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thxnews · 1 year ago

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Dire Humanitarian, Security, and Political Crisis Grips Haiti: Urgent International Action Needed, Says UK Ambassador at UN Security Council

A Nation in Crisis

In a recent statement at the United Nations Security Council, Ambassador James Kariuki expressed grave concern over the dire humanitarian, security, and political crisis that has enveloped Haiti. The country is currently grappling with an alarming rise in gang violence, resulting in the complete takeover of entire neighborhoods. The situation has led to widespread killings, burnings, kidnappings, and severe restrictions on movement, leaving the population in a state of constant fear and vulnerability. Gangs' Reign of Terror and Sexual Violence Of particular distress are the harrowing accounts of armed gangs employing sexual violence, including collective rape, as a deliberate tactic to instill fear within communities. This abhorrent use of sexual violence serves as a weapon to maintain control and dominance over the population. Such acts have perpetuated a climate of terror, leaving the people of Haiti traumatized and in urgent need of assistance. Humanitarian Assistance in Desperate Demand The dire circumstances have pushed nearly half of Haiti's population into a state of acute vulnerability, necessitating immediate humanitarian assistance. Ambassador Kariuki highlighted the pressing need for the Security Council to consider effective measures to address the ongoing cycle of violence and ensure the well-being of the Haitian people.

Seeking Security and Stability

Recognizing the Haitian Government's call for urgent international security assistance, the United Kingdom emphasizes the importance of achieving both security and political stability in Haiti. The recent CARICOM-hosted stakeholder meeting held in Jamaica was welcomed as a positive step towards addressing the crisis. The UK hopes that the regional support provided during this meeting will encourage sustained domestic efforts to restore stability within the country. A Call for Inclusive Elections In order to restore political stability, the United Kingdom urges all stakeholders to engage constructively and prepare for inclusive, free, and fair legislative and presidential elections. However, the timing of these elections must be contingent upon the improvement of the local security situation to ensure the safety and participation of all citizens. The UK stands ready to support Haiti in this endeavor. Strengthening BINUH's Capabilities In addition to regional and national efforts, the United Kingdom emphasizes the importance of ensuring that the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) possesses the necessary capabilities to fulfill its mandate effectively. The UK recognizes the vital work being done by Special Representative of the Secretary-General Helen La Lime Salvador and her team under challenging circumstances. Discussions on the renewal of BINUH's mandate are underway, and the UK looks forward to concluding these discussions in the coming days.

Commitment to Addressing the Crisis

Ambassador Kariuki reaffirmed the United Kingdom's commitment to supporting the Government of Haiti and the international community in their efforts to address this urgent crisis. The gravity of the situation necessitates immediate action, and the UK stands ready to contribute to the collective response.

A History of Humanitarian Challenges in Haiti

Haiti, a nation plagued by a long history of humanitarian crises, finds itself once again at the brink of devastation. For decades, the country has faced a series of challenges, including poverty, political instability, natural disasters, and now the menacing grip of violent gangs. These persistent issues have severely impacted the lives of the Haitian people, leaving them vulnerable and in urgent need of international assistance. The current dire humanitarian situation represents a culmination of systemic challenges that have plagued Haiti for years, requiring immediate and concerted efforts to break the cycle of suffering and provide a path towards a more stable and prosperous future. Sources: THX News, Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office & James Kariuki. Read the full article

#BINUHmandaterenewal #GangviolenceHaiti #Haiticrisis #HistoryofHaiti'schallenges #HumanitarianassistanceHaiti #InclusiveelectionsHaiti #PoliticalinstabilityHaiti #SecurityCouncilHaiti #SexualviolencegangsHaiti #UKsupportHaiti

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benajessopwrites · 3 years ago

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Silently The Worst Humanitarian Crisis On Earth

When people discuss humanitarian crises, they tend to think of The Holocaust, The Rwandan genocide, Syria during and after the war, Haiti after the earthquake, Japan after the tsunami but the world's worst and most desperate humanitarian crisis is happening right now, right this second.

Yemen, is currently facing the worst humanitarian crisis on earth - Which is now coupled with the Covid-19 pandemic and a Cholera epidemic. There is no hiding away from the fact that Yemen is the most destitute place of earth, with raging poverty and ongoing civil war, the future for all Yemeni's looks bleak.

Before I get into the history of how and why this conflict has been so disastrous and why no mainstream coverage is being shown to you, I'll give you some headline figures to highlight just how bad this situation is; just before the pandemic took hold, 80% of Yemeni's required humanitarian assistance, 24.1 million people. Since early 2015, 3.65 million people have been internally displaced, most for over a year. Around 8.5 million Yemeni's go hungry every single day and 2 million children under the age of 5 suffer from acute malnutrition. Prior to the pandemic, 2 million children were out of school and now with the closures an additional 5 million children now have no access to education. The civil war has already taken the lives of over 100,000 people. The UN have stated that the number of deaths could reach 233,000 by the end of 2020 with 60% being children under the age of 5. Over 10 million people are facing food insecurity and are on the brink of famine. Over 13 million people face dying of starvation.

We need to understand the political landscape of Yemen, before we can properly understand how this was has become so devastating. Yemen was run by President Saleh for twenty years before his removal from government and eventual assassination. To the north of Yemen, there is an Islamic political and armed movement called 'Ansar Allah' but is colloquially known as the Houthi's. They fought against the government corruption, and directly against President Saleh for decades prior to the Yemen revolution and civil war. To the south of Yemen, since 2007 there has been a political movement and paramilitary organisation who demand secession of South Yemen as its own state called the 'Southern Separatist Movement'.

In July 2011, the Arab Spring took place which involved large scale anti-government protests from around the world against political corruption and low living standards. Disillusioned by the state of affairs in Yemen, many normal Yemeni's including the Sunni Muslim population silently, or actively supported the Houthi's. After years of street protests and escalating tensions within the country, one of the biggest players in this conflict wades into the picture. Saudi Arabia. They are by far the most powerful and influential country in the G.C.C (Gulf Cooperation Council) and they had negotiations with President Saleh and eventually forced him out of government - this now gave the G.C.C a golden opportunity to right the wrongs committed on Yemeni's over the years, but their choice for the next President of Yemen after the revolution was none other than Vice President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. It became quickly apparent that the G.C.C were quite blatantly putting the same elites back into power once the revolution had occured.

By 2014, the factions I'd mentioned previously (The Houthi's and The Southern Separatist Movement) had begun to lose patience with what was occurring in their political landscape. Despite the fact that the Houthi's had fought against ex President Saleh for decades previously, once their patience had worn thin with now President Hadi, and with a drive to take more territory and run Yemen how they saw fit, the Houthi's contacted Saleh and bought him into their side. Saleh saw this as a way to claw back control. Now with a large population of disillusioned Yemeni's and Saleh's military contacts, The Houthi's began their 'takeover' of Yemen and successfully took the country's capital Sanaa by the end of 2014. By January 2015, the government had collapsed and President Hadi was under Houthi house arrest. As the Houthi's, along with Saleh continued to push South, they were met with resistance from the Southern Separatist Movement and this is where the civil war began. President Hadi had managed to flee to Saudi Arabia in March of 2015 just as the Houthi's reached the southern coast.

Now, believe it or not, this is where this war becomes complicated. Saudi Arabia created a coalition of countries, that all had the same three ideal outcomes for their intervention; to return President Hadi to power, they wanted to protect their own southern border, and most importantly they wanted to stop the perceived growing influence of Iran in the region.

The Saudi-led coalition was a campaign of relentless airstrikes with up to 19,000 separate attacks in four years. Saudi claim that they are purely targeting the 'enemy' but human rights groups on the ground see a very different picture. Dozens of hospitals and schools have been bombed, killing thousands upon thousands of Yemeni civilians. Included in the Saudi-led coalition, was the use of aid as a weapon. They created an air, sea and land blockade around Yemen, making it almost impossible for supplies to get in, or out of the country. The Houthi's are also blamed for blocking, destroying or taking aid for themselves. Of a country with a population of 29 million, 24 million would now require humanitarian aid (for perspective, that's almost the entire population of Australia)

The fighting continued, and still continues today but when the war reached 2017 the agreement between the Houthi's and Saleh broke down after fighting the Saudi-led coalition for three years after Saleh was seen on television breaking ranks and saying he wanted to talk with the coalition to find some sort of common ground. Just two days later, the Houthi's killed Saleh.

The Houthi's still continue to control Yemen's capital Sanaa and continue to have an upper hand in the war, but Saudi Arabia believe this is because they are backed militarily by Iran, despite public support from Iran, they deny any military assistance to the Houthi's.

So, when you hear that the war in Yemen is known as a proxy war, this is what they mean - despite all of the Yemeni's real and genuine protests about low quality of life and corruption in politics, what has really transpired is a war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. They both support different sides in the civil war, meaning they get to use Yemen as their war playground without damaging their own land.

And as to why you don't see this on UK or US mainstream news channels is scarily obvious, but I'll lay it out for you here too.

The UK, the US and France offer an almost unlimited supply of weapons and logistical support to the Saudi-led coalition. In 2018 alone, Saudi-Arabia spent $70 billion on weapons alone, and the US are by far the biggest contributor with about 70% of the market, the UK come in second with around 10% of the market, although we do offer unlimited logistical support to our 'friends' in Saudi Arabia. In the study of 27 attacks in Yemen, 25 involved the use of US weapons, whilst 5 involved the use of UK weapons. A bomb dropped on a school bus, killing forty children in August 2018 was US made.

Despite the obvious and unequivocal evidence that our weapons are causing mass casualties to civilians in Yemen we are still pushing forward to try and sell our most sophisticated and expensive weaponry to Saudi Arabia. France continue to push to regain market share with Saudi Arabia - Desperate to sell their arms to kill innocent children, just like the UK and the US.

