Tag Archives: Migrants/Refugees.

THE BEADY EYE SAYS. WE NEED A GLOBAL UNDERSTANDING OF MIGRATION .

14 Tuesday Jun 2022

Posted by in 'Refugee' and 'Migrant' , 2022: The year we need to change., Climate refugees., Migrants/Refugees.

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( Ten-minute read) 

Science shows that Europe is a continent of immigrants and always has been. All Europeans today are a mix. The people who live in a place today are not the descendants of people who lived there long ago.

When one looks back on history most countries were established by migration with the removable of the Aboriginal (original) inhabitants. The tribes of America, the Maori of New Zealand, the Aborigines of Australia, and three waves of immigrants settled in prehistoric Europe.

In an era of debate over migration and borders, Migrant and refugee are just two of the many terms we use to describe people who are seeking new homes in other countries. It is becoming increasingly common to see the terms ‘refugee’ and ‘migrant’ being used interchangeably in media and public discourse.

But is there a difference between the two, and does it matter?

Simply speaking, a migrant is someone who chooses to move, and a refugee is someone who has been forced from their home. 

The distinction is an important one, as there are certain rights for people deemed refugees, whereas migrants have no such rights.Hundreds of refugees and migrants crossing the Mediterranean aboard a fishing boat, moments before being rescued by the Italian Navy as part of their Mare Nostrum operation in June 2014.

All people are born with fundamental rights and dignity. That includes migrants.

Behind every migrant family and host community is a story. The stories can be positive or negative, but we cannot hope to understand migration without hearing them. There are presently around 258 million international migrants. That figure is proliferating since the turn of the millennium when there were 173 million.

Migrants are subjected to a country’s immigration laws and procedures and can be turned away or deported back to their homeland.

No matter what name migration is given it is just not the movement of people from one place to another it is a mixing of cultures.  (Cultural diffusion is the spread of cultural beliefs and social activities from one group of people to another. The mixing of world cultures through different ethnicities, religions, and nationalities has only increased with advanced communication, transportation, and technology.)

An asylum seeker is someone who has asked the government for refugee status and is waiting to hear the outcome of his or her application.

It becomes clear that we cannot just look at migration at the national level. Of course, governments decide on their own migration laws and policies – whether they have to do with security, education, health, or employment. They have done this throughout history. They do it today.

Our current response to international migration is sustainable.

In general, migrants pay more taxes than receive benefits. Newcomers also enrich the cultures of their host communities, and those who return to their countries of origin bring back new skills and ideas. Yet irregular migration is a continuous challenge that exposes migrants themselves to exploitation and abuse. And host communities also have legitimate concerns that we need to listen to.

For example.

The recent UK and Rwanda migration and economic development partnership to address shared international challenge of illegal migration and break the business model of people-smuggling gangs. Rwanda where a genocidal war killed 800,000 people has already around 150,000 refugees from neighboring Burundi and DR Congo.

( It is not the first time  England has exported the unwanted. Today, one in five Australians is the descendant of a convict from Ireland or England. Australia’s oldest city Sydney in the late 18th century was a penal colony to house its surplus of petty criminals — a murky past that continues to leave its mark on the country today.)

                            ——————————

The reality of migration as seen in statistics does not always correspond to what we hear in public discussions.

There are an estimated 272 million international migrants – 3.5% of the world’s population. Although refugees and internally displaced persons make up a relatively small portion of the total number of migrants, they are often most in need of help.

India remains the main origin of international migrants, with 17.5 million Indian-born people living abroad. Mexico and China both also have more than 10 million former residents spread around the world.

Asia hosts the most migrants, with 80 million residing in the region.

In fact, almost 80 percent of English speakers in the world are non-native speakers due to the spread of the language through imperialism and trade.

Cultural diffusion is rapidly becoming the human face of climate change.

Internal climate migrants are Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America could see more than 140 million people move within their countries’ borders by 2050.

Although migration is a global phenomenon, there is still no global understanding of how to manage it. No single country can manage migration on its own because it is motivated, first and foremost, by the lack of economic opportunities at home.

If migration is managed properly, migrants can boost economic growth by filling gaps in fast-growing sectors and by increasing the working-age population.

This is the true beauty of cultural diffusion, that expansion of the mind.

                                ——————————-

The global approach to asylum and migration is broken. 

We have a small window now, before the effects of climate change deepen, to prepare the ground for this new reality.

Together with the increasing volume, we are seeing changing demographics, advancing technology, evolving needs of labor markets, and continued challenges posed by wars, shortages, human rights violations, and climate change WHEN ANY HOPE OF ORDERLY AND REGULATED MIGRATION  WILL DISAPPEAR WITH THE GLOBAL SOUTH POURING INTO THE  THE GLOBAL NORTH. 

Moreover, climate change, as indicated by a recent World Bank report, will accelerate the trend, by driving an estimated 140 million people from their homes in the coming decades.People arriving in Dover today after being picked up trying to cross the channel in a small boat.

Be under no illusion; people smugglers are not humanitarians. They are organized criminals whose evil business finances other serious crimes. The challenge, then, is to find a sustainable solution that is fair to everybody. There is no single solution.

All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS: IS THE UK A GOOD PLACE TO IMMIGRATE?

16 Saturday Apr 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., Human values., Humanity., Modern Day Slavery., Our Common Values., Profiteering., Refugees., Survival., Telling the truth., The essence of our humanity., Truthfulness., Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Five-minute read) 

The UK was recently given the title of the most crowded country in Europe with a population of nearly 65,000,000 it is the 10th largest source of migrants to the rest of the world.

This is a country that made its wealth on the back of slavery and is now intending to provide those deemed to have arrived unlawfully with a one-way ticket to Rwanda.Map showing the distance from the UK to Rwanda.

SHAME ON YOU  Britain.  

In an effort to curtail human trafficking it is resorting to the same despicable trade of human trafficking it wants to stop.

Priti Patel the daughter of a Ugandan-Indian family should know that refugees are among the most vulnerable people in the world.

Your indifference is the engine of entropy that is shining a light on Britain’s apathy to the plight of refugees.

Anti-immigration sentiment existed in Britain long before the referendum.

On June 23, 2016, Britain held a referendum to determine the future of its relationship with the European Union. “Immigration” was the single strongest issue driving Brits to vote for Leave and fundamentally reshaping the language of “immigration.”

In reality, the UK’s membership in the EU would have very little effect on the country’s responsibilities concerning the refugee crisis, as the UK had already opted out of common EU asylum policies and instead was bound only by a distinct set of international conventions.

The relentless (negative) coverage of the refugee crisis in the media brought the topic of immigration to unprecedented national salience for the British public.

