary State Secretary for E.U. Affairs, in a statement.

Zanda Kalniņa-Lukaševica (right), Latvian Parliamentary Secretary of State for E.U. Affairs and Meltek Livtuvanu, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Vanuatu and President of the ACP’s Council of Ministers. Photo Credit: EU Council

On paper, the Cotonou Agreement remains the most sophisticated framework for ACP-EU cooperation, covering political, trade, economic and development cooperation issues.

According to the last figures for the E.U. budget for 2014-2020, a package of 30.5 billion euros is specifically provided to ACP regions and countries. In fact, the ACP still remains the biggest group of states with which the European Union has a partnership.

The European Development Fund (EDF), an implementing instrument of the Cotonou Agreement, will finance E.U. development cooperation projects until 2020 to assist partner countries in poverty eradication. These funds will target the people most in need and finance different sectors such as health and education, infrastructure, environment, energy, food and nutrition.

Looking towards the future, the ACP is determined to move from being on the receiving end of development assistance to asserting its aim to speak with “one voice in global governance institutions”, in the words of ACP Secretary-General Gomes.

The need to consider and treat ACP countries as “responsible partners” at the global level despite the reluctance of the international community, emerged strongly during the E.U.-Africa Summit in  April 2014, with ACP members hoping for a lift-up effect on the ACP’s political leverage.

According to observers, ACP countries matter for the European Union partly to help overcome the effects of the economic crisis. Some ACP countries in the North African region, for example, have witnessed upturns in economic growth since 2004. At the same time, the abundance of natural resources in ACP countries provides an alternative to the volatile Middle East, Russia and some other countries as a source of energy and raw materials.

On the issue of financing for development, Alexandre Polack, European Commission Spokesperson for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management & International Cooperation and Development told IPS: “We need to come away from Addis with a comprehensive agreement which covers all the means of implementation for the post-2015 development agenda.”

He was referring to the Third International Conference on Financing for Development which will take place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from Jul. 13 to 16 this year.

“This,” added Polack, “means addressing non-financial aspects, including policies. We need an agreement which puts domestic actions and domestic capacities at the heart of poverty eradication and sustainable development, and adheres to the principles of universality in terms of shared responsibilities.”

Observers also point out that the ACP countries can also be important interlocutors during the U.N. Climate Change Conference this coming December in Paris.

While the Western industrialised and emerging countries are the main greenhouse gas emitters, many ACP countries – particularly Small Island Developing States (SIDS) – are directly threatened by the consequences of climate change through, for example, natural disasters, hurricanes and tornados, flooding and drought.

Their voice on this, along with their experience and good practices developed in countering or mitigating the drastic effects of climate change, can make a useful contribution to the deliberations in Paris.

Meanwhile, the ACP-EU Joint Council has endorsed recommendations concerning the migration crisis, including enacting comprehensive legislation on both trafficking in human beings and smuggling of migrants, stressing the differences between both phenomena, while also implementing relevant national laws.

The co-President of the Joint Council, Hon. Meltek Sato Kilman Livtuvanu of Vanuatu, speaking on behalf of the ACP ministers, said: “We consider that even if the military and security approach is meant to discourage and respond immediately to the issue, there is an urgent need to have a comprehensive approach to deal with the root causes of this phenomenon, in partnership with all the countries involved.”

Edited by Phil Harris   

Refugees in Berlin defied a municipal eviction order in June 2014 with a nine-day hunger strike on the rooftop of a vacant school building using the slogan “You Can’t Evict a Movement” which today has become the rallying cry of the refugees’ movement in Germany. Credit: Denise Garcia Bergt

By Francesca Dziadek
BERLIN, May 21 2015 (IPS)

In a move to take their message of solidarity to refugees across the country and calling for their voices to be heard in Europe’s ongoing debate on migration, Germany’s asylum seekers have taken their nationwide protest movement for change on the road under the slogan: “You Can’t Evict a Movement!”.

Earlier this month, in a twist to conventional protest movements, refugees organised a Refugee Bus Tour across Germany, turning action into networking through mobile solidarity.

“We wanted to go out and bring a message of solidarity to all corners of Germany, to meet other refugees and tell them not to be afraid, to take life into their own hands and above all that you are not a criminal,” Napuli Görlich told IPS, tired but relieved after a month of travelling."In dictatorships, young people suffer systematic oppression for a mere criticism of the regime. Faced with joblessness and lack of freedom of expression, they will seek legal or illegal emigration following the lure of the foreign media's often empty slogans of justice and freedom" – Adam Bahar, Sudanese blogger and campaigner for Germany’s refugee movement

On the morning of Apr. 1, Napuli had stood on this same spot, flanked by fellow campaigners Turgay Ulu,  Kokou Teophil and Gambian journalist Muhammed Lamin Jadama, staring at the burnt-out refugee Info Point in Berlin, victim of one of a number of disturbing arson attacks this year, including one on a refugee home in Tröglitz, in the eastern state of Saxony.

Until the day before, the Info Point had functioned as a social solidarity base in the heart of Berlin’s Oranienplatz square, known here as the O’Platz. The square holds a symbolic importance as the central stronghold of the nation-wide refugee movement.

“That was a very sad moment for us,” said Napuli. “Such brutal attacks hit us where it hurts most, in our sense of vulnerability, precariousness, and invisibility,” she continued, vowing that the Info Point, registered as an art installation in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district, will be rebuilt.

One of the most vocal and resilient personalities of the German refugee movement, Napuli was born in Sudan and studied at the universities of Ahfad and Cavendish in Kampala.  A human rights activist, she suffered torture and persecution for running an NGO and fled to Germany, where she has been with the refugee movement ever since.

From the start, she has also been associated with the O’Platz “protest camp”, which became her home and that of 40 other refugees in October 2012.  They had pitched their tents in the square after a 600 km march from what they termed a “lager” reception centre in Würzburg, Bavaria. The refugees stayed, on braving the elements, until the district council ordered bulldozers to tear it down in April last year.

“When they came to clear the camp I had nothing, absolutely nothing, only a blanket on my shoulders,” Napuli recalled. For the next three days, she took her blanket, her protest and her rage at the lack of an agreement with the Berlin authorities up a nearby tree, literally.

Germany’s refugee movement was sparked by the suicide of a young Iranian asylum-seeker Mohammad Rahsepar who hanged himself in his room at the Würzbug reception centre on Jan. 29, 2012.  En route to the German capital the marchers stopped by other “lagers”, starting to raise awareness about the inhumane conditions of isolation for asylum applicants, inviting them to leave their camps and join the march for freedom to Berlin.

Since then, the movement has been calling unequivocally for abolition of Germany’s enforced residence policy, or “Residenzpflicht”, a lager system which effectively denies asylum-seekers freedom of movement.

Other demands are an end to deportations, and rights to education, the possibility to work legally and access to emergency medical care, so far unavailable to asylum seekers.

After the O’Platz protest camp was razed to the ground, many of the prevalently African refugees occupied a vacant school building in Berlin, the Gerhardt-Hautmann-Schule in the Kreuzberg district’s Ohlauerstrasse, where they ran social and cultural activities until June 2014.

The local authorities attempted to enforce an eviction order, flanked by a 900-strong federal police force, and barring all access to visitors, press, voluntary organisations and even Church groups were denied access to the school or delivery of food.

Refusing to leave the building, some of the refugees took to the school’s rooftops for a nine-day hunger strike and standoff, waving a banner with the slogan “You can’t evict a movement”, which has now become the rallying cry of the refugees’ movement.

Some, like Alnour, Adam Bahar and Turgay Ulu, continue to live here, still hopeful that the district will agree to a proposal to set up an international refugee centre here and that they may be able to receive visitors.

Angela Davis, the iconic U.S. civil and human rights activist, was denied access when she tried to visit them on the premises recently.  “The refugee movement is the movement of the 21st century,” said Davis, referring to the plight of migrants worldwide.

During her May 2015 visit to Berlin, Angela Davis brought a message of support to members of the German refugee movement outside an occupied school building in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district. Credit: Francesca Dziadek/IPS

“The Polizei can come at any time of night and snatch us away; we are under constant threat of deportation. I am feeling very stressed, I cannot sleep very well,” Alnour told IPS, explaining how they have had to make do with one, cold, defective shower for 40 people.

Undeterred on his return from the Refugee Bus Tour, Turgay Ulu, a Turkish journalist who was tortured and imprisoned as a dissident for 15 years, published the refugee movement’s magazine and is an active network organizer, has a very busy “working” schedule.

“There is a lot to do, from organising sleeping places for the homeless, writing and producing video content, organising spontaneous demonstrations and occupations, musical events, theatre performances, and consciousness-raising on national and international refugee bus tours,” Ulu told IPS.

“We have two choices, we either sit in the lagers and eat, sleep and eat again and go crazy, or we protest.”

Germany’s problem has been the exceedingly long waiting times necessary for processing asylum applications.  The United Nations has reported that in 2014 the country had the highest number of asylum applications since the Bosnian War in 1992. There are reportedly 200,000 asylum applications still outstanding and it is being predicted that this will have risen to 300,000 this year.

Adam Bahar, a Sudanese blogger and one of the refugee movement’s campaigners, told IPS that his dream of a better life of freedom and wealth evaporated when he reached Europe, where he soon realised that freedom and human rights are not for everyone to enjoy.

“In dictatorships, young people suffer systematic oppression for a mere criticism of the regime,” he said. ”Faced with joblessness and lack of freedom of expression, they will seek legal or illegal emigration following the lure of the foreign media’s often empty slogans of justice and freedom.”

Today, continued Bahar, who is in demand as a speaker and gives seminars at Berlin’s Humboldt University, “colonialism, which was born in Berlin in 1884, is being implemented by starting wars and marketing weaponry.”

As politicians busy themselves with strategies and programmes and allocating resources to more programmes to hold back refugees, they should be naming and shaming the real culprits instead, he said. “Change begins by uprooting dictators who are clandestinely colluding to misuse their nation’s wealth and remain in power thanks to the support of the pseudo democracies of the first world.”

Meanwhile, the refugee movement’s unified front appears to be making some, albeit limited, headway. The forced residence system, for example, has been abolished in a number of federal states and the Berlin Senate has just announced plans to provide refugee shelter accommodation to be completed by 2017 in 36 locations for 7,200 asylum seekers spread out across Berlin’s local districts at an overall cost of 150 million euros.