So don't think you're not being shown this because Brexit, or Coronavirus is more important - it's because there is blood on Britains hands in this conflict and as we continue to bury our heads in the sand, and continue to sell more weapons, we openly and unapologetically ignore the worlds worst humanitarian crisis as innocent children, women and men starve to death whilst no-one comes to save them.

https://www.unicef.org.uk/donate/yemen/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIo6WljayQ6gIVhu7tCh0ltQX-EAAYAiAAEgJxP_D_BwE

https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/how-you-can-help/emergencies/yemen-crisis

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newstfionline · 3 years ago

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Sunday, July 11, 2021

Crushing heat wave in Pacific Northwest and Canada cooked shellfish (Washington Post) Amid the crushing summer heat wave that has slammed the Pacific Northwest and parts of Canada, Alyssa Gehman, a marine ecologist who lives by the sea in Vancouver, B.C., walked down to the shore to go for a swim. As expected, the beach was packed with others looking to beat the heat. She made her way to the edge of the water. It smelled like putrid shellfish—cooking. All around her, beds of mussels had popped open, dead. The heat beating down on the rocks had killed them, and she could see dead tissue between their shells. A dead crab floated in the water, she said. Gehman studies marine community ecology, but this was the first time she had seen anything of this “magnitude of mortality.” An estimated 1 billion small sea creatures—including mussels, clams and snails—died during the heat wave in the Salish Sea, off more than 4,000 miles of linear shore, according to marine biologist Chris Harley.

School boards become battle zones (AP) Local school boards around the country are increasingly becoming cauldrons of anger and political division, boiling with disputes over such issues as COVID-19 mask rules, the treatment of transgender students and how to teach the history of racism and slavery in America. Meetings that were once orderly, even boring, have turned ugly. School board elections that were once uncontested have drawn slates of candidates galvanized by one issue or another. A June school board meeting in Loudoun County, Virginia, that dealt with transgender students and the teaching of “critical race theory” became so unruly that one person was arrested for disorderly conduct and another was cited for trespassing. In Rapid City, South Dakota, and Kalispell, Montana, nonpartisan school board races devolved into political warfare as conservative candidates, angered over requirements to wear masks in schools, sought to seize control. “We’re in a culture war,” said Jeff Holbrook, head of Rapid City’s Pennington County GOP.

Heat, wind spur California fire; evacuation hits Nevada area (AP) A California wildfire that closed nearly 200 square miles of forest forced evacuations across state lines into Nevada on Friday as winds and scorching, dry weather drove flames forward through trees and brush. The Beckwourth Complex—which began as two lightning-caused fires in Plumas National Forest—showed “extreme behavior,” fire information officer Lisa Cox said Friday evening. Hot rising air formed a gigantic, smoky pyrocumulus cloud that reached thousands of feet high and created its own lightning, Cox said. Spot fires caused by embers leapt up to a mile (1.6 kilometers) ahead of the northeastern flank—too far for firefighters to safely battle, Cox said. Winds up to about 20 mph (32 kph) on ridgetops were funneling flames up draws and canyons full of dry fuel, where “it can actually pick up speed,” Cox said.

‘We need help’: Haiti’s interim leader requests US troops (AP) Haiti’s interim government said it asked the U.S. to deploy troops to protect key infrastructure as it tries to stabilize the country and prepare the way for elections in the aftermath of President Jovenel Moïse’s assassination. The stunning request for U.S. military support recalled the tumult following Haiti’s last presidential assassination, in 1915, when an angry mob dragged President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam out of the French Embassy and beat him to death. In response, President Woodrow Wilson sent the Marines into Haiti, justifying the American military occupation—which lasted nearly two decades—as a way to avert anarchy. But the Biden administration has so far given no indication it will provide military assistance. For now, it only plans to send FBI officials to assist with the ongoing investigation into a crime that has plunged Haiti, a country already wracked by gaping poverty and gang violence, into a destabilizing battle for power and constitutional standoff.

Venezuela: Battles rage between police and gangs in Caracas (BBC) Street battles have been raging between security forces and armed gangs in the Venezuelan capital Caracas. No official death toll has been given but local media reports say more than 10 people have been killed since the fighting began on Wednesday. Hundreds of officers have been deployed to seize weapons and search for gang leaders, who have been seeking to expand their territory. One local resident said the recent violence was “like a war”. Images shared on social media showed bullet castings littering the ground in the Cota 905 neighbourhood on Friday. One officer told AFP news agency that authorities were now in control, but said “there may still be a few snipers”. The operation marks the first time in years that authorities have launched a major offensive against the gangs, AFP reports.

Queen Elizabeth II opens her lawn to picnics for the first time (Washington Post) For the first time in her nearly 70-year reign, Queen Elizabeth II is allowing the people to picnic on her lawn. It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, courtiers say. And the grass? It really is a little greener on the other side. “The boss,” as staff members call the monarch, thinks the people need this bit of fresh air after a wretched year. And so, starting Friday and for the rest of the summer, the paying public may sprawl upon the main lawn behind the high walls of Buckingham Palace.

Biden presses Putin to act on ransomware attacks, hints at retaliation (NYT) President Biden warned President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Friday that time was running out for him to rein in the ransomware groups striking the United States, telegraphing that this could be Mr. Putin’s final chance to take action on Russia’s harboring of cybercriminals before the United States moved to dismantle the threat. In Mr. Biden’s starkest warning yet, he conveyed in a phone call to Mr. Putin that the attacks would no longer be treated only as criminal acts, but as national security threats—and thus may provoke a far more severe response, administration officials said. It is a rationale that has echoes of the legal justification used by the United States and other nations when they cross inside another country’s borders to rout terrorist groups or drug cartels. Asked if it might attack the servers Russian cybercriminals have used to hijack American networks—meaning knock them offline—Mr. Biden responded, “Yes,” according to a pool report.

Taliban Enter Kandahar City and Seize Border Posts (NYT) Taliban forces on Friday penetrated Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest city, in a new phase of a sweeping insurgent offensive that has captured territory across the country since May 1, when U.S. forces began withdrawing. The insurgents had been encroaching on Kandahar city, the capital of the province of the same name, for several weeks, capturing surrounding districts, before entering the city for the first time Friday. Taliban fighters entered Kandahar’s Seventh Police District Friday, seizing houses and engaging with security forces in the area, said Bahir Ahmadi, the spokesman for the Kandahar governor. Commandos and other special forces units were battling the insurgents well into the evening. Afghan security forces have struggled to defend themselves against the Taliban, who in the span of just over two months have managed to seize at least 150 of Afghanistan’s roughly 400 districts.

Russia votes to keep crucial Syrian border crossing open to humanitarian aid (CNN) The Biden administration scored a key diplomatic victory Friday after Russia agreed to keep a crucial border crossing open in Syria for another year, allowing the United Nations to continue delivering crucial humanitarian aid to millions of Syrians who have been displaced by the decade-long civil war. Friday’s vote at the U.N. Security Council took some US officials by surprise given Russia’s longtime opposition to the humanitarian corridor that has been used by the United Nations to deliver aid to millions of Syrians every month. Officials said it was evidence that the possibility of future US-Russia cooperation is better than was expected. “Syria is the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world today,” said Mark Cutts, the U.N. deputy regional humanitarian coordinator for the Syria crisis. “The people in these camps are mostly women, children, and the elderly. They are totally dependent on the aid that has been coming across the border from Turkey. That aid corridor has proven to be the only safe and reliable way of getting aid to these people. This is one of the most vulnerable populations in the world.” He called Friday’s vote “very encouraging.”

Lockdowns in Asia as some nations see 1st major virus surges (AP) Several countries around Asia and the Pacific that are experiencing their first major surges of the coronavirus rushed to impose tough restrictions, a year and a half into a pandemic that many initially weathered well. Faced with rapidly rising numbers of infections in recent months, authorities in such countries as Thailand, South Korea and Vietnam announced or imposed measures Friday that they hope can slow the spread before health care systems are overwhelmed. It’s a rhythm familiar in much of the world, where repeated surges deluged hospitals and led to high numbers of deaths. But many Asian countries avoided that cycle by imposing stiff travel restrictions combined with tough measures at home.

52 dead in Bangladesh factory fire as workers locked inside (AP) A fire engulfed a food and beverage factory outside Bangladesh’s capital, killing at least 52 people, many of whom were trapped inside by an illegally locked door, fire officials said Friday. The blaze began Thursday night at the five-story Hashem Foods Ltd. factory in Rupganj, just outside Dhaka, sending huge clouds of black smoke billowing into the sky. Police initially gave a toll of three dead, but then discovered piles of bodies on Friday afternoon after the fire was extinguished. So far 52 bodies have been recovered, but the top two floors of the factory have yet to be searched, said Debasish Bardhan, deputy director of the Fire Service and Civil Defense. He said the main exit of the factory was locked from the inside and many of those who died were trapped.

Violence erupts over jailing of South Africa’s ex-president (AP) Supporters of former South African president Jacob Zuma are protesting his imprisonment, burning trucks, commercial property, and blocking major roads in KwaZulu-Natal province. They are demanding that he be released from prison. Zuma started serving a 15-month sentence for contempt of court earlier this week. His bid to be released from the Estcourt Correctional Center was rejected by a regional court on Friday and he is set to make another attempt with the country’s apex court on Monday. His supporters in KwaZulu-Natal, his home area, have been blocking roads, setting trucks alight and damaging and looting shops in various spots in the province. At Mooi River, near Pietermaritzburg, about 20 trucks were stopped and set on fire early Saturday, according to witnesses.

#headlines #news

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news-lisaar · 4 years ago

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saraseo · 4 years ago

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wolainterns · 5 years ago

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The Rational and Legal Merits of Granting Venezuelan Migrants TPS

By: David Velasco, Spring 2020 Venezuela Intern

(Flickr/ Diariocritico de Venezuela)

From 2016 to November 2019, more than 4.6 million Venezuelan citizens, about 15% of the country’s population, fled its crisis, with upwards of 350,000 of these migrants choosing to enter the United States. With a nearly unprecedented number of Venezuelans entering the United States at once, it is imperative that legislators, especially those whose constituencies are being affected by said migration, collaborate to provide Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to Venezuelan migrants and refugees. TPS has historically had bipartisan support and should now. While certain doubts brought by TPS – to appease both parties – must be addressed, it is crucial that the current vulnerabilities of Venezuelan migrants are not exploited as a bargaining chip for other policy advancement. To demonstrate the urgency of a TPS designation for Venezuela, one must understand the current situation Venezuelans face, how it compares to other countries that have also been granted TPS, and how it warrants at least the same protections and demands a more generous immigration process.