By blurring the boundaries between EU and non-EU, economic and humanitarian, and legal and illegal migration it has not isolated itself from the Leave campaign.  It not only stripped humanity from the crisis but also misled voters by implying that the forces guiding and controlling both the refugee crisis and internal EU migration were the same and could both be solved by leaving the EU.

Without using the terminology of “refugee,” the umbrella term “migrant” instead of “refugee” to refer to people fleeing war zones, has resulted in sending a strong message that Britain is not a country to migrate to. 

The UK’s referendum to leave the EU was an unequivocal demonstration of the anti-establishment sentiments, xenophobia, populism, and Euroscepticism.  

( There has always been an intersection between populist politics and media discourse, and there is strong evidence that fear-based messages appear during important political and electoral markers, like elections.)

We must hope that the Priti Patel deal with Rwanda falls on the sword of justice and that decency people in the UK make their voices heard.

Now more than ever UNHCR’s role in Britain must come to the fore. Promoting accession to, and implementation of, refugee conventions and laws. 

Ensuring that refugees are treated in accordance with internationally recognized legal standards;

Ensuring that refugees are granted asylum and are not forcibly returned to the countries from which they have fled;

Promoting appropriate procedures to determine whether or not a person is a refugee according to the 1951 Convention definition and/or to other definitions found in regional conventions;  

Seeking durable solutions for refugees.

The definition of a refugee is someone who:

“Owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.”

It cost Australia more than £5 billion since 2013 to send 3,127 people to Papua New Guinea and Nauru as part of a similar policy.
 

The realities of conflict, violence, and persecution continue to cause displacement.

THERE GO I BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD. 

All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE OPEN LETTER TO THE DELEGATES OF THE FORTHCOMING UNITED NATIONS CLIMATE CHANGE CONFERENCE IN GLASGOW: If you thinks they we have a problem with migration today … wait 20 years.

06 Friday Mar 2020

Posted by in Climate Change.

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Fifteen-minute read.

Dear Delegate,

Although climate change undoubtedly posed an “existential threat to our world” it is not too late to take decisive action.

So far we had the Cop-out 15 to Cop 25, the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 the Paris Agreement in December 2015 and now the 2020 United Nations climate change conference in Glasgow.

As you know dealing with climate change will require coordinated action by nations around the world.

Up to this point what we have seen are countries and industries trying to gut, block or water down all efforts, in a rearguard manoeuvre that mirrors President Donald Trump’s rollback of climate policy in Washington.

24 million people were displaced by weather-related disasters this year.

As climate change begins to alter patterns of disasters, we can imagine these figures will get worse. Understand how changing weather patterns and disasters will alter patterns of migration. This will be both difficult and almost impossible to predict.

Reduction of carbon emissions has no chance of being reached through a voluntary cap and trade system utilizing the free market system. Why would countries strongly enforce caps and targets on their emissions if it puts them at a competitive disadvantage in the market place?

The fact is that if we are to save the planet from a devastating ecological meltdown, it is going to require an immediate and I mean immediate, reduction in greenhouse gases.

We must abandon the absurd notion that the invisible hand of the free market system will solve the crisis.

Why?

Because a market-driven voluntary system will not work.  

Because they are traded for huge profits. There is no baseline from which true carbon reductions can be measured, verification is lacking. 

Because it is cheaper to pollute and buy credits than it is to change production processes.

It is totally unrealistic to believe that carbon reductions on a large scale can be attained unless mandatory reductions are implemented and a full scale global. 

While rewarding carbon-reducing technologies makes sense we will only be able to take worthwhile actions if they are funded by a self-perpetuating fund with outright non-repayable subsidies. 

However, I don’t have to tell you that when it comes down to the wire as who and how we are going to fund the way forward to tackle fairly any actions the simple answer is that we do not have enough time to haggle about it. 

It can be achieved tomorrow by placing a 0.005% commission on all world activities that seek profit for profit sake. ( See previous posts)

The world stock markets are 99% run by high-frequency algorithms. Exploiting market conditions that can’t be detected by the human eye.

Of course, this begs an important question will such a commission affect the free market and can it be applied worldwide. 

Yes to both. 

It will not be climate change that creates another refugee crisis.

Rather, it will be the attempts to stop this migration that will be creating a crisis.

Climate change will not wait. Neither can we for climate refugees.

Regardless of how fast we cut emissions, we are going to see more and more people on the move and there is no single global agreement that can be signed and ratified to change this fact. 

Most of what you know about climate-linked migration is probably wrong.

We all know that climate change is the unpredictable ingredient in our rapidly changing world – and it’s potential to trigger both violent conflict and mass migration – needs to be considered as an urgent priority for policymakers.

As its effects spread, it will destabilise entire economies and overwhelm poorer countries lacking resources and infrastructure. 

When added to existing social, economic and political tensions, it has the potential to ignite violence and conflict with disastrous consequences.

Poland is highly dependent on polluting coal for power (Pic: Beemwej)
You cannot strike a bargain with Climate. 

The choice faced by politicians and all of us is not about how to prevent climate-linked migration.

That possibility is gone, several decades ago.

There is now a stark choice between two very different options:

One: Trying to stop people from moving—which will lead to something that looks like a crisis—or helping people migrate out of the most badly hit areas.

Two: Is to facilitate climate-linked migration in a legal and organised way.

Support for migrants and refugees is at an all-time low. People are already using migration as a way of adapting climate change, with little or no help.

When migration isn’t illegal there is no need to do it secretly. No need for traffickers and smugglers. And no need for migrants to hide as soon as they arrive.

There is no simple law that could be passed that would “fix” climate-linked migration.

The problem is this won’t stop people moving so we need to start by defining exactly what a climate refugee is.

Droughts, hurricanes, floods and sea-level rise are all forcing people to move but picking out one group of people to call “climate refugees” is very difficult.

WHY?

Political responses to climate-linked migration are complicated, and it’s a field where the answers are often not simple.

Because if climate change plays a role in displacement it becomes difficult to draw the line.

What do we know about the links between climate change and conflict?

Climate-linked migration is very often from rural areas into cities.

So if the seas do rise to the predicted levels and people move within there own countries they will not be refugees climate or otherwise.  

To be a refugee you have to have crossed an international border which is part of the official definition of what makes someone a refugee. But, as the impacts of climate change worsen, more people will want to migrate across borders.

Therefore there is only one course of action and that is to open approved channels into the EU and other world nations in order to determine who is a genuine refugee and who is not. 

Few politicians will risk making bold statements about making provision for more people. Climate change is also a low priority for electorates in developed countries.

This is the climate crisis, not the coronavirus. tomorrow is too late. 

These changes cannot take place tomorrow. They should have been implemented yesterday!

