Category: International Cooperation

Italy wants remaining rescue ship seized

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Authorities in Italy have demanded the seizure of a humanitarian ship used to rescue migrants from drowning in the Mediterranean Sea, alleging that the ship improperly dumped contaminated and medical waste at port — a charge strongly rejected by the nonprofit groups that operate the ship.

Doctors Without Borders (also known as Médecins Sans Frontières or MSF) and SOS Mediterranee describe the seizure order as an attempt to criminalize humanitarian aid, saying the ship has always followed standard procedure for disposing waste.  Italian authorities demanded that the ship, operated by Doctors without Borders and SOS Mediterranee, be seized on Tuesday.

The officials alleged that the migrants were carrying diseases* that could be transmitted through their discarded clothing, Reuters writes.

In a press conference, Gabriele Eminente, MSF‘s general director in Italy, expressed astonishment at the charges. He said that since 2015, his group has made more than 200 landings in Italy. “These are among the most controlled and closely watched moments by Italian police. We would have had to set up illegal activities right under the eyes of the authorities,” Eminente said. “We are absolutely surprised and indignant.”

The BBC notes that Italy’s populist government, which campaigned on an anti-immigrant platform, has had an antagonistic relationship with aid groups rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean.

[NPR]

* Alleging that migrants or outsiders are bearing disease has a very long history, as a Stanford study notes, and Europeans in particular have long depicted Africa as dirty and diseased. Here in the U.S., Fox News recently claimed without evidence that a caravan of Central American migrants and asylum-seekers was bringing infectious diseases toward the U.S.

Pope Francis criticizes migrant treatment and rising wealth inequality

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Pope Francis criticized rising wealth inequality and the treatment of migrants, saying the world should not ignore those “tossed by the waves of life”.

“Injustice is the perverse root of poverty,” Francis said. “The cry of the poor daily becomes stronger but heard less, drowned out by the din of the rich few, who grow ever fewer and more rich.”

Francis also reiterated his support for migrants saying that people must pay attention to “all those forced to flee their homes and native land for an uncertain future”.

A report this year by Oxfam said 3.7 billion people, or half of the global population, saw no increase in their wealth in 2017, while 82 percent of the wealth generated last year went to the richest one percent of the global population.

[Reuters]

Federal Court blocks Trump Administration’s asylum ban

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A federal court in San Francisco has temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s new asylum ban, saying it violates existing law and would cause irreparable harm to immigrants.

Earlier this month, President Trump issued a proclamation saying anyone crossing the U.S. southern border without doing so through an official port would be ineligible for asylum. The American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Center for Constitutional Rights and others quickly filed lawsuits seeking to block the order. The plaintiffs’ complaint alleged the administration violated the Immigration and Nationality Act, or INA, which maintains that if a person makes it to U.S. soil — even if they’ve crossed the border illegally — they are eligible to apply for asylum.

U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar agreed with the complaint in his ruling, issuing a temporary restraining order on the proclamation. “Whatever the scope of the President’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden,” he wrote. It “strains credulity” that an asylum-seeker’s manner of entry into the U.S. can be the sole factor in declaring them ineligible for asylum, he wrote.

“This ban is illegal, will put people’s lives in danger, and raises the alarm about President Trump’s disregard for separation of powers,” ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt, who argued the case, wrote in a statement. “There is no justifiable reason to flatly deny people the right to apply for asylum, and we cannot send them back to danger based on the manner of their entry. Congress has been clear on this point for decades,” his statement continued.

Southern Poverty Law Center lawyer Mary Bauer said she’d “talked to a dozen kids and they’ve all been there any number of weeks,” she said, “and they’ve all been told that if they try to get on the list [to get into the US for an asylum claim], they’ll be taken into custody.”

The allegations from Tijuana make it clear that the asylum ban actually affected unaccompanied children more than anyone — and made asylum literally unavailable to them. And even now, with the ban on hold, these children will have to find a way to cross into the US illegally — over newly mounted concertina wire — if they want a shot at asylum.