The three most robust TPS programs, which comprise nearly 94% of all TPS recipients, have been granted to citizens from El Salvador, Honduras, and Haiti, all whose benefits were provided after major natural disasters. El Salvador was designated for TPS in 2001 as a response to the earthquake in January of the same year that directly killed nearly 1,000 people and destroyed over 100,000 homes. Economic losses incurred during the crisis measured approximately $1.2 billion, about 10% of the country’s GDP at the time. Honduras was greatly impacted by Hurricane Mitch which struck in 1999 and led to the loss of more than 5,500 lives and $3.8 billion in economic damage, half its GDP at the time. The circumstances present for Haiti’s entrance into TPS were almost inconceivable by comparison. Haitians were granted TPS status after the devastating 2010 earthquake that killed at least 220,000 people and made homeless another 1.5 million. Economic damage was estimated to be more than the country’s GDP (only $6.6 billion at the time) with at least $7.2 billion of lost capital.

Following each country’s designation, each one’s TPS has also been extended. The rationale has always been the same; for example, a note on TPS extension for El Salvador in 2016 noted: “[an extension] is warranted because the conditions supporting El Salvador's 2001 designation for TPS persist.” These countries have not recovered from the original disaster or circumstance, and thus may be allowed to keep TPS.

Precedent makes an overwhelming case for Venezuelans’ TPS designation. Despite being initially given TPS for natural disasters, El Salvador, Honduras, and Haiti have all had their TPS extended due to humanitarian concerns emanating from sources other than those that caused their first disaster. Other countries, Syria and South Sudan among them, have been granted TPS due to the ‘temporary extraordinary conditions’ its citizens have faced because of a mix of civil war and rogue paramilitary groups. Venezuelans face similar ‘extraordinary’ conditions at home that compare to to the circumstances that led to El Salvador, Honduras, and Haiti’s extension of TPS as well as Syria and South Sudan’s grant of TPS.

The issues facing Venezuelans at home are numerous, and their combined effects create a situation that can be only modestly described as ‘extraordinary.’ For one, measures of standard of living have been plummeting since the late 2000s and have caused the average Venezuelan to experience conditions equivalent to those faced by the aforementioned countries. Despite not being affected by a crisis of a sudden nature, Venezuela’s crisis has exacerbated significant problems that had often been ignored by domestic and foreign governments even before the onset of Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis.

The average rate of malnourishment in Venezuela in 2013 was already approximately 9.5%, and by 2017 it was as high as 21%, 3 years before the peak (arguably today) of the crisis. A 2019 report by the World Food Programme estimated that 32% of the population lacked food security. In a last appeal to emphasize the magnitude of Venezuela’s crisis, it serves to highlight that the economic collapse of the its economy is unprecedented in the hemisphere’s history. Despite no natural disaster, no bombing or warfare, Venezuela’s GDP has nearly halved since 2013. An economy once the size of Argentina’s and with the largest proven oil reserves in the world has lost approximately $216 billion in GDP in just 6 years. Venezuela’s own central bank admitted inflation to have been 53,798,500% from 2016 to when the report was published in May 2019, a figure that made the currency among the least valuable in the world and contributed to shortages across the country. No doubt remains that conditions here are as catastrophic as the conditions present in other countries whose TPS was granted.

A second necessary take on the situation is how applicable it is to the conditions set by the Department of Homeland Security for TPS eligibility, as well as how precedent justifies a TPS designation for Venezuela. The Department of Homeland Security has stated that TPS may be offered in the case of “ongoing armed conflict (such as civil war)”, “environmental disaster” or “Other extraordinary and temporary conditions.” Though Venezuela is not engaged in armed conflict, many civilians have been subject to intense political suppression, political persecution, arbitrary detention, and extrajudicial killings by Venezuelan security forces. From 2016 to late 2019, nearly 18,000 murders were classified as extrajudicial killings by the police forces. Even if these statistics still do not qualify Venezuela’s situation as an armed conflict, the gravity of the humanitarian situation, evidenced by its rates of poverty, malnutrition, and migration, undeniably characterize Venezuela’s situation as ‘extraordinary.’

The complexity of TPS designation arises with the ‘temporary’ condition, which is an aspect of TPS that critics have been disputing for over 20 years. The argument invoked by influential anti-immigration organizations is that these people, and the representatives that support them, do not see this measure as temporary. This perspective is widely held but seldom expressed by politicians. The second argument is that, although TPS recipients may faithfully believe the crisis is temporary, it may truly well not be. However, working under the assumption that Venezuelan leaders will inevitably have to undergo a negotiated transition and return to democracy in the coming years, as has been assumed for Syria and South Sudan, the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela is temporary, and until the situation has improved it’s important that the US offer solidarity and protection to the Venezuelan people.

Venezuela’s crisis has already had a significant impact on the United States. Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans are already in the US, many of whom do not have work authorization and are forced to work in the informal sector. Granting TPS so that the immigrant population may find work and pay taxes, and later encouraging this group to return to a healed homeland is much more productive than spending the money to find, detain, and deport them now. It must be emphasized that the Venezuelan immigrant population in the US is of a higher educational standing than the average Latin-American immigrant. With 55% of its population holding bachelor degrees (the US average is about 32%) and taking into account the fact that the typical Venezuelan arriving at the United States is younger and more educated than the average Venezuelan, the statistics go to show the economic potential such an educated and skilled workforce can bring. In this regard, the United States will not be sacrificing anything, save for the effort to pass this bill, or to sign the executive order, to bring an end to the temporary suffering of thousands of highly qualified Venezuelan workers and families.

#spring20

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johnlmangum84 · 5 years ago

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Ethical Flowers: Arena Flowers

Arena Flowers was first awarded independent Ethical Accreditation in 2007 and has shown an ongoing commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility in that time.

The company aims to lessen any negative impact on the environment and in the last 12 months has removed all single-use plastics – replacing with compostable or recyclable alternatives. The company works closely with Fairtrade farms and has recently made a commitment that any product they sell which can have a Fairtrade rose included, will do so.

Arena Flowers has also launched initiatives to help combat deforestation and extreme poverty in some of the world’s worst-affected regions. For every bouquet or plant they sell, they will plant a tree in Haiti, Madagascar and Mozambique, plus donate £1 to Crisis – in support of their work tackling homelessness in the UK.

You can see Arena Flowers’ top-ranking Ethical Company Index score within the latest brand comparison table for Ethical Flower Delivery Companies and visit their website to find out more about their commitments and to see their full range of products, which include Fairtrade and organic flowers.

Click here for further infomation about Ethical Accreditation and to see a full list of member companies

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The post Ethical Flowers: Arena Flowers appeared first on The Good Shopping Guide.

from Shopping https://thegoodshoppingguide.com/ethical-flowers-arena-flowers/

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96thdayofrage · 5 years ago

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US imperialism is white supremacist capital on a global rampage, and must be countered by mass mobilizations of the oppressed -- like this weekend’s Black Is Back Coalition march on the White House.

“Now is the time to throw off all hesitation, open up new fronts of struggle and to launch every protest, demonstration, and anti-imperialist action – from the ballot box to the barricades – as an act to deepen the crisis of imperialism.

“Every protest against police and white civilian murder of our people, every mass mobilization to demand the end to the cruel, bloody economic war against Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Iran, Korea and Russia must be seen as our part in turning the imperialist wars into wars against imperialism!" -- Omali Yeshitela, Chair of the Black is Back Coalition.

Global dominance has been the centerpiece of U.S. policy in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union when the U.S. suddenly found itself without a counter to its global imperialist aspirations.

This drive for dominance has always been fueled by one objective – to position U.S. capitalist interests to more effectively plunder the labor and resources of the peoples and nations of the global South. In other words, it is and has always been both an imperialist and racial project.

Therefore, while the priority of the call by the Black is Back Coalition to “Turn imperialist wars into wars against imperialism ” is directed to the colonized and exploited Africans in the U.S. and globally, the silence and open support for U.S. imperialism by both parties and many segments of the liberal and radical sectors makes that call a historical demand to Western radicals.

It is Western imperialism, led by the U.S. that is responsible for the billions of human beings living in poverty, it is imperialism that degrades and destroys the earth, that makes water a commodity, food a luxury, education an impossibility and health care a distant dream. It is the rapacious greed and absolute disregard for human life by imperialism that drives the arms trade, turns human incarceration into a profitable enterprise and transforms millions into migrants and refugees because of war and economic plunder.

“The U.S. drive for global dominance is, and has always been, both an imperialist and racial project.”

Parasitic imperialist domination would be impossible without its core instrument of enforcement and control – state violence. Beginning with the European invasion of the Americas in 1492 to this very moment, previously unimaginable brutality and systematic violence was used to enslave, commit genocide, steal lands, despoil cultures and assault the earth all in the service of what became the Pan-European colonial/capitalist white supremacist patriarchal project.

That is why the notion that Trump represents some aberration is so insulting. That perspective and position reveals more about its adherents than the reality of Trump. Because for the colonized who first encountered Western civilization at the end of a bayonet, or in the hold of a slave ship, Trump is no departure from King Leopold, the pedophile and rapist Thomas Jefferson, Cecil Rhodes, or Abraham Lincoln who while he was fighting the South was still hanging natives as part of the ongoing U.S. colonial expansion. Trump is just an embarrassment for liberals because, unlike the slick criminality of Obama, Trump is cruder with his white supremacy.

Western radicals are suffering from a similar kind of Trump and neoliberal derangement. Instead of fighting side by side with the oppressed peoples and nations who are still attempting, imperfectly, to extricate themselves from the clutches of imperialism, the imperial left subjects these attempts to a litmus test informed by their idealistic imaginings of how national liberation should look, even under Trump. And if the movement or nation in the crosshairs of imperialism is found wanting, they side, through non-opposition and silence, with U.S. imperialism in a form of cross-class white supremacist national solidarity.

“Western radicals suffer from a kind of Trump and neoliberal derangement.”

