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tevnakurdi · 4 years

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Civil workspace in northeastern

Brussels | Northeastern Syria | Erbil

English | العربية

Introduction.

The emergence of civil society institutions in their current form can be considered a new phenomenon in Syrian Society as the political and social changes and the availability of funding opened new horizons for civil work through it, it was able to play a prominent role in addressing societal needs, from humanitarian aid to human rights issues.

Although northeastern Syria provides a good space for civil work if it is compared with the rest of the different areas of control, at the same time, it suffers from many difficulties related to the availability of a safe environment, the legalization of work and the governance of organizations alike, not to mention the shrinking of that space day after day for security and political reasons. we cannot deny that civil society has fought many wars in order to address the needs of the internally and externally displaced, and that it faced many challenges for it. However, the neutrality of civil society towards societies and its members remains in great question and suspicion, which applies to its political independence as well.

This paper deals with the reality and space of civil work in northeastern Syria and based on the opinions discussed in the dialogue session held by TEVN Kurdi virtually via the Internet on November 23, 2020, with the participation of / 26 / civil society organizations operating in northeastern Syria, Kurdistan Region Iraq and the European Union countries.

The reality of the work of organizations

First of all, civil society carried out the tasks of the state due to the urgent need and the weakness of service institutions, as it delivered humanitarian aid, documented violations, resolved conflicts, sought gender equality, conveyed reality in voice and image, and many other roles. However, a lack of experience, limited capabilities, and shifting war dynamics hindered its ability to achieve integrated successes. No organization has been able to document all the violations in northeastern Syria and has not yet been able to build a database supported by reliable evidence that can be used in trials one day, according to some participants.

For relief field, it has managed to cover a large proportion of the needs of the displaced and those affected by the war. but it gradually declined in recent years due to the lack of funding and political decisions by the member states of the Security Council, which hindered the capabilities of civil society at the humanitarian level, such as Russia and China, which has used its veto against a series of decisions related to the delivery of humanitarian aid. The most recent of which was the failure to renew United Nations Resolution No. 2165 on the delivery of aid across the border, which led to the closure of the Iraqi border crossings with Syria (the Yaroubia crossing).

As for mobilization, advocacy and gender equality, the number of implemented projects was many, but some organizations believe that they did not achieve the required change at the social level or at the level of local government institutions , most of the reasons are attributed to the lack of experience and the lack of acceptance by local communities of a tribal and religious nature of these changes and also to the short period of time for this pattern of change as it may take many years to give the desired results.

The work of civil society in resolving conflicts and building peace is considered a positive development after a set of circumstances came together that contributed to the emergence of a favorable climate for them. the Syrian war itself is considered a catalyst, as it weakened the security grip of the Syrian government and opened small windows, but local communities still suffer from deep divisions as a result of intense political polarization.

Despite the many roles, civil work is still a reaction to the reality we live in, which is a form of response to the changes that have occurred and are happening, the negative thing is that many organizations do not have effective and applicable theories of change, and most of their strategic plans have not been transformed into a complete business plan and have often remained confined to discussions and workshops. faced with this critical reality, the question remains, "Has civil society succeeded in achieving what it sought in the required manner?"

Constraints and challenges.

Civil society has worked in its various sectors in northeastern Syria in a difficult, insecure and unstable environment that witnessed many fluctuations, especially in recent years, donor policies and restrictions have also contributed to undermining the civil society’s response to the big changes, in addition to the absence of vision, intense competition, corruption in some cases, and the absence of oversight, polarization, and division between inside and outside the country. the absence of organizational law also contributed to weak independence and affected the integrity of civil society.

Despite the efforts exerted, it notices a clear weakness in the structure of civil society at the administrative and financial level, as well as the lack of experience, the lack of cadres and the lack of adoption of the principle of governance as a means of directing the civil work compass, which constitutes the most prominent challenges that must be solved. In addition to the great political polarization, what led as a whole to weak confidence at the social level and negatively affected its legitimacy and ability to respond to the social responsibility entrusted to it.

The lack of international funding and the lack of alternative local financial resources constitute the biggest challenges, and its impact is exacerbated by the weakness of the volunteer work culture due to high unemployment rates, low per capita income, and the modernity of the civil work culture.

Relations.

It is said that the civil society relationship should be in competition with any government or local authority in all countries, whether they are deep-rooted or emerging democracies.

This competitive and balanced relationship is achieved in a stable country in which there is an agreed constitution that protects everyone and separates the authorities, which is not available in northeastern Syria. Therefore, the existing relationship between the Autonomous Administration on the one hand and the organizations on the other hand marred by many doubts and mutual distrust as a result of the great political polarization that led to the outbreak of many conflicts that were mostly soft. The lack of competitiveness and the required balance in the conflict has led to a narrowing of the civilian work space, especially in the field of freedoms and human rights.

This relationship based on lack of trust can be traced back to the parties ’lack of belief in the role and importance of civil society. On the contrary, they view it as a competitor and an obstacle to their efforts.

On the other hand, the organizations - as a result of the political polarization - lost much of their neutrality and political independence, which further deepened the gap and It led to more distrust, mutual suspicion, and great competition in relationships within civil society itself as well.

Funding.

Local organizations depend for their funding on international bodies and organizations, donor governments, and donations from Syrians abroad, the latter of which are of a small percentage. Despite the availability of funding during the past years, it is considered low due to the increasing needs produced by the war machine, not to mention the existence of a large gap in the direction of funds and the development of the programmatic strategy by donors.

Donor priorities have always been, to a high degree, different from those of civil society, and closely linked to government political priorities it was a reaction to the military conflict, and as a result of its side effects, it led to an imbalance in the distribution of funds to different geographical and work sectors. Focusing on restoring stability in Raqqa contributed to creating a gap in the work on human rights and gender issues, and created a work environment similar to that of businessmen, Moreover, the funding distribution policies among the three governorates have led to the creation of a conflict between the governorates and even between the different components.

Covid – 19.

The beginning of the emergence of the virus in northeastern Syria, the Health Authority in the Autonomous Administration, in cooperation with the Kurdish Red Crescent and the World Health Organization, has taken several measures, the most important of which is the decision to establish a "Covid-19" hospital in the countryside of Hasakah , It is a hospital equipped with 120 beds to receive suspected cases and cases of infection with the Corona virus 19 emerging with moderate symptoms, in addition to imposing a total and partial curfew.

Exceptionally, the organizations affairs bodies have facilitated the work of organizations, exempt them from the ban, and provide them with the necessary assessments and schedules, especially for the areas where the injuries appeared, and civil society has devoted 60% of its activities to confronting the Coronavirus and mitigating its effects. The closure and quarantine measures led to donors and international organizations to stop some projects and reduce their funding for civil society, as the latter was forced to reduce the number of its employees and reduce salaries. These measures weakened the capabilities of local organizations to respond in proportion to the scale of the disaster, restricted the movement of organizations, and also greatly weakened the ability of financial organizations, one of the managers of the organizations says that the project that we were implementing with 25 thousand dollars, we are now implementing it with 5 thousand dollars, which is a number through which we cannot maintain the quality of work or the quality of the service provided.

Despite the efforts made by civil society to address Covid-19 at the beginning, it has been noticed recently that its effectiveness in combating the virus has decreased and its awareness-raising role, and there are concerns that the work environment within civil society institutions may shift to an environment that carries the virus due to the decline in the level of prevention measures within the institutions themselves.

Conclusions and recommendations.

i. The current reality is witnessing a crisis due to the emergence of the Corona-19 pandemic on the health and living levels, and it requires concerted efforts to overcome this crisis and avoid dangerous scenarios and limit its repercussions by involving everyone in the planning and decisions that are formulated by the Self - Administration. Political parties must also make more efforts to contribute positively to finding solutions, and they should separate the services file, especially the health sector, from the political file.

ii. The Self-Administration must provide a legal work environment that establishes a competitive relationship that safeguards the rights and roles of everyone and helps expand the civil workspace and strengthen its role away from political polarization and it should involve it and include it in re-evaluating the labor laws of civil society and listening to their views. Political parties and frameworks should be more open to the role of civil society and bridge the gap between them in order to enhance confidence, and they must provide all forms of community support to organizations in order to carry out their duties.

iii. Donors and the United Nations must conduct a reassessment of their local plans and strategies at the program level and adopt the local approach in providing funds needed by local communities away from their political positions and they must change their financial procedures and policies in providing grants in terms of form and content, and they must stop the project financing policy and start financing the fund Essential for organizations to build sustainability.

iv. The Self- Administration shall provide local financing to local organizations from the economic revenues of oil and others in accordance with the rules of integrity and transparency that guarantee equality for all in obtaining financing without any privilege, and measures must be proposed that help provide the greatest degree of neutrality.

v. The involvement of civil society in the work does not allow it the time to stand up and look back and study the development that has been achieved in depth, especially at the level of sustainability. Therefore, it must conduct a comprehensive review of the past years and determine what it has and what is on it in a transparent manner according to the dictates of its social responsibility.

Note:

This paper was based on the discussions that took place between / 26 / local and international organizations on 23-2020-10, and it does not represent the views of all participating organizations.

For more information or to provide feedback and opinions, please contact TEVN via email.

also You can follow us on Twitter and Facebook . And subscribe to our newsletter to receive updates about the TEVN's work.