Capitalism caused the problem now it should pay to resolve it.

Climate change is unequivocal, that we are responsible, and that our choices before us matter”.

We were never going to get there in one go unless we spread the cost in a way that is acceptable to one and all.  

Yours Faithfully 

The Beady Eye. 

Footnote: All supportive comments appreciated.

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE: LOOKS AT THE TREATMENT OF REFUGEES.

10 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by in Humanity., Refugees., The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., United Nations, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Leaders, World Organisations.

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( A shameful read of twenty minutes)

One of this century’s greatest tragedies.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "papers on refugees"

This is an issue that is long on rhetoric, as newspaper and TV news reports testify. The number of people forcibly displaced from their homes due to conflict and war continues to increase at a staggering rate and will soon be overshadow by Global warming climate change migration.

This post attempts to look at where we have been, and where we are likely to go, in coping with this worlds endless stream of refugees. The refugee problems and crises are far from over and will continue to require urgent international cooperative treatment.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "papers on refugees"

Half of all current refugees have been displaced for over ten years.

At the moment most displaced people stay in their own country this will not be so with climate change.

We all know what causes refugee displacements and asylum flows, but the effects of conflict, political upheaval and economic incentives to migrate, are going to be dwarfed by climate migration.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly resolution 217A (III), on the 10 December 1948 will be out of date. 

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”

This may well represents the first global international expression of rights to which all human beings are inherently entitled but Artificial Intelligence, and technology combined with global warming is going to create a different kind of refugee or migrant.

The right to life is humanity’s most fundamental value.   Résultat de recherche d'images pour "papers on refugees"

More than 65 million people are today, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons (IDPs) or refugees, illegal immigrants, to put a label on them.

The distinction between an economic migrant and a refugee is simple:

Are you running from or to? all are escaping.

Half of the world’s refugees are children under 18 years of age. The average length of time a refugee spends in exile is about 20 years, which is more than an entire childhood, and represents a significant portion of a person’s productive working years.

So let’s try to comprehend ( not that it is possible to do so with written or spoken words)  what refugees have to face.

What is a camp?  What characterizes a camp and how camps affect the lives of those who are placed in them.

On a global scale, millions of refugees are contained in camps of one sort or another.

Life goes on in camps—albeit a life that is affected by the camp.

They are places where the depoliticization of life takes place, due to humanitarian government, paradoxically they also produces a hyper-politicized space where nothing is taken for granted and everything is contested.

They are places of social dissolution, of new beginnings where sociability is remolded in new ways.

They are places with little or no human rights, dignity strippers, with no education, they are terrorist recruitment centers.

Camps are defined along two dimensions: spatially and temporally.

Temporally, refugee camps are meant to be temporary, while in practice this temporariness are becoming permanent.

Temporary are legal anomalies, in which the administration of justice is virtually in the hands of the humanitarian agencies that exercise this function either directly, or by delegating it to community leaders.

In reality temporary camp are exceptional space put in place to deal with populations that disturb the national order of things, while spatially, camps always have boundaries the fact is that in despite of ubiquitous images of sprawling refugee camps the majority of refugees are no longer confined to camps they now live in cities or towns.

So try to imagine yourself in Zaatari a Jordanian Camp set on a lump of desert.A Syrian refugee woman walks in Zattari Syrian refugee camp, Mafraq city, Jordan

It has a current population of over 100,000 souls,( Equivalent to the population of Exeter Uk or  Reykjavík  Iceland.) of which 70% are woman and children.

People are reduced to ants in this dystopian, chronically parched science – fiction setting in Jordan.

A population that is utterly poverty-stricken and powerless, reduced to de facto prisoners with no hope no food no running water, imagine the toilets. Anger blooms, mothers sell their daughters, gangs roam, children go feral:

(Non of this can be blamed on Jordan who have contributed over £500 million against contributions from other countries of around £150 million. With 14,000 new arrivals a week a half a million will only keep the camp open for a few months.)

Or

Imagine you are on a disposable barque approaching Lampedusa with 500 passenger packed like sardines having paid traffickers $ 1000 to $1600. ( Newspapers headlines constantly refer to these people as illegal immigrants. They’er not, they’er refugees. ) You have survived crossing of the Sahara, the violence in Libya and all told your family have raised $6000 for you to make the journey in the likelihood that they will never see you again.

Anyway lets say you don’t drown, now add the screaming and crying ringing in your ears as you scramble the shore to be warped in a tinfoil, and bused to a reception camp, fingerprinted though you are not a criminal.

Your only option is to vanish to continue your journey in the hands of traffickers and gangs who exploit, enslave, rape and bully.

The EU Dublin convention stipulates that people political asylum must remain in the first safe country you land in. There is no picking and choosing.

According to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, European countries have the obligation to provide asylum to those who seek it. This is not the matter of politics and economy, but of basic human rights. There is no person that should live in fear for their life and the lives of their close ones.

Its only by not looking, by turning or backs that we can sail away and think that this is sad, but it is not our sadness.

Refugees are not spread evenly across the world.

Seven countries – Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Lebanon, Turkey, Palestine and Jordan – host more than 50% of all refugees. Many countries, including some of the richest and most developed countries like the US, UK and Australia, are not fully living up to their responsibility under the Refugee Convention.

At the moment, there are over 9 million refugees seeking asylum.

If all refugees were distributed evenly across all the countries in the world, each country would host 100,000 refugees.

By mid-2015, the World Bank’s estimated cost of the Syrian war for the Middle Eastern countries is $35 billion.

Current funding models for displacement are no sustainable.

Whether greater international coordination could produce better outcomes for refugee-receiving countries and for the refugees themselves is of course governed by funds.

The United Nations’ annual appeal for international aid has risen 500% in 10 years due to the “new norm” of multiple humanitarian crises. Only 26% of the money needed has been committed, to enable the UN to provide assistance to 78.9 million people in 37 countries.

To quote António Guterres: The UN high commissioner for refugees. “Today’s needs are at unprecedented levels and without more support there simply is no way to respond to the humanitarian situations we’re seeing in region after region and in conflict after conflict.”

It has been widely suggested that more resources should be devoted to providing aid to refugees closer to home. “80% of our emergency response is to man-made crises which are now “apocalyptic” with displacement of people the highest since the second world war and multiple crises being the “new norm”.

On average, around 100 million people are affected by natural disasters per year and disasters now cost more than $100bn in economic damages. The number of displaced people has also increased, with 65 million people displaced at the close of 2015 compared with 33.3 million in 2013.

While donors give more generously every year, the gap between funds needed and funds provided continues to widen.

This raises questions about our ability to continue to meet affected people’s needs.

Then there is the question whether to devote resources directly to repatriation and reintegration programs, or simply to provide some form of economic incentive to return.

