Supreme Court upholds Trump travel ban

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The US Supreme Court upheld President Donald Trump’s travel ban, which restricts entry to the US from seven countries to varying degrees: Iran, North Korea, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Venezuela.

  • The ruling: It was 5-4 along partisan lines, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing for the conservative majority. “The Proclamation is squarely within the scope of Presidential authority,” Roberts wrote.
  • The dissenting opinion: Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a blistering dissent, said the court was wrong to ignore Trump’s various comment on the ban. She also compared the court’s opinion to one that came down in 1944 in which the court blessed the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
  • An unusual step: Chief Justice John Roberts declare that the 1944 case, Korematsu v. United States, was no longer good law and was wrongly decided. It is the first time the Supreme Court has ever made this public determination.
  • The reaction: The American Civil Liberties Union and Democratic lawmakers strongly denounced the court’s ruling.
  • What Trump said: He called the ruling “a tremendous victory for the American People and the Constitution” and said he felt vindicated.

[CNN]

Rich and mid-income countries must welcome more refugees

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1.4 million refugees will need resettlement in 2019, according to new figures from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), but the number of places available do not match needs.

The Norwegian Refugee Council calls for rich and mid-income countries to increase the number of people they admit for resettlement. “The shocking lack of compassion and willingness among many rich and mid-income countries to take their share of responsibility and provide refugees with resettlement has resulted in a large and dangerous back-log,” said Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council Jan Egeland.

In the US, a country that normally has received the largest number of people for resettlement, the quotas have been cut by two thirds after Donald Trump became president. Denmark, another country that used to contribute substantially, has ended their program, and also Norway has reduced the number of places available.

“We should be able to expect countries that have the economy to host World Cups,
Eurovision or Olympic Games, to also have the capacity to host some of the world’s refugees who currently cannot find protection where they are,” Egeland said.

“The lack of resettlement places globally feeds the smuggling industry and pushes desperate people to embark on dangerous journeys,” added Egeland.

[Norwegian Refugee Council]

World Tolerance Summit to be held in UAE

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The International Institute for Tolerance, part of Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Global Initiatives, has announced the launch of the ‘World Tolerance Summit’, a two-day conference to be held in Dubai, from November 15th-16th, 2018, to coincide with the International Day of Tolerance on November 16th.

The summit will host 1,000 government leaders, key personalities from the private and public sectors, youth representatives, social leaders, social influencers, and the international diplomatic community in a platform that seeks innovative solutions and to forge fruitful partnerships that will help promote respect for diversity and productive pluralism.

Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan commented, “Tolerance is not simply enduring the existence of opinions, ideas, behaviors or practices that do not concur with your own. It is about recognizing, respecting and embracing diversity. It is about being secure in your own culture and beliefs, so that you respond to what is different with curiosity and compassion rather than with fear and intolerance. To be tolerant one needs to be concerned genuinely for the welfare of one’s fellow human beings, and to take action based on those concerns.”

The summit will also explore the use of social media and digital networking in advocating the significance of tolerance with respect to its societal and economic benefits. There will also be a strong effort focusing on the youth through the involvement of educational institutions in inculcating the values of tolerance as well as efforts to include women empowerment and their capacity to promote and advocate the value of tolerance.

The World Tolerance Summit is the world’s first-of-its-kind event that tackles tolerance, peace and cultural understanding among mankind.

[IPS]

A humane solution needed for those who cross the southern US border

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It has become clear in the days since President Trump signed an executive order supposedly barring the routine practice of taking children from parents who illegally cross the border from Mexico that the chaos — and anguish — continue.

Many of the 2,500 children separated from their parents since the administration started implementing its zero-tolerance policy in the spring remain in shelters and foster homes all over the country. Some are of very young. Exactly where and under what conditions the children are being held is not clear since officials have largely refused to share information. They also have allowed little access to the facilities, even for lawmakers and local officials.

They appear to have devoted little thought or effort to reunifying families, a process that even under the best of circumstances has legal and logistical challenges. “It’s just a total labyrinth,” said one Texas attorney. One legal aid organization is representing more than 300 parents but has been able to locate only two children. The Los Angeles Times detailed the story of a man sent back to Guatemala without his 6-year-old daughter, who remains at an undisclosed shelter in New York, crying constantly, according to social workers.

A federal public defender in El Paso wrote in The Post about a judge who was incredulous that a jail system that gives you a receipt when it takes your wallet gives you nothing — “not even a slip of paper” — when it takes your children. Said another attorney, “Either the government wasn’t thinking at all about how they were going to put these families back together, or they decided they just didn’t care.”

[Washington Post]

International Widows’ Day – Stigmatized, shunned and shamed

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On its website dedicated to International Widow’s Day, the United Nations calls the abuse of widows and their children “one of the most serious violations of human rights and obstacles to development today.”

Across a wide range of countries, religions and ethnic groups, when a woman’s husband dies, she is left destitute – often illiterate or uneducated with no access to credit or other economic resources – rendering her unable to support herself or her family, according to the UN.

According to UN Women’s 2018 Turning Promises into Action: Gender Equality in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, nearly one-in-ten of the estimated 258 million widows globally live in extreme poverty – with little or no input to policies impacting their survival.