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khalilhumam · 4 years

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Five Years Later, One Million Refugees Are Thriving in Germany

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/five-years-later-one-million-refugees-are-thriving-in-germany/

Five Years Later, One Million Refugees Are Thriving in Germany

This is one of a series of blogs exploring the issues facing refugees’ economic inclusion within the top refugee and forced migrant hosting countries. All are being authored with local experts, and provide a snapshot of the barriers refugees face and what the policy priorities are going forward. All blogs can be found here: https://www.cgdev.org/page/labor-market-access In 2015, large numbers of refugees fleeing war and terrorism in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq arrived on Europe’s shores. Fear and uncertainty reigned—who would give these people asylum and how would they integrate? The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, remained undaunted. “We can do this!” she announced in August of that year. And do this, they did. In 2015 and 2016, Germany received over one million first-time asylum applications. Five years later, over half of these refugees have found a job, and public support for immigration remains high. Still, integration challenges remain. Refugees typically work in lower-paid and more precarious roles, which have been hit harder by COVID-19. Germany needs to institute policies that target specific barriers to full labor market integration, such as training and the certification of existing skills.

Germany’s decision to admit one million refugees

Prior to 2015, the number of people applying for asylum in Germany was relatively low (see figure 1). Arrivals predominantly came from seven countries: Iraq, Turkey, Russia, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Serbia, and Syria. While asylum seekers only had to wait for three months before gaining access to the labor market—one of the lowest rates in Europe—underemployment was high. Figure 1. First-time asylum applications to Germany, 2010-2019

Source: Eurostat migr_asyappctza, https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/asylum-and-managed-migration/data/database As images documenting the distress of people fleeing war and terrorism in the Middle East began to surface, public support for accepting refugees increased. Yet Merkel’s decision to take in an unlimited number of people came as a surprise. It was perceived as unilateral, and garnered criticism even from her own party. It was sold as a difficult but surmountable challenge, an ethical decision rather than a political one. The asylum processing system was completely unprepared to deal with this large influx. German policymakers began to introduce a series of regulations to improve the speed and efficiency of asylum procedures. Asylum seekers from countries with high protection rates were even able to start integration courses before receiving a decision on their application. While this sped up processing, it came at the expense of people from countries further down the list. By 2018, 72 percent of the asylum seekers had been granted protection in Germany, gaining the right to work without restrictions. Some 17 percent had pending claims with restricted work authorization. Prospective asylum seekers were shared among the different regions of Germany, using a scheme called Königssteiner Schlüssel. Many municipalities were overwhelmed, lacking appropriate infrastructure such as housing and language classes. Five years on, the integration of this population is impressive. By December 2018, there were 1.8 million people with a refugee background in Germany (including beneficiaries of international protection, asylum seekers, and those who had their request rejected). 75 percent are younger than 40, and most have higher levels of education than other migrants. Today, about half have found a job, paid training, or internship. On arrival, only about one percent declared having good or very good German language skills. By 2018, that figure had increased to 44 percent. Such contributions are badly needed within an aging German labor market, which is facing skill shortages and needs trained migrant labor. Such successful integration also has impacted the local German population. For example, between 2008 and 2015, the number of employees in companies founded by migrants grew by 50 percent (to 1.5 million). It has also mobilized civil society. A survey by the Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research suggests that 55 percent of Germans have contributed to the integration of refugees since 2015, either financially or through their own involvement in supportive actions. Such engagement has increased support for migrant populations overall and has demonstrated the success of Merkel’s move.

How the decision influenced public opinion

Germany has maintained high levels of support for accepting refugees, both before and after Merkel’s decision. In September 2015, a Politbarometer poll found that 66 percent felt allowing in large refugee flows was the right thing to do. The same survey has consistently found that Germans feel they can cope with these flows (figure 2). Five years later, following the fire in the Moria refugee camp in Greece, another Politbarometer poll still found widespread support for a more welcoming refugee policy. Only nine percent were found to be completely opposed to taking in more refugees. Figure 2. Can Germany Manage the High Number of Refugees? 2016-2019

Source: Forschungsgruppe Wahlen: Politbarometer, https://www.forschungsgruppe.de/Umfragen/Politbarometer/Langzeitentwicklung_-_Themen_im_Ueberblick/Politik_-_Archiv/#Asylpol Yet, Germans have always been concerned about the integration of refugees—the primary problem of concern between 2014 and 2018 (figure 3). As described above, the lack of a developed regional infrastructure to cope with such a large number of arrivals brought challenges and mistakes, some of which have taken a long time to rectify. In 2019, a study by Ipsos MORI found that only 31 percent of Germans believed that most refugees could successfully integrate in the society (compared with 37 percent in 2017). This concern may have contributed to the relatively lower levels of support for future migration movements, choosing to focus on ensuring existing populations are well integrated first. Figure 3. What is the main problem in Germany? 2000-2020

Source: Forschungsgruppe Wahlen: Politbarometer, https://www.forschungsgruppe.de/Umfragen/Politbarometer/Langzeitentwicklung_-_Themen_im_Ueberblick/Politik_II/#Probl1 Concerns about integration, however, have provided an opening for the rise of the far-right, anti-immigrant party, Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD). They won 94 (out of 709) seats in the Bundestag in the 2017 elections, partly campaigning on an anti-immigration platform. Merkel’s decision clearly benefited the AFD but similar increases in support for far-right parties can be seen around the world, including in countries with small refugee populations. Therefore, it makes more sense to attribute the rise of the AFD to structural concerns, such as inequality, precarity, and pessimism about the future, rather than Merkel’s decision.

Future challenges

Despite progress, challenges to full economic inclusion for refugees remain. The German labor market is complicated and bureaucratic, creating barriers for foreign qualification recognition, and those who don’t speak German. Women have poorer prospects, especially those with young children, and healthcare access remains low for recently arrived refugees. COVID-19 has amplified these challenges. Refugees typically work in lower-paid and more precarious roles, which have been hit harder by the pandemic. As a result, they have seen the largest increase in unemployment, compared to both other migrants and German locals. The suspension of learning opportunities and social interactions are particularly detrimental, meaning refugees are receiving less support. These challenges have been recognised by the Chancellor, who hosted a national integration summit in October. There it was decided that services such as German language courses, counselling, and job support should all be provided digitally to improve access during and after the pandemic. What is now needed is a set of policies that precisely target well-identified barriers to labor market integration. What is now needed is a set of policies that precisely target well-identified barriers to labor market integration. The main issue is training and the certification of existing skills. Many refugees report labor market experience in their country of origin, but they lack certifications or documentation to prove it. Moreover, the equivalence of some certifications is difficult to assess due to important differences in educational systems. Projects such as the Labour-INT project, supporting the integration of refugees from arrival up to the workplace, through skills assessment, training, and job placement, are promising and go in the right direction. Initiatives incentivizing firms to hire refugees and assisting them in the recruitment process could also improve labor market integration. Initiatives incentivizing firms to hire refugees and assisting them in the recruitment process could also improve labor market integration. Facilitating early access to the health care system could also contribute to improving the well-being of refugees, in particular when it comes to detecting consequences of traumatic events before or during their movement, such as depression and emotional distress. Before their asylum request is decided or if their duration of stay is below 15 months, asylum seekers must request medical visits from the local health authority, which involves a substantial amount of bureaucracy. Some federal states have already lowered the barriers of access to health care by introducing electronic health cards. Other issues need to be better understood and require more research. For example, the low participation rate of female refugees in integration classes, language classes, or the labor market, should be addressed. Proposed explanations rank from cultural differences and religion, to problems related to childcare and inappropriate schedules. A better understanding of the exact causes would help design effective projects to address such specific issues and promote better economic integration for this population. The figures discussed above show that Merkel’s decision to admit one million refugees in 2015 has had immense economic and social benefits for Germany, while providing needed support to a vulnerable population. Targeted progress on integration barriers such as skills certification and those disproportionately affecting women, would do even more to magnify this impact.

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rightsinexile · 4 years

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Publications

“How and with what consequences are individuals fleeing the Syrian conflict to Lebanon given various legal, bureaucratic and social labels by humanitarian, state and local government actors? A wide array of labels are imposed; registered refugee, labourer, displaced, foreigner and others. This article argues that each of these modes of ordering has its own set of implications for what a Syrian may do, how her presence is understood by others in the community, and what type of rights and protections she may have access to.” - Modes of Ordering: Labelling, Classification and Categorization in Lebanon's Refugee Response. Maja Janmyr and Lama Mourad, Journal of Refugee Studies, 2018.

“The Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Felipe González Morales, conducted an official visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina from 24 September to 1 October 2019, at the invitation of the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The main objective of the visit was to assess existing laws, policies and practices in relation to migration governance in Bosnia and Herzegovina and their impact on the human rights of migrants of all categories, including asylum seekers and migrants in an irregular situation.” - Report of the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants on his visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina. Felipe González Morales, Human Rights Council, 12 May 2020.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has magnified existing issues in the child migration context. It illuminates socio-economic challenges, laying bare deep-seated policy inequities and their devastating impact on the millions of children forced to leave their homes across the globe. But the pandemic, and the ensuing pause in some aspects of global migration management, also provides an opportunity to rethink the impact of forced migration practice on affected children.” - Child Repatriation in the Time of COVID-19. Jacqueline Bhabha and Vasileia Digidiki, Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford University, 5 June 2020.