The Trump administration intends to keep fighting the asylum ban in hopes of getting the newly ensconced conservative majority on the Supreme Court to uphold it.

[NPR/Vox]

New UNESCO report highlights insufficient progress on education for refugee children

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Half of the world’s forcibly displaced people are under the age of 18. Yet, many countries exclude them from their national education systems.

Asylum-seeking children in detention in countries such as Australia, Hungary, Indonesia, Malaysia and Mexico, are given limited access to education, if any. Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, Burundian refugees in the United Republic of Tanzania, Karen refugees in Thailand and many Afghan refugees in Pakistan can only get an education in separate, nonformal, community-based or private schools, some of which are not certified.

Lebanon and Jordan, hosts to the largest number of refugees per capita, do not have the resources necessary to build more schools. They have therefore established separate morning and afternoon school shifts for citizen and refugee children.

To provide quality education to all refugees, Germany would need 42,000 new teachers, Turkey 80,000 and Uganda 7,000.

A new UNESCO Report recognizes the considerable investments made by countries such as Rwanda and Iran to ensure that refugees attend school side by side with nationals. Turkey has committed to include all refugees in its national education system by 2020, as have seven countries in East Africa. Uganda has already fulfilled this promise.

 [Read full article]

A hard journey for those in the Migrant Caravan

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The month-long journey for the Migrant Caravan has been hard. The migrants’ expected long stay in Tijuana has raised concerns about the ability of the border city of more than 1.6 million people to handle the influx.

While many in Tijuana are sympathetic to the migrants’ plight and trying to assist, some locals have shouted insults, hurled rocks and even thrown punches at them. The cold reception contrasts sharply with the warmth that accompanied the migrants in southern Mexico, where residents of small towns greeted them with hot food, campsites and even live music.

Alden Rivera, the Honduran ambassador in Mexico, told the AP on Saturday that 1,800 Hondurans had returned to their country since the caravan first set out on 13 October and that he hoped more would make that decision. “We want them to return to Honduras,” said Rivera.

Honduras has a murder rate of 43 per 100,000 residents, similar to US cities like New Orleans and Detroit.

In addition to violence, migrants in the caravan have mentioned poor economic prospects as a motivator for their departures. Per capita income hovers around $120 a month in Honduras, where the World Bank says two out of three people live in poverty.

[The Guardian]

Migrants arriving in Tijuana brace for long stay

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More buses of exhausted people in a caravan of Central American asylum seekers reached the U.S. border as the city of Tijuana converted a municipal gymnasium into a temporary shelter and the migrants came to grips with the reality that they will be on the Mexican side of the frontier for an extended stay.

Tijuana’s robust network of shelters was already stretched to the limit, having squeezed in double their capacity or more as families slept on the floor on mats. A gated outdoor courtyard can accommodate hundreds more. There are real questions about how the city of more than 1.6 million will manage to handle the migrant caravans working their way through Mexico, which may total 10,000 people in all.

With U.S. border inspectors at the main crossing into San Diego processing only about 100 asylum claims a day, it could take weeks if not months to process the thousands in the caravan that departed from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, more than a month ago.

To claim asylum in San Diego, migrants enter their names in a tattered notebook held together by duct tape and managed by the migrants in a plaza outside the entry to the main border crossing. Migrants who registered six weeks ago are just now getting their names called. The waiting list has grown to more than 3,000 names and stands to become much longer with the caravans.

Francisco Rueda, the top deputy to Baja California state governor, said that if all migrants from the caravan currently in Tijuana were to register to seek asylum in the U.S., they would likely have to wait four months in Mexico at current processing rates. For that reason, the state has asked Mexican federal authorities to encourage others in caravans to go to other border cities.

There are 7,000 jobs available in the state for those who can obtain legal status in Mexico, Rueda added. He touted Tijuana’s integration of Haitian migrants over the last two years and the state’s relatively low unemployment rate.

[AP]

The US has spent more on Afghanistan’s reconstruction than was spent on all Western Europe after World War II

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“All the money that has come to this country has gone to the people in power. The poor people didn’t get anything,” said Hajji Akram, a day laborer in Kabul’s Old City who struggles to feed his family on around $4 a day. “The foreigners are not making things better. They should go.”

