Humanitarian crisis in Athens port

Aid agencies in Greece have warned that “appalling” conditions for thousands of stranded refugees are becoming increasingly explosive. In an excoriating indictment of official efforts to handle the emergency, Human Rights Watch said a humanitarian crisis was unfolding in the Athens port of Piraeus that needed urgently to be addressed.

“Thousands of asylum seekers and migrants … face appalling conditions as the crisis for people trapped in Greece due to border closures intensifies,” a report released by the group said on Thursday.

“[People] are sleeping in squalid, unsanitary and unsafe conditions in passenger waiting areas, in an old warehouse, in tents outdoors and even under trucks,” it said.

About 5,000 men, women and children were dependent entirely on volunteers in the absence of any visible government support. Fights had erupted as tensions escalated, with aid workers often forced to intervene.

Close to 50,000 migrants and refugees are trapped in the country. On Thursday, for the first time since a controversial EU deal with Turkey to halt the influx was brought into force, Greece announced that no arrivals had been registered on any of the Aegean islands that have borne the brunt of the flows. Officials, however, were hesitant to say whether the no-shows were due to a Nato flotilla patrolling the Aegean, or gale-force winds that had made crossings from the Turkish coast especially dangerous.

[The Guardian]

Focusing on the moral compass of international aid organizations

In a Geneva conference hall last October, a bespectacled Somali woman, in hijab and flowing robes, took to the stage and began to berate the humanitarian system. The establishment, she said, was failing local NGOs. International organizations had lost their moral compass and local groups were not prepared to put up with it any longer.

“We are demanding change,” Degan Ali, executive director of the Kenyan-based NGO African Development Solutions (Adeso), told the audience. “Be prepared to be uncomfortable.”

She wasn’t kidding. Over the last few years, Ali has led the charge of small, local, predominantly southern organizations – the kind who do most of the work, yet receive the smallest share of funding – against the northern humanitarian establishment. She has highlighted the derisory 2% that local organisations currently receive directly of humanitarian funding, and accused the entire sector of racism.

On paper, Ali is an unlikely revolutionary. Born in Somalia to a political family, the family moved to the US with her diplomat father when she was nine. When war broke out they stayed, and Ali went to high school, and then university in the US. Bilingual, educated, she cut her teeth as a social activist on the notorious south side of Chicago, but never lost sight of her desire to go back to Africa. So, with the offer of a job with the UN, she returned to Somalia where her mother had set up Adeso, then a small organization.

What she found was a shock. “I saw my mother doing great work, but it was the most humiliating and depressing thing to watch her fundraise, to try and bang on the doors of the donor establishment, because she came from a local NGO,” says Ali.

“I left the US thinking I was going to leave behind a system of institutionalized racism. Unfortunately, I found a different form of institutionalized racism in the humanitarian system.”

The humanitarian sector has long recognized there’s a problem. Evaluations and policy papers alike have castigated responses and agencies for their failure to put local responders at the center of any crisis response, but little has changed in practice. And little that might endanger the current balance of power.

[Read full Guardian article]

Europe reaches deal with Turkey to return new migrants

The European Union has reached an agreement with Turkey that it hopes will ease the migrant crisis that has roiled the Continent for the past year.

Under the deal struck Friday, asylum seekers who take clandestine routes to Greece from Turkey are to be sent back, a significant step in the bloc’s effort to deal with the migrant exodus. The leaders of the 28 nations in the bloc and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey approved the accord over strenuous objections from humanitarian groups, who warned that the deal violated international law on the treatment of refugees.

The plan, which took effect over the weekend, faces many challenges. There are many alternative routes into Europe, and it is unclear how effective the Turkish and Greek authorities will be at rounding up migrants who use boats to cross the Aegean and sending them back to Turkey. Turkey is also in the midst of its own security crisis, raising questions about the country’s ability to implement the deal and cope with the huge numbers of migrants on its soil.

The deal calls for Turkey to receive about $6.6 billion in aid to help organizations look after the migrants there. Also promised are visa-free travel for Turkey’s citizens in most of Europe by this summer if Turkey meets certain conditions, and the eventual resumption of negotiations with Turkey on membership in the European Union.

The European Union also will resettle one Syrian from a camp in Turkey in exchange for each Syrian who used an irregular route to reach Greece.

The first exchanges could take place as soon as April 4, European Union officials said.

[New York Times]

Pros of Foreign Aid

1. It can help ease poverty in poor countries.
Supporters of foreign aid posit that if rich countries will work hand in hand to help developing and poverty-stricken countries, this can help solve the problem of impoverished nations, and better the lives of the people.

2. It is beneficial to involved countries, the donor and recipient.
Giving foreign aid is between two nations and this humanitarian activity is not only a good thing for the country receiving help but also to the giver of financial aid. By helping another country, diplomatic relations will be nurtured.