“This report is motivated by recent changes in policy and practice in respect of immigration detention in South Africa, as well as legislative and jurisprudential development over the past few years. In broad terms, since 2013, shifts have occurred in the following areas: jurisprudence, legislation, practical barriers to accessing the asylum system, and information access regarding designation of places of detention.” - Monitoring Policy, Litigious and Legislative Shifts in Immigration Detention in South Africa. Wayne Ncube and Charné Tracey, Lawyers for Human Rights, May 2020.

“The number of refugees in need of protection has climbed to an all-time high, while at the same time, many countries have reduced their commitments to refugee resettlement. To meet these challenges, governments and civil-society groups in a growing number of countries have begun to explore refugee sponsorship (also called community or private sponsorship), either as a complement or alternative to traditional protection pathways. This MPI Europe policy brief takes stock of sponsorship programs worldwide.” - Refugee Sponsorship Programs: A Global State of Play and Opportunities for Investment. Lena Kainz, Migration Policy Institute, 2019.

“This fact sheet provides an overview of the asylum system in the United States, including how asylum is defined, eligibility requirements, and the application process.” - Asylum in the United States, American Immigration Council, 11 July 2020.

“This article analyses the international migrations and statuses of people who left Syria after the outbreak of the civil war. In addition to exploring the dynamics of Syrian refugee migrations since 2011, we also discuss future prospects and possibilities of return.” - Syrian Refugee Migration, Transitions in Migrant Statuses and Future Scenarios of Syrian Mobility. Hariz Halilovich, Refugee Survey Quarterly, 2020.

“The fourth volume of Refugee Review, an open access, multidisciplinary, multimedia, and peer-reviewed journal of the ESPMI Network. The journal features varied and challenging articles, opinion pieces and practitioner reports from emerging scholars and practitioners around the world.” - Emerging Issues in Forced Migration - Perspectives from Research and Practice. Refugee Review, 1 May 2020.

“As the corona virus sweeps rapidly across the globe, it is undoubtedly having immense psychological impacts on communities. There are legitimate concerns that an epidemic of mental illness could actually occur in the midst of the current environment.” - Mental health and psychological well-being during COVID-19 pandemic: the invisible elephant in the room. Akaninyene Otu, Carlo Handy Charles and Sanni Yaya, International Journal of Mental Health Systems, 2020.

“Parents are an essential source of constancy and support, and effectively promote children’s resilience even in adversity. To build on this potential, however, more information is needed about the realities of refugee parents in situations of extreme adversity such as war and displacement.” - Parental suffering and resilience among recently displaced Syrian refugees in Lebanon. Bree Akesson and Cindy Sousa, Journal of Child and Family Studies, 30 November 2019.

“Around the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has created dramatic new levels of humanitarian need. Marginalized groups—including the world’s more than 70 million forcibly displaced people—are being particularly hard hit. For Venezuelan refugees and migrants in Colombia, the pandemic has hardened barriers to social and economic integration.” - Searching for Home: How COVID-19 threatens progress for Venezuelan integration in Columbia. Daphne Panayotatos and Rachel Schmidtke, Refugees International, 26 May 2020.

“Canada has been one of the world’s top destinations for immigrants, and this year was supposed to be no exception. However, concerns about the spread of COVID-19 led Canada to implement travel restrictions that for all intents and purposes shutdown immigration. Amid ongoing border restrictions, travel-related health fears, and the global economic downturn, we expect immigration levels to be down sharply in 2020.” COVID-19 derails Canadian immigration. Andrew Agopsowicz, RBC Economics, 29 May 2020.

“The Pacific Islands are a group of 20 small island developing nations scattered across the Pacific Ocean that are especially vulnerable to large-scale disasters, such as cyclones. In 2020, the Pacific Islands had to face a new challenge: weathering a Category 5 cyclone, the highest measurement on the cyclone intensity scale, while facing the paralyzing conditions and economic uncertainty brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.” - A New Vulnerability: COVID-19 and tropical cyclone Harold create the perfect storm in the Pacific. Refugees International, Kayly Ober and Stefan Bakumenko, 3 June 2020.

“This Impact Report pulls together and synthesises the information we have collated to date on the impact of COVID-19 on stateless persons and those whose nationality is under threat around the world.” - Statelessness in a global pandemic. Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion, June 2020.

“This article discusses the challenges of conducting interviews about human rights matters with refugees and displaced people. It examines aspects of the practice of conducting interviews, particularly the ethical, psychosocial and cultural in which these issues might be approached. The article aims to be of particular value to emerging scholars and practitioners familiar with the principles of research methods but with less practical experience of conducting interviews with refugees and displaced people.” - Refugee Testimony and Human Rights Advocacy: The challenges of interviewing refugees in the field Matt Oliver Kinsella, Refugee Review Emerging Issues in Forced Migration, 2020.

“This collection and review of evidence aims to illustrate how the COVID-19 crisis triggers disproportionate risks and barriers for men, women, boys and girls with disabilities living in humanitarian settings. It highlights recommendations for humanitarian actors, to enhance inclusive action, aligned with existing guidance and learnings on disability inclusion.” - COVID-19 in humanitarian contexts: no excuses to leave persons with disabilities behind. Humanity and Inclusion, June 2020.

“IDMC’s Global Report on Internal Displacement is the official repository of data and analysis on internal displacement. This year's GRID breaks down data by conflict, violence and disasters across 145 countries. This edition looks at policy and operational practice from across the world and shows what is being done by countries to prevent, respond to and resolve internal displacement.” - Global Report on Internal Displacement 2020. Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, 2020.

“Statistics on asylum matters have become a central part of political debate in Europe in recent years, in particular, statistics on protection rates or recognition rates – the percentage of the people seeking asylum who are recognised (or declared) to be entitled to international protection – are often used in arguments about the reasons for migration and the appropriate policy responses. ECRE has analysed the use of asylum statistics and has also contributed the gathering and dissemination of asylum statistics through its Asylum Information Database (AIDA). Here, ECRE sounds a note of caution in regard to the presentation and use of statistics.” - Asylum statistics in Europe: Briefing. European Council on Refugees and Exiles, 2019.

“The EU has (re)-built the so-called Libyan Coast Guard by financing, equipping, training and politically legitimizing them. Despite the fact that the Libyan Coast Guard is effectively a militia with documented involvement in systemic human rights violations and human smuggling, EU institutions and Member States provide technical, logistical, and political support, and often even direct operational coordination.” - The EU-Libya collaboration in mass interceptions of migrants in the Central Mediterranean. Remote Control, 17 June 2020.

“From 2015 intensification of the Syrian conflict, the number of asylum applications significantly increased in the EU Member States. This situation has led to political tensions in and between some countries – particularly those on the "front line" such as Greece and Italy – regarding the suitable responses in terms of reception and integration of exiled persons. How have national asylum systems in Europe adapted? Is the reaction of the European institutions – in a fragmented Union on the issue of asylum – appropriate? What evolution of asylum policies in European countries since 2015?. European Insights, June 2020.

“FRA’s Fundamental Rights Report 2020 reviews major developments in the field, identifying both achievements and remaining areas of concern. This publication presents FRA’s opinions on the main developments in the thematic areas covered, and a synopsis of the evidence supporting these opinions. In so doing, it provides a compact but informative overview of the main fundamental rights challenges confronting the EU and its Member States.” - Fundamental Rights Report. European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2020.

“The EMN Annual Report provides a comprehensive overview of the migration and asylum situation and developments in the EU (Member) States as well as statistical data for the year 2019, which were available at the time of the publication of the report.” - Annual Report on Migration and Asylum 2019. European Migration Network, June 2020.

“The UK Home Office’s Asylum Policy Instruction on Asylum Interviews (Asylum Policy Instruction) provides guidance to Home Office caseworkers on how to conduct asylum interviews and obtain information to establish whether or not protection should be granted. Despite this guidance, independent inspection bodies and other organisations working directly with asylum claimants have expressed significant concerns over many years about the quality of asylum interviews, highlighting the link between poor quality interviews and flawed, unsustainable decisions.” - How the Home Office fails survivors of torture at the asylum interview. Freedom from Torture, 2020.

“As of June 2020 the world is well into a global health crisis, with over 5 million COVID-19 cases worldwide and over 330,000 related deaths. There remains great uncertainty about what comes next. We do not know how many people will be infected or how long the pandemic will last. However, we do know that those who are most marginalized will be disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, including members of the LGBTQI community” - The Impact of COVID-19 on displaced LGBTQI persons. Paul Dillane and Kimahli Powell, Rainbow Railroad, June 2020.

#refugee #asylum #asylum seeker

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jeremyhodge2 · 5 years

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The Final Battle for Syria Has Begun

The Daily Beast: 26 January 2020

By Jeremy Hodge

GAZIANTEP, Turkey—Syrian activists report that the Assad regime has launched its most intense assault since the beginning of the war almost nine years ago. The target is Idlib, the last opposition holdout in northwestern Syria.

All indicators suggest that the campaign will produce a new humanitarian disaster and be the beginning of a final confrontation between the Syrian National Army (SNA)—an alliance of Turkish-backed armed opposition forces—and Russian-Iranian-backed pro-Assad units.

The fighting undermines the perception of a seamless Turkish-Russian rapprochement and reveals the hidden gridlock that exists even after years of negotiations over key issues that are critical to Turkey’s security and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s political prospects.

The unbridgeable gap between Moscow and Ankara has created space for the United States to acquire more leverage in its relationship with Turkey by acting as a counterweight to Moscow’s ambitions, if the Trump administration chooses to do so.