Germany is currently walking a tightrope between honouring its international humanitarian responsibilities, pursuing its international economic interests, including its remunerative arms sales contracts, and handling dangerous right-leaning swings in public opinion against immigrants.

At the same time, Germany is pursuing a risky carrot-and-stick immigration policy agenda which is sending out contradictory signals – a 10-year-old immigration law which placed Germany on the map as a land of “immigration” for highly skilled foreigners, while tightening restrictions for those who are not deemed to be candidates for economic integration.

At issue is the divisive policy which places refugees in “asylum-worthy” categories. “In Germany there are three categories of refugees,” Asif Haji, a 30-year-old Pakistani asylum seeker, told IPS.

“The first are Syrians and other Middle East refugees who are awarded permits and education. Second come the Afghans and Pakistanis, who have to struggle a bit but are allowed language school and work permits. But then there are the Africans who are widely perceived as economic migrants leeching on the system and petty criminals dealing in drugs who are not particularly welcome anywhere.”

“This is unfair,” he said. “Human tragedy should not be classified.”

Edited by Phil Harris    

Boat carrying asylum seekers and migrants in the Mediterranean Sea. Photo credit: UNHCR/L.Boldrini

By Sean Buchanan
ROME, Apr 15 2015 (IPS)

“The unbearable number of lives lost at sea will only grow if the European Union does not act now to ensure search-and-rescue operations across the Mediterranean,” Human Rights Watch warned Apr. 15.

The international human rights organisation was reacting to reports that as many as 400 migrants may have died in the Mediterranean sea over the past weekend, according to witness accounts collected by the Save the Children charity among the more than 7,000 migrants and asylum seekers rescued by the Italian Coast Guard since Apr. 10.

Noting that 11 bodies have been recovered so far from one confirmed shipwreck over the past few days, Judith Sunderland, acting deputy Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch said that “if the reports are confirmed, this past weekend would be among the deadliest few days in the world’s most dangerous stretch of water for migrants and asylum seekers.”

Many of those rescued over the weekend remain on Italian vessels as authorities scramble to find emergency accommodation, and Human Rights Watch said that the lack of preparation for arrivals was entirely preventable because many had predicted that 2015 would be a record year for boat migration.

“Other E.U. countries have shown a distinct lack of political will to help alleviate Italy’s unfair share of the responsibility,” according to the human rights organisation.

The European Union’s external border agency, Frontex, launched Operation Triton in the Mediterranean in November 2014, as Italy downsized its massive humanitarian naval operation, Mare Nostrum, which has been credited with saving tens of thousands of lives.

Triton’s geographic scope and budget is far more limited than Mare Nostrum, and the primary mandate of Frontex is border control, not search and rescue.

According to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), as many as 500 migrants and asylum seekers have died already in the Mediterranean in 2015, a 30-fold increase over recorded deaths in the same period in 2014.

However, said Human Rights Watch, if the reports of hundreds more dead over the past few days are confirmed, the death toll in just over three months would be nearly 1,000 people, and that number is likely to rise as more migrants take to the seas during the traditional crossing season in the spring and summer months. The death toll for all of 2014 was at least 3,200 people.

The European Commission is to present a “comprehensive migration agenda” to E.U. member states in May but some of the proposals, while cloaked in humanitarian rhetoric about preventing deaths at sea, raise serious human rights concerns, Human Rights Watch said.

These include setting up offshore processing centres in North African countries, outsourcing border control and rescue operations in order to prevent departures, and increasing financial assistance to deeply repressive countries like Eritrea, one of the key countries of origin for asylum seekers attempting the sea crossing, “without evidence of human rights reforms.”

While some proposals contain elements that could potentially address root causes of irregular migration or provide safe alternatives for migrants, Human Rights Watch said that the proof of their success will rest on whether they respect the rights of migrants and asylum seekers, rather than simply stop the flow.

Early signs of intent suggest that rather than building the capacity to protect, the emphasis will be on enhancing and outsourcing containment mechanisms to prevent departures, and “it’s hard not to see these proposals as cynical bids to limit the numbers of migrants and asylum seekers making it to E.U. shores,” Sunderland said.

“Whatever longer term initiatives may come forth, the immediate humanitarian imperative for the European Union is to get out there and save lives.”

Meanwhile, the debate around immigration in Italy has taken on xenophobic tones in some quarters, with the leader of Italy’s anti-immigrant Northern League, Matteo Salvini, calling on all local authorities to resist “by any means” requests to accommodate asylum seekers, and saying that his party is ready to occupy buildings to prevent arrivals.

Edited by Phil Harris    

When a natural disaster strikes, people are sometimes left with no choice but to leave the areas affected. Yet, for some, even this option might not exist. Cyclone survivors in Myanmar shelter in the ruins of their destroyed home. Credit: UNHCR/Taw Naw Htoo

By Ido Liven
LONDON, Nov 10 2014 (IPS)

Climate change is projected by many scientists to bring with it a range of calamities – from widespread floods, to prolonged heatwaves and slowly but relentlessly rising seas – taking the heaviest toll on those already most vulnerable.

When a natural disaster strikes, people are sometimes left with no choice but to leave the areas affected. Yet, for some, even this option might not exist.

While many could be uprooted in search of a safer place to live, either temporarily or permanently, some may become “climate hostages”, unable to escape.

“People around the world are more or less mobile, depending on a range of factors,” argues Prof Richard Black from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, “but they can become trapped in circumstances where they want or need [to move] but cannot.”When a natural disaster strikes, people are sometimes left with no choice but to leave the areas affected. Yet, for some, even this option might not exist … they may become “climate hostages”, unable to escape

According to Black, “it is most likely to be because they cannot afford it, or because there is no [social] network for them to follow or job for them to do … or because there is some kind of policy barrier to movement such as a requirement for a visa that is unobtainable, in some countries even the requirement for an exit visa that is unobtainable.”

For the most vulnerable, climate change could mean double jeopardy – first, from worsening environmental conditions threatening their livelihood, and second, from the diminished financial, social and even physical assets required for moving away provoked by this situation.

A project on migration and global environmental change led by Black was one of the first to draw attention to the notion of “trapped populations”.

In its report, published in 2011 by the Foresight think tank at the U.K. Government Office for Science, the authors warned that “in the decades ahead, millions of people will be unable to move away from locations in which they are extremely vulnerable to environmental change.”

An example the Foresight report mentions is that of inhabitants of small island states living in flood-prone areas or near exposed coasts. People in these areas might not have the means to address these hazards and also lack the resources to migrate out of the islands.

The report warned that such situations could escalate to risky displacement and humanitarian emergencies.

In fact, past cases offer some evidence of groups of people who have become immobile as a result of either extreme weather events or even slow onset crises.

One such example, says Black, is the drought in the 1980s in Africa’s Sahel region, when there was a decrease in the numbers of adult men who chose to migrate – the same people who would otherwise leave the area.

“Under drought conditions they were less able to do so because that involves drawing on your assets – in the Sahel often assets would be livestock – and the drought kills livestock, which means you can’t convert livestock into cash, and then you can’t pay the smuggler or afford the cost of the journey that would take you out of that area.”

Nevertheless, Black argues that in many cases it would be especially difficult to distinguish people who remain because they can and wish to, from those who are really unable to leave. In addition, environmental change could also drive people to migrate towards areas where they are even more at risk than those they have left.

In the Mekong delta in southern Vietnam, researchers foresee climate change contributing to floods, loss of land and increased soil salinity. Facing these hazards, local residents in an already impoverished region could find themselves unable to cope, and also unable to move away.

“It would generally be income and assets that will determine whether people can stay where they are or need to relocate,” says Dr Christopher Smith from the University of Sussex, who is currently conducting a European Community-funded project assessing the risk of trapped populations in the Mekong delta.

“Within the short term, it would mostly be temporary movement, but in the future … there could be more permanent migration.”

According to Smith, “the Mekong, being such a long river that flows through so many different countries, will make [this case] quite unique in terms of changes to the water budget in the delta and, of course, factors like cultures and populations in the delta will play a part.”

Conclusions from the study are likely to be relevant to other cases around the world, and specifically to other low lying mega-deltas with similar characteristics, Smith adds.

In Guatemala, researchers found that relatively isolated mountain communities could also be facing the risk of becoming stranded by climate change.

According to a study published earlier this year, irregular rainfall could be posing a serious threat for the food security and sources of income of communities in the municipality of Cabricán who rely on subsistence rain-fed agriculture.

Yet, the risks associated with climate change are not confined to developing countries. Hurricane Katrina, which hit the south-east of the United States in 2005, offered a vivid example when the New Orleans’ Superdome housed more than 20,000 people over several days.

“That was to do with the fact that an evacuation plan had been designed with the idea that everybody would leave by car, but essentially there were sections of the population that didn’t have a car and were not going to leave by car, and also some people who didn’t believe the messages around evacuation,” says Black.

“And those people who were trapped in the eye of the storm were then more likely to be displaced later – so they were more likely to end up in one of the trailer parks, the temporary accommodation put on by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.”

Scientists are wary of linking Hurricane Katrina, or any single extreme weather event, to climate change. Yet, studies show that a warmer world might not necessarily mean more hurricanes, but such storms could be fiercer than those that these areas are used to.

Beyond science, says Black, international organisations are aware of the issue. “I’ve had quite extensive discussions with UNHCR [the U.N. refugee agency], the International Organization for Migration, the European Commission and a number of other bodies on these matters. There is a degree of interest in this idea that people can be trapped.”

A paper on Populations ‘trapped’ at times of crisis written by Black with Michael Collyer of the University of Sussex and published in February, notes that while it might still be early to suggest specific policy measures to address this predicament, there are several steps decision makers can take, and not only on the national level.

“As long as we have limited information on trapped populations,” say the authors, “the policy goal should be to avoid situations in which people are unable to move when they want to, not to promote policy that encourages them to move when they may not want to, and up-to-date information allowing them to make an informed choice.”

Intergovernmental fora – and among them the loss and damage stream in international climate negotiations – are yet to address specifically the challenge of trapped populations, but Europe might already be showing the way.

A European Commission working paper on climate change, environmental degradation and migration that accompanies the European Union’s strategy on adaptation to climate change adopted in April 2013 mentions the risk of trapped populations, albeit implicitly only outside the region, and recommends steps to address the issue.

Reviewing existing research on the links between climate change, environmental degradation and migration, the authors note that relocation, while questionably effective, “may nevertheless become a necessity in certain scenarios” such as the case of trapped communities.