3. Extending foreign aid will help other countries be more independent.
Advocates say that by helping poor countries and giving them financial assistance and helping them in times of natural disasters and providing medical help like vaccines for diseases, a time will come that these countries will be able to improve their economies. Eventually, these countries will not be needing aid anymore but instead, be the ones to pay it forward like Peru, Japan and China.

4. It can help other nations fight drugs and other problems like HIV/AIDS.
Many organizations are helping in the dissemination of information about transnational problems like drugs and HIV.

Now read The Cons of Foreign Aid

Cons of Foreign Aid

1. Foreign aid does not go to the people because of corruption.
Opponents of foreign aid argue that in most cases, help fails to reach the right people who are really in need of assistance. There are poor countries with corrupt officials who use the fund for themselves and that little or no aid is given to the poorest members of the communities.

2. Favoring selected countries over another can be a problem.
Critics of foreign aid say that oftentimes, developing countries which can give back benefits are the ones given assistance instead of nations which really need help. They also argue that some countries who give aid use this as a tool to control the recipient country in terms of favors like setting up military bases.

3. Giving financial aid like loans only leave these poor countries deeper in debt and poverty.
People who are against giving loans to under-developed countries say that the IMF can sometimes be reckless in approving loans for programs that are not really beneficial to the recipient country but instead, more harmful. They also point out that these countries become poorer because instead of using their funds to invest in profitable projects and channel their income to other investments, they use what they have to pay their debts.

4. Questioning foreign aid when there is now so much poverty in donor countries.
Another setback that is apparently clear is that instead of using the fund to improve the lives the poor in the donor country, a big chunk of the money goes to other countries which, sometimes, do not deserve to be helped.

Conclusion – Giving financial aid to despondent nations is a humanitarian gesture and promises several benefits. However, critics are also correct in saying there are loopholes in the system. The best way to address this is to come up with a structural design to ensure aid is given to the right recipients and that it is properly implemented, with utmost focus on corruption.

[Green Garage]

Humanitarian catastrophe on the border of Macedonia

The refugee camp at the Greek village of Idomeni near the Greek border with Macedonia is slowly turning into a humanitarian catastrophe as more than 12,000 people have been stranded here by border closures.

Idomeni was originally established as a transit camp designed to hold no more than a few thousand people.

With overloaded boats daily crossing the Aegean Sea towards the shores of the Greek islands of Lesbos and Kos, the number of people venturing in the direction of Idomeni keeps growing.

The United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, has accused the European authorities of violating basic principles such as solidarity, dignity and human rights while applying restrictive measures by erecting fencing along their borders and refusing entry on the basis of nationality.

The refugees and the aid organizations working at the camp report a shortage of blankets and tents which leaves people exposed to the elements, as well as sub-standard sanitary conditions with only cold water available for washing. There are no warm meals and refugees must wait for hours to receive food. The camp is also lacking in availability of medical equipment and assistance.

[Al Jazeera]

Afghan Boys: The New Face of Europe’s Migrant Crisis

17-year-old Elyas is one of the tens of thousands of Afghan teenagers who showed up on Europe’s doorstep last year, in perhaps the most unexpected and challenging aspect of the migrant crisis. In a matter of weeks last fall, Sweden alone received more than 20,000 young Afghans–equaling the number of unaccompanied minors that applied for asylum in all of Europe the year before.

As asylum-seekers stream into Europe, the number of unaccompanied children and teenagers among them overall is soaring. In Norway and Sweden, about one in five last year was a minor traveling alone, up from one in 10 the year before. The exodus has put a new, youthful face on migration into Europe. But it has also strained Europe’s capacity to receive migrants even more, because minors traveling alone are given priority in the asylum process and require attention from social services.

In Norway, two-thirds of the 5,300 unaccompanied minors who sought asylum in 2015 were Afghans. They are now spread out in special shelters across the country. Elyas lives here in a former hostel with about 40 other boys from Afghanistan, Syria, Eritrea and other countries. Many are traumatized by years of war, oppression and abuse in their home countries, or shaken by an agonizing journey to Europe at the mercy of brutal human smugglers.

Ann Roarsen, one of five nurses working with refugees at the Alta Health Center, says it’s not uncommon for the boys to show stress symptoms, including heart palpitations, sweating, anxiety, muscle pain and difficulty sleeping, once they’ve settled down from their journey. Some get depressed and resort to deliberate self-harm, she says, making a cutting gesture over her arm.

Analysts are still trying to figure out why the Afghan numbers soared so suddenly in the fall. Most cite a deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, where civilian casualties of the war rose to record levels for the seventh year in a row in 2015, according to the United Nations. They say the violence, along with a drop in prices for human smuggling and the images of Syrian refugees entering Europe, combined to make Afghan families decide this was the time to send their sons abroad.

[AP]