“The situation here is shit,” says Abd al-Rahman al-Aissawi a local activist in the town of Mara’at al-Nu’aman, which has iconic status as a holdout against the regime. “In nine years of war, this is the worst bombing we’ve ever seen. This is worse than the regime’s assault on east Aleppo [in 2016]. At least then, we negotiated a way out. This time, there’s nowhere to go, we have to fight. The regime knows this, and is paving the way for a truly scorched earth.”

In addition to a stepped up Syrian-Russian air campaign, the war zone in Idlib looks further set to escalate due to increased involvement by powers with ties to the Syrian opposition, in particular Turkey and to a lesser extent the United States.

Since the most recent reboot of hostilities on January 16, SNA units reportedly received a new influx of American-made TOW anti-tank missiles that they used to repel regime advances around the town of Abu Jurayf, about 10 miles northeast of the rebel stronghold of Mara’at al-Nu’aman. (TOW stands for Tube launched, Optically tracked, Wire data link auto-guided missile.)

“We’ve since been able to take back the towns of Samaka, al-Barsa and Mushaymis and destroy a large number of regime firepower with the recent influx of TOW missiles,” says Abu Muhammad, a high ranking SNA commander. Rumors circulating at the time suggested that meetings held between Turkish defense officials and SNA leaders were attended by representatives from the United States as well.

“The situation here is shit. ... There’s nowhere to go, we have to fight. The regime knows this, and is paving the way for a truly scorched earth.”— Syrian activist in the town of Mara’at al-Nu’aman

Mustafa Sayjari, a prominent leader within the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) fighting against regime forces in Idlib, has his own history of working with the United States. He told Syrian opposition television that he could confirm “via direct meetings I’ve had with the Americans, that Washington will support all Turkish efforts [with regards to Idlib].”

Expectations are that the U.S., Turkey and other western countries will take joint efforts to stave off a Syrian regime advance in order to prevent a new influx of refugees pouring across the Turkish border. As al-Aissawi noted Syrian displaced persons in Idlib have nowhere to flee in the event Idlib falls except to Turkey.

Throughout 2018, Idlib became the final refuge for an outpouring of SNA and opposition activists from key rebel strongholds in Homs, Damascus and the southern Dara’a province that fell to pro-Assad forces. Now, as the saying goes, “There’s no Idlib for Idlib.”

But the prospect of further refugees is one President Erdoğan is keen to avoid. Turkey’s assault on northeast Syria three months ago, in addition to removing the threat of U.S.-backed Kurdish forces along its border, was supposed to carve out a safe zone Ankara could use to relocate an unspecified percentage of Turkey’s 5 million Syrian refugees. The long-term presence of Syrian refugees in Turkey has recently stoked xenophobic sentiments in the country, with populists blaming them for Turkey’s recent economic downturn.

Last June, Erdoğan’s AK Party lost Istanbul in municipal elections for the first time since 2002. The defeat was seen as a major blow to Erdoğan personally that was partially brought about by the latter’s perceived lax stance towards refugees.

“Throughout 2018, Idlib became the final refuge for people fleeing regions that fell to pro-Assad forces. Now, as the saying goes, 'There’s no Idlib for Idlib.'”

Shortly after coming to power, the opposition CHP party in Istanbul launched a new wave of arrests and deportations of Syrian refugees in a series of high profile cases that sparked outrage at home and abroad.

With these high stakes, Turkey has signaled that it takes the latest escalation by the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad very seriously. On Friday, sources told The Daily Beast, Erdoğan convened a closed meeting with Turkish intelligence chief Hakan Fidan and high-ranking SNA commanders declaring that ongoing Turkish attempts since July 2018 to reach a political solution with Russia over the status of Idlib had reached an impasse.

“Erdoğan called in to the meeting convened with Hakan Fidan, effectively telling us that the political process in Syria was over,” claimed SNA commander Abu Muhammad, who attended the meeting. “The President advised us to make final preparations to take a final stand and defend ourselves, giving assurances as well that Turkey would not abandon the SNA.”

The arrival of TOW missiles and Erdoğan’s acknowledgement of the failure of more than a year and a half of talks could signal a potential shakeup in the much-touted Turkish-Russian rapprochement that since 2015 has seen both countries significantly expand cooperation in the defense and energy sectors.

This also occurs nearly two weeks after news that Ankara sent 2,000 SNA fighters and an unspecified number of Turkish troops to the Libyan capital of Tripoli to halt the advance of Russian-backed rebel general Khalifa Haftar against the beleaguered Turkish-backed Libyan government of Fayez al-Sarraj.

After years of seeking common ground, in recent weeks Turkey finally appears willing to get tougher on Moscow. But the lengths to which Ankara is willing to go actually to hold off the regime advance in Idlib remain in question.

Over the weekend, the tide on the battlefield appears to have turned once again, with regime forces and their Russian and Iranian allies unleashing an unprecedented wave of bombing and advancing to Wadi Dayf, a town directly adjacent to and on the outskirts of Mara’at al-Nu’aman. Russian, Iranian and pro-Assad forces are said to be mobilizing for a renewed push on the outskirts of the city that will begin within days.

The widespread presence throughout Idlib province of Ha’it Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the former al-Qaeda affiliate previously known as Jabhat al-Nusra, provides a convenient pretext for the Russian and Iranian assault, and hobbles the American ability to intervene more directly.

If Mara’at al-Nu’aman falls, it would represent the third major victory for regime forces in Idlib in the last six months, following the December 25 fall of Jarjanaz, and the capture on August 22 of Khan Sheikhoun (photo above was taken during that assault). Khan Sheikhoun was the site of the regime’s chemical attack in April 2017 that prompted U.S. airstrikes on the Syrian Shayrat airbase.

The prospect of such a fall, for now, appears plausible. “Other than the TOW missiles, the situation on the ground is the same as it was before, we haven’t received any new support from our allies,” claimed Abu Muhammad.

When asked on television about the SNA’s ability to repel further regime advances, SNA leader Mustafa al-Sayjari made sure to say, “We’re confident that keeping the city of Idlib in the hands of the opposition isn’t just a Syrian priority, but a Turkish one as well.”

The city of Idlib, located nearly 30 miles north of Mara’at al-Nu’aman, is the main population center in the rebel held province of the same name, and for now remains largely outside the scope of regime attacks. But Sayhari’s omission of the names of the frontline towns that are threatened by the regime was ominous.

Lastly, the heavy presence of Iranian-backed militias on the front lines in Idlib suggests that Tehran’s projection throughout the region has not been scaled back since Trump's January 2 assassination of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani. Many suspect that the U.S. strikes may in fact be pushing Tehran to assert itself further in order to avoid appearing weak.

“The heavy presence of Iranian-backed militias on the front lines in Idlib suggests Tehran has not scaled back since Trump's assassination of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani.”

Although Russia is believed to hold the upper hand in military decisions on the ground in Syria, the significance of Iranian forces cannot be overstated: the Russians attempts on their own to advance on Idlib throughout 2018 and early 2019 fell short and failed to achieve any major successes. The fall of Khan Sheikhoun in late August 2019 was largely made possible by the arrival of a large contingent of Iranian-backed forces following new power sharing agreements between Tehran and Moscow on the frontlines. Now, Iranian backed Lebanese Hezbollah and Afghan Fatimiyun Shi’a militias are the shock troops leading the assault on Mara’at al-Nu’aman under the cover of Russian air power.

Sitting in a small operations room in a town outside Mara’at al-Nua’man, activist Abd al-Rahman al-Aissawi combs through a database of enemy military communications between Afghans speaking Dari that have been intercepted and leaked in real time by Turkish-backed SNA forces. Unfortunately, neither he nor anyone else can do much with them. In a last ditch effort on social media, he sends out a blast to anyone willing to listen, “Does anyone speak or know anyone who speaks Afghan? We need translators in Idlib; are willing to pay money.”

As The Daily Beast went to press, he had failed to get any responses.

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letskorean-blog1 · 5 years

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worldwidemobilenumberdatabase · 4 years

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numberdatabase-blog · 5 years

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nevin-manimala-blog · 6 years

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Why Big Data Cannot Fix Migration Statistics

We are witnessing the datafication of mobility and migration management across the world. In the context of Europe, programs like Eurosur use satellite images for surveilling the E.U.’s maritime borders, while the so-called hotspot approach aims to register all newly arriving migrants in biometric databases. Similarly, in the field of asylum, biometric databases are built for purposes of refugee management, while asylum seekers in Greece are distributed cash-cards. These new types and collections of data do not only change border and migration management practices. They also reconfigure how human mobility and migration are known and constituted as intelligible objects of government. The crucial innovation driving this datafication is the digitization of information that was previously stored – if at all – on paper files. This information is now available in a range of databases and can – at least in theory – be searched, exchanged, linked and analyzed with unprecedented scope and efficiency. As a consequence, “Big Data” is promoted as promising alternative sources for producing more reliable statistics on international migration. Several national statistical institutes (NSIs), international organizations and private actors are currently developing alternative methodologies for the production of migration statistics, for instance, by analyzing mobile phone data, geotagged social media data from platforms like Twitter or Facebook or internet searches with particular search terms. Likewise, the UNHCR stresses the (potential) role of social media to inform humanitarian response. The “huge potential of Big Data” to provide accurate and up-to-date accounts of international migration is promoted. Nevertheless, the promises driving these efforts are just as big as the data they refer to. In this post, we briefly discuss three reasons why it is rather unlikely that Big Data will simply solve the most important known limitations of migration statistics. Each reason is related to a form of politics which, taken together, shape the quantification of migration.