So when the Black is Back Coalition – of which the Black Alliance for Peace is a member -- gathers in Washington D.C. on Saturday to march on the White House in solidarity and unified struggle against imperialism with the millions in rebellion, from Chile to Haiti, we will see how many of our allies show up.

But it doesn’t matter how many of our allies or what elements of the anti-war movement show up, we will continue to build and to organize. We are clear. Independent organizing and building a Black left unity process that is grounded in the Black working class is our primary priority. It is the base for our survival and foundation for being able to reverse the one-sided class war being waged against us by imperialism.

Imperialism can be defeated. It is on the defensive everywhere, and that is its weakness. It cannot sustain the one, two, the many body blows from multiple places. And when the working class in the U.S. stops sending its sons and daughters to the military to fight for the ruling class, it will be over, and a new day of freedom and possibility for the people of the U.S. and the world will be born.

Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the 2016 candidate for vice president on the Green Party ticket. Baraka serves on the Executive Committee of the U.S. Peace Council and leadership body of the United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC). He is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and contributing columnist for Counterpunch. He was recently awarded the US Peace Memorial 2019 Peace Prize and the Serena Shirm award for uncompromised integrity in journalism.

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glenmenlow · 7 years ago

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How Oxfam Flubbed Response to Worker Abuses

Oxfam, the international aid organization based in the UK, is under fire not only for a scandal that has rocked the non-profit to its core but also for a cover-up and handling of the crisis.

It took a whistleblower—Helen Evans, Oxfam’s former head of Global Safeguarding—to raise alarm bells after her reports showing ongoing evidence of charity’s staff hiring prostitutes, including demanding sex in exchange for aid in Haiti, were ignored. The reports were made before and after her maternity leave, and she was fired before she could continue making inquiries.

The allegations of rape, harassment and sex in exchange for aid handouts in Haiti were just some of the damaging claims raised by Evans, as she recounted in a damning interview with Channel 4 News:

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There have been additional complaints of abuses in Chad along with reports of volunteer supervisors in Oxfam’s charity shops in the UK abusing teen workers as young as 14 due to lack of screening.

Oxfam International tweeted, in part, on Tuesday:

We know that we still have more to do to change our culture and to prevent harassment, abuse and exploitation. We are fully committed to doing this in an open and transparent manner. We hope we can restore the trust of all the people who believe in Oxfam’s mission.

Oxfam reviewed and strengthened its policies and practices in regard to safeguarding in the wake of the Haiti case. We know we have more to do to prevent harassment, abuse and exploitation and are fully committed to doing this urgently and in an open and transparent manner.

— Oxfam International (@Oxfam) February 13, 2018

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— Oxfam International (@Oxfam) February 13, 2018

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Our priority is to stand w those who experienced this exploitation & ensure sexual misconduct is rooted from our organization. As an organization fighting for women’s rights globally, we have special responsibility to protect our staff, partners, volunteers & people we work with.

— Oxfam International (@Oxfam) February 13, 2018

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The majority of the complaints focus on Haiti, and abuses by the NGO’s workers there from 2011 on. Oxfam’s team there were supposed to be assisting locals following a devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people in 2010.

In addition to aid relief, Oxfam also campaigns against inequality, accepting funds from governments and donors to raise the standard of living in the countries it operates. To take advantage of the disadvantaged, especially in the wake of a disaster, goes against the values and mission of the organization. To not take adequate actions to address its own abuses compounds the situation, critics argue.

After Evans’ report surfaced, Oxfam deputy CEO Penny Lawrence resigned on February 12th. Oxfam CEO Mark Goldring has not resigned, telling reporters he is “deeply ashamed” but feels he’s still needed to lead the organization and an investigation:

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The response has raised an outcry, with celebrity ambassador Minnie Driver quitting, saying she was “nothing short of horrified” by the allegations against the charity.

All I can tell you about this awful revelation about Oxfam is that I am devastated.Devastated for the women who were used by people sent there to help them, devastated by the response of an organization that I have been raising awareness for since I was 9 years old #oxfamscandal

— Minnie Driver (@driverminnie) February 13, 2018

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“In no uncertain terms do I plan to continue my support of this organisation or its leaders,” the Good Will Hunting actress told The Telegraph. “And though it is unfortunate that after 20 years I am no longer able to advocate and defend through this specific framework, social and economic injustice is more globally prevalent than ever.”

At home in the UK, politicians are calling for funding to the charity to be cut.

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The executive director of Oxfam International she was “heartbroken”. Winnie Byanyima addressed the reports of exploitation and abuse in Oxfam’s humanitarian responses in Haiti and Chad in a video response.

"This is appalling. It hurts me very deeply.

Our priority is to stand alongside the women who were abused, and to root out sexual misconduct from our organization and we are working on that."

Oxfam Internat'l Executive Director @Winnie_Byanyima responds: https://t.co/URzVmyftYE

— Oxfam International (@Oxfam) February 12, 2018

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The president of Haiti, Jovenel Moise condemned the actions on Twitter (in French) as an “extremely serious violation of human dignity.” He further tweeted that “There is nothing more outrageous and dishonest than a sexual predator who uses his position as part of the humanitarian response to a natural disaster to exploit needy people in their moment of greatest vulnerability.”

Ce qui s'est passé avec Oxfam en Haïti est une violation extrêmement grave de la dignité humaine.

— Président Jovenel Moïse (@moisejovenel) February 13, 2018

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Il n'y a rien de plus indigne et malhonnête qu'un prédateur sexuel qui utilise sa position dans le cadre de la réponse humanitaire à une catastrophe naturelle pour exploiter les personnes nécessiteuses dans leurs moments de grande vulnérabilité.

— Président Jovenel Moïse (@moisejovenel) February 13, 2018

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An investigation will now be launched into foreign aid agencies operating in Haiti after details the charity concealed the findings of a 2011 inquiry into claims that senior aid workers, including Haiti’s national director, paid local prostitutes for sex.

PRESS RELEASE: Oxfam response to DfID statement https://t.co/HzxWChrW6V

— Oxfam News Team (@oxfamgbpress) February 12, 2018

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Oxfam is a confederation of 19 independent charitable organizations led by Oxfam International focused on global poverty since founding in 1942 at 17 Broad Street, Oxford, as the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief by a group of academics, Quakers and social activists.

Pierre Esperance, the head of Haiti’s National Human Rights Defence Network, told the BBC that, “Oxfam, after the earthquake, became like a factory. A big organisation with a lot of people with bad management. People who don’t have any skill regarding development, with a lot of money, and this is the result.”

Roland van Hauwermeiren, 68, is the former Oxfam executive at the heart of the scandal, but by no means the only one. He left an earlier charity job after allegations he was involved in sex parties with young women in Liberia, alerted by Amira Malik Miller, a former aid worker serving with van Hauwermeiren there in 2004. He was recruited by Oxfam to work in Chad two years later and then in Haiti in 2011, following the quake.

Miller was stunned that he managed to get to work for another charity. “Oh my God, he’s been doing this for 14 years,” she said. “He just goes around the system…from Liberia to Chad, to Haiti to Bangladesh. Someone should have checked properly.”

No surprise, van Hauwermeiren denied the allegations against him but resigned. Miller said there was a “systemic failure” and “culture of complacency” resulting in abuse of vulnerable women.

Oxfam’s former head, Dame Barbara Stocking, defended the organization’s actions (or lack thereof) to the BBC, arguing that “the sheer numbers of NGOs operating meant that it was not possible to prevent those found guilty of exploitation from finding jobs elsewhere.:

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The current chairwoman of Oxfam Great Britain’s council of trustees, Caroline Thomson, said: “As recent events have shown, sexual abuse is a blight on society and Oxfam is not immune. Indeed, NGOs that work in often fragile and unstable environments can become targets for abusers.

“We have made significant improvements since 2011 in our efforts to expose and eliminate sexual abuse but we know we have to be vigilant and to continue to improve if we are to constantly live up to the high standards rightly expected of us,” she added. “It is not sufficient to be appalled by the behaviour of our former staff—we must and will learn from it and use it as a spur to improvement.”

Given the organization’s lack of a coordinated, zero tolerance and transparent response since 2011, the promises will ring hollow to many.

"Every member of the Oxfam family at the moment is very carefully looking back through what has happened to ensure that if there were issues, that they are being dealt with appropriately, and if they're not that they now be dealt with." @HelenSzokehttps://t.co/KiLvZh6QSS

— Oxfam International (@Oxfam) February 14, 2018

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— Oxfam International (@Oxfam) February 14, 2018

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djgblogger-blog · 7 years ago

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To prevent the next global crisis, don't forget today's small disasters

http://bit.ly/2l089sv

In an era of seemingly ceaseless tragedies, it can be hard to stay on top of the news. This week, six wildfires have burned up over 141,000 acres in California – an area larger than the cities of New York and Boston combined – killing two people.

A few weeks prior, the headlines were on Iran’s deadly earthquake. Before that, it was the Rohingya refugee crisis.

You may have managed to stay on top of all that news. But do you know about the November plague outbreak in Madagascar that has infected 2,119 people and killed 171? What about flooding in South Asia a few months back, which affected more than 41 million people in India, Bangladesh and Nepal?

If it’s all new to you, you’re hardly alone. According to the International Federation of the Red Cross, 91 percent of global crises go unnoticed.

As a researcher at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, a Harvard University center dedicated to advancing the science and practice of humanitarian action, our aim is to change that. Why? Evidence shows that ignoring all these small crises is a recipe for global disaster.

The many sides of world crises

Crises can take many forms, from hurricanes and floods to epidemics and complex emergencies like war. They also have varying levels of intensity: Taking only Latin America and the Caribbean, between 1994 and 2014, for every one large-scale crisis, there were approximately 177 smaller crises.

November 2017 saw not only a 7.1 magnitude earthquake kill over 400 people in Iran and Iraq, for example, but also flash floods, a typhoon and earthquakes in Malaysia, Vietnam and Cambodia, among other countries.

People generally pay less attention to these events, in part because there isn’t much data on them. Still, while the impacts of an individual small crises may be less – both in terms of death toll and physical damage – together minor crises can have huge human consequences.