It’s not just Afghans who feel this way. The United States’ own inspector general for Afghanistan’s reconstruction offered a blistering critique in a speech in Ohio.

John Sopko pointed out that the U.S. has spent $132 billion on Afghanistan’s reconstruction–more than was spent on Western Europe after World War II.

Another $750 billion has been spent on U.S. military operations, and Washington has pledged $4 billion a year for Afghanistan’s security forces.

The result? “Even after 17 years of U.S. and coalition effort and financial largesse, Afghanistan remains one of the poorest, least educated, and most corrupt countries in the world,” Sopko said. “It is also one of the most violent.”

“After the Taliban we were expecting something good, but instead, day by day, it is getting worse,” said Hamidullah Nasrat who sells imported fabrics in Kabul’s main bazaar. “How is it that a superpower like the United States cannot stop the Taliban? It is a question every Afghan is asking.”

[AP]

650 illegal immigrants detained crossing Arizona border over two days

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U.S. Border Patrol agents in Arizona have been busy, detaining more than 650 illegal immigrants in just two days this week. They say apprehensions in the Yuma Sector are up more than 150 percent compared to the last fiscal year at this time.

Agents in the Yuma Sector said they detained 654 people – most reportedly being family units or unaccompanied minors from Guatemala – on Monday and Tuesday. Officials said the groups of illegal immigrants are not believed to be associated with the large caravan of mostly Central American migrants that have prompted the military deployment.

“Yuma is seeing a huge spike and it’s a concern because they don’t have the facilities to process the cases,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, adding a majority of the people detained are released to local charities or even at bus stations because federal facilities are overwhelmed.

[Fox News]

First wave of the Migrant Caravan reaches US border in Tijuana

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Hundreds of migrants in the caravan traveling from Central America have begun arriving in the northern Mexico border city of Tijuana, setting up a potential confrontation with the American authorities that has been brewing for weeks.

About 800 migrants associated with the caravan have made it to Tijuana so far, according to local officials and advocates, with another 1,500 – 2,000 migrants expected to arrive by the end of Thursday, with many hundreds more showing up throughout the rest of the week. That influx could possibly overwhelm the city’s resources, they said.

Tijuana, long a migratory gateway to the United States, supports a constellation of migrant shelters. Prior to these first arrivals, migrants’ advocates said the shelters were already half full. César Anibal Palencia Chávez, Tijuana’s director of migrant services, said there were already some 2,800 migrants not related to the caravan waiting their turn to apply for asylum at the United States border, plus another 130 Mexican deportees, staying in Tijuana shelters.

After coming under fire from critics who accuse him of stoking fears about the migrant caravan as a threat to get Republicans to the polls for the midterm elections, President Trump has not tweeted about the caravan since the elections on November 6.

Olvin Joel Lobo Reyes, 21, who said he left Honduras because of poverty, hoped that the American authorities would relent and let them in. If that didn’t happen, he had a Plan B: to stay in Mexico and look for work. And even a Plan C: to sneak across the American border with the aid of a smuggler.

“Thanks to God, we made it,” he said. “All will be defined here.”

[New York Times]

Human Rights Watch denounces Angola’s expulsion of 400,000 Congolese

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Global rights watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW) called on Angola to halt mass deportations after more than 400 000 migrants mainly from the Democratic Republic of Congo fled or were expelled from Angola in just weeks.

Without producing any evidence, the government of President Joao Lourenco claimed that migrants organized and controlled diamond smuggling.

The migrants have accused Angolan security forces of physical and sexual abuse that feed a climate of fear and intimidation. HRW pointed to UN reports that Angolan security forces and allied youth militias from the ethnic Tshokwe group, shot dead at least six Congolese last month during an operation in Lunda North province bordering DRC. (Angola and DRC share a 2,500km land border, the longest in Africa.)

The government has vehemently denied that its security forces committed abuses.

[AFP]