The Politics of Numbers

The first issue that innovative methodologies are unlikely to solve is the so-called politics of numbers. This politics concerns how institutional interests and agendas of the actors of a particular policy field shape decisions about how migrants are counted and what kind of numbers are ultimately disseminated in the public sphere. For example, according to a tweet by E.U. border agency Frontex “more than 710,000 migrants … entered E.U. in first 9 months of 2015.” Migration studies scholar Nando Sigona remarked that this number, published at the height of the “migration crisis” in October 2015, was likely to be inflated. After a Twitter exchange, Frontex admitted that the figure might be too high since it was based on recorded border crossings. It is likely to have included double-counts, in particular of the thousands of migrants who had entered the E.U. in Greece and then, after crossing the Balkan route, again in Hungary. Although Frontex added a clarification to its news release, Nando Sigona concluded “that Frontex needs to be made more accountable for its actions, including how and why they ‘inflate’ figures – especially given their expanding mandate & budget.” In late 2017, in the context of an uncovered corruption scandal with refugee aid in Uganda, it emerged that the officially reported number of 1.4 million refugees was probably too high. NGOs accused the Ugandan government of inflating the size of the refugee population to receive more financial aid from international donors. They estimated that Uganda’s refugee population is no more than one million people. The question of who is reporting the numbers is critical in migration statistics. For instance at the Supporting Syria and the Region meeting held in London in 2016, the number of refugees reportedly hosted by Turkey ranged from 1.5 to 3 million, depending on who was tweeting. These examples demonstrate that migration policy actors may count migrants in particular ways to produce numbers that provide evidence in support of certain policy objectives or institutional agendas. Importantly, these politics of numbers will not cease with alternative Big Data-based methodologies.

The Politics of Method

The second form of politics that will not simply wither away in the proclaimed “Age of Big Data” is what we call the politics of method. This is interrelated with the politics of numbers insofar as different methods produce different numbers of the object to be quantified. The question of who is reporting the numbers is critical in migration statistics. In brief, methodological heterogeneity – the usage of different definitions, methods and data sources by different NSIs and other producers of migration statistics – makes cross-country comparison of migration data “difficult and confusing.” For example, according to Eurostat figures, the U.K. reported 42,403 immigrants from Poland in 2015, while Poland reported sending only 11,682 emigrants to the U.K. One reason for this divergence lies in the usage of different methods for the production of migration statistics across countries. In this context, it is important to note that methodological heterogeneity is not necessarily a bad thing. Rather, statisticians can only assess the reliability and accuracy of any method, as well as its strengths and weaknesses, by comparing it with another method. To illustrate, in England and Wales, the International Passenger Survey (IPS) – the principal method used by the National Office for Statistics (ONS) for the production of migration statistics – became a matter of concern after the last census in 2011. According to the census results, the population size of England and Wales was 464,000 people larger than what had previously been reported by ONS. The latter was based on the so-called cohort component method, which adjusts the population size of the previous census on an annual basis by recorded births, deaths and net migration figures. An investigation concluded that the “largest single cause” for the divergence was a “substantial underestimation” of immigration from the eight new Eastern European member states by the IPS in the early 2000s. The questionable reliability of ONS migration statistics became a matter of public debate in the context of the promise of then-Prime Minister David Cameron to reduce net-migration to the U.K. to the “tens of thousands each year,” down from an estimated 252,000 in 2010. In light of the inherently probabilistic results of the IPS, a report of the Migration Observatory concludes that “efforts to meet the government’s target lack, for the time being at least, an adequate measure of success.” The availability of established methodologies for evaluating the results of innovative methods is particularly important in the context of Big Data, since these data sources have usually been generated for different purposes than the production of migration statistics. Big Data-based methods are unlikely to replace established methodologies for migration statistics any time soon. Consequently, the usage of alternative data sources like mobile phone or Twitter data raise several methodological issues, such as selection bias. Mobile phones and Twitter are, for instance, not used equally by all groups of migrants. This is why, contrary to what their proponents may claim, Big Data-based methods are unlikely to replace established methodologies for migration statistics any time soon. They might rather complement them, thus adding to the already existing methodological heterogeneity.

The Politics of (National) Distinction

The politics of method are also intertwined with a politics of (national) distinction. These politics arise because migration concerns a core issue of national sovereignty: the claimed authority of nation-states to decide on the terms and conditions of entry to and stay within their respective jurisdiction. This claimed prerogative of nation-states results in different migration regimes across nation-states, including different ways of categorizing and counting migrants and asylum seekers. Since migration policies are shaped by and are a source of national identity and distinction “the harmonization of migration and asylum statistics and policy is controversial as it intervenes in the nation state’s sovereign control of who should stay on its territory,” Marianne Takle rightly notes. The persistence of these differences can be illustrated through the European Statistical System (ESS) that comprises E.U. member states as well as associated countries. The ESS resembles a “hard case” insofar as it constitutes one of the most advanced, harmonized and robust statistical systems in the world. Principle 14 of the European Statistical Code of Practice stipulates that “statistics are compiled on the basis of common standards with respect to scope, definitions, units and classifications in the different surveys and sources” to ensure “European Statistics are consistent internally, over time and comparable between regions and countries.” However, our study into the operationalization of otherwise well-established legal categories of asylum-seekers and refugees demonstrates that their conversion into statistical categories entails various moments of adaptation to national contexts. These adaptations, in turn, result in important differences across E.U. member states. For instance, the harmonized statistical categories for forced migrants of the ESS include refugee and first time applicant only, despite the plethora of nationally varying sub-categories. DeStatis, the NSI of Germany, provides an explanatory note on the German asylum regime which distinguishes between asylum seekers whose applications are still pending, have been rejected and have been granted protection status. Each group comprises further sub-categories. These range from migrants who still have to lodge their asylum application or those appealing a decision, to five different types of recognized asylum seekers and various types of rejected asylum seekers, including 154,780 people whose presence in Germany is “tolerated” as they are not deportable. “The harmonization of migration and asylum statistics and policy is controversial as it intervenes in the nation state’s sovereign control of who should stay on its territory.” How asylum seekers and refugees are counted in migration statistics and in the overall population also differ between E.U. member states. DeStatis counts people from all the aforementioned subcategories in its migration statistics and its population count. Other NSIs in Europe pursue a different policy. For instance, the NSI of Norway excludes all asylum seekers from its population statistics, as they are not included in the national population register, on which these statistics are based. This is because asylum seekers are not issued personal registration numbers until their application is granted. Eurostat metadata indicates that in many E.U. countries, only accepted refugees are included in migration and population statistics. The legal limbo asylum seekers find themselves in is reflected in whether and how they are included in migration and population statistics. Taken together, the three types of politics discussed here demonstrate that Big Data-based methodologies are unlikely to revolutionize migration statistics. Many of the known limitations of migration statistics are related to political issues that cannot be addressed through a technological fix. Rather, the politics of numbers, the politics of method and the politics of national distinction will also shape the development and use of innovative Big Data-based methodologies for migration statistics. So, it is not only the newness of methods per se, but why and how these methods are developed and by whom, that require our attention. The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Refugees Deeply. This story was originally published on the Border Criminologies blog and is reproduced with permission. This is the final post of Border Criminologies’ themed series ‘Migrant Digitalities and the Politics of Dispersal’, organized by Glenda Garelli and Martina Tazzioli. You can read more about the series here. Read the full article

#google_plus #linkedin #math #mathematics #nevin_manimala #statistics

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awesomeblockchain · 6 years

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A few times a month, Bassam pushes a shopping cart through the aisles of a grocery store stocked with bags of rice, a small selection of fresh vegetables, and other staples. Today he's wearing a black sweater tucked into denim jeans, which are themselves tucked into calf-high boots caked in mud. The Tazweed Supermarket, where he's shopping, is on the periphery of a 75,000-person refugee camp in the semi-arid Jordanian steppe, six and a half miles from the Syrian border.

At the checkout counter, a cashier tallies the total, but Bassam doesn't pay with cash or a credit card. Instead he lifts his head to a black box and gazes into the mirror and camera at its center. A moment later, an image of Bassam's eye flashes on the cashier's screen. Bassam collects his receipt-which reads -EyePay" and -World Food Programme Building Blocks" across the top-and walks out into the noonday chaos of the Zaatari refugee camp.

Though Bassam may not know it, his visit to the supermarket involves one of the first uses of blockchain for humanitarian aid. By letting a machine scan his iris, he confirmed his identity on a traditional United Nations database, queried a family account kept on a variant of the Ethereum blockchain by the World Food Programme (WFP), and settled his bill without opening his wallet. Bassam gets his eye scanned to pay at the market's checkout. (Right) A mural at the Zaatari in early 2017, Building Blocks, as the program is known, helps the WFP distribute cash-for-food aid to over 100,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan. By the end of this year, the program will cover all 500,000 refugees in the country. If the project succeeds, it could eventually speed the adoption of blockchain technologies at sister UN agencies and beyond.

Building Blocks was born of a need to save money. The WFP helps feed 80 million people around the globe, but since 2009 the organization has shifted from delivering food to transferring money to people who need food. This approach could feed more people, improve local economies, and increase transparency. But it also introduces a notable point of inefficiency: working with local or regional banks. For the WFP, which transferred over $1.3 billion in such benefits in 2017 (about 30 percent of its total aid), transaction and other fees are money that could have gone to millions of meals. Early results of the blockchain program touted a 98 percent reduction in such Haddad is the UN executive behind Building Blocks and its use at the Jordanian camp.