According to a 2015 United Nations report, the accumulated losses from small and recurrent events like flash floods, fires and drought account for 42 percent or more of total economic losses in low- and middle-income countries.

For particularly disaster-prone nations, the toll can be much higher. In Madagascar, for example, the annual economic losses from minor crises between 2001 and 2011 were equivalent to 75 percent of annual public investment during that same period. This is a serious economic erosion challenge for any country, but especially a low-income nation like Madagascar.

Plus, even in places where insurance exists, such events are rarely covered. As such, small crises can plunge families into debt. They also create food insecurity, drive environment damage and hurt mental health.

Small crises may also lay the foundations for greater tragedy to come. Before the Syrian civil war began in 2011, for example, drought and food shortages were compelling out-of-work farmers to leave rural areas starting in 2007.

Over several years, people from the countryside migrated en masse into big cities like Damascus. This influx, in turn, exacerbated Syria’s existing political instability and contributed to the initial waves of political unrest that began rocking the country in 2011.

The end result is now one of the biggest humanitarian crises of our time.

Neglected crises

I call the kind of incidents that occasionally grace international headlines but tend to fade quickly into the background “neglected crises.”

Currently, repeated famines in Somalia and Ethiopia fall into this category, as do the ongoing civil wars in Yemen and the Central African Republic.

Protracted violence and displacement in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda have also made brief appearances in international news, only to disappear for those not suffering through them.

These problems aren’t just neglected in the news – they’re also critically underfunded. From 2016 to 2017, the United Nations fell short of its requested US$22.8 billion in global humanitarian assistance by fully $20.1 billion.

Consequently, neglected crises tend to get little economic and humanitarian support, even when great human suffering results from them. More than a million people have been uprooted by conflict in the Central African Republic, yet budget shortfalls compelled aid workers distributing food to displaced people to withdraw in early 2017.

Silent crises

Then there are what I call “silent crises.” These events may be noteworthy for local government and the United Nations, but less so internationally.

Zika is a case in point. For two years before this mosquito-borne illness exploded across Latin America in 2015, it infected 30,000 people in French Polynesia. But as no deaths were reported and the consequences of infections remained uncertain, almost no one paid attention.

Unseasonably wet or dry weather is another issue that both the media and humanitarian relief organizations tend to neglect. That, too, is short-sighted.

The United Nations has found that between 1990 and 2014, the cumulative effects of droughts and floods in Latin America “generated more than half of all human losses due to climate events.” Bad weather during those 15 years damaged the homes, crops and land of 115 million Latin Americans.

And because climate change-related disasters are strongly associated with poverty and inequality, these aberrant weather phenomena disproportionately hurt people in low- and middle-income countries.

Neglected rural problems often culminate in big urban crises. Take the 2010 Haitian earthquake, for example.

Its epicenter struck near Port-au-Prince, a city that had doubled in size between 1986 and 2006 as government neglect of agricultural policy and the well-being of people in the countryside forced millions of farmers to relocate to the capital.

By 2010, 86 percent of Port-au-Prince residents lived in dense informal settlements, many of them located on mountainsides, along rivers and in other fragile areas.

Urban crises

Haiti’s exploding urban growth echoes a global trend. In 1950, only 30 percent of people lived in cities. Today, the global urban population exceeds the rural population. Exploding urban populations, combined with poor planning, have led to overcrowding, insufficient public services and rising urban inequality.

When disaster then strikes in such cities, the death toll can be astounding. Haiti’s 2010 earthquake claimed approximately 310,000 lives, including 25 percent of all the country’s civil servants, and displaced more than 1.5 million. Today, 2.5 million Haitians still subsist on humanitarian assistance.

Seven years later, more than $13.5 billion in international aid money has gone into funding the country’s recovery, including the added toll of 2016’s Hurricane Matthew.

That’s because post-disaster response is incredibly expensive. In 2013, the Red Cross calculated that for every $1 spent on preparedness activities, $4 could be saved in response internationally

So, if saving lives is not reason enough to pay more attention to small crises, perhaps money will be.

Tilly Alcayna does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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tortuga-aak · 7 years ago

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The US has a lot riding on the Honduras election

Jorge Cabrera/Reuters

Honduras has a presidential election this month.

The pro-U.S. president, Juan Orlando Hernández, is seeking reelection and ahead in the polls.

A Hernández win would be not only good for Honduras but also for the region and the United States.

Washington has invested significant money in Central America to help turn the security and economic situation around. Moreover, with bad interlocutors in Guatemala and El Salvador, losing Hernández would be a real setback.

Jorge Cabrera/Reuters

President Hernández was the leader who called for a “Plan Colombia” for Central America

When the arrival of 70,000 unaccompanied minors from the region in 2014 put the Northern Triangle back on the map, President Hernández was the leader who called for a “Plan Colombia” for Central America.

In response, the three presidents of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras came together and put forward their own plan, called the Alliance for Prosperity. The Inter-American Development Bank, a large funder and significant influencer in the region, supported this process.

The unaccompanied minors crisis got a Republican Congress and the Obama administration to put up more than $1 billion and make a five-year commitment of additional U.S. foreign assistance and diplomatic attention as part of the Alliance for Prosperity to the region.

President Donald Trump has continued this support, putting forward in his budget to Congress for fiscal year 2017 over $600 million in support of the region. But this commitment requires leaders who are willing and able to make changes in their countries, because our money can only go so far.

In El Salvador, there is a distinctly anti-American government with a hostile relationship to the Salvadoran private sector, which makes progress hard. Legislative and municipal elections in El Salvador will take place in March 2018; the next presidential election is in early 2019.

The good news is that the pro-business Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party is leading in the polls over leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) party. However, there is a large group of undecided voters (60 percent) that could sway the elections either way.

In Guatemala, President Jimmy Morales is squandering his political capital

Morales, a former comedian, ran on a platform of clean government. Guatemala, in essence, partially outsourced its prosecutor functions to a U.N.-supported body called CICIG, which has successfully prosecuted a number of high-profile cases — including ones that removed the immediate past president and vice president for corruption.

But CICIG has now begun an investigation against Morales for failing to disclose $900,000 in campaign contributions. And Morales’s move to close CICIG has precipitated a political crisis whose outcome is unclear; what is clear is that it’s going to stop or slow any progress on economic or political reforms in the short- to medium-term.

In spite of the recent setbacks in the region, a different future for the Northern Triangle is possible — but we have to think in terms of decades, not years.

A prosperous and safe Central America would retain its best people and would attract migrants back from the United States.

These countries have made progress in years past and could return to a better path: one particularly notable period of progress, in the mid-1990s, was in El Salvador when it enjoyed 8 percent growth rates, significant poverty reduction, and the achievement of an investment-grade credit rating.

Some 20 years ago, Colombia was being written off as a failed state; it took at least 10 years to turn it around. There continue to be problems in Colombia, but there’s also been a great amount of success.

With the right political partners and the ongoing support from the United States and others, the Northern Triangle could achieve something similar. That has been the rationale for the major increase in U.S. foreign aid to the region.

Given the problems in the other two countries right now, a victory by Hernández would be a piece of good news.

The Northern Triangle region has great agricultural and logistics potential, with its proximity to the United States and South America, and access to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans

Moreover, the region has a young and cost-effective labor force with increasing numbers of bilingual training programs. Industries such as tourism, agribusiness, textiles, manufacturing, and business-processing outsourcing (e.g. call centers) are all part of the region’s future.

Of course, plenty of problems remain in Honduras and the rest of the Northern Triangle, starting with extremely high levels of gang violence and limited economic opportunities.

Excluding Haiti, these countries remain some of the poorest in the Western Hemisphere. Tackling corruption remains a huge challenge, but according to statistics from the National Autonomous University of Honduras, the murder rate in the country fell by 30 percent in 2011-2015.

Policy abuse and impunity led to the creation of a police reform and purge commission in 2016, after reports involved high-ranking police officials in the killing of chief of the anti-drug directorate in 2009 and his advisor in 2011.

In an effort to continue combating police corruption, President Hernández extended the commission’s mandate until 2018 and has so far purged 20 percent of the police force.

Several high-profile human-rights cases have made it harder for the U.S. Congress to provide assistance to the region, however.

NOW WATCH: Watch Putin accuse the US of interfering in Russia’s election

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delectablyweepingnightmare-blog · 7 years ago

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Life, Liberty, and Migrants

New Post has been published on http://eduandlearning.tk/2017/06/19/life-liberty-and-migrants/

Life, Liberty, and Migrants

Being a missionary in an impoverished and gang controlled area of Guatemala, some of our friends have started asking for our perspective in the newly popular media trend of talking about children from Guatemala that are illegally entering the United States. I'm wondering why it has taken so long for people to start noticing! Since God called us here 3 years ago, we have been trying to tell others of the extreme poverty crisis here in Guatemala that causes Guatemalans to risk everything for the chance of living in the United States, if only to send a few dollars back for the Rest of their family.

For those of you who did not happen to see our initial presentation weave at various churches in 2012 as we prepared to come down here, I will directly quote the stats we gave as evidence of the ongoing problem:

If we can get communities to the point where people are happy to live in them, they will not be flocking to the US illegally, further draining our resources. The 2000 US census counted 480,665 foreigners born from Guatemala, but the International Migration data suggest that approximately one million Guatemalans now live in the United States. Although the International Organization for Migration estimates that there are 200,000 undocumented Guatemalans living in the US, some civil society organizations believe the actual figure is higher. They also estimate that between 6,000 and 12,000 new Guatemalan immigrants arrive in the United States via Mexico each year. Why would Guatemalans want to move into the United States? More than half of the population is below the national poverty line and 15% lives in extreme poverty. 43% of children under five are chronically malnourished, one of the highest malnutrition rates in the world. 42 / 1,000 children die before the age of five, the highest mortality rate in the hemisphere after Haiti and Bolivia.To put that in a little more of a personal comparison, as of 2004, Guatemala has 56.2% of the population below the poverty line As opposed to only 15.1% in the United States.