Neither will stem the flow of long-distance illegal migrants, once such flows have become established.

The best option by far is to find ways of preventing civil wars or to stop them recurring. Civil wars suggest that the causes are chiefly economic rather than political.

To really help displaced people, aid agencies must better understand how people are helping themselves, to figure out how to support these initiatives and advocate on behalf of refugees to overcome the barriers.

Education is to be seen as key to contributing to long-term solutions for refugees, ensuring that displaced generations are equipped to rebuild their lives and communities − either in the country of asylum or upon
their return home.

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "papers on refugees"

We need to fix the system – not for today, but to be ready for what the situation will be like five years from now never mind 20 or 30 years in the future.

It’s no wonder that we are living in disturbed times.

It is now time to unite and provide a new home for those who need it the most. What is needed, therefore, is a comprehensive, fully funded global program.

The world can’t keep pretending the refugee catastrophe is a European problem. The brunt of the crisis has fallen on the Turks, the Egyptians, the Jordanians, the Iraqis and the Lebanese.

All the goodwill, all the technology, all the appeals, all the solutions will not stop people fleeing wars, or climate change.

A smart phone can be a lifeline if you’ve had to leave everything else behind, because when you take to the roads, to the boats and to the trains, all our political leaders can think of is fences, barbed wire and more police.

There is only one way to help:

And that is to get Profit for Profit sake to contribute.

By placing a world Aid Commission on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions over $50,000, on all Sovereign Wealth funds Acquisitions. Combined this with a 0.00005% charge on all tweets, and all online purchases, on all google inquires, on all Facebook postings, etc.

Will create a permanent self funding resource of funds doing away with begging for resources.

Mr António Guterres should call a world summit of all Industrial world leaders not countries with a view to passing a people resolution to implement such a World Aid commission.

Then we might have some hope of a more peacefully world for all.

All suggestions and comments appreciate. All like clicks chucked in the bin.

 

THE BEADY EYE SHINES A LIGHT ON A WORLD WHERE NEARLY 20 PEOPLE ARE FORCIBLY DISPLACED EVERY MINUTE.

16 Saturday Sep 2017

Posted by in Humanity., Natural World Disasters, Our Common Values., Post - truth politics., Refugees., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., United Nations, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Aid., World Leaders, World Organisations., World Politics

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(A shameful twelve minute read)

We got it all wrong when it comes to helping Refugees.

They are not invisible people.

Camps are the wrong way to help today’s refugees.

We cannot turn our backs on the ten million people who have been forced to flee their homes. Every decent society knows this and knows that it’s our moral duty to come up with a workable way of helping the refugees.

So here’s the crucial question: what, beyond safety itself, are the critical elements of normality for any refugee?

The entire international refugee support system has presumed that the answer is food and shelter.

But is this really the right response in 2017?

The system was designed to cope with the displaced of post-war central Europe, many of them Germans who had fled the Russians, or Jews freed from the concentration camps.

Refugees nowadays do not have the luxury of a short-term solution. The problems they are fleeing are likely to last for a very long time. Imagine yourself in their position, displaced with your family. Would you really resign yourself to years in a refugee camp, living off food tokens, housed in a converted container?

UNHCR, and its penumbra of similar organisations, are designed for care.

Like all welfare programmes, theirs treats people as passive recipients. Inadvertently, it infantilises.

That so many refugees forgo this care, preferring the struggle of earning a living beneath the official radar of regulations that prohibit it, is testimony to the heroism of the human spirit. We shouldn’t, even with the best intentions, crush that spirit. We should do what we can to make autonomy less grim.

The key confusion has been to conflate refugees with migrants.

Refugees, by definition, are people who didn’t choose to be migrants: they wanted to live at home but their home became unsafe. Migrants are people who seek a better life. Migrants go to honeypots — dream locations can readily be ranked by their desirability.

Refugees do not go to dream locations; they are seeking proximate havens. All of the top ten destinations for refugees are themselves countries of emigration. All are poor countries in disorderly neighborhoods.

So this is the real answer for refugees, not tents and food but autonomy and community. It’s what you would want in their position.

In asking the development agencies to scale-up and integrate the new mechanisms for generating jobs for refugees with those for speeding post-conflict recovery, it would at last become possible to meet our true international duty of rescue. In the process we should free ourselves from the lazy trap of fitting the present into the past.

But try telling that to the current wave of some 65.6 million people around the world that have been forced from home from today’s wars and conflict zones. 65.3 million people on the run – most are now crammed into often squalid and unsafe camps as they wait in increasing desperation for a home, somewhere.

65.6 million is according to the UNHCR the latest figures (which should be taken with a dose of salt as many nations are not equipped with refugee registers or effective data collection procedures. It excluded people who were displaced by natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes, which separately uprooted at least 19 million people in 2015.

To put this number into perspective, one in about every 113 people in the world is currently a refugee. This means that of the 7 billion people on earth, over 65 million of them are living as refugees –– forced to leave their homes. The numbers are so breathtaking that they take a while to settle into the mind.  This is the largest number ever recorded – and a testament to massive failures of both the international community and the United States in dealing with this crisis.

(There are also 10 million stateless people who have been denied a nationality and access to basic rights such as education, healthcare, employment and freedom of movement.)

I say the US, because it is the worst offender. It led the invasion of Iraq in 2003 without a legitimate casus belli. It set in motion the events that produced the Arab Spring resulting in immense forcible displacement in the region.

Just compare this 65 million with one of the greatest humanitarian crises in history — when a shattered Europe at the end of the Second World War had to resettle a staggering 16 million displaced persons.

A horrifying number certainly, but only a third as many as we have now.

The fact that the average amount of time people worldwide are living in displacement is now a staggering 17 years suggest that something is going terribly wrong in how we’re dealing with this issue.

In this climate, it is not surprising that there is animosity towards refugees by so many people.  There has been a perceptible rise in racist and xenophobic acts in many nations, sometimes fueled by politicians and the media. The political reality suggests most countries will remain reluctant to house all but a very small minority of those displaced by violence.

We now live in a world where nearly 20 people are forcibly displaced every minute and we have seen anything yet. Wait till uninhabitable regions due to climate change then we will have millions turning into billions.

Combined this with the violence in the Middle East and North Africa, with nine civil wars now going on in Islamic countries between Pakistan and Nigeria and half of the 23 million population of Syria been forced from their homes, plus 2.6 million Iraqis displaced by Islamic State – Isis – and 1.5 million people displaced in South Sudan.

Religious, ethnic and separatist conflicts are tearing countries apart.

Nationalism and socialism no longer provide the ideological glue to hold together secular states or to motivate people to fight.