“The EU should therefore consider supporting countries severely exposed to environmental stressors to assess the path of degradation and design specific preventive internal, or where necessary, international relocation measures when adaptation strategies can no longer be implemented,” states the working paper.

Ultimately, the situation where individuals, families, and indeed entire communities, find themselves unable to move out of harm’s way is not unique to the effects of climate change – it can be other natural hazards such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions or human-induced crises like armed conflict.

The international community’s response to people moving in the face of such crises is most often based on giving them a status, such as “internally displaced persons”, “asylum seekers” or “refugees”.

But this would not be the appropriate response when people remain, argues Black.

For them, “the issue is not a lack of legal status – it’s a lack of options … Public policy needs to be geared around providing people with options, in my view, both ahead of disasters and in the immediate aftermath of disasters.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The Italian Navy rescued 1,004 refugees and migrants on 14 August 2014. Some arrived barefoot, some children were shaking with cold. Men, women and children from Syria, Somalia, Gambia, Bangladesh and other countries were rescued. Credit: Amnesty International

By Matt Carr
MATLOCK, United Kingdom, Oct 10 2014 (IPS)

Since the end of the Cold War, the Mediterranean has become the most lethal of Europe’s barriers against irregular migration, having claimed nearly 20,000 migrant lives in the last two decades.  

And the first nine months of 2014 indicate that the phenomenon is on the rise, with more migrant deaths than in any previous year.

Last month, a report from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported that 3,072 migrants have drowned in the Mediterranean this year out of a worldwide total of 4,077 deaths worldwide.  These figures are almost certainly underestimates, because many migrant deaths in the Mediterranean are not reported.

In the same month, a report from Amnesty International on migrant deaths in the Mediterranean estimated that 2, 200 migrants died between the beginning of June and mid-September alone.“It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Mediterranean has become an instrument in a policy of deterrence, in which migrant deaths are tacitly accepted as a form of ‘collateral damage’ in a militarised response to 21st century migration whose overriding objective is to stop people coming”

The worst incident in this period took place on Sep 11. when 500 men, women and children, many of them refugees from Syria and Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, drowned after their boat was deliberately rammed by their traffickers in Maltese territorial waters.

This horrendous crime took place less than one year after the horrific events of Oct. 3 last year, when at least 360 migrants drowned when their boat sank near the Italian island of Lampedusa.

At the time, the drownings at Lampedusa prompted an unprecedented outpouring of international anger and sympathy.

Pope Francis, European politicians such as Cecilia Malmstrom (European Commissioner for Home Affairs) and Juan Manuel Barroso (President of the European Commission), and  U.N. Secretary-General  Ban Ki-Moon all joined in the chorus of condemnation and called on Europe and the international community to take action to prevent such tragedies in the future.

Twelve months later, these worthy declarations have yet to be realised.

Following the Lampedusa tragedy, Italy undertook the largest combined naval/coastguard search and rescue operation in its history – known as ‘Operation Mare Nostrum’ – to coincide with Italian occupancy of the Presidency of the Council of the European Union.    At a cost of nine million euros per month, the operation has rescued 100,000 people.

Yet despite these efforts, the death toll is already four times higher than it was in the whole of last year.  This increase is partly due to the rise in the numbers of people crossing, primarily as a result of the Syrian civil war and the collapse of the Libyan state. This year, more than 130,000 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean, compared with 60,000 the previous year.

A group of Somali women, among those rescued by the Italian Navy vessel Virginio Fasan, between 13 and 14 August 2014. Credit: Amnesty International

These numbers have tested the resources of Malta and Italy.  Some drownings have occurred as a result of a lack of clarity and coordination between the two countries over their mutual search and rescue areas.  In addition, Malta has sometimes been reluctant to rescue migrant boats in distress – a reluctance that some observers attribute to an unwillingness on the part of the authorities to accept them as refugees.

But the European Union has also been conspicuously absent from the unfolding tragedy on its southern maritime borders.

Despite numerous calls from the Italian government for assistance, it was not until August this year that the European Union mandated ‘Frontex’ – the European border agency – to undertake ‘Operation Triton’ in the Mediterranean to complement Italy’s search and rescue operations.

But Frontex is primarily concerned with immigration enforcement rather than search and rescue, and the joint operations that it coordinates are entirely dependent on resources provided by E.U. member states.

Glaring lack of response

It is at this level that the lack of response is most glaring.  There are many things that European governments could do to implement to reduce migrant deaths.

They could use their navies to establish the ‘humanitarian corridors’ between North Africa and Europe, as the U.N. refugee agency UNCHR once suggested during the Libyan Civil War.  They could facilitate legal entry, so that men, women and children fleeing war and political oppression can reach Europe safely without having to place their lives in the hands of smugglers. 

The European Union could also abolish or reform the Dublin Regulation that obliges asylum seekers to make their applications in one country only.  This law has placed too much responsibility on European ‘border countries’ like Malta, Italy, Spain and Greece, all of which have experienced surges in irregular migration over the last twenty years.

More generally, Europe could establish an international dialogue with migrant-producing countries to make labour migration safe and mutually beneficial. However, many governments clearly regard ‘Mare Nostrum’ as an essential moat between ‘Fortress Europe’ and its unwanted migrants.

Most migrants who cross the Mediterranean are refugees from nationalities that UNHCR considers to be in need of some form of protection under the terms of the Geneva Convention.   But in order to obtain this, they have to reach Europe first and undergo all the risks that these journeys entail.

All this has transformed the Mediterranean into what Amnesty calls a “survival test” for refugees and migrants. Few politicians will openly admit this because such an admission would directly contradict the values that the European Union has set out to uphold since the European project first took shape after World War II.

Most governments prefer instead to condemn the smugglers and organised criminals who profit from such journeys, and wring their hands whenever a particularly terrible tragedy takes place. Men who sink migrant boats or send them to sea without lifebelts certainly deserve to be condemned.

But, as Amnesty International points out, Europe’s ”woeful response” has also contributed to the death toll.  And it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Mediterranean has become an instrument in a policy of deterrence, in which migrant deaths are tacitly accepted as a form of ‘collateral damage’ in a militarised response to 21^st century migration whose overriding objective is to stop people coming.

Until these priorities change, migrants will continue to die, and 2014’s grim record may well be superseded.  Italy has already threatened to stop its search and rescue operations when its presidency of the European Union comes to an end later this year.

Amnesty International has urged European governments to fulfil their humanitarian obligations to save lives in the Mediterranean and warned that “the EU as a whole cannot be indifferent to this suffering.”

So far, there is little sign that anybody is listening.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The author posts blogs on this and other issues at infernalmachine.co.uk/

Group of asylum seekers in Casoli, near Bagni di Lucca, Italy. Credit: Silvia Giannelli/IPS

By Silvia Giannelli
LUCCA, Italy, Aug 1 2014 (IPS)

His journey started four years ago in Conakry, Guinea. Now that Mamoudou* has finally reached Italy, he hopes this will be his final stop.

When he first left his home, his plan was to stay in Libya, but after the 2011 crisis, when Gaddafi’s government was overthrown, life in the country became very hard for migrants. “I was jailed 28 times, and tortured,” he told IPS, “so I decided to come to Italy, because it’s a democracy and I hope I will have a peaceful and secure life here.”

Together with 13 other asylum seekers from Mali, Pakistan and Bangladesh, Mamoudou is now living in a tiny village in the Tuscan mountains, where the ‘Partecipazione e Sviluppo’ association is taking care of his application.“While trying to look at tackling the root causes [of migration] in economic disparity may be a laudable objective, it is not going to make a difference any time soon […] Without an effective rescue response people are going to drown, and they have drowned, and more will drown” – Benjamin Ward, Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch

They all arrived between April and June from Libya, where they had migrated to escape conflicts and hunger and it is now painful for them to recall how their voyage took. “

In order to smuggle me to the Libyan coast, they put me in the boot of a car,” says Mamoudou. “I don’t know how many hours I spent there and what day I left Libya, but my registration documents say I arrived in Sicily on April 11. “

He paid the equivalent of 1,000 dollars to human traffickers to share a boat with 80 people and no skipper. “They told us where the North was and that we should have taken turns steering. When the Italian Navy found us, we had no idea where we were and the boat was already sinking.”

Since the tragedy off the Italian island of Lampedusa, which left more than 350 migrants dead in October last year, the Italian authorities have started a rescue operation called ‘Mare Nostrum’ (Our Sea). Mamoudou is one of the more than 80,000 migrants that have been saved since the operation started, winning appreciation from human rights NGOs and European Union authorities.

“Mare Nostrum is extremely important because it has saved many lives,” Benjamin Ward, Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch, told IPS. “We think it is something that needs to continue and we are among other groups calling for the European Union to respond positively to Italy’s call for European support for the operations”.

Given the high costs of the operations – about 9.3 million euro a month, according to Italian Navy – the Italian Minister of the Interior, Angelino Alfano, who is also leader of the New Centre Right (NCD) party, has stressed on several occasions the need for Frontex, the European Union border management agency, to take over Mare Nostrum.

“Mare Nostrum was set up as an emergency operation. It can’t last forever,” the minister told G6 interior ministers in Barcelona in June. ”Europe must replace Italy in this effort, and Italy will continue to make its contribution,” he added.

“Europe must come up with a clear strategy to regulate the flow of migrants. The Mediterranean that unites us is a European sea. It does not just belong to Italy, Spain, or any of the other countries that look onto this extraordinary body of water,” said the minister.

Yet, the answer of the European Commission leaves little room for negotiation. “Mare Nostrum is a very broad and expensive operation and Frontex is a small agency, it cannot take over Mare Nostrum,” Michele Cercone, spokesperson for EU Commissioner for Home Affairs Cecilia Malmström, explained to IPS. “Of course Frontex can and will contribute and can do a lot, but we don’t have the means to totally substitute it.”

Despite the widespread approval that the Italian rescue operation enjoys, Italian right-wing party Northern League has been calling for its termination since its early stages. “The only real outcome of Mare Nostrum is the favour we make to the traffickers, who can now leave tens of thousands of people at risk of dying, because they know the Navy will come and rescue them,” Massimiliano Fedriga, party leader in the Chamber of Deputies, told IPS.

“The only real solution is to have EU observatories in the North African countries to verify who has the right to receive asylum, which must be a European asylum and not the asylum of a single country. The others, the illegal migrants, who are the majority, should not come and must not come to our country,” he concluded.