And if the man behind the project, WFP executive Houman Haddad, has his way, the blockchain-based program will do far more than save money. It will tackle a central problem in any humanitarian crisis: how do you get people without government identity documents or a bank account into a financial and legal system where those things are prerequisites to getting a job and living a secure life?

Owning your identity

Haddad imagines Bassam one day walking out of Zaatari with a so-called digital wallet, filled with his camp transaction history, his government ID, and access to financial accounts, all linked through a blockchain-based identity system. With such a wallet, when Bassam left the camp he could much more easily enter the world economy. He would have a place for an employer to deposit his pay, for a mainstream bank to see his credit history, and for a border or immigration agent to check his identity, which would be attested to by the UN, the Jordanian government, and possibly even his neighbors.

Such a record, perhaps stored on a mobile phone, could let someone like Bassam take his data from Syria to Jordan and beyond, backed up online in encrypted form. Syrian refugees using such a system-and most in Zaatari already have smartphones-could regain legal identities that were lost along with their documents and assets when they fled their homes. In this scenario, Bassam could move-to Germany, or back to Syria-and easily prove his educational credentials, demonstrate his relationship to his children, and get a loan to start a business. (In most countries, without an ID you can't get a bank account, and without a bank account, you can't get a place to live or a legal job.) is a bustling city that sprang into existence as a tidal bore of humanity crashed over the Syrian border in 2012. Nearly 75,000 Syrians live in the sprawling camp, including many children and young adults.

If such a system had existed before Bassam left his hometown of Daraa, he might have avoided Zaatari altogether and become a productive member of Jordanian society straight away. Even if Syria revoked his passport, or if a school with a record of his degrees were bombed, an immutable register of his history could still smooth his entry into an adopted country.

A number of organizations are already working on aspects of this idea. In Finland, a blockchain startup called MONI has collaborated since 2015 with the Finnish Immigration Service, giving every refugee in the country a prepaid MasterCard-backed by a digital identity number stored on a blockchain. Even without the passport necessary to open a Finnish bank account, a MONI account lets refugees receive benefits directly from the government. The system also allows refugees to get loans from people who know and trust them, helping them build rudimentary credit histories that could make it possible to get institutional loans down the road.

Meanwhile, companies like Accenture and Microsoft are joining nonprofit organizations in a public-private alliance called ID2020. The mission is to help achieve the UN goal of providing a legal identity to everyone, starting with the 1.1 billion people who lack any officially recognized proof of their existence. system uses a traditional database and an account stored on a permissioned variant of the Ethereum blockchain. The supermarket offers bulk supplies of necessities such as rice, oil, and sugar.

At the heart of such systems is a concept known as -self-sovereign identity." It was popularized in 2016 by Christopher Allen, an American technologist, who outlined principles for a digital proof of existence owned by the individual. In such a scheme, identity would be portable and not dependent on any state or central authority. And the consensus is growing that a blockchain should be at its center.

Blockchains, Allen told me, are critical to such identity systems because they solve previously -unsolvable" problems. By storing an encrypted identifier in a blockchain, one can separate the authentication system from one's data, helping to protect privacy. Blockchain systems are also more secure than conventional identity records because they cut out third-party intermediaries. They can be easier to use, and they can survive disasters that might wipe out more centralized record-keeping systems.

The ultimate goal is a system in which a user owns and totally controls some kind of digital wallet-much like the physical one we carry today for our paper documents. The wallet stores claims made by the user (like name and date of birth), evidence for those claims (like copies of birth certificates or utility bills), and third-party validations, known as attestations, that further support an individual's claims (like a government confirmation of the details on a birth certificate). Such a wallet could reside in a smart chip on a key fob or something resembling a credit card, or it could be a secure enclave within one's phone, like those already provided by some manufacturers.

With the right technology, say Haddad and others, a blockchain ID system could cover many more claims than the kind found on licenses or passports-claims like -over 21" or -US citizen." It might, for example, help a refugee prove his or her professional background or family connections. the Tazweed Supermarket, residents of the camp can buy goods using a blockchain-based controls it?

It will take a while to achieve that grand vision. Haddad's idea for Building Blocks was to start by creating an account on a blockchain for every family of Syrian refugees in a Jordanian camp. Families wouldn't then have to wait days for local banks to transfer their money, or have to share identifying information with the banks, where some unscrupulous employee might steal or misuse it. Meanwhile, the WFP, instead of forwarding money before it's spent, could itself tally all refugee purchases and pay participating stores afterward in local currency. That's a big deal, since upwards of 30 percent of UN assistance is lost to corruption.

In an early test of the Building Blocks payment idea in Pakistan, however, the transactions were slow and the fees were too high. Haddad decided one of the problems was that the system was built on the public Ethereum blockchain. The current version of Building Blocks-the one now in use in Jordan-runs on a -permissioned," or private, version of Ethereum.

On a public blockchain, anyone can join the network and validate transactions. Such a system makes it difficult for any one person or agency to tamper with or forge transactions, but transaction fees tend to add up. On a permissioned blockchain, a central authority decides who can participate.

The upside of the permissioned system is that Haddad and his team can process transactions faster and more cheaply. The downside is that since the WFP has control over who joins its network, it also has the power to rewrite transaction histories. Instead of cutting the banks out of the equation, it has essentially become one.

For Bassam and his fellow refugees in Zaatari, the distinction may not matter. Bassam told me he'd bought groceries with an iris scan even before Building Blocks was implemented, but in that case an actual bank handled the transaction. And before that, he had a card the cashier would scan, but sometimes it wore out, and it could take weeks to get it replaced. -The new system works better," he says. iris scan is used to establish digital identity at the checkout. The system uses a traditional database and an account stored on a permissioned variant of the Ethereum a major success," says Haddad, who explains that it reduces costs and the risks of sharing refugees' data, while simultaneously improving the WFP's control, flexibility, and accountability. -Now if we get a call that 20,000 people are coming in the night, we can have everything ready for them in the morning," he says. -The old way would have taken two weeks and required paper vouchers."

But because Building Blocks runs on a small, permissioned blockchain, the project's scope and impact are narrow. So narrow that some critics say it's a gimmick and the WFP could just as easily use a traditional database. Haddad acknowledges that--Of course we could do all of what we're doing today without using blockchain," he says. But, he adds, -my personal view is that the eventual end goal is digital ID, and beneficiaries must own and control their data."

Other critics say blockchains are too new for humanitarian use. Plus, it's ethically risky to experiment with vulnerable populations, says Zara Rahman, a researcher based in Berlin at the Engine Room, a nonprofit group that supports social-change organizations in using technology and data. After all, the bulk collection of identifying information and biometrics has historically been a disaster for people on the run. Think of the Holocaust, or the more recent ethnic cleansing of Rohingya in Myanmar.

A matter of courage

Ultimately, the question with Building Blocks or any similar system is whether it will put ownership of digital IDs in the hands of the people being represented or simply become an easier way for corporations and states to control people's digital existence. Bob Reid, CEO of a blockchain identity startup called Everid, told me he expects a battle over this question in the next few years. -Either it goes to individuals or it goes to major institutions that will mine our data," he says. Still, he says, the hope is that the discussion will move away from such either-or market is well stocked with real promise of using blockchains may not be realized until organizations like the WFP and the UN have the courage to open at least parts of the system to other agencies, and then to take the bravest step of all and turn over ownership of the data to beneficiaries like Bassam, who currently has little say in the matter because he has to be in the system if he wants to eat.

Building Blocks could, in theory, accomplish this if it evolves according to Haddad's vision. For instance, the WFP could offer its technology to others as a basic accounting system, tracking disbursements for food and later adding entries for land ownership, educational credentials, and travel history. If outside nonprofit organizations were allowed to add nodes to the blockchain's network, it could become more like a public blockchain, with its advantages of being harder to hack or cripple because it is decentralized and distributed.

Walking around Zaatari, a bustling city that sprang into existence as a tidal bore of humanity crashed over the Syrian border in 2012, shows what a severe test it will be for Building Blocks' ambitions. Just beyond the two officially sanctioned grocery stores that accept payments using Building Blocks, there are scores of mom-and-pop vendors openly running what are essentially black-market shops selling everything from food to washing machines to old bicycles. If Building Blocks can't be adopted there, then aside from making the WFP's operations a bit more efficient and transparent, it will remain little more than a centrally controlled database dressed in a costume of distributed, decentralized trust.

Russ Juskalian is a freelance writer based in Munich, Germany. He visited Zaatari this February.

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tevnakurdi · 4 years

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Corona's effects on the humanitarian situation in north-eastern SyriaMarch 28, 2020

The Covid19 pandemic crippled the world’s movement and cast a shadow over millions of people. It made governments mobilize their full potential: political, economic and even military, which until now seems insufficient to end or contain the pandemic, at least while it is spreading continuously in the absence of a treatment. There is no doubt that in a country like Syria, which has been suffering from a devastating conflict for nearly ten years, the pandemic will have this catastrophic impact, seeing the unstable security situation and the lack of the necessary infrastructure to confront it. Meanwhile, the war continues.