The numbers have gotten worse. I'm sure by now everyone who pays attention to the news in the US has been inundated with statistics, pie charts, and reviews of past, present, and future policy change that is related to all of this. I do not plan to pick apart certain news clips or debunk certain theories that have been developed and reiterated. I want to give a perspective not just as someone who is here "on the ground" working with some of the very kids that are migrating to the US, but as one who has been purposed to come here and help prevent it.

God's vision for us here in Guatemala is simply simple and difficult: to help strengthen the local church so it can grow as a fountain of hope and God's power for those in its surrounding community. It frustrates me that it took finding a couple dead children in the desert on the border of the US for people to start paying attention to this issue. Sadly, though, not many people are asking the right questions. The question is not, "how do we prevent people from entering our borders," rather it should be, "how can we help these countries better serve their people so they are happy to live in their own country?"

Being a Marine Corps Veteran who was sent to fight a war on foreign soil and one who believes in the right to pursue freedom from oppression, I wonder if we ever really stop to think about the ideals of our founding fathers. America has been long touted as the "Land of Opportunity," the United States of America was founded upon the backs of migrant workers who appreciated the value of hard work, strong family principles, and the desire to serve our Creator in a way that pleases Him as our Father. The US has grown lazy and the American dream is slowly dying because we have more than we could ever dream for and refuse to share it with anyone else. We know this does not apply to everyone; There are many people who are aware of the struggles of the rest of the world and who serve in whatever way God has called them to help alleviate this suffering. This is not to say nobody is doing anything, but to highlight that per capita and in comparison with how much we do have as a country, we could be doing a whole lot more. There are still many in the US who are literally drowning in the river of dreams Billy Joel sang about and are trying to keep everyone else out. I know this looks like I may have strayed off point, but I offer this as a comparison to what my wife and I witness here in Guatemala.

Education is valued as a luxurious commodity in Guatemala. Families know the importance of being able to send their children to school, but the difficulty is in being able to afford to send them. There are public schools available but the quality is extremely low. This is not to say the teachers do not do their best, but schools are underfunded and under supported. One of the local schools we worked with in the past year receives about 5,000 Guatemalan Quetzales (about $ 640) per YEAR for whatever needs they have. Other than having their electric and water bills paid for by the local government, the school director must constantly ask the parents of the students to donate time and money in order to support teacher salies, school supplies, and improvements to the buildings. All students attend classes part-time because there are more children than space in the schools. Primary school students attend for only 4 hours a day. One class attests in the morning while the other in the afternoon. Middle and high school students attend school once a week and have to do the majority of their learning at home on their own. There are some private schools available in each area, but these are only available if families can afford to pay about $ 300 per child each year ($ 250 of which is due at the beginning of the school year). The public schools, since they receive less funding, are also more privy to gang control. One school near the church we work in has received threats to the security of the staff if the parents of the students do not collectively pay an extortion demand. The police are working to resolve this issue, but the threat remains.

Most families can not afford to pay for their own rent and food, so instead of children completing their high school education the children find jobs at a young age in order to help their parents sustain the family. They know that getting a better education will result in a better job, but it is difficult to stay in school when your family is starving to death. Not only does not attending school alleviate the costs of attendance, but it also makes a family member available to work, when they can find it. So, families are faced with a difficult decision: who has the best potential to succeed in school and who should we keep out of school to work so we can eat? In the United States, we have taken for granted the "no child left behind" directive that ensures all children get an equal education. Guatemalan children are lucky if they get an education at all.

The gang situation in Guatemala is rampant. Most families have been abandoned in one way or another by the father figure. Either they have left the family because they could not handle the responsibility, they have moved somewhere far away to secure a better work opportunity to support the family, or they have been killed for not succumbing to the demands of a ruling gang. This opens the door for young men and women to not be properly guided and need to make very hard life decisions at an early age. Aside from the education issue, they are confronted with the opportunity to join a gang so they can keep their family safe while making enough money to sustain them all. One of the laws in Guatemala is that at the age of 18, any criminal history you have is wiped clean without question. As a result, boys under the age of 18 are registered as hitmen because they know they get a clean slate in just a few years. I recently had someone ask me if we live in a "dangerous" area of the country. In Guatemala, the sections of each city is divided into "zones" and are assigned colors of red, orange, or yellow to signify the level of danger as indicated by gang activity. Guatemalans laugh at this system as the entire country is practically red and the only areas that are not place where nobody really lives or are not connected with the rest of Guatemalan society (Ie Indigenous Mayan tribes who have avoided contact with outsiders). While actual violence is mostly limited to the interchange of gunfire between warring gangs, armed robbery and theft has become an accepted element of living in Guatemala.

Despite the extreme poverty in Guatemala it amazes me to see how it has affected everyone for the good. If someone is given two tortillas, they share one with their neighbor. If there is a donation of clothing, the community tries to bless as many as possible instead of everyone fighting to get as much as possible. If someone is given an abundance past their immediate necessity, they find someone else to what they can give the extra. Our boss always says, "you can not out-give a Guatemalan," referring to the abundant generosity and concern for the whole instead of the individual. This is how the majority of the Guatemalans we know and work with survive. The problem is there is never enough to go around, so someone always misses out. Even our poor and homeless in the US have shelter, clothing and food.

Two sad stories hit us "close to home" in our ministry in regards to Guatemalan migration to the United States. One 17 year old boy, a senior in high school, disappeared over the last year from our church. He was the drummer of the church's worship team and after he did not show up for a couple of weeks, I asked the pastor if he was OK. "Well, it turns out that his father who is in the US illegally convinced him to go work with him in San Diego." I was dumbfounded. In a country full of poverty, this kid literally had everything going for him. His dad, who lives in a garage with a few other illegals and works as a mechanic, told his son that he would be able to finish his high school education and flourish in the US while helping him work to send more money back to the States . We heard nothing of the boy for months until finally the boy's mother told the pastor that he had arrived safely in the US His father had paid the coyote extra to ensure the safety of his son and they had been hiding in the desert waiting for safe passage . An admirable gesture, but why would the boy and the father go along with it? Coyotes can not be trusted, nor can the Mexican cartels and if caught by border control, he would have been sent back to where he came from. That $ 500 could have supported the whole family for 3-6 months.

Another story is of a woman known by the church we are working with; She lives a few hours away. Her husband has been in the US for quite some time and she wanted to go to be with him and help him earn more money for their children. For an entire year, she saved up money by eating as little as possible and keeping her children out of school. During her trip guided by the coyote she paid, she and her traveling companions were taken hostage and a bounty was requested to be paid. Her village collected the necessary money to pay for her release and she was sent back to the town she came from. Now she is paying off her debt to those who paid for her freedom and the children are missing another year of school.

We hear these stories and first question, "why would someone ever do something so ridiculous?" Unfortunately, the people here in Guatemala do not have the luxury of recognizing these actions as ridiculous. These actions are actually done out of love and the pursuit of survival and opportunity. They are not even really pursuing happiness, they are just trying to make sure their kids have a better life than they did, even if that means they will be able to read and write and have at least one meal a day. Our ignorance as Americans goes far beyond understanding what it means to be poor or underuced. It reaches into the depths of our own depravity of recognizing from where we've come as a people and society. When my wife and I were preparing to come to Guatemala two years ago, we sometimes got the question, "why would you go to another country and help people when we have needs here in the US?" I have a plethora of answers to that question now and a handful of stories to tell you about those same people who still refuse to be a part of the solution but expect us to be the actors of everyone's desires and ideas. The answer I offer today, however, is that the people who have the grave needs in the US have come from the country we are now serving in. We complain about the influx of poor and hungry immigrants into the "land of opportunity" but balk at the idea of meeting them where they are so they can create their own land of opportunity.

I have an evolving understanding of the word "poverty" which is: the result of one's environment failing them. I have and continue to read various books on poverty, written a college thesis about it (and it's elevation), and continue to involve myself in discussions over physical, emotional, and spiritual depravity which all point to this simple principle. As humans, our basic needs when not met create an emptiness in our lives that cause us to strive to fill those needs. Some do it with drugs, others with violence, some with sex, yet others by shutting themselves off from the rest of the world. As our depravity grows and our needs continue to go unmet, we work harder to create that equilibrium. Occasionally, this depravity grows strong enough to motivate us to pay someone to load our 5 year old on a bus and drive across some of the most dangerous gang controlled territories in the world for the hopes that at least they will get clothing, shelter, and A full belly all the while sacrificing ourselves to make it happen. Yes, they could have been sold and sold into the sex trade. Yes, they could die of starvation or dehydration in the desert. Yes, I will probably never see them again. But it is worth the risk because life here is not any good either.

On the Statue of Liberty overlooking the New York Harbor which was intended to be a symbol of welcome reprieve from a tumultuous world, is a tablet engraved with a poem by Emma Lazarus that is meant to signify the value represented by it:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates will stand

A mighty woman with a torch, who flame

Is the hospitalized lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; Her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" Priest she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearing to breathe free,

The wretched refusal of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tot to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door! "

Even more important is what Jesus says in Matthew 25 about His imminent return and impending response about how we treat the least of society:

34 "Then the King will say to those on His right, 'Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 35' For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to Eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; 36 naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came To Me. ' 37 "Then the righteous will answer Him, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink? 38 'And when did we see you a stranger, and invite you in, or naked, and clothe You? 39 'When did we see you sick, or in prison, and come to You?' 40 "The King will answer and say to them, 'Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.' 41 "Then He will also say to those on His left, 'Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; 42 for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink; 43 I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; Naked, and you did not clothe Me; Sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me. ' 44 "Then they themselves also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?' 45 "Then He will answer them, 'Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.' 46 "These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."

So instead of worrying ourselves with politicking about the legality of foreign children bussed in with the hope of a better life, maybe we should focus on why they are coming in the first place. Instead of cursing the ever growing "illegal immigration" problem, maybe we should remember that this country was born by the hard work of "illegal immigrants" and fertilized in everyone's self-evident truths: that all men are Created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. (Copied from our US Declaration of Independence) Instead of fighting wars on foreign soil to secure better stock rates and fuel prices, perhaps we should fight for the freedom of those who otherwise are left hopeless and helpless not the oppressed by tyrants but the insufficiency reliability of Their surroundings. Instead of thinking "mine, mine, mine," maybe we should think, "yours, yours, yours," because what we have is not ours to keep; It is a gift from God He has given us with which He wants us to bless others. Instead relying on skewed news reports and opinions of people who have never visited the squatter's villages of Guatemala, maybe we can look for ways to be a part of the solution.