Yet, in April Alfano had already said that “immigration is deeply changing profile […] there are increasingly more asylum seekers than economic migrants.”

Riccardo Noury, communications director of Amnesty International Italy, confirmed. “The migrants who arrive, when they manage to survive, at the European border, which is often the Italian and the Greek border, are mostly people who would have the right to asylum or other types of international protection,” he told IPS.

Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch seem to be mostly concerned by Europe resistance to changing its approach towards migration.

“Obviously there are other aspects like border enforcement, like taking action against dangerous smuggling, which are important and need to continue, but we do think that saving lives should be the top priority,” said Ward.

“While trying to look at tackling the root causes in economic disparity may be a laudable objective, it is not going to make a difference any time soon […] Without an effective rescue response people are going to drown, and they have drowned, and more will drown. That in our view is something that has to be engaged. The European Union can’t simply say that it’s Italy’s mess to fix,” he added.

According to Noury, there are several reasons why Italy’s requests have not been heard.

“In the past years, Italy has lost the chance to show credible policies while asking for Europe’s support. We have been the country of push-backs, the country that threatened to release fake residence permits during the 2011 crisis to allow migrants to cross the Italian Northern border… we haven’t been a reliable partner when it came to reform the EU’s migration policies,”  the Amnesty International spokesperson commented.

“But we now have another opportunity, with the EU presidency [which Italy assumed for a six-month period at the beginning of July], to assume a leadership role.”

If Italy fails to obtain strategic and financial support from the European Union, it will be soon forced to scale down or discontinue its rescue operations. One year after the Lampedusa tragedy, exactly same conditions might be in place, and the consequences could be deadly once again.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

 * Name changed to protect his identity.

With Italy having taken over presidency of the European Union (EU) until December 2014, questions remain regarding Europe’s migration policies as reports of migrants dying at sea while trying to reach Italy regularly make the headlines.

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) estimates that since the beginning of 2014, 500 migrants have died in the Mediterranean Sea and almost 43,000 have been rescued by the Italian Navy.

However, Italy’s “Mare Nostrum operation has gone a long way towards addressing the issue of saving people’s lives,” says Anneliese Baldaccini, Amnesty International’s Senior Executive Officer for Asylum and Migration.

Mare Nostrum – the Italian search-and-rescue operation – was launched following the tragedy of October 2013, when 366 migrants died as the boat in which they were travelling sank off the coast of Lampedusa, an Italian island which is closer to Tunisia than Italy.“The EU needs to do more to create legal channels for asylum seekers and migrants” … at the moment, "the EU is focused almost exclusively on strengthening its borders” – Gregory Maniatis, advisor to the U.N. Special Representative of the Secretary-General for International Migration

Italy is the lone sponsor of the search-and-rescue initiative, investing an estimated nine million euros every month.

In an interview with IPS, Baldaccini highlighted the unsustainability of this operation, arguing that this is why “Amnesty is calling on the European Union to act in a concerted way to support Italy in these operations”. So far, she continued, “the EU has proved reluctant in doing so.”

“With its Mare Nostrum operation, Italy has been pushing for a collective humanitarian response,” said Gregory Maniatis, Senior Policy Fellow at the Migration Policy Institute and advisor to Peter Sutherland, U.N. Special Representative of the Secretary-General for International Migration. “But what is missing at the EU level is a common vision of the problem,” he told IPS.

“The EU needs to do more to create legal channels for asylum seekers and migrants,” Maniatis explained. At the moment, “the EU is focused almost exclusively on strengthening its borders.”

Maniatis also argued that the EU does not have a sustained focus “to improve asylum processing to create a truly common European system, to increase its capacity to receive refugees, and to establish ways for people to apply for asylum without undertaking the dangerous Mediterranean crossing.”

According to Amnesty International, there is a dichotomy between the “EU’s aspiration to promote human rights and the reality of human rights violations in member states.” In its recommendations to the Italian EU presidency, Amnesty International stated that currently, “border control measures expose migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers to serious harm.

Their detention is systemic, rather than exceptional. And their lack of agency makes them vulnerable to abject exploitation and abuse.”

Amnesty International has calledon Italy, in view of its presidency of the European Union, “to show leadership and steer the Union in the direction of human rights, putting people before politics”.

The European Council Summit held on June 26-27 agreed broad guidelines for Europe’s migration and asylum strategy but these “do not change the current status quo” according to Amnesty’s migration expert Baldaccini. They “even represent a setback,” she told IPS. Overall, said Baldaccini, they “show a lack of political commitment.”

She went on to explain that the Secretariat of the European Council has partly blamed the recent rise of far-right parties at the last European Parliament elections as being the reason why no progress was made in terms of migration policies.

In general, states – and not only far-right parties – are reluctant to “mention human rights as it could be perceived as encouraging more arrivals to Europe,” Baldaccini said.

Many organisations have called on the European Union to change its approach to migration policies. The Lampedusa tragedy is only one example of a long series of similar events, said Elena Crespi, Western Europe Programme Officer at the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), an NGO representing 178 organisations throughout the world.

“Despite repeated commitments to change,” Crespi told IPS, “EU migration policies remain security driven, and aim at reinforcing border control while migrants’ rights are given little attention.”

One such example, she argued, is the increasing presence of FRONTEX, the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union.

Crespi explained that the intensification of FRONTEX operations has not resulted in fewer incidents, nor better respect for migrants’ and asylum-seekers’ rights. On the contrary, an increased number of allegations have been made regarding human rights violations at the Union’s external borders, which remain unaddressed.

FRONTEX has turned down the recommendation by the E.U. Ombudsman to put in place a mechanism to allow alleged violations to be investigated.

This, said Crespi, raises questions regarding the compatibility of FRONTEX’s operations in terms of human rights.

The presence of the European Border Agency is not sufficient to prevent people from dying at sea, she noted. Instead, enhanced border control pushes more and more people into taking increasingly dangerous routes into Europe, thus putting their lives at risk.

Italy is now pushing for FRONTEX to assume the costs of the Mare Nostrum operations, explained Simona Moscarelli, a legal expert for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in Rome. But to do this, the “FRONTEX mission will have to be revised because its mandate does not include search-and-rescue operations.”

“FRONTEX’s role is not to save lives but rather to prevent and deter migrants from coming into Europe,” Crespi told IPS.

Moreover, “the vast majority of migrants travelling across the Mediterranean Sea are Syrian and Eritrean nationals and should be entitled to asylum,” Moscarelli told IPS.

According to the UNHCR, the number of Syrians reaching Europe by sea increased in 2013. Last year, Italy rescued an estimated 11,307 Syrians in the Mediterranean.

“The European Union must overhaul its approach to migration, and put respect for migrants’ and asylum seekers’ rights at its centre. Opening new channels for regular migration, enhancing reception capacity including by increasing responsibility sharing for migrants coming into Europe and investigating human rights violations are some steps that could be taken in the right direction,” said Crespi.

At the conclusion of the International Conference on Migration, Childhood and Family, civil society organisations called for migrants to be seen as human beings rather than just statistics in official files. Credit: Casa Presidencial de Honduras

By Thelma Mejía
TEGUCIGALPA, Jul 18 2014 (IPS)

The migration crisis involving thousands of Central American children detained in the United States represents the loss of a generation of young people fleeing poverty, violence and insecurity in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, the countries of the Northern Triangle of Central America where violence is rife.

Some 200 experts and officials from several countries and bodies met in Tegucigalpa to promote solutions to the humanitarian emergency July 16-17 at an International Conference on Migration, Childhood and Family, convened by the Honduran government and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

The conference ended with a call to establish ways and means for the countries involved to implement a plan of action with sufficient resources for effective border control and the elimination of “blind spots” used as migrant routes.

They also called for the rapid establishment of a regional initiative to address this humanitarian crisis jointly and definitively, in recognition of the shared responsibility to bring peace, security, welfare and justice to the peoples of Central America.“It is like someone has torn open an artery in Honduras and other Central American countries. Fear, grinding poverty and no future mean we are losing our lifeblood – our young people. If this continues to happen, the hearts of our nations will stop beating” – Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga of Honduras

But the declaration “Hoja de Ruta: Una Invitación a la Acción” (Roadmap: An Invitation to Action) does not go beyond generalisations and lacks specific commitments to address a crisis of unprecedented dimensions.

The U.S. government says that border patrols have caught 47,000 unaccompanied minors crossing into the United States this year. They are confined in overcrowded shelters awaiting deportation.

José Miguel Insulza, Secretary General of the Organisation of American States (OAS), told the conference that in 2011 there were 4,059 unaccompanied minors who attempted to enter the United States. But this figure rose to 21,537 in 2013 and 47,017 so far in 2014.

“These huge numbers of children are from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. According to the data, 29 percent of the minors detained are Hondurans, 24 percent are Guatemalans, 23 percent are Salvadorans, and 22 percent are Mexicans,” said Insulza, who called for the migrants not to be criminalised.

Images of hundreds of children, on their own or accompanied by relatives or strangers, climbing on to the Mexican freight train known as “The Beast” on their way to the U.S. border, finally aroused the concern of regional governments.

The U.S. administration’s announcement that it would begin mass deportations of children apprehended in the past few months was also a factor. Honduran minors began to be deported on July 14.

The Tegucigalpa conference brought together officials and experts from countries receiving and sending migrants. According to analyses by participants, in Guatemala migration is motivated by poverty, while in El Salvador and Honduras people are fleeing citizen insecurity and criminal violence.

Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández said these migrants were “displaced by war” and that an emergency “has now erupted among us.”

Out of every nine unaccompanied minors who cross the border into the United States, seven are Hondurans from what are known as the “hot territories” of insecurity and violence, the president said.

Ricardo Puerta, an expert on migration, told IPS that the Central American region is losing its next generation. “This is hitting hard, especially in countries like Honduras where people are fleeing violence and migrants are aged between 12 and 30.

“We are losing many new and good hands and brains, and in general they will not return. If they do come back it will be as tourists, but not permanently,” he said.

Laura García is a cleaner. She earns an average of 12 dollars for each house or office she cleans, but she can barely get by. She wants to emigrate, and does not care about the risks or what she hears about the hardening of U.S. migration policies, whose officials endlessly repeat that Central American migrants are “not welcome”.

“I hear all that, but there is no work here. Some days I clean two houses, some days only one and sometimes none. And as I am over 35, no one wants to give me a job because of my age. I struggle and struggle, but I want to try up in the North, they say they pay well for looking after people,” she told IPS in a faltering voice.