In 2010 the General Assembly set aside 23 June each year to pay tribute to the millions of living spouses who endure extreme poverty, ostracism, violence, homelessness and discrimination.

While violence against women is one of the most widespread violations of human rights, widows may be at particularly high risk. In many countries widows find themselves the victims of physical and mental violence – including sexual abuse – related to inheritance, land and property disputes.

Moreover, they often endure poor nutrition, inadequate shelter and vulnerability to violence – combined with a lack of access to health care. Although they are frequently rape victims and, through economic insecurity, sometimes driven to sex work, their gynecological needs often go unaddressed.

[UN]

As aid dries up, Gaza families pushed deeper into poverty

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Large numbers of Gaza families have been pushed deeper into poverty in recent months by the freezing of U.S. aid. Life is tougher than ever for most of the 2 million Palestinians locked into tiny, blockaded Gaza, where electricity is off most hours of the day, unemployment approaches 50 percent and the Islamic militant group Hamas rules with a tight grip.

“It’s a perfect storm,” said Hilary DuBose of the Catholic Relief Services, which has had to forego emergency food distributions because the Trump administration is withholding funds. “At the same time that the humanitarian situation in Gaza is worsening, humanitarian aid is disappearing.”

Growing despair in Gaza has helped drive recent Hamas-led protests against the border blockade by Israel and Egypt. The closure was imposed after Hamas, branded a terrorist group by Israel and the West, seized Gaza in 2007, driving out forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Meanwhile, in the past two months, more than 115 Palestinians have been killed and close to 3,800 wounded by Israeli fire in near-weekly border protests, with some facing lifelong disabilities.

Along with the Palestinian Authority, the U.N. has been instrumental in propping up Gaza’s fragile economy. Need has grown exponentially, with some 1 million people in Gaza now receiving U.N. food aid, compared to 80,000 two decades ago, said agency spokesman Chris Gunness.

At the same time, the Trump administration has blown a $305 million hole into the agency’s annual $1.2 billion budget–the result of a decision earlier this year to suspend most aid to the Palestinians until further notice. With the exception of the funds already spent this year, all U.S. assistance to the Palestinians is under review. This includes projects funded by USAID and the State Department, including health, education, good governance and security cooperation programs.

[Associated Press]

New study projects $17 Billion drop in US charitable giving for 2018

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The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) released a study that estimates charitable giving will decline by more than $17 billion in 2018 due to last year’s overhaul of the tax code by the Trump administration.

According to The Hill, “AEI researchers estimated that of the projected $17.2 billion decline in giving, $14.2 billion of the reduction will be due to the bigger standard deduction and $3 billion will be due to other provisions in the tax law.

[Council on Foundations]

US quits UN human rights body, citing bias vs. Israel

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The United States withdrew from a “hypocritical and self-serving” United Nations Human Rights Council on Tuesday over what it called chronic bias against Israel and a lack of reform, a move activists warned would make advancing human rights globally even more difficult.

Standing with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the State Department, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley slammed Russia, China, Cuba and Egypt for thwarting U.S. efforts to reform the council. She also criticized countries which shared U.S. values and encouraged Washington to remain, but “were unwilling to seriously challenge the status quo.”

Washington’s withdrawal is the latest U.S. rejection of multilateral engagement after it pulled out of the Paris climate agreement and the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

It also comes as the United States faces intense criticism for detaining children separated from their immigrant parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein on Monday called on Washington to halt its “unconscionable” policy.

Twelve rights and aid groups, including Human Rights First, Save the Children and CARE, warned Pompeo the U.S. withdrawal would “make it more difficult to advance human rights priorities and aid victims of abuse around the world.”

[Reuters]

Record number of people forcibly displaced in 2017

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Every two seconds, someone in the world was forcibly displaced in 2017, according to a new report by the U.N. Refugee Agency.

Due to wars, violence and persecution, 68.5 million people were forced to flee their homes by the end of 2017 — a record high and a trend that has continued for five years.

More than half of those displaced, which included refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced people, were children, many unaccompanied or separated from their parents, the UNHCR’s Global Trends report found.

The crisis in Democratic Republic of the Congo, war in South Sudan and the plight of 700,000 Rohingya refugees who fled from Myanmar into Bangladesh, were big contributors.

UNHCR dispelled several incorrect “perceptions” of the global refugee crisis. “Among these is the notion that the world’s displaced are mainly in countries of the Global North. The data shows the opposite to be true — with fully 85 per cent of refugees in developing countries.”

In 2017, Turkey remained the largest host nation, with a population of 3.5 million refugees, while Lebanon had the greatest number in comparison to its population.

[TIME]

Survival of a refugee family

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A refugee mother looks out from the cement cylinder which has become her family’s home, while holding her seven-month-old baby, in Kutupalong, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. (Photo by Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

Sameera, 20, looks out from her temporary home where the family is living until a shelter is built. Over 700,000 such Rohingya refugees fled into Bangladesh during an outbreak of violence in the Rakhine state. Satellite images released by Amnesty International provided evidence that security forces of Myanmar were trying to push the minority Muslim group out of the country.