In America we talk of freedom as a commodity that we deserve, not something we are blessed to have. Yet, if we truly understand the depth of the freedom we possess, we would be gladly sharing it with all and working to make sure all are truly free. From the freedom that was obtained by our early settlers to the freedom that Jesus Christ offers us, our understanding of freedom is revealed in our willingness to share it with others and secure it for those who might not even recognize it is an option.

Source by Dylan Brobst

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newstfionline · 3 years ago

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Saturday, July 17, 2021

Vaccinated Americans to be able to enter Canada (AP) Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Thursday Canada could start allowing fully vaccinated Americans into Canada as of mid-August for non-essential travel and should be in a position to welcome fully vaccinated travelers from all countries by early September.

Child Tax Credit (The 19th) Earlier this year, Congress expanded the Child Tax Credit, giving families $3,000 for kids aged six to 17 and $3,600 for kids under six. Furthermore, it’s no longer just an annual lump sum around tax time: the money will now hit bank accounts in monthly increments of $250 to $300 per kid per month. The payments began yesterday and will go to 88 percent of American families with children, and the backers hope that the payments could cut the child poverty rate from 13.6 to 7.5 percent, a 45 percent reduction. There’s at least one catch—the deposits are actually prepayments based on estimated 2021 taxes, meaning families may face smaller returns or unexpected tax bills next April.

Largest wildfire in Oregon expands further (AP) Firefighters scrambled on Friday to control a raging inferno in southeastern Oregon that’s spreading miles a day in windy conditions, one of numerous conflagrations across the U.S. West that are straining resources. Authorities ordered a new round of evacuations Thursday amid worries the Bootleg Fire, which has already destroyed 21 homes, could merge with another blaze that also grew explosively amid dry and blustery conditions. The Bootleg Fire, the largest wildfire currently burning in the U.S., has now torched an area larger than New York City and has stymied firefighters for nearly a week with erratic winds and extremely dangerous fire behavior.

With virus cases rising, mask mandate back on in Los Angeles (AP) Los Angeles County will again require masks be worn indoors in the nation’s largest county, even by those vaccinated against the coronavirus, while the University of California system also said Thursday that students, faculty and staff must be inoculated against the disease to return to campuses. The announcements come amid a sharp increase in virus cases, many of them the highly transmissible delta variant that has proliferated since California fully reopened its economy on June 15 and did away with capacity limits and social distancing. The vast majority of new cases are among unvaccinated people. Other counties, including Sacramento and Yolo, are strongly urging people to wear masks indoors but not requiring it.

Haiti’s assassination mystery (Foreign Policy) In the search for those behind the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse last week, authorities have arrested at least 18 retired members of Colombia’s armed forces—some of whom previously received U.S. military training—and five Haitians, including a former rebel leader, the owner of a security company, and a pastor. While the details of the plot are still under investigation, the alleged use of former Colombian soldiers as mercenaries was unsurprising to observers. Elite Colombian troops, trained over the country’s half-century of conflict, can retire as early as their 40s and are frequently hired as private military contractors in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Biden: US will protect Haiti embassy, won’t send troops (AP) President Joe Biden said Thursday that the U.S. will bolster security at its embassy in Haiti following last week’s assassination of that country’s president, but sending American troops to stabilize the country was “not on the agenda.” Haiti’s interim government last week asked the U.S. and the United Nations to deploy troops to protect key infrastructure following President Jovenel Moïse’s assassination. Biden signaled he was not open to the request, which comes as he is drawing down U.S. forces in Afghanistan this summer. “We’re only sending American Marines to our embassy,” Biden said. “The idea of sending American forces to Haiti is not on the agenda,” he added.

U.S.-Cuba policy (Foreign Policy) U.S. President Joe Biden said he would not allow U.S.-based Cubans to send remittances home as part of White House plans to assist the Cuban people following Sunday’s protests. Biden said he was prepared to give COVID-19 vaccines to the island, but only under the condition that an international organization administered them. During a speech on Wednesday, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel again lambasted the “cruel” and “genocidal” U.S. blockade of Cuba while promising a “critical analysis” of the problems facing the country. Since the weekend protests, Cuba has lifted restrictions on the amount of food and medicine travelers are allowed bring in to the country, fulfilling one of the demands of the protesters.

Death toll from European floods passes 115 as receding waters reveal scope of devastation (Washington Post) As deadly floodwaters began to recede Friday across Germany and Belgium, the full extent of the destruction was slowly revealed: muddy washouts where homes used to stand, cars and debris tangled together, and officials still adding to a death toll that surpassed 115 and was expected to climb higher. “Whole places are scarred by the disaster,” German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said at a news conference after the worst flooding in decades to hit the region. “Many people have lost what they have built all their lives.” The storm—a major low-pressure system that stretched from Germany to France—brought a deluge Thursday that quickly swelled rivers, collapsed bridges and roads, and left many people scrambling to rooftops or onto fallen trees. Luxembourg and Switzerland were also hit by torrential rain, and warnings were issued in more than a dozen regions of France. Earlier this week, Britain was struck by flash floods that submerged parts of London in deep waters and turned residential roads into flowing rivers.

Xinjiang Products Banned In U.S. (Reuters) The Senate passed bipartisan legislation Wednesday banning the import of all products from China’s Xinjiang region. It is Washington’s latest effort to punish Beijing for what U.S. officials say is an ongoing genocide against Uyghurs and other Muslim groups. Under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, the burden of proving goods manufactured in Xinjiang are not made with forced labor—and therefore not banned under the 1930 Tariff Act—would be shifted to importers. This legislation would go beyond steps already taken to secure U.S. supply chains in the face of allegations of rights abuses in China, including existing bans on Xinjiang tomatoes, cotton, and some solar products. The Biden administration, which has been increasing sanctions, issued an advisory on Tuesday warning businesses they could be in violation of U.S. law if operations are linked even indirectly to surveillance networks in Xinjiang.

COVID spreading in Asia and Africa (Worldcrunch) As Indonesia becomes Asia’s new COVID epicenter, nearby countries are planning new restrictions with Singapore’s announcement it will limit social gatherings, a move that South Korea is also considering. Across Africa, cases have “surged by 43 percent in the space of a week.” There is concern that the Delta variant could mutate into more dangerous variants as it sweeps through largely unvaccinated regions.

Athletes go it alone in Tokyo as families watch from afar (AP) Michael Phelps reached for his mother’s hand through a chainlink fence near the pool. The 19-year-old swimmer had just won his first Olympic medal—gold, of course—at the 2004 Athens Games, and he wanted to share it with the woman who raised him on her own. That kind of moment between loved ones won’t be happening at the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Olympics. No spectators—local or foreign—will be allowed at the vast majority of venues, where athletes will hang medals around their own necks to protect against spreading the coronavirus. No handshakes or hugs on the podium, either. “I like to feed off of the crowd,” defending all-around champion gymnast Simone Biles said, “so I’m a little bit worried about how I’ll do under those circumstances.”

Hospital fire deepens Iraq’s COVID crisis (AP) No beds, medicines running low and hospital wards prone to fire—Iraq’s doctors say they are losing the battle against the coronavirus. And they say that was true even before a devastating blaze killed scores of people in a COVID-19 isolation unit this week. Infections in Iraq have surged to record highs in a third wave spurred by the more aggressive delta variant, and long-neglected hospitals suffering the effects of decades of war are overwhelmed with severely ill patients. Doctors are going online to plea for donations of medicine and bottled oxygen, and relatives are taking to social media to find hospital beds for their stricken loved ones. “Every morning, it’s the same chaos repeated, wards overwhelmed with patients,” said Sarmed Ahmed, a doctor at Baghdad’s Al-Kindi Hospital.

Riots in Lebanon as West calls for quick Cabinet formation (AP) Tension intensified in Lebanon on Friday, with riots leaving more than two dozen people injured in the northern city of Tripoli, including five soldiers who were attacked with a hand grenade. France, the European Union and the United States in the meantime called on Lebanese politicians to urgently form a Cabinet. The announcements came at a moment of great uncertainty for Lebanon after Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri stepped down on Thursday over disagreements with the president on the shape of the Cabinet. Hundreds of his supporters rioted in the streets, blocked major roads and hurled stones. In Beirut, protesters briefly closed several main roads Friday, prompting a swift intervention by the troops to clear them. In the northern city of Tripoli, Lebanon’s second largest and most impoverished, residents angry over rising prices, electricity cuts that last for most of the day and severe shortages in diesel and medicine, rioted in the streets and attacked Lebanese troops.

Bamboozled Birds (Hakai Magazine) Lots of bird populations are at risk due to habitat destruction, deforestation and wildfires in historical nesting areas. Given that they’re not really known to crash zoning board meetings, birds don’t know that the areas they want to live in are doomed to timber harvesting, so researchers would like to find ways to get birds to nest in places where it’s safe. New studies have found ways to trick the birds into doing this, with one recent experiment in Oregon convincing marbled murrelets to nest away from threatened forests by piping in artificial recordings of marbled murrelets into the desired areas. Over 60 species of seabirds have been lured to different breeding grounds in this way before, and now they know it works with the murrelets: they played back recordings in 14 locations not slated for logging but otherwise unoccupied in 2016. Within a year, those locations had four times as much nesting activity compared to un-bamboozled tracts of forest.

#headlines #news

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stopkingobama · 8 years ago

Text

With Budget Plan, Trump Signals ‘Tough Love’ Approach to UN

Photo: Public Domain

The Trump administration is promising to reconsider America’s relationship with the United Nations, with the White House aiming to limit U.S. financial contributions to the global body, and to enact reforms.

In his first action suggesting a new approach to the international organization, President Donald Trump released a budget proposal Wednesday night that would reduce funding for U.N. peacekeeping operations and eliminate climate change programs.

Trump, before he was inaugurated, signaled a harder-line approach when he sharply criticized a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s construction of new settlements—a vote the Obama administration abstained from.