She lives in the poor and conflict-ridden shanty town of San Cristóbal, in the north of Tegucigalpa, which is controlled by gangs. After 18.00, they impose their own law: no one goes in or out without permission from the crime lords.

“They say that a lot can happen on the way (migrant route), attacks, kidnappings, rapes, they say a lot of things, but with the situation as it is here, it’s the same thing to die on the way than right here at the hands of the ‘maras’ (gangs), where you can be shot dead at any time,” Garcia said.

At the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington on July 7, Honduran cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga spoke about the despair experienced in Honduras and the rest of Central America.

“It is like someone has torn open an artery in Honduras and other Central American countries. Fear, grinding poverty and no future mean we are losing our lifeblood – our young people. If this continues to happen, the hearts of our nations will stop beating,” said the cardinal in a speech that has not yet been disseminated in Honduras.

Rodríguez Maradiaga criticised the mass deportations of Honduran children who have started to arrive from Mexico and the United States. “Can you imagine starting your adult life being treated as a criminal? Where would you go from there?” he asked.

The Catholic Church in Honduras has insisted that fear and extreme poverty, together with unemployment and violence, lead parents to take the desperate measure of sending their children off on the dangerous journey of migration in order to save their lives. The Church is demanding inclusive public policies to prevent the flight of a generation.

Violence in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador is considered to have grown as a result of the displacement of drug trafficking cartels from Mexico and Colombia, due to the war on drugs waged by the governments of those countries.

In 2013, the homicide rate in El Salvador was 69.2 per 100,000 people, in Guatemala 30 per 100,000 and in Honduras 79.7 per 100,000, according to official figures.

At present over one million Hondurans are estimated to reside in the United States, out of a total population of 8.4 million. In 2013 remittances to Honduras from this migrant population amounted to 3.1 billion dollars, according to the Honduran Association of Banking Institutions.

By Joaquín Roy
BARCELONA, Jul 14 2014 (IPS)

A few decades ago, even before the end of the Cold War and before and after Ronald Reagan’s election to the White House, analyses regularly referred to U.S. decadence. At other times, it was Europe’s turn for pessimistic descriptions, especially when it could not overcome its ambivalence over deepening integration, and above all because of the failure of its constitutional project. 

The West was in crisis. And now the pair are apparently going through a similar phase, with each one trying to outdo the other in inferiority.

The United States seems to be in the doldrums because of the apparently erratic foreign policy of President Barack Obama, who does not seem to be profiting from surmounting the legacy of George W. Bush’s actions in the Middle East.

Joaquín Roy

Obama’s agenda based on “leading from behind” is creating serious problems that would damage his re-election chances if he were eligible (which he is not).

Hillary Clinton may inherit this liability if she finally decides to run for the presidency. What is certain is that indecision in Syria, the disaster of Iraq’s disintegration and the still unsolved challenge of Russia in Ukraine, create a picture of the United States in international decline.“Both partners [Europe and the United States] are still the natural allies that could lead the world out of the crisis. And the future of both is welded to their role as immigration destinations” – Joaquín Roy

The European Union, for its part, does not offer a more hopeful scenario, and only if it is able to strengthen its institutions following the European Parliament elections in May will it be able to overcome the generalised forecast of a problematic future.

Gripped by the rise of populism and neo-nationalism and with its economy weighed down by inequality and lack of sustained growth, the European Union is a long way from offering alternative leadership and hope for the rest of the planet, and appropriately partnering the United States to beat the global crisis.

Yet curiously, this odd couple, which can be subsumed in what is generously called the West, can pride itself on an immense capital that is a basis not only for survival, but of sustained leadership for the rest of the world.

In both cases, a systematic humanitarian tragedy reveals their mutual strength and guarantees their future survival. Dramatic, repeated migration processes produce huge human capital flows to both Europe and the United States compared with other regions.

On the one hand, thousands of Latin American teenagers are invading the United States in search of a much better future than they are leaving behind in Central America, racked by crime, poverty and inequality.

On the other hand, the shores of Italy are being bombarded by desperate migrants cast up by traffickers, resulting in shipwrecks and deaths by suffocation. Elsewhere, attempts to take the Spanish border by storm in the enclaves in Morocco have ceased to call attention as newsworthy.

What do these apparently dissimilar scenarios reveal?

Quite simply, that the strength of these partners in crisis is based on their relatively powerful magnetism for migrants.

For all the present difficulties suffered by many European countries, the prospect of life in Europe is comparatively far better than in Africa or Asia, and even Latin America, in spite of the fact that many immigrants are returning to their countries of origin.

The future and the present of the United States – as it always was in the past – remains linked to the immigration pool. Hence, U.S. sectors that oppose migration reform are not only destined to fail, they are also currently rendering poor service to their country.

Both regions, now engaged in exploring a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement, are destined to surpass other world regions in terms of standard of living and future expectations.

Both partners are still the natural allies that could lead the world out of the crisis. And the future of both is welded to their role as immigration destinations.

Excerpt:

By Isolda Agazzi
GENEVA, Nov 28 2012 (IPS)

Remittances to the world’s poorest countries reached a record 27 billions dollars in 2011, according to a report released Monday by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva.

Supachai Panitchpakdi, secretary general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Credit: Communications and Information Unit/UNCTAD

Analysing trends in the 48 least developed countries (LDCs), the report noted that remittances – monies sent back home by nationals working abroad – are now second only to official development assistance (ODA), which stood at 42 billion dollars in 2010.

Remittances were almost double the value of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows to these countries, which amounted to 15 billion dollars last year, making them a much more important source for LDCs than for other country groups.

Indeed, remittances amount to 4.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in the LDC bloc as a whole and 15 percent of exports. These shares are three times higher than in other developing countries.

While these numbers are impressive, experts like UNCTAD Secretary-General Supachai Panitchpakdi believe governments are missing a vital opportunity to mainstream these financial flows into industrialised policies that favour long-term development.

Panitchpakdi sat down with IPS correspondent Isolda Agazzi to discuss how these private transfers, more beneficial to LDCs than trade and investment, can harness the potential of migrant workers to drive sustainable growth in their national economies.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: Why have remittances to LDCs seen this sudden jump in recent years?

The primary purpose of these private transfers is to help (migrants’) families back home and very few countries are trying to (turn that money) into profits for the whole economy. Some migrant workers have managed to set up small businesses, but the potential is far from being fully harnessed.

Q: How can UNCTAD help turn a wasted opportunity into a profitable one?

A: UNCTAD has a unique position to deal with the LDCs and persuade governments to adopt specific policies to mainstream remittances into national development strategies. These private flows should be linked to new industrial policies. Development institutions should provide supplementary financing to returning migrant workers to encourage them to use their knowledge and accumulated savings in building productive capacities.

Governments should be able to protect small businesses by sequencing trade liberalisation. Infant industry protection may appear a bit naïve nowadays, but governments still need to support small and medium enterprises in certain areas, though not forever.  Adopting permanent trade distorting policies is not the way. We still believe in free trade.

Q: Given that 80 percent of LDC migrants move to other developing countries, shouldn’t industrialised countries revise their migration policies and open up their border to unskilled labour?

A: While full trade liberalisation would only add one percent to the world’s GDP, full labour liberalisation could (result) in a 100 percent increase since a person’s productivity can double when going abroad. Recently, people have been looking at migration through a different lens. The more mobile labour becomes, the more productivity increases. And there is no crowding out because most of the time migrant workers go into areas of employment where nationals don’t want to work.

Q: Is the emphasis on remittances an acknowledgement of the failure of trade and investment in the LDCs?

A: It is true that FDI and remittances have flowed in reverse correlation. For the weaker countries, FDI goes only into extractive industries that do not (create) jobs. And due to the ‘race to the bottom’ (competition between host countries to attract investment by lowering wages, taxes and standards), these countries have lost revenue.

UNCTAD is also worried by the involvement of transnational corporations. The problem with FDI is that it is tied to conditionalities and driven by gain, whereas remittances are not conditioned by anybody. Therefore, given that one in five people with university-level education from the LDCs lives abroad, mainly in developed countries, improving and mobilising FDI would be one way for LDCs to avoid the brain drain.

Indeed, brain drain is the downside of remittances: two million educated people from the LDCs live abroad. The loss of knowledge and know-how for the home countries in key sectors like health and education – there are more Ethiopian university professors in the United States than in Ethiopia – could outweigh the benefits of remittances. Other adverse effects are the potential distortion of local prices and the increase of the exchange rate.

(END)

Excerpt:

Farewells among family members who don’t know when they will see each other again are frequent in the Havana airport. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños /IPS

By Ivet González
HAVANA, Oct 20 2012 (IPS)

Her voice is calm. She no longer has any question that her “destiny” is to live outside of Cuba. “My father is getting older every day. It’s time for me to help him,” the 27-year-old woman tells IPS, commenting on her plans to emigrate and become her family’s provider.

“He went to Mexico in 1992 and since then, he has been supporting the family on his own,” says the young scientist, who prefers not to give her name. “I wish I could support him in the future with what I earn here as an agricultural researcher,” she said with regret, speaking a few days before making a visit to the United States that could become permanent.

Her father, an industrial engineer, went abroad to support his family during the economic crisis that broke out in Cuba in the early 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and whose effects are still felt today.

“I wouldn’t want to repeat that story,” she says. “My mother and other relatives are here. If I get a job and the new migration law allows me to travel freely, I’ll come back.”

Many Cubans are reviewing their plans for the future as they grapple with the magnitude of change implied by the easing of travel restrictions announced by the government of Raúl Castro on Tuesday, Oct. 16. They are especially hoping that the new law will assuage the need for reuniting families that have been separated by emigration.

Cuban families “experience the migration process very intensely; it is a traumatic thing for them,” psychologist Consuelo Martín told IPS. That is why family needs should be taken into account in migration policy, which has taken a new turn with the reform of legislation that was in place since 1976.

As of Jan. 14, 2013, the red tape for travelling outside of Cuba for personal reasons will be reduced, with the elimination of the requirement for two documents: a letter of invitation from abroad and an exit permit. Now, Cubans will only have to show a valid passport – although they will also need a visa, required by the immense majority of countries.

But under the new law, special travel restrictions will remain in place for high performance athletes, government officials, members of the military, university graduates, and certain professionals and technicians.

Some of the new measures take into account recommendations that have been made repeatedly by researchers like Martín, who proposes “contextualising migration policies within the challenges of the 21st century and the economic and socio-political dynamics of Cuba today.” In fact, Cuban authorities have announced further, unspecified changes in this respect in the near future.