Wars are currently being waged in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, south-east Turkey,Yemen, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and north-east Nigeria and none of them show any sign of ending. sanliurfa-syrians-getty.jpg

Europeans were jolted by pictures of the little drowned body of Alyan Kurdi lying on a beach in Turkey and half-starved Syrians crammed into Hungarian trains.

What is to be done to stop these horrors? Perhaps the first question is how we can prevent them from getting worse, keeping in mind that five out of the nine wars have begun since 2011.

Let me begin by attempting to demonstrate why the refugee question must be addressed:

The waves of refugees now are just the leading edge of a global catastrophe, just watch as global warming takes its toll in the coming years.

The core problem remains the amount of violence we have in too many areas of the world. Until we figure out how to isolate wars and cut off their oxygen — as was done eventually in the Balkans in the 1990s — we will only delude ourselves in thinking our era grows less violent.

There is a danger that by attributing mass flight to too many diverse causes, including climate change, political leaders responsible for these disasters get off the hook and are free of public pressure to act effectively to bring them to an end.

Not an easy delusion to maintain as 48 million people call out to us from refugee camps that now seem as much prisons as safe havens. 

It is better first to be informed and draw an opinion, rather than only to be opinionated. Half of refugees worldwide are children.

But why has this topic been so often ignored, or if mentioned, referred to as a “taboo”?

The fact is that world media in all its forms is dissenting us all to the point that refugees from war-torn countries are considered collateral damage, making good news footage.

World leaders can no longer watch passively as so many lives are needlessly lost.

We must be smart about finding solutions to help refugees.

We must find humane and dignified means to ensure refugees don’t risk their lives and those of their families by resorting to ruthless traffickers.

We must open designated channels of entry and offer tagged shelter under repatriation once its is safe to do so.

We must stop the world media spreading a climate of xenophobia.”

We must stop the growing resistance from nations to providing asylum for refugees.

We must stop spreading (due to political rhetoric) painting refugees as terrorists or beggars. “Refugees… don’t bring danger” but “flee from dangerous places.

 

The world governments will resist doing anything until such time as it is profitable to do so. This will be too late.

One of the more comforting claims in recent years is that the world is a less violent place than the blood-soaked centuries gone by. Bull shit.

The modicum of UNHCR support before abandonment, puts a spotlight of Shame on our world!

I have this awful feeling of deja vu. One begging UN resolution after another.

However there are the beginnings of an awakening about all this. In October the World Bank approved its first refugee loan — for job generation for Syrian refugees in Jordan.

Perhaps if the top five Tech Conglomerations were to charge a cent on all like clicks, on all shared photos, on all sales, all up loads, on all searches, on all tweets, on all e mails, on all Skype calls, they could save the world from melt down.  This combined with a 0.05% world aid commission,( See previous posts) would create a perpetual fund of trillions to address inequality that leads to all our troubles.

In just a single minute on the web 216,000 photos are shared on Instagram, a total of £54,000 ($83,000) sales take place on Amazon, there are 1.8 million likes on Facebook and three days worth of video is uploaded to YouTube.

All suggestions and comments appreciated. All like click chucked in the bin till they are chargeable.

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS JUST WHAT DO WE THINK WE ARE DOING BY RETURNING MEN,WOMEN AND CHILDREN HOW ARE DESPERATE.

05 Tuesday Apr 2016

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( A five to Six minute read)

While acknowledging that the current immigration/ refugee problems facing Europe are difficult in the extreme to manage they have being created for the most part by us through european colonization, the plunder for natural resources, and interference, which have resulted in our current day wars.Afficher l'image d'origine

It is not possible to address all the reasons but the western elite that currently rules the world has 3 majors intellectuals influences:

Machiavelli (How to rule over people with cynicism and deception), Hegel (using the Hegelian dialectic of history they consider the western civilization as the end of history) and Darwin (the Survival belongs to the fittest, therefore the white race should stay at the top and rule over other races).

I strongly believe we are the same humanity, and like the plant and flowers, colored differently by location and conditions to survive and thrive.Afficher l'image d'origine

Young people aspire to emulate the most successful models in their society, and now the only visible and tangible model available is the rich subaltern model.

Anyone who wants to understand the intellectual principles that are shaping our current world, should deeply understand the above 3 authors and their influence on the western elite.

“If you want to control the people, separate the people and you can rule them. Divide them and you can conquer them.”

That is just what the European is now about. Bartering in Humans who are destitute. It is the process of dehumanization. It is cynical but it is for the profit!

Dignity is not something Europe cared about.

Magazines photos showing it at its worst now fill the mind of billions of people around the world, and unfortunately those people can’t help but think about Europe only through those images. (In the same time, those medias won’t show the photo of a dead American or English soldier, because it’s shocking and doesn’t respect human dignity)

It must be said that most of these refugees have very little idea of the world they are living in, specially the forces and trends that are shaping it.

The worst consequence of this “free publicity” is the way it has deeply impacted the refugees self-perception and self-image.

All we are doing is creating more enemies for the future.

For any society to prosper it should have a endogenous system of identifying, training and coaching its future leaders. Some countries do it through their military services, some do it through elite schools, and some others do it through informal coaching and assistance organizations or secret societies.Solomon

The “Poverty porn” of the NGOs, the humanitarian organizations, and Western medias is the problem number one because it sabotages self-image, weakens, sell-confidence and resolve, and contributed hugely to the hate and racism we now all face all over the world.

International AID is now doing more harm than good.

It has become the main tool used by foreign governments and organizations to corrupt the elite, and get them to behave so irrationally toward their own populations and the basic interest of their countries. You end up with a species with incompatible types, where one has to triumph over the other or risk extinction.

Take Africa for instance; What is the problem?

The problem is that you can’t develop a country or continent where the majority of people who have the potential to become leaders are raised to be “good subalterns” to be successful.Colonial-Africa

Aside corruption and the criminality, International Aid is the root of the 5 Stars colonization disease that cripple the African elite which dislike the responsibility and the self-sacrifice that comes with being in control of a nation destiny. As far as they enjoyed the status offered by their positions, they never liked the responsibilities demanded by the jobs, therefore they use international aid programs as substitute to their responsibilities.

Elites are elites, and they don’t like someone else to tell them what to do, or to think, elites are not influenced, they pretend to be, but serve their own interests, or deeper convictions, they are not ‘genuinely’ influenced by thinkers. 

So many charity dinner against starvation where people eat like 4, that’s disgusting.

If Africa needs any aid, the most urgent one is to get rid of the 40 billions corruption industry (called International Aid) that shackles its youth and elite, cultivates and maintains the beggar mentality.