As president-elect, Trump questioned the effectiveness of the U.N., describing it as an outdated social club to which the U.S. contributes a disproportionate amount of money.

The United Nations has such great potential but right now it is just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time. So sad!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 26, 2016

“The U.S. has used extreme tough love in the past, and the U.N. could use tough love right now,” said Mark Lagon, a former foreign policy adviser to the late Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., who in the 1990s tried to withhold portions of U.S. dues to the U.N. in exchange for reforms.

“But what’s most important is being a constructive skeptic,” Lagon told The Daily Signal in an interview.

Lagon says he’s learned lessons from his experience with Helms, which ended with the North Carolina Republican’s partnering with then-Sen. Joe Biden D-Del., to pass legislation—signed by President Bill Clinton—restoring U.S. funding to the U.N. in exchange for a compromise on reforms.

“The U.S. is in a more convincing position to bring about reform if it fulfills its commitments,” Lagon said.

Trump’s Plan

The Trump administration’s plan for the U.N. is still taking shape.

Trump’s budget proposal provides the most specifics to date. It calls for America’s funding to U.S. peacekeeping costs to be capped at 25 percent, down from 28.5 percent. The U.S. contributes more to the U.N. budget than any other nation: 22 percent of the regular budget ($5.4 billion) and 28.5 percent of the peacekeeping budget ($8.27 billion).

A total of 16 U.N. peacekeeping operations are underway throughout the globe. Ongoing missions—designed to help host countries transition from conflict to peace—include ones in Mali, South Sudan, and Darfur. Several of these missions already are winding down, such as those in Liberia, Haiti, and Kosovo.

“The reason the U.S. is authorizing all these peacekeeping missions is we don’t want to see slaughter in vulnerable places, and we also don’t want to keep U.S. military forces there,” said Stewart Patrick, the director of the program on International Institutions and Global Governance at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“But peacekeeping is hardly perfect,” Patrick added in an interview with The Daily Signal, noting that sexual abuse and exploitation by peacekeepers has been a persistent problem for the U.N.

The White House budget proposal also eliminates the U.N.’s Green Climate Fund, designed to help poorer countries pay for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The Obama administration had provided $1 billion of $3 billion it pledged to the fund.

“While the skinny budget didn’t provide a great deal of detail outlining where the Trump administration will target its specific cuts, the details that are provided are welcome,” said Brett Schaefer, an expert on the U.N. at The Heritage Foundation.

Congress passed legislation in 1994, signed into law by Clinton, capping contributions to peacekeeping at 25 percent. Congress, however, enacted an annual waiver during the Obama administration.

“It’s good to see the Trump administration seeking to comply with the law,” Schaefer said.

Evaluating Funding

Schaefer says the U.S. pays more than 178 other U.N. member states combined for regular budget assessments, and more than 185 member states combined just for peacekeeping.

As mandated by treaties that Congress has ratified, assessed funding is obligatory on member states, and each nation pays a share proportionate to the size of its economy.

Member states, including the U.S., have sometimes fallen beyond on their assessed payments. Chronic nonpayment can lead to a suspension of voting rights.

The U.S. can adjust its assessed share only if the U.N. General Assembly agrees.

“In broad strokes, it makes sense for the U.S. as the world’s largest economy to pay more than smaller economies, but it’s not unreasonable for the U.S. to try and encourage other countries to take a larger stake in the organization,” Schaefer said. “There needs to be a greater financial incentive to members to make sure their own dollars are being utilized well by the organization.”

Richard Gowan, who conducts research about the U.N. for the European Council on Foreign Relations and at New York University, says the cuts outlined in Trump’s budget proposal are expected and “relatively small.”

Gowan says U.N. diplomats are more worried about potential cuts to several U.N. humanitarian agencies, which the U.S. voluntarily supports—a different payment stream from obligatory assessed funds.

These voluntary programs include the children’s fund UNICEF, the World Food Program, and UNHCR, the U.N. refugee agency.

The Trump administration has not yet provided funding plans for these humanitarian agencies, but a leaked draft White House executive order—widely reported by media—would set up an “International Funding Accountability Committee” to evaluate the effectiveness of U.S. contributions to the different U.N. programs.

The order asks the new committee to make suggestions on how to cut voluntary funding by at least 40 percent.

Time of Crises

Gowan, and U.N. advocates, says the U.S. should be wary of limiting its commitment to these agencies at a time of great need.

The U.N. reports that four countries—Somalia, South Sudan, Nigeria, and Yemen—are experiencing hunger crises. In 2016, the U.S. contributed about 28 percent of the foreign aid in those four countries, according to the U.N.

About 65 million people around the world have been forced from their homes, UNHCR says, including 21 million refugees, many fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa. The U.S. contributed more than $1.5 billion—of a nearly $4 billion budget—to the U.N. refugee agency in fiscal 2016. The money that the U.S. voluntarily contributes to the U.N. is a little over 0.1 percent of the total federal budget.

“My suspicion is we won’t see the U.S. cut humanitarian funding as extremely as some people fear, for the simple fact that spending is crisis driven,” Gowan told The Daily Signal in an interview. “It would be very difficult for the president to announce he cut off emergency food supplies for countries in famine. No president wants to be associated with photos of starving children.”

Gowan agreed with the other experts that it would be wise for the U.S. to evaluate its funding to U.N. programs. They say a “slash and burn” method to cutting U.S. contributions would be counterproductive.

Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., has disavowed such an approach, while vowing to “restore trust and value” to the international body because it “spends more money than it should.”

‘Not Perfect’

As part of its effort at reform, the Trump administration also threatens to withdraw from the U.N. Human Rights Council over longstanding concerns the body is too accommodating to countries with troubled human rights records, such as China and Saudi Arabia.

In a letter to human rights organizations, first reported by Foreign Policy, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson wrote that the U.S. is conditioning its membership on the Human Rights Council on whether the body undergoes “considerable reform.”

The George W. Bush administration refused to join the council in 2006, the year it was created, due to concerns about how members treated Israel. The Obama administration reversed that decision in 2009.

The nine human rights groups addressed in the Tillerson letter advocate continued American membership on the council, writing in a return message to Tillerson that the U.S has helped reduce anti-Israel resolutions. They say the council has produced valuable reports exposing North Korea’s human rights record and documenting Russian and Syrian government abuses in Syria’s civil war.

“The Human Rights Council is not perfect and can be unbelievably frustrating, and there’s still too many resolutions against Israel,” Patrick of the Council on Foreign Relations said. “But in my view, it’s better to be on it, because otherwise you are handing over influence to the Chinese, the Saudis, or other countries that don’t share our values.”

Yet concerns over anti-Israel bias at the U.N. continue.

A U.N. commission, in a report issued Wednesday, accused Israel of committing apartheid against Palestinians.

The leadership of the U.N. moved to distance itself from the report, published by the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, composed entirely of Arab member states.

“The report as it stands does not reflect the stance of the secretary general,” a spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at a news briefing.

Lagon, the former Helms staffer, says he was troubled by the report. But despite the body’s problems, he says, the U.S. is better off with using its influence to make the U.N. more effective.

“The U.N. isn’t only a faraway bureaucracy,” Lagon said. “When people say the U.N. is politicized, you shouldn’t be shocked because it’s a political body. What the U.S. needs to do is play the political game in the arena.”

Originally published by Josh Siegel at The Daily Signal

#budget #trump #United Nations #Budget #Donald Trump #U.N.

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americanlibertypac · 8 years ago

Text

With Budget Plan, Trump Signals ‘Tough Love’ Approach to UN

Photo: Public Domain

As president-elect, Trump questioned the effectiveness of the U.N., describing it as an outdated social club to which the U.S. contributes a disproportionate amount of money.

The United Nations has such great potential but right now it is just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time. So sad!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 26, 2016

“But what’s most important is being a constructive skeptic,” Lagon told The Daily Signal in an interview.

“The U.S. is in a more convincing position to bring about reform if it fulfills its commitments,” Lagon said.

Trump’s Plan

The Trump administration’s plan for the U.N. is still taking shape.

“But peacekeeping is hardly perfect,” Patrick added in an interview with The Daily Signal, noting that sexual abuse and exploitation by peacekeepers has been a persistent problem for the U.N.

Congress passed legislation in 1994, signed into law by Clinton, capping contributions to peacekeeping at 25 percent. Congress, however, enacted an annual waiver during the Obama administration.

“It’s good to see the Trump administration seeking to comply with the law,” Schaefer said.

Evaluating Funding

Schaefer says the U.S. pays more than 178 other U.N. member states combined for regular budget assessments, and more than 185 member states combined just for peacekeeping.

As mandated by treaties that Congress has ratified, assessed funding is obligatory on member states, and each nation pays a share proportionate to the size of its economy.

Member states, including the U.S., have sometimes fallen beyond on their assessed payments. Chronic nonpayment can lead to a suspension of voting rights.

The U.S. can adjust its assessed share only if the U.N. General Assembly agrees.

Gowan says U.N. diplomats are more worried about potential cuts to several U.N. humanitarian agencies, which the U.S. voluntarily supports—a different payment stream from obligatory assessed funds.

These voluntary programs include the children’s fund UNICEF, the World Food Program, and UNHCR, the U.N. refugee agency.

The order asks the new committee to make suggestions on how to cut voluntary funding by at least 40 percent.

Time of Crises

Gowan, and U.N. advocates, says the U.S. should be wary of limiting its commitment to these agencies at a time of great need.

‘Not Perfect’

Yet concerns over anti-Israel bias at the U.N. continue.

A U.N. commission, in a report issued Wednesday, accused Israel of committing apartheid against Palestinians.

The leadership of the U.N. moved to distance itself from the report, published by the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, composed entirely of Arab member states.

“The report as it stands does not reflect the stance of the secretary general,” a spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at a news briefing.

Lagon, the former Helms staffer, says he was troubled by the report. But despite the body’s problems, he says, the U.S. is better off with using its influence to make the U.N. more effective.

Originally published by Josh Siegel at The Daily Signal

#budget #trump #United Nations #Budget #Donald Trump #U.N.

0 notes