Emigration needs to become an increasingly “normalised” process in Cuban society, said Martín, who works at the University of Havana’s Centre for the Study of Human Health and Welfare. Generally speaking, families see emigration as a “legitimate” aspiration of one or more of their members, she said.

The Cuban émigré community spans more than 150 countries and is the equivalent of about 10 percent of the island’s current population of 11.2 million, according to analyst Antonio Aja. In 2011, the migration balance was negative for Cuba by 39,263 people, the highest such figure since 1994, according to official sources.

An estimated one in four Cubans living here have at least one family member abroad.

Decree-law 302 brings the Cuban diaspora closer by eliminating the entry permit for emigrants who have current passports, permitting them to visit for a longer period – up to three months, with possible extensions – and establishing a mechanism for those who wish to move back to the island.

But some controversial issues are still pending, such as the elimination of the category of “permanent” or “definitive” departure, and the creation of permits to live abroad. Currently, if Cuban residents stay overseas for 24 months, their departure is automatically seen as permanent, and they lose their rights and assets on the island.

“Maybe I can obtain non-permanent migration status,” said the young scientist. “I want to be with my father, who has been so wonderful.

“This whole time, he has taken care of us, compared to others who forget about the family that they leave behind,” said the young woman, who has been dealing with the absence of her father since she was seven years old. “It was very hard at first. We learned how to live with it, but we never really got over it. My mother never had another solid partner, and my father concentrated on his work.”

The psychologist, Martín, said that whenever the issue of migration comes up, “it’s always a sore spot for someone. Even when a family member’s decision to emigrate was agreed and understood by everyone, absences are felt, especially by those left behind,” she said. The human face hidden behind the statistics needs to be shown, she added.

During the initial decades following the 1959 revolution, emigration had an “ideological and political” connotation, leading to many family break-ups, even though many were subsequently reunited, Martín said. Beginning in the 1990s, the main motivation for emigrating has been economic.

Since then, family ties — between Cuba and the diaspora — tend to be maintained, with some exceptions, she noted. That is why a good number of those who emigrate come back for visits and fight for family reunification once they have settled into their new place of residence.

According to the results of studies led by Martín more than 15 years ago, “the way that family members relate to each other changed. The father or mother is physically absent, but continues to be present by providing support, gifts and economic help, and through communication by means of email and the telephone.”

Sometimes, “from here, the émigré is economically supported. For example, many young people face difficulties adapting to their new society, due to a lack of resources. Their families here support them, even though that might seem almost impossible because of Cuba’s economic crisis,” Martín said.

The youngest son of a retired woman who gave her name as Luisa María Ramírez sometimes receives remittances from his parents in Havana. “He went to Peru over a year ago, and he has not been able to prosper,” the woman, who works part-time in a privately-owned restaurant, told IPS. “Whenever we can, we send him something.

“Only one of my three children is here with me,” Ramírez said. Seven years ago, she bid farewell to her older daughter, who lives in the United States. “She hardly needed any help. Now we just want our children who live outside Cuba to come and see us, and for the one who’s here to stay with us,” she said.

Condom promotion campaign in Male: Credit: SHE

By Feizal Samath
MALE, Sep 22 2012 (IPS)

For an orthodox Islamic country, the Maldives has made remarkable progress in halting the spread of HIV in the Indian Ocean archipelago through bold awareness programmes and the distribution of condoms.

A few years ago, condoms were available in the Maldives only at drug stores and on production of a doctor’s prescription. Anyone found carrying a condom in the streets  was liable to be arrested by police.

But, a five-year project mounted by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM), reports progress in creating awareness of safe sex issues and the use condoms by providing them free. The GFATM is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The GFATM programme in the Maldives addressed the sexually active among the 300,000 Maldivians, but focused on the 110,000 foreign workers in the country – mostly Bangladeshis, Indians and Sri Lankans employed in construction and in the country’s famed luxury resorts.

“We did a lot of work in the five years of the programme, which ended in August,” Ivana Lohar, HIV/AIDS project manager at the United Nations Development Programme in the Maldives, told IPS. “We believe that one more round of global funding would help to sustain the momentum.”

The challenge, Lohar said, is to ensure that the Maldives remains a low HIV prevalence country despite the presence of high-risk groups. As of December 2011, only 15 HIV cases were reported among Maldivians, while there were 289 cases among the foreign  labour force.

At the spanking new Voluntary Counselling and Testing Centre set up in the heart of capital by the Society for Health Education (SHE), a local non-government organisation (NGO), both local residents and foreign workers can avail of the free services.

Asna Luthfee, programme associate at SHE, says her work has included training 40 migrant workers as peer educators to promote awareness at hotspots where foreign workers congregate and provide condoms on request.

SHE offers a range of services through a sexual and reproductive health clinic, including screening for thalassaemia, DNA testing, counselling and psychosocial support. “We distribute oral pills, emergency contraceptives and condoms. We don’t ask people whether they are married or not – we distribute on request,” Luthfee said.

“There is also counselling if testing for HIV shows positive, and these cases are referred to the government,” Luthfee said. The programme, in which SHE and UNAIDS are partners, has been successful enough to be seen as a model for the region, she added.

Mohamed Yahiya, an accountant from Bangladesh who also works as HIV peer educator, said a government decision made earlier in the year to allow workers who contract HIV in the country to stay on and get free treatment, has helped immensely.

“Many were scared to talk about their HIV status fearing deportation, but the new government guidelines have eased those concerns,” he said. Foreign workers, however, undergo mandatory testing on arrival and those testing positive are refused entry.

The campaign has had its ups and downs because of pressure from the public and  religious groups that accused organisers of promoting promiscuous sexual behaviour.

“Though religion has its own inhibitions, Maldivian society is open and able to understand the need for awarenesss,” says Lohar. “We are not trying to interfere with religious beliefs, but flagging a serious public health issue. AIDS is a devastating condition that can impact the economy.”

A spokesman (officials may not be named under briefing rules) for the National AIDS Programme (NAP) said stigma and discrimination are still prevalent and public surveys in 2008 and 2009 showed that them to be  barriers to effectively addressing HIV and AIDS.

The UN-funded Biological and Behavioural Survey on HIV/AIDS – 2008 had noted that the potential for HIV transmission is “accelerated by non-use of condoms and the sharing of unsterile needles and syringes among injectors.”

Unprotected sex is high in all the risk groups. Aside from the risk behaviours themselves, a growing concern is the early age at which commercial sex and injecting drug use start in the Maldives, the study found.

The Maldives, warned the report, “is showing signals of a possible future epidemic which need to be closely monitored by the national programme, including injecting drug use in prisons and rehabilitation centres and risk behaviours found among the 18-24 year age group (selling and buying of sex, group sex, male-to-male sex, sex with non-regular partners, and injecting drug use).”

The NAP spokesman said that religious groups and scholars are supportive of public health efforts to prevent diseases and in this context using condoms is advised. “Prevention efforts are well supported by the religious scholars, and recently they have been involved as partners in HIV prevention work,” he added.

A major component of the programme was the conduct of migrant fairs where free testing for HIV/AIDS was provided. The latest of these fairs, which was held in August,  had collaboration from  government agencies, embassies and high commissions.

“Though most workers don’t understand English, these cultural shows break barriers and provide foreigners access to services, overcoming stigma and discrimination,” Luthfee said.

“Workers are provided information in their own language and when they return to their home countries they go back armed with knowledge on health issues,” said Yahiya.

Mohamed Ceesay, a 20-year-old farmer from the Central River Region in the Gambia, is a high school dropout. But thanks to an initiative to discourage local youths from emigrating to Europe, he earns almost half the salary of a government minister from his rice harvest.

The Gambian government has provided farmers in 10 of the country’s most-vulnerable districts with inputs such as power tillers, tractors, rice threshers, seeders, sine hoes and bags of fertilisers. Credit: DW / Manuel Özcerkes/ CC by 2.0

“In July I harvested 20 hectares of rice fields on my own farm, and our association harvested 100 hectares across the Central River Region. We earn more than what our ministers are earning today,” he told IPS.

He earns 35,000 Gambian dalasi or 1,170 dollars every three months or so – half of what government ministers in this West African nation earn. Their monthly salaries are around 667 dollars, which amounts to almost 2,000 dollars over three months.

Ceesay is one of 50 young farmers from “Operation No Back Way to Europe”, an association founded in 2008 that aims to discourage youths from illegally emigrating.

Indeed, some of the young farmers in the organisation have attempted to enter Europe unlawfully, but they were deported back to the Gambia. Edrissa Sane, 23, is one of them.

“Before, I used to ask my family to help me go abroad in search of greener pastures. I have tried several times by voyaging by sea on a small boat to Spain. I did not succeed because we were arrested and deported back to the Gambia,” Sane said.

But since he joined “Operation No Back Way to Europe” he has no desire to make the dangerous and unlawful journey to Europe again.

“I earn more than 30,000 Gambia dalasi (about 1,000 dollars) in just a few months. That is enough for me, rather than voyaging across the sea to lose my life,” the rice farmer told IPS.

Edrissa said that he regretted not venturing into farming sooner as he now earned a good living.

The chairman of “Operation No Back Way to Europe”, Bubacarr Jabbi, told IPS that the association was working with the Immigration Department and the Gambia Police Force to reduce illegal emigration.

Over the years, more than 200 Gambian youths have died while crossing the seas to Europe. At one point, more than 600 youths a year were attempting to emigrate unlawfully. However, according to statistics from the Gambia Immigration Department, only 60 attempted the journey in 2010/2011.

“We believe in action and therefore urged other relevant stakeholders to come to the aid of the youth in order to inform them about the implications of illegal emigration,” Jabbi said.

One of their initiatives to keep young people in the Gambia has been youth farming. “Operation No Back Way to Europe” has young farmers across the country, in the Lower, Central and Upper River Regions.

On about 2,000 hectares of loaned government land, the 50 young farmers grow the New Rice for Africa (NERICA) variety known for its ability to grow in dry lands. An additional 1,000 hectares of government land has been loaned to other farmers across the country.

And as the 2012 harvest approaches this September, the organisation has promised that its farmers will have a bumper crop. It estimates that they will produce 4,500 tonnes of NERICA.

Currently, the country has only 100 registered rice farmers who produce between 10,000 and 15,000 tonnes of rice a year.