This situation requires Syrian people to make double efforts to mitigate the risk of infection with the virus, in light of the almost complete absence and collapse of the state and its institutions, especially the health sector. In the face of this catastrophic situation we are trying through this paper to shed light on the situation in northeastern Syria and to suggest a set of measures that may help Syrians to address the crisis together.

Health status.

The health sector in north-eastern Syria suffers from major weaknesses in its infrastructure, a shortage of medicine and medical materials, and a severe shortage of medical personnel as a result of the ongoing instability in the three governorates due to the ongoing conflict and continued displacement.

There are many urgent needs in this sector, including corona tests, artificial respirators, oxygen cylinders, oxygen generators, field hospitals, sterilizers, all types of medicine, and masks and protective clothing. Health sector workers, being vulnerable to being infected with the virus, are in dire need of all these materials.

Local parties.

There is no doubt that this situation greatly exceeds the capabilities of local parties having to deal with this global catastrophe, but this does not negate their responsibility or reduce their chances of seeing the virus spread exponentially. This situation should be dealt with wisely, through inclusion and participation, making smart use of the available resources, and installing the following procedures:

１. Stopping all forms of conflict and announcing a ceasefire so that all the sides can use all their capabilities to deal with the virus;

２. The political parties should put their differences aside and work together, which would also contribute to rebuilding confidence;

３. Local authorities should adhere to transparency standards in announcing the detection of cases of infection and disclosing the numbers of infected persons and their places of residence, so that all individuals who have been in contact with the infected people can take the necessary measures;

４. Abolishing all kinds of monthly financial obligations that are due to be paid by citizens, in addition to developing a plan to compensate families and individuals with low incomes so that they can secure their needs and adhere to the quarantine;

５. Strict control over all companies, individuals and parties who seek to take advantage of the situation by raising prices and take strong measures against violators;

６. Issuing clear and strict instructions to prevent entrepreneurs and companies from arbitrarily laying off any worker without fair compensation;

７. Tightening the medical and preventive measures in the camps to avoid the spread of the epidemic in these locations;

８. Installing strict medical and preventive measures in prisons and taking all measures to prevent the spread of the epidemic. All political detainees should be released;

９. The Internal Security Forces and military forces must step up action to address the epidemic. In cases of natural disasters, security and military forces have a great role in protecting societies, thus controlling quarantine.

International parties:

All countries suffer from the effects of this pandemic, which affects cooperation and solidarity between countries. At the same time, it increases the obligations of the richer and economically stronger countries towards the poorest countries. This widespread virus also increases the burden on international organizations such as the United Nations, the European Union, and the World Health Organization. All actors must work together to tackle this global humanitarian catastrophe. The following steps should be taken:

１. The Security Council must pass a resolution declaring a global truce and stopping all forms of conflict not only in Syria but in all countries. In addition, all export and import of weapons should be halted, to stop conflicts and also to limit the spread of violence and crime. It is time for the Security Council to take bold measures to build real peace and security;

２. The international community must provide all healthcare necessities, as Syria is considered a fragile and devastated countries after ten years of war;

３. The Security Council must reactivate Resolution 2165 and open border crossings, such as the Yarbia crossing and other crossings. The Russian government should not obstruct the implementation of this decision;

４. The United Nations, donor countries and international organizations should reconstruct humanitarian aid, especially healthcare, paying attention to the most densely population areas first;

５. The Turkish government must stop all types of military operations, and it must end its operations to close the water station in the village of Al-Aluk, since hygiene is the most effective way to counter the virus;

６. We recommend the Kurdistan Regional Government to open the border to aid entry without any restrictions so that all types of aid can be transported except for what constitutes a violation of the quarantine;

７. All parties should continue to provide support to local organizations, as stopping support would undermine anti-virus efforts, and also continue to support health programs and civil defense projects.

Civil community.

Civil society organizations and public opinion leaders are making tremendous efforts to address the spread of the virus by providing all kinds of support. These efforts can be more effective and produce great results through the following set of measures:

１.Increasing coordination and working together to build a unified database so that efforts are not repeated, or aid is distributed repeatedly;

２.Developing a long-term response plan beyond the end of this epidemic so that it can also address its long-term effects on the lives of citizens;

３.Continuing and intensifying awareness efforts and combating the dissemination of false information on social media;

４.Intensifying efforts to form volunteer working groups and teams in order to assist families and individuals who are unable to leave their homes to provide for their daily needs, provided all necessary measures are taken to avoid infection;

５.Enhancing coordination with local authorities in order to promote effective and positive cooperation.

Finally, the Corona virus indeed poses a major challenge for humankind, but at the same time, it may represent a great opportunity to increase cooperation and build joint mechanisms of action that transcend differences and problems. Therefore, we call on everyone to put their differences aside and work together for the common good.