How would you develop any country when the dream of  the majority  of its youth and elite is not entrepreneurship, innovation, education and self-sufficiency, but the dream to have a job with a humanitarian organization or to get their project financed by some International aid Agency or proxy.

They are creating new realities like “People from the North” compared to “people from the South” or “people from the West”. They invent new divisions with creative imagination, like the Belgians falsely created the “Tutsi” and “Hutu” tribes in Rwanda which ultimately lead to the genocide in 1994.

The western medias seems to follow an agenda of further dividing African nations and populations with their constant framing of Africa through fight between tribes, religions, geography, etc.

This must stop before African could unite to fight their way out.

The influence of western medias in Africa is very negative, and could be considered as part of Africa problems.Ennemi-within

With today’s cheap and world-wide media platforms on the internet, we are projecting world issues, but the patterns are shaped by a power grabbing philosophies, the us vs them, the one up one down.

We all need to wake up around the world black, white, yellow, brown and start talking at the levels of people, communities, not just among those who rule over us cause they have different agendas.

Charles Darwin makes this point very clear –“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races.

China is using a new form of economic subjugation.

What is important is a deep understanding of where we are and owning our own problems and solutions and find a solutions among ourselves. The only way to unlearn lies is to learn the truth.Posted @ QUOTEZ.CO

If we can’t solve our problems in our surrounding, the other people coming from other places won’t as well.

We better know better!

It’s unfortunate that the world is unable to prosper harmoniously.

“Can all people in the world live the way the developed countries are living ? ” The answer will be No. There is no enough resources for that.

However it is necessary to put things in perspective there are enough resources to Grant temporary Asylum to those that have risked all..  We need to tap into our Possibilities! Create enemies or friends. The world has closed its eyes.

The UN refugee agency have made an appeal for international aid to help with

the influx of people. This what we hear all to often.

We must replace our out of date World Organisations with a new World Aid Organisation.( see previous Posts)

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S SHAME ON US ALL THAT CALL OURSELF EUROPEANS.

04 Monday Apr 2016

Posted by in European Union., Humanity., Politics., The Refugees, The world to day., Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Organisations.

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More than a million migrants and refugees crossed into Europe in 2015, sparking a crisis as countries struggled to cope with the influx, and creating division in the EU over how best to deal with resettling people.

Under the terms of the EU’s deportation deal 202 people from Greece to Turkey have to-day being forcibly returned to Turkey.

On the island of Lesbos, which lies just across the Aegean Sea from Dikili, the 136 deportees boarded two Turkey-bound boats in what some witnesses described as a “sedate state”. On Chios, a Greek island farther to the south, violence briefly erupted as police attempted to transfer selected deportees to a third ferry.

The calmness of proceedings belied the horror of what they represented.

“This is the bargaining and bartering of human bodies,”

Only two of the 202 deportees were Syrian. The rests were mostly Pakistanis, and so could have been deported back to Turkey under pre-existing international agreements, or Afghans, who the Greek government claimed had elected to return to Greece of their own accord.

“It is absolutely mind-boggling that neither the media nor human rights organisations had access to the detention facilities to monitor the asylum procedures,” said a Human Rights Watch spokesman.

The first day of deportations has been met with affirmative statements by credible international organisations, including the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), who confirmed that all procedures were regular and rights of deportees were observed.

Even as the expulsions were under way, a rubber dinghy with about 40 men, women and children arrived from the shores of Turkey, and on the other side of the Aegean dozens of others were arrested trying to follow in their wake.

Turks are now putting up blue tarp to stop the prying eyes of the press.

The conflict in Syria continues to be by far the biggest driver of migration. But the ongoing violence in Afghanistan and Iraq, abuses in Eritrea, as well as poverty in Kosovo, are also leading people to look for new lives elsewhere.

Europe needs to be reminded that Deportation from Europe has a dark history.

Without genuine transparency over the enacting of the EU-Turkey deal, pictures alone won’t be enough. Amid this crisis, children are the most vulnerable of all. Many are travelling with their families, while many others are on their own. Every one of them is in need of protection and entitled to the rights guaranteed under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

 This is an appalling deal. 

We that is Europe is responsible in more ways that one for the Crises. If we were less concerned and not driven by fear we would have set up proper immigration enter channels and now of this would now be necessary.
Our world organisation like UNICEF can only stand by and appeal for funds.
There are still millions caught in situations of conflict, displacement, poverty and underdevelopment – the main causes of the crisis
“It’s what happens when the media is not looking that will matter most.”

Map of asylum claims in Europe in 2015
Tensions in the EU have been rising because of the disproportionate burden faced by some countries, particularly the countries where the majority of migrants have been arriving: Greece, Italy and Hungary.

In September, EU ministers voted by a majority to relocate 160,000 refugees EU-wide, but for now the plan will only apply to those who are in Italy and Greece.

Another 54,000 were to be moved from Hungary, but the Hungarian government rejected this plan and will instead receive more migrants from Italy and Greece as part of the relocation scheme.

The UK has opted out of any plans for a quota system but, according to Home Office figures, 1,000 Syrian refugees were resettled under the Vulnerable Persons Relocation scheme in 2015. Prime Minister David Cameron has said the UK will accept up to 20,000 refugees from Syria over the next five years.

Let me ask you. 

What would you do to escape ISIS and the Taliban?

Even if we have taken in the odd million.

Shame on us all. That we can’t offer at least temporary sanctuary.  

“The journey is difficult but we have no choice,” We have to endure.

THE BEADY EYE ASKS CAN THE EU ACCOMMODATE ANOTHER 4 MILLION MIGRANTS.

20 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by in European Union., Humanity., Politics., The new year 2016., Unanswered Questions., Where's the Global Outrage.

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( a one minute read)Afficher l'image d'origine

As riot police dismantle the camps of northern France, ‘forced relocation’ of people into shipping containers is brushing a humanitarian disaster under the carpet. The new accommodation on which the French have spent £20m is shipping containers, each kitted out with 12 bunk beds. There is heating and electricity BUT Humanity is bulldozed away.

The underlying political problem is never dealt with, except ironically by the refugees and migrants themselves, who have put up a sign saying “David Cameron Street” in the Jungle.

The focus of many EU governments now appears to have shifted decisively back to a default position—namely efforts aimed at preventing or discouraging people from attempting to reach EU territory, tackling smuggling networks, and rapidly deporting individuals who do not have a right to remain in the EU.

FOUR MILLION migrants expected to reach Europe by the end of 2017.

EU leadership is more important than ever to reach a Europe-wide deal on refugees.

An estimated 31,244 migrants have braved the deadly boat crossing over the Mediterranean Sea to Greece in the first 16 days of this year. This shocking statistic represents 21 times the number of migrants who crossed during the same period in January 2015, according to the International Organisation for Migration.