The Gambia, Africa’s smallest country in the Sahel zone, was in the midst of a food crisis last year when the government announced a national emergency in March after declaring the 2011 crop season a failure. At the time, about half the country’s 1.4 million people were affected by food insecurity.

According to a United Nations Development Programme report, the country experienced an almost 70 percent reduction in food production, with 19 of the country’s 39 rural districts being the most affected because of low rainfall. According to the report, rice production in the country fell by 74 percent.

The U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization office in Banjul said that vulnerability to food insecurity would continue to rise in the country, especially among farmers who faced an early and protracted lean season because of decreased income and household food stocks.

In addition, the prices of basic food commodities have skyrocketed over the last year. Many here cannot afford to buy a 50-kilogramme bag of rice that now costs almost 33 dollars when it previously cost 20.

About 70 percent of the population in the Gambia rely on farming for their livelihoods. Agriculture, however, only contributes 32 percent of GDP. Although almost half the country’s 10,000 square kilometres is arable, only about one-fifth of the land, some 2,000 square kilometres, has been cultivated.

However, the government says that agriculture remains the prime sector with which to reduce poverty, generate investment and improve food security. And this is the reason why it wishes to see further investment in the sector.

According to the agricultural director of Central River Region, Ousman Jammeh, the success of young farmers from “Operation No Back Way to Europe” is thanks to the support of the Gambia Emergency Agricultural Production Project or GEAPP.

The European Commission-funded project, run by the Gambian government, has provided farmers in 10 of the country’s most-vulnerable districts with inputs such as power tillers, tractors, rice threshers, seeders, sine hoes and bags of fertilisers – all for free.

Jammeh told IPS that since some farmers in the Gambia had been supplied with proper farming inputs, their production levels for the 2012 harvest should increase. The GEAPP distributed 3,000 tonnes of fertilisers to 600 villages, 300 power tillers, 367 seeders, 367 sine hoes and 367 threshing machines, and 525 tonnes of seed.

“GEAPP has the objective, due to soaring food prices, to enhance agricultural production in the country’s most vulnerable villages by providing access to inputs and machinery, and through the rehabilitation of 35 village seed stores and 23 seed multiplication centres,” he said.

Ceesay, who only started farming last year, is one of the farmers expecting an increase in his crop yield. He estimated that he would have more than 300 50-kilogramme bags of rice from his harvest. Last year he produced 200.

“This year, we had all the farming materials and inputs in place ahead of time and used them. (Not having inputs) was our major problem that contributed to our poor season last year,” Ceesay said.

Nyan Tuch in her temporary home in a camp outside of Aweil where she is living until the government provides her family with land. Credit: Jared Ferrie/IPS

By Jared Ferrie
JUBA, Jul 9 2012 (IPS)

The streets have been swept clean and lined with flags to mark the first anniversary of South Sudan’s independence. But cosmetic changes in the capital, Juba, mask deep concerns about the future of the world’s newest nation.

South Sudan’s first year of independence has been marred by violent clashes, food shortages, a refugee crisis and a faltering economy that threatens to halt development. As the nation celebrates its liberation from Sudan after a civil war that killed an estimated two million people, messages from the international community were decidedly muted.

“Looking back, the last year has clearly been a difficult one for the people of South Sudan,” Hilde Johnson, the United Nations secretary general’s special representative, told reporters in Juba on Friday, Jul. 6. “It’s been a tough start.”

In a strongly-worded statement read out at the United States embassy’s July 4 celebrations, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that the country faces “significant challenges that threaten stability and prosperity.”

“Conflict and unresolved issues with Sudan and domestic inter-ethnic tensions have led to increased fighting and economic hardship, which threatens to compromise the very foundations upon which South Sudan’s future was to be built,” she said.

Much of South Sudan’s future was tied to oil. The country inherited three quarters of Sudan’s reserves when it separated, but the pipelines and processing facilities remain north of the border, along with the port that South Sudan needs to use to get its oil to market.

It was thought that the countries’ mutual interest in oil revenue would help foster a working relationship between the former civil war foes. But it has not worked out that way. Talks since independence have failed to yield an agreement on how much South Sudan should pay to ship its oil through Sudan. In late January, South Sudan shut down oil production after Sudan confiscated 815 million dollars worth of Southern crude, which it claimed was in lieu of unpaid fees.

South Sudan said it had no choice but to halt production because Sudan was “stealing” its oil. But in doing so, the government deprived itself of 98 percent of its revenue. Already greatly dependent on the international community for aid, donors are now concerned that South Sudan will now be unable to fund any development programmes or even pay public sector salaries, which could lead to civil unrest.

“We must not allow the large investments in agriculture, water, education and other services to be undone by the economic crisis and increase in conflict,” said Helen McElhinney, a policy advisor with Oxfam International. “The longer this crisis drags on, the greater the risk South Sudan’s development will slip backwards, and its vast potential will be unrealised.”

Alfred Lokuji, dean of Juba University’s Community and Rural Development Studies department, said an agreement to restart oil production would not solve South Sudan’s problems.

“Even if the oil were flowing, the fundamental problem remains – how to manage it, how to manage those resources,” he said.

Lokuji pointed out that South Sudan and Sudan split oil revenues 50-50 in the five years leading up to independence, but southerners have seen very little development. Instead, oil wealth has been squandered and stolen.

On May 3, President Salva Kiir wrote a letter to 75 former and current “senior” government officials asking them to return stolen public funds. He said that four billion dollars had been looted.

Lokuji said that the letter was unlikely to succeed in convincing people to return money lost to corruption, or to prevent officials from stealing more. He criticised the government for failing to bring charges against corrupt officials during South Sudan’s first year of independence.

“I’d say it has been a failure, a failure because we have been unable to get a hold of corruption, unable to put things in order, put institutions in order and get going,” he said.

Even as the economy stagnates after the loss of oil revenue, humanitarian needs are increasing. The number of people requiring food aid in 2012 doubled from the previous year to 2.4 million, according to the U.N. Some of those are people displaced by ethnic violence that is most pronounced in Jonglei, an eastern state bordering Ethiopia.

More than 1,000 people died in fighting between the Murle and Lou Nuer ethnic groups in Jonglei in 2011. At least 900 more died in clashes that began in late December and stretched to February, according to a May 25 report by the U.N. peacekeeping mission.

The report noted that U.N. surveillance flights had reported around 8,000 Lou Nuer marching toward Murle communities in the weeks leading up the December attacks. Despite advanced warning, “the government was slow to respond in any robust way.”

“Actions taken came too late and insufficient troops were deployed at the critical time,” the report said.

South Sudan is also struggling to cope with close to 200,000 refugees that have crossed the border from Sudan’s Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan states where the Khartoum government is fighting an insurgency. On Jul. 4, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres warned that people are arriving “dangerously malnourished” to camps where “the threat from water born disease is high.”

In addition to refugees, about 375,000 southerners have returned from Sudan since October 2010, according to the International Organization for Migration. The government has promised to provide land to them but many remain in temporary camps.

In one camp outside of Aweil, the capital of Bahr El Ghazal state, 50-year-old Nyan Tuch has been waiting almost 20 months for the government to give her family a plot of land. She lived for four decades in Sudan where she and her husband were both employed and owned a house. As the referendum on whether the south would separate loomed, tensions increased and they decided to return to their homeland.

Tuch and her husband now live in a thatched hut with a tarpaulin roof and they farm vegetables to survive. But she said she has no regrets about returning.

“I am filled with joy at one year independence it is now a country of our own,” she said. “What we are looking for is for the government to allocate our land. And we are hoping the place we have will be better than the place we left in the north because this is our place, we are proud of it.”

Another month of plying his ‘becak’ (trishaw) in the capital city and Sarjo will be coming back to this West Java district to harvest the rice ripening on his 1,400 sq m paddy.

Sarjo (one name) reckons the harvest will fetch him a timely 325 dollars to celebrate the holy month of Ramadan (Jul. 20 – Aug. 18) before returning to becak-pulling in Jakarta.

Mona, who works as an entertainer in Jakarta’s ‘Princess Entertainment’ nightclub, is also preparing to return home for Ramadan. “But, my boss has warned me that if I leave for Indramayu without completing my contract I don’t need to come back.”

“Entertainment work is not easy,” says Lisa, another Indramayu girl who works in a Jakarta disco. “I am expected to encourage guests to spend money and for that I need to be attractive, even after staying up night after night keeping drunken clients happy.”

Lisa manages to send one million Indonesian rupiah (106 dollars) every month to her parents. “They are too old to work on the farm, so they depend on my earnings,” she explained.

Many residents of Indramayu, one of Indonesia’s ‘rice bowls’, are seasonal migrants to the city where there are opportunities to earn cash by pedaling becaks, running street food stalls and working as construction labourers.

Indramayu’s women, too, are part of the exodus to the cities, working the nightspots, massage houses and the entertainment businesses. Those who are not so lucky end up as domestic workers. Either way, they are vulnerable to violence and sexual abuse.

The shuttling between Indramayu and Jakarta is dictated by the rice cropping cycles. The last months of the year, September, October, November and December, referred to as the ‘ber’ period for the last syllable of those months, form the rainy season when rice seedlings are planted.

Four months later, the paddy is ready for harvest – at least that used to be the case until the cycle began to go awry with changing climate and erratic rainfall.

“We can no longer tell when it is going to start raining or when the rice is ready for harvesting, and so we just continue working in the city until we are sure,” says Sarjo. “It costs money and time travelling between Indramayu and Jakarta.”

Over the last few years, rice crops have been failing in Indramayu not only because of dry conditions but also because unseasonal downpours have inundated paddies, affecting the quality and quantity of harvests.

In a 2007 report titled ‘Indonesia and Climate Change: Current Status and Policies,’ the World Bank had warned that the country could become vulnerable to both prolonged droughts and unseasonal downpours.

These conditions, according to the report, could lead to changes in water supply and soil moisture, negatively impacting agriculture. Additionally, the Bank warned of a rise in sea levels and saline ingress into coastal farming zones like Indramayu.

Erratic weather in Indramayu affects jobs in Jakarta, which are often on contract. “Until a few years ago, we could be sure of our schedules and sign up for specified months,” says Sudira, a construction labourer.

With incomes from both rice farming and the seasonal work in the cities uncertain, many of Indramayu’s farmers have fallen into debt and been forced to sell off their smallholdings, weakening their links to the land.

Lisa is unsure what will happen to the family’s rice fields after her parent’s time and they may have to be sold off. “Already, I am spending more time in Jakarta than in Indramayu.”