The IMF has predicted four million refugees will reach Europe by the end of 2017. Pictured is a migrant waiting to catch a train while wrapped in a blanket while trying to keep warm in SerbiaChancellor Angela Merkel's party has also called for Germany to declare Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia 'safe countries of origin', making it easier to reject asylum requests by its nationalsIt is expected that the number of new arrivals to Greece is likely to exceed the 853,650 migrants who crossed over to Greece by sea last year

Last year children accounted for a quarter of the one million migrants and refugees arriving across the Mediterranean in Europe.

God knows, these people need help. They are not obtruders. Every one of them is in need of protection and entitled to the rights guaranteed under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

At the same time, there are still millions caught in situations of conflict, displacement, poverty and underdevelopment – the main causes of the crisis.

UNICEF is appealing for US$14 million to support the needs of affected children and women through 2016.Composite image showing three different lots of migrants

The rising number of people entering Europe in search of safety and in search of a better life has captured the world’s attention with scenes of heartbreaking tragedy.

JUST IMAGINE IF IT WAS YOUR FAMILY.

Travelling hundreds and thousands of miles over land and over water, from Africa, the Middle East and Asia, people are risking everything in the hope of reaching their goal, and the danger does not end at a border crossing.

Here are a few Graphics to open your eyes.

Map of arrivals

Asylum claims

In September, EU ministers voted by a majority to relocate 120,000 refugees EU-wide, but for now the plan will only apply to 66,000 who are in Italy and Greece.
chart showing number of migrants EU countries will acceptChart showing approved asylum applications

 

 

 

 

Migrant deaths in Mediterranean by month                       Syrians in neighbouring countries and Europe map

 

 

Whenever people treats others as they treat each other, then we will have no more wars.

THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT WHO IS A REFUGEE?

25 Tuesday Aug 2015

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Understanding the problems confronting refugees—and those striving to protect them—depends on grasping precise legal definitions.

The core definition of a “refugee” is contained in the 1951 United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, which define a refugee as an individual who: “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable or unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.”

With biggest driving force for change still to manifest itself: It seem to me that the definition is long over due a revamp.

Climate Change will like the Internet have a profound effect on the world.

The Internet alone has assisted the creation of wars, by highlighting the inequalities that exist between the have and have not’s. It is exposing Capitalism and the free Market for what it real is. It is unveiling corruption, challenging the mass media and assisting mass immigration by generating sizeable networks to deal with the any obstacles set in their paths.

Climate change will change any definition of undocumented aliens asylum seekers. It will displace millions, impacting on the economy, by having a positive affecting on some groups and negatively others.

Trade agreements like the TTPI will weaken the case of those who would venture a rigid and single-factor comparison between “political” immigration and “economic” immigration.

We can expect the migratory issue to become increasingly political. A more rational approach would be to consider who the illegal immigrants are, before making immigration laws.

Much of Europe’s brewing migration debate carries a polarized tone of certainty, and migrants themselves are often slotted into neat “political” and “economic” categories.

You can see this at the moment as the EU struggles to establish who are political refugees and illegal immigration, on the role of economic versus non-economic factors. The definition Refugee has and is being ignored.

Is it possible to distinguish between the poverty of “condition” and the poverty of “position”?

Poverty, while a commonly cited factor “pushing” migration, is difficult to define.

In the former situation, the two main factors are a lack of employment and steady income, which prompt a feeling of having “nothing to lose.”Their biggest concern and expectation is to improve their physical well-being, something they regard as impossible at home.

This element has also got a growing home-grown element of poverty due to unemployment, no hours contracts, and exploration of the vulnerable within the EU.

Poverty of position, in contrast, involves migrants who use emigration as a way of more rapidly climbing the social ladder. These migrants feel that their income and position in their home country will never match their social capital (for example, their level of formal education or training). They move to places where they believe they can realize their aspirations.

Theses generic terms therefore covers a wide range of facts but Violence and Conflict are the leading causes of the current wave of migration [to Europe]

It is rooted in the crazy [U.S.] idea to launch an intervention in Iraq, which allegedly had weapons of mass destruction, but nothing was found.” A disaster that destabilized the Middle East giving rise of terrorism that we now see to-day.

However some of the blame for many asylum seekers is not wars.

For example, persecution is not necessarily imposed by the government or other official institutions in their country of origin. Some may face violence at the hands of mafia networks, armed groups, or a dominant majority group in connection with factors that are not directly political, such as ethnicity.

Others may be threatened for having a lifestyle that involves a socially unacceptable choice of spouse, sexual orientation, etc. As a result, some people are threatened and persecuted without fully meeting the demands of the 1951 United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees.

The long the short and tall of it is that Northern Africa today can no longer defend Europe from the immense masses of people on the move.

As Europe turns its back, these are refugees, not migrants, are arriving in their thousands on Greek shores .

The number thought to be in the UK could be as high as 863,000 – larger than the population of Leeds. By comparison, Italy was thought to have up to 461,000, Germany had 457,000, France’s top estimate was 400,000 and Spain had 354,000. Greece, it is estimated that about 100.000-150.000 undocumented refugees and migrants enter Greece each year, among them maybe around 10.000 unaccompanied minors.

Refugees and other vulnerable people deserve the protection and assistance to which they are entitled under international law. Rather then the inhumane treatment seen in the below:

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/08/streams-refugees-flow-macedonia-greece-150823072040825.html

In a wide range of countries, attitudes toward immigrants appear to be related to labor-market concerns, security and cultural considerations, as well as individual feelings toward political refugees and illegal immigration.

Are attitudes toward foreigners influenced by economic considerations or are they driven exclusively by non-economic issues?

At what point do we as citizens of the EU conclude that these people have already suffered enough and deserve to be aided in their flight to safety?

Without legal alternative routes for refugees to enter other European countries, people fleeing conflicts in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere have taken matters into their own hands

The future of Europe, will be determined by its ability to confront the issue of immigration. Whatever the attitude of the government, population pressure will be immense on Europe and there is no chance to prevent such migration.

On the one hand, the Fortress Europe concept essentially focuses on the role of external border controls and neglects the entry and settlement of clandestine immigrants and undocumented aliens. At the same time, border controls, deportations, mass arrests, and internment of migrants in closed centers and prisons invalidate the thesis of Europe as a sieve.

Europe, which is neighbor to many war zones takes in more than 1.5 million legal migrants.

Overall, forced displacement numbers in Europe totalled 6.7 million at the end of the year, compared to 4.4 million at the end of 2013, and with the largest proportion of this being Syrians in Turkey and Ukrainians in the Russian Federation. Syria’s ongoing war, with 7.6 million people displaced internally, and 3.88 million people displaced into the surrounding region and beyond as refugees, has alone made the Middle East the world’s largest producer and host of forced displacement. Adding to the high totals from Syria was a new displacement of least 2.6 million people in Iraq and 309,000 newly displaced in Libya.

Today, Libya, between 500,000 and one million people aspire to come to Europe.

With population growth of 7% or 8% in Africa, against just over 1% here, migratory pressure is mechanical.

It is not possible or desirable that Europe opens its doors to every tom dick and harry. On the other hand it not possible to address the situation with 4-meter (13-foot) high fence on its borders like Hungary, or We need to build a wall, we need to keep illegals out,” Donald Trump said at last Thursday’s GOP debate.

I for one do not want to be represented by Israeli or Berlin wall.

It needs policies that better serve the interests of both nations and immigrants.

It is beyond me that we cannot move FRONTEX (It coordinates EU States’ actions in the implementation of EU border management measures.) from Warsaw (Poland) to some where useful.  So far this year, more than 180,000 migrants have reached Greece and Italy by sea (others come from Turkey via the land border with Bulgaria).

In the first four months of this year, more than a quarter of a million people claimed asylum in a European Union member state.

Where is the big deal in setting up humanitarian corridors for asylum seekers. To putting up initial reception center. To agreeing to a binding quota system for distributing refugees among all European countries.

I am sure if an appeal was made to all European Citizens the majority of the 509 million would not begrudge 10 Euros a month.

Let us hope that Europe can respond intelligently by rejecting generalisations and simplistic discourse by being true to its values, notably in terms of asylum and yet be more effective.

I leave you with the words of  Ahmed Satuf, another refugee from Idlib in Syria, told Al Jazeera he didn’t want anything from Macedonia, except for being allowed to cross its borders.

“I’m not a terrorist. We are humans. Where’s the humanity? Where’s the world? Everyone here, they are families,” he said.

“We don’t need anything. We don’t need money. Let us cross. I want to go to Germany.”

Europe above all places in the world born of integrationist ideals yet undermined by participants’ unwillingness to share costs as well as benefits, has a chance to shine.

“For us, today Europe is at stake” 

said Orban Viktor the president of Hungary,  “The survival, disappearance or, more precisely, the transformation beyond recognition of the European citizen’s lifestyle, European values and the European nations.”

He knows where he can stick that finger of his.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We know what fate we’re going towards.

14 Saturday Feb 2015

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You don’t have to be told that the World is in a mess or for me to tell you why –  it is in this post.

Of all the places in the world you would think that the European Union (which was built out of the ashes and grief of two World Wars) would extend the hand of help to Refugees.

I am not saying that the EU should accept every Tom Dick and Harry on a  Willy – Nilly bases.

I am saying that in order to save lives the EU should have safer routes for refugees run by EU border agency.

Italy Mare Nostrum at a costs 9 million euro per month has now fished out over 150,000 migrants/refugees – mostly from northern Africa and the Middle East.

Italy ended its full-scale coastguard operation known as Mare Nostrum, and the EU replaced it with Operation Triton.  An under-resourced scheme whose primary focus, officials admitted, was securing maritime borders rather than rescuing migrants.  While on the other hand it is commencing to pump billions into the economies by Quantitative Easing.  

Shame on us all.

If the EU is not willing to set safer routes  it needs to get serious about preventing future tragedies, it needs to give Triton the mandate and resources to rescue boats throughout the Mediterranean.

The morality of Europe’s decision to downsize maritime rescue operations last autumn fly’s in the face of everything it stands for.

The drowning of over 400 migrants since the start of the year, once again raises concerns over Europe’s reduced coastguard rescue operations.

If we believed that families drowning in the Mediterranean would be a deterrent to other migrants to attempt the crossing, well it’s not.

People are leaving because they’re being pushed out.”One survivor from Wednesday’s disaster told their rescuers: “We know what fate we’re going towards and [we understand] the probabilities of dying, but it’s a sacrifice we consciously make to have a future.”

God forbid it was one of us.

The Mediterranean Sea is over 2.5 million square kilometers.

The European Union must guarantee that there are no more push-backs at its land and sea borders:

Such refoulement (The expulsion of refugees) is an infringement of international law. Fundamental rights and fundamental values are just that, and should not be modified or curtailed based upon the strength of economic indicators. For if that is the case, they were not fundamental rights or values at all.

The true measure of a country, as well as a person, is how it deals with the most vulnerable. Our children may not consider this one of Europe’s finest hours.

Foreign Office minister:  Baroness Anelay has said such operations can encourage more people to attempt to make the dangerous sea crossing to enter Europe and claims that the demand for smuggling trips will continue despite the cancellation of Mare Nostrum. The UK would not support future search and rescue operations to prevent migrants drowning in the Mediterranean Sea. Migration is seen as something negative.

The UK looks about migrants as a burdens on the labor market, security risks linked to immigration, burdens on the social security system – these are three issues that are immediately brought up when migration is discussed by UKIP. And we can see from the political discussion of the last few weeks with what strength this defense mechanism comes into operation, even though we are talking about such small numbers.

I would suggest that the Baroness should spend a few day on a Life raft.

Since refugees have little chance of legal resettlement in countries such as Britain, which has settled only 90 Syrian refugees.  Europe unlike the UK must open its arms in an act of humanity. The costs will be about EUR 2.8 million per month creating badly need jobs.

Let me tell her that the protection of asylum seekers are shared challenges. The new EU refugee operation “Triton”  will be different in nature to Mare Nostrum, as it does not have a search and rescue function, but it has only a third of the budget of the Italian mission.

The operation has six ships, two planes and one helicopter at its disposal.

The EU needs to reconsider how it deals with refugees. The invasion is a myth which has been encouraged over decades, but it has nothing to do with the reality of the global figures.

Here is what a few that survived say:

Justice Amin, Ghana

“I’m here to find work to do so that I can help my family in Africa. That’s why I’m here in Europe. So I’m not happy. I mean, I like this area, this place I am living. But I’m not happy.

 

Vito, Nigeria

He explained life in Europe isn’t what he was expecting: “They are not treating us well… there is no work for black people, for illegal immigrants, all of them are wandering the street, looking for, begging money.”

 

 

Atiku, Ghana

After be saved, he was buzzing with excitement and ambition, now he’s sleeping rough in a train station, scavenging in litter bins and begging:
“I can’t steal… so begging is better for me.That will be better for me to survive.”
He would still like to go to England, but his priority is finding work and somewhere to live.

 

One idea would be an EU-wide distribution key with clear criteria, including possibly distribution according to population and tax revenue. That way, one wouldn’t always have this jealousy and bad feeling and the refugees wouldn’t be politically instrumentalized.