A study conducted by the Fahmina Institute, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) working on community empowerment, shows that 70 percent of Indramayu’s 11,000 hectares of paddy fields are now owned by about 30 percent of its 125,000 people.

The rest have become landless farmers, struggling to make a living in the cities. Many fall prey to human trafficking networks that have links in wealthy Asian countries like Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and the Middle East.

According to the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, a major international NGO, over the last three years, at least 1,500 girls from Indramayu have ended up in Japan as sex workers.

Supali Kasim, chairman of the Indramayu Art Council, explains that female migration from Indramayu goes back to a prolonged drought in the 1960s. That started a trend of women leaving Indramayu in droves to find work in the cities, depriving the rice farms of extra hands.

“Nowadays, women who cannot find work as entertainers in Japan are ‘exported’ as domestic workers to the Middle Eastern countries,” Kasim said.

Currently, there are 93,000 Indramayu women working overseas, going by figures available with insurance companies of which the women are clients.

A student organisation in Indramayu, ‘Sarinah’, has petitioned the government to intervene and create conditions that would encourage the district’s women avoid having to look for risky situations abroad.

Warisyah, a female farmer who has stayed back in Indramayu, said the government could start by ensuring that rice farming is viable. “They can build irrigation networks so that we don’t have to be so dependent on rainfall,” she said.

So far, the government’s response has been to hasten completion of the controversial 900,000 cu m Jatigede mega dam capable of irrigating Indramayu and adjacent districts. But the dam is also expected to submerge five districts and 39 villages along with 3,000 hectares of rice fields.

In 1988, the World Bank cancelled plans to allocate 37 million dollars to the dam – planning for which began in 1963 – following doubts about its consequences to residents and the environment, but the government has pressed on and the dam is due to be operational by 2014.

By that year more of Indramayu’s men and women are likely to have moved to Jakarta and other cities, many never to return.

(END)

Many Afghan refugees in Pakistan do odd jobs, like selling vegetables. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Feb 22 2012 (IPS)

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government recently launched a harsh crackdown on illegal Afghan immigrants who have been pouring across the border into Pakistan, going so far as to request federal government permission to deal with the situation, which has deep social and economic implications for the host country.

During the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, about five million Afghans entered Pakistan through the porous 2400-kilometre-long border between the two countries.

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Pakistan is home to 1.7 million documented Afghan refugees. Meanwhile, data compiled by Pakistan’s home and tribal affairs department found that the country was simultaneously playing host to 400,000 undocumented Afghans, many of who live in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), one of the Pakistan’s four major provinces.

For the refugees and immigrants, Pakistan is the only escape from a life of poverty and persecution.

Haji Dost Muhammad, an elder of the Afghan Refugees Jirga (tribal assembly), told IPS that many of his people could not return due to a lack of electricity, water and education in their home country.

“Our children have been born and brought up here and now they don’t want to go back as they are getting an education here. When the situation improves in Afghanistan, we will all go back,” he said.

But many Pakistanis, from government officials to local business owners, are frustrated by the weight of a refugee population that has encroached upon the local business sector and is allegedly responsible for a major surge in crime rates.

The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and police have so far failed to investigate undocumented immigrants under the country’s Foreigners Act.

A government official told IPS that the federal government should make arrangements to block undocumented Afghans from entering the country and make more of an effort to settle an issue that has been lingering for decades.

The home department recently briefed the provincial cabinet on the presence of refugees and unregistered Afghans in the region, concluding with a proposal to deport all illegal residents from the province, with the government’s permission.

However, in January last year, a Tripartite Commission – which includes the UNHCR, Pakistan and Afghanistan – agreed to extend Afghan immigrants’ stay by two years, owing to conflict in the sending country.

The government official lamented that these “vague” immigration policies were an impediment to a long-term solution.

“While the issue is being discussed by the inappropriate authorities (such as the Islamabad-based tripartite commission), the prolonged stay of Afghans has resulted in multiple socioeconomic problems in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,” he told IPS.

He contended that since the people of KP and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) are forced to suffer the consequences of rampant immigration – such as competing with cheaper labour – these provinces should have a say in the decision-making process; however, Islamabad has thus far ignored local voices.

A recent report by Pakistan’s home department found that, in addition to the refugees and immigrants in the North, approximately one million Afghans were illegally residing in Islamabad and other parts of the country, many of who were also running their own businesses.

In addition, the report said that Afghans had obtained false computerised national identity cards (CNICs) and used them to set up shops, maintain bank accounts and purchase property and vehicles.

“We have (found) that about 80,000 Afghans have obtained illegal CNICs. We are now very strict. We have taken action against hundreds of Afghans for getting fake CNICs,” said Jawad Ali of the National Database Registration Authority (NADRA).

“The Special Branch Police and Intelligence Bureau have also informed the government that refugees were involved in crimes,” police inspector Jala Khan told IPS.

According to official data, over 14,000 Afghan students were studying in various public and private sector educational institutions, while 470 Afghan prayer leaders have been identified.

Following numerous reports that these religious figures were promoting extremism and religious disharmony among various sects, sources said that 164 of them had been removed from their jobs. The ministry of interior recently gave police the green light to take immediate action against the remaining religious leaders.

Despite deploying a Border Management Force, the influx of Afghans through unfrequented routes continues unchecked.

So far, there is only one border opening at Torkham, which is not sufficient to facilitate the passage of hundreds of Afghan refugees everyday.

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa home department proposed that the interior ministry open four additional entry and exit points along the Afghan border – at Nawa Pass in Mohmand and Bajaur agencies, Kharlachi in Kurram Agency, Ghulam Khan in North Waziristan Agency and Birmal in South Waziristan Agency – to regulate cross-border movement.

The home department also suggested that the ministry install a biometric system and set up joint checkpoints along the border to check illegal movement.

Representatives for the Afghan refugees, like Haji Dost Muhammad, insist that Afghan visitors in Pakistan are committed to abiding local laws. He went so far as to stress that those involved in crimes should be arrested and deported.

But for some, like KP’s law minister Arshad Abdullah, the problem is already out of control and requires swift action, such as immediate deportation of all illegal residents.

(END)

As the number of domestic workers flooding into Jordan from Indonesia, Philippines and Sri Lanka reaches 140,000 annually, non-governmental organisations on the ground are working hard to protect migrant labourers’ rights and expose the terrible working conditions in the rich households that employ them.

“Occurring out of sight and individually, abuses against domestic workers are many,” Luna Sabbah, director of the renowned Adaleh centre for human rights, asserted.

The majority of these domestic workers are women. Over the last thirty years, their presence in the country has literally skyrocketed: in 1984, there were only 8,000 female migrant domestic workers in Amman; today they are more than 10 times that number.

This evolution can be partially explained by a growing disinterest among Jordanian women to engage in domestic labour and, from employers’ perspectives, the eagerness of many households to acquire a cheap workforce that can be exploited at will.

Often deprived of basic freedoms and contact with the external world, migrant women workers find themselves in an extremely vulnerable situation, especially since they do not speak the local language and are basically bound to their employers, who often force the women to sign “labour contracts” they do not understand.

Impossibility of returning home

Thanks to the relentless work of NGOs like the Adaleh centre and Tamkeen, an organisation that archives workers’ complaints and labour violations, details of these abusive working arrangements are finally coming to light.

“The employers don’t feel worried,” Tamkeen’s director Linda Al Kalash, who won the French Republic’s human rights prize back in 2011, told IPS.

“They exploit and perpetrate every kind of violation against their domestic workers: total or partial deprivation of wages, restriction of freedoms, interminable hours, no days off, insults, even physical and sexual abuses,” Al Kalash explained.

She said that the number of workers’ complaints has already reached 500 this year.

“Complaints are generally settled in a tribunal,” she told IPS, adding that the seizure of workers’ passports is a common practice that requires legal deliberation.

However, simply lodging complaints does not always yield results for the plaintiff. First, the violations need to be recognised by the ministry of employment, which often decides to ignore them.

Women are also routinely mistreated by public security forces, who disregard the legal rights of foreign domestic workers.

“There have always been so many rights for women in Jordan, but only on paper,” Sabbah noted.

Indeed, Jordan ratified international conventions against forced labour and traffic in persons in 2009, while female domestic workers were integrated into the Jordanian Labour Code back in 2008.

However, the country is yet to ratify the comprehensive International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families.

Meanwhile domestic workers see the window of opportunity for preserving their rights closing fast.

When a domestic worker escapes the house where she works, she has nowhere to go and finds herself shackled by the accumulation of fees for each day she doesn’t work, especially if her legal work permit has expired and she is living on the mercy of her employer.

Unable to pay the fees, these women often end up in detention.

“At the moment, 35 domestic workers have been in prison for over a year because they accumulated astronomical fines and no one can pay their return journey ticket,” Sabbah said with a touch of bitterness.

NGOs playing a crucial role

The Adaleh centre and Tamkeen work with all the parties involved in the crisis: ministries, public security forces, prison personnel and broker agencies, among others.

In 2010, Adaleh gathered the necessary funds to send eight detained workers back to their home countries and managed to shut down three broker agencies. The NGO also forced many employers to pay withheld wages.

That same year, Tamkeen won authorisation from the ministry of employment for migrant workers to open bank accounts and enact basic regulations on the treatment of undocumented workers.

One of the most comprehensive projects involves the reinforcement of the existing legal framework on the migrant domestic workforce. To this end, Adaleh formed a united front of legal workers to assist migrant workers in their fight for rights.

Tamkeen also bolstered itself with competent lawyers to defend the implementation of international conventions in Jordanian tribunals.

“We try to force those who should execute the laws to actually do (their duty), by publishing statements, by testifying about violations in the media, by suing perpetrators before tribunals. Sometimes all it takes is a simple phone call to ensure that the proper authorities implement the law,” Al Kalash revealed.

The campaign for domestic workers’ rights also includes creating public consciousness around the issue. Efforts are currently underway to educate the police on how to deal with real or potential victims of abuse; influence public opinion on the issue; build trust between NGOs and the prison system and work closely with broker agencies’ managers and with embassies’ personnel.

According to Al Kalash, the greatest challenge will be to change society’s “contemptuous look” towards migrants.

Jordanian women in particular have an extremely negative attitude toward female migrants. Al Kalash told IPS that domestic workers often fall victim to Jordanian women, who are likely lashing out against years of repression and male dominance by attacking the only people in society who are more vulnerable than they.

(END)