#COVID19 #human rights #democrcay #kurdistan #Kurd #syria #civil society

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clubofinfo · 7 years

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Expert: As the late media activist Danny Schechter wrote, when it comes to the corporate broadcast media: ‘The more you watch, the less you know.’ Schechter’s observation only fails in one key respect: ‘mainstream’ output does tell us a lot about which foreign governments are being lined up for regime change. In 2013, it was remarkable to see the BBC reporting claims from Syria on a daily basis in a way that almost always blamed the Syrian government, and President Assad personally, for horrendous war crimes. But as the New York Times reported last month, the picture was rather less black and white. The US was embroiled in a dirty war that was ‘one of the costliest covert action programs in the history of the C.I.A’, running to ‘more than $1 billion over the life of the program’. Its aim was to support a vast ‘rebel’ army created and armed by the US, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey to overthrow the Syrian government. The BBC’s relentless headline stories were mostly supplied by ‘activists’ and ‘rebels’ who, in fact, were militants attempting to overthrow Assad, and whose claims could not be verified. Veteran Middle East correspondent Patrick Cockburn described the problem afflicting virtually all ‘mainstream’ reporting on Syria: All wars always produce phony atrocity stories – along with real atrocities. But in the Syrian case fabricated news and one-sided reporting have taken over the news agenda to a degree probably not seen since the First World War… The real reason that reporting of the Syrian conflict has been so inadequate is that Western news organisations have almost entirely outsourced their coverage to the rebel side. There was a simple reason why ‘rebel’ claims were uncontested: they originated from ‘areas controlled by people so dangerous no foreign journalist dare set foot among them’. The additional point being that ‘it has never been plausible that unaffiliated local citizens would be allowed to report freely’. This was obvious to everyone, doubtless including the BBC, which nevertheless produced a tsunami of ‘rebel’-sourced propaganda. Crucially, these stories were not balanced attempts to explore the various claims; they sought to establish a version of events justifying regime change: ‘rebels’ and ‘activists’ were ‘good’, Assad was ‘bad’ and had to go. Journalist Robert Parry explains: The job of the media is not to provide as much meaningful information as possible to the people so they can exercise their free judgment; it is to package certain information in a way to guide the people to a preferred conclusion. The BBC campaign was clearly inspired – whether consciously or otherwise – by a high-level decision to engineer regime change in Syria. The key moment arrived in August 2013 when the US came very close to launching a major attack against Syrian government forces, supposedly in response to Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons in Ghouta, Damascus. Only the UK parliament’s rejection of the case for war and warnings from US generals on doubts about the claims, and likely fallout from regime change, prevented Obama from attacking. Particularly disturbing was the fact that, as the possibility of a direct US regime change effort faded, so too did the steady flow of BBC atrocity claims. It was as if, with the goal temporarily unattainable, the propaganda tap was simply closed. It was later re-opened ahead of an anticipated, pro-war Clinton presidency, and then as part of an attempt to push president-elect Trump to intensify the Syrian war. ‘Well, Shock, Shock, It’s The Oil!‘ This year, we have witnessed a comparable BBC propaganda blitz on Venezuela centred around opposition claims that President Maduro has ‘eroded Venezuela’s democratic institutions and mismanaged its economy’. The BBC campaign has again been characterised by daily reports from Venezuela presenting a black and white picture of the crisis: Maduro ‘bad’, opposition ‘good’. The BBC has again promoted the sense of an escalating crisis that will inevitably and justifiably result in regime change. It is no surprise, then, to learn from the Independent: The head of the CIA has suggested the agency is working to change the elected government of Venezuela and is collaborating with two countries in the region to do so. CIA director Mike Pompeo said he was ‘hopeful that there can be a transition in Venezuela and we the CIA is doing its best to understand the dynamic there’. No eyebrows were raised in a US political culture obsessed with unproven claims of Russian interference in last year’s US presidential elections. Last month, Pompeo’s boss, President Trump, commented on Venezuela: We don’t talk about it but a military option, a military option is certainly something that we could pursue. Pompeo’s and Trump’s statements indicate a continuation of US policy that supported a 2002 coup that temporarily overthrew (then) President Chavez and which ‘was closely tied to senior officials in the US government’. Political analyst Ricardo Vaz notes the ironic fact that ‘many of the opposition leaders’ denouncing Maduro’s alleged attacks on democracy, including Henrique Capriles, Julio Borges, Leopoldo López and Maria Corina Machado, ‘were directly involved in the 2002 coup attempt’. US interest in Venezuela was explained with admirable candour in a classified US government document from December 12, 1978: ‘OUR FUNDAMENTAL INTERESTS IN VENEZUELA ARE: 1. THAT VENEZUELA CONTINUE TO SUPPLY A SIGNIFICANT PROPORTION OF OUR PETROLEUM IMPORTS AND CONTINUE TO FOLLOW A MODERATE AND RESPONSIBLE OIL PRICE POSITION IN OPEC…’ According to the respected BP ‘Statistical review of world energy’ (June 28, 2015), proven oil reserves in Venezuela are the largest in the world, totalling 297 billion barrels. The US Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, naturally shares Trump’s and Pompeo’s view of the country, commenting: We are evaluating all of our policy options as to what can we do to create a change of conditions where either Maduro decides he doesn’t have a future and wants to leave of his own accord or we can return the government processes back to their constitution. (Our emphasis) The fact that Tillerson was chairman and chief executive officer of the world’s largest oil company, ExxonMobil, from 2006-2016, having joined the company in 1975, might give cause for pause in considering the ‘change of conditions’ he has in mind. In 2007, the Evening Standard reported: BP and the other majors are taking a hard line with Chavez, demanding conditions and compensation for [Venezuelan policy changes]… Exxon Mobil chief executive Rex Tillerson said that unless the negotiations produce a profitable proposal, “we won’t be staying”.’1 And, of course, Trump has left us in no doubt about who is the rightful owner of the world’s oil: I wasn’t a fan of Iraq, I didn’t want to go into Iraq. But I will tell you – when we were in, we got out wrong. And I always said, in addition to that: “Keep the oil!”… So we shoulda kept the oil. But okay, maybe we’ll have another chance… But the fact is: we shoulda kept the oil. Our search of the Lexis database (August 30, 2017) for UK national press articles mentioning ‘Tillerson’, ‘Exxon’ and ‘Venezuela’ over the seven months since Tillerson was made Secretary of State generated precisely three hits. None of these discussed oil as a possible motive driving US policy – a taboo subject. Investigative journalist Greg Palast describes why and when Venezuela became an Official Enemy of the West: Well, shock, shock, it’s the oil! Chavez, back in 2000, 2001, decided that he wasn’t going to give it away anymore… Big US oil companies were paying a royalty for Venezuela’s super-heavy oil of about 1 per cent – 1 per cent! – okay. And for the regular oil, the heavy oil, it was 16 per cent. So the oil companies were keeping 84 per cent, and Chavez said: “You’re going to have to pay 30 per cent, you can only keep 70 per cent of our oil… You gotta split off a bit for the people of Venezuela.” And, of course, that made him enemy number one – not to Americans, but to America’s landlords, the oil companies. Regional specialist Mark Weisbrot commented recently on the Venezuelan opposition’s US allies: These right-wing U.S. politicians – with much cooperation from all of the U.S. administrations of the past 15 years – have consistently fought to overthrow the Venezuelan government. This is all they can think about, regardless of the consequences of escalating violence, increased suffering, or even civil war. Weisbrot’s overly-optimistic conclusion: The U.S. strategy of “regime change” has contributed to the death of hundreds of thousands of people — mostly civilians — in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan. It has also had a hideous history in the Americas. Hopefully something has been learned from these crimes and tragedies. The BBC’s Propaganda Blitz In numerous ‘reports’, the BBC has presented damning criticism of the Venezuelan government, often with no or nominal balance. We will sample below from a large number of similar offerings with a few related examples from other corporate media. On May 6, the BBC published a piece titled: ‘Venezuela protests: Women march against Maduro’. The article reported: The US has also expressed concern about what UN ambassador Nikki Haley called a “violent crackdown”. At least 36 people have died and hundreds have been injured in weeks of protests. This gave the impression that a government ‘crackdown’ was responsible for the deaths. But the truth was more mixed. In July, Venezuela Analysis reported that since violent anti-government protests began on April 4, there had been 14 deaths caused by the authorities and 23 direct victims of opposition political violence, with 61 deaths disputed or unaccounted for. Like so many BBC articles, this one focused on claims that Venezuela is a ‘dictatorship’: “The dictatorship is living its last days and Maduro knows it,” former MP Maria Corina Machado told AFP news agency at the women’s march. The BBC even included a comment presumably intended to remind readers of the infamous toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad (in fact orchestrated by US forces): Meanwhile video posted on social media purportedly showed the pulling down of a small statue of Hugo Chavez in the western town of Rosario de Perija. In similar vein, a May 9 BBC piece included the comment: The secretary general of the Organisation of American States (OAS) likened the country to a dictatorship. While recognising that the Maduro government certainly merits criticism for mishandling the current situation, ‘both economically and politically’, political analyst Greg Wilpert noted that ‘none of the arguments against the democratic legitimacy of the Maduro government hold much water’. Moreover, ‘polls repeatedly indicate that even though Maduro is fairly unpopular, a majority of Venezuelans want him to finish his term in office, which expires in January 2019’. Western media devoted intense coverage to Maduro’s decision to hold elections for a Constituent Assembly in July. In response, the Trump administration extended sanctions. Mark Weisbrot commented: The pretext for the sanctions is that the new Constitutional Assembly will essentially carry out a coup d’etat, abolishing the National Assembly – which the opposition won by a wide margin in December 2015 – and allowing President Nicolas Maduro to cancel presidential elections, which are due next year. But as Weisbrot noted, such a cancellation ‘will not happen automatically’ as a result of the Constituent Assembly election, and so ‘it does not make sense that the sanctions should be triggered by the election itself’. On May 11, the BBC published ‘Inside Venezuela’s anti-government protests’. The first comment relayed by the BBC: There’s no freedom of expression here in Venezuela. There’s no freedom of any kind. Media analyst Joe Emersberger describes the reality: The biggest lie told over the past fifteen years about Venezuela is that its media is cowed by the government and that it has rendered the opposition voiceless. He adds: In fact the protests and the leading opposition leaders’ take on the protests are being extensively covered on the largest private networks: Venevision, Televen, Globovision. If people abroad sampled Venezuela’s TV media directly, as opposed to judging it by what is said about it by the international media and some big NGOs, they’d be shocked to find the opposition constantly denouncing the government and even making very thinly veiled appeals to the military to oust Maduro. The BBC’s second quoted opinion: ‘e’re here to put an end to the dictatorship in Venezuela, so that our children can grow up in a free Venezuela. There was no balance and there have been no similar compilations looking ‘inside’ Venezuela’s pro-government protests. One would hardly guess that Maduro was elected president on April 14, 2013 in a democratic election. In a May 12 report, ‘Venezuela protests: a week in pictures’, the BBC included two successive photo captions, which read: People angry with the government of President Nicolas Maduro have been taking to the streets almost daily since the beginning of April. And: Many have been injured, and there have been close to 40 protest-related deaths. This again suggested that people ‘angry with the government’ had been killed. Opposition violence has included bomb attacks on police, grenades thrown at the supreme court building from a helicopter, a government supporter burned alive, shootings, attempted lynchings, and so on. This violence was not mentioned by Paul Mason when he condemned ‘Maduro’s crackdown’ in the Guardian. A New York Times op-ed under the title, ‘Venezuela Needs International Intervention. Now.,’ commented in similar vein: President Nicolás Maduro has responded with an iron fist. More than 50 people have been killed, 1,000 injured, and 2,700 arrested… The bomb attack on Venezuelan National Guard soldiers shown in this video, severely injuring several of the soldiers and cheered by people watching, would, of course, have been described by all US-UK media as a ‘terror attack’, if it had happened in the West. The Guardian published a similar photo gallery of anti-government protestors, but not of pro-government protestors. The compilation came with remarkable captions of this kind: Drawing inspiration from Ukraine’s 2013-14 revolt, young protesters in Venezuela carry Viking-like shields as they battle government security forces during protests against President Nicolás Maduro One photo caption read: ‘”Miraflores on fire” is written on the front of this shield. Miraflores Palace is the president’s official workplace’ Another: The opposition says President Maduro has created a dictatorship. The last parliamentary vote held in 2015 gave the opposition a majority but the government has repeatedly blocked any attempts to oust Maduro The BBC’s May 16 piece was titled, ‘Venezuela: Teenager killed as mass protests rage’. A May 18 BBC piece maintained the sense of developing crisis: ‘Venezuela: Soldiers sent to quell looting amid protests’. On May 22, a BBC report opened with these words: “Venezuela is now a dictatorship,” says Luis Ugalde, a Spanish-born Jesuit priest who during his 60 years living in Venezuela has become one of the South American nation’s most well-known political scientists. The BBC later offered another ‘inside’ look at anti-government protestors: ‘Apathy to activism: Venezuelan students on why they protest.’ Mario Bonucci, rector of the University of the Andes, was quoted: This is an institution where you can speak your mind freely without fear of repercussion and that’s uncomfortable for this government. A remark that again ignored the fact that widespread criticism of Maduro’s government is published and broadcast by many Venezuelan media. The BBC offered no balancing comment. The 2002 Coup: Telling Omissions On July 9, the BBC wrote of opposition leader Leopoldo López: Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has praised the decision to release from prison one of the country’s main opposition leaders, Leopoldo López… Mr López was serving a 14-year sentence for inciting violence during anti-government protests in 2014, a charge he has always denied. The Supreme Court said he was released on health grounds. There is rather more to be said about Lopez. Venezuela Analysis commented: Lopez is also well known in Venezuela for his active participation in the April 2002 coup against the democratically elected president Hugo Chávez. During the coup, using his authority as Mayor of Chacao, he led the illegal arrest of Minister of Justice Ramón Rodríguez Chacín. The report continued: In a joint appeal with Maria Corina Machado, López called on citizens to join his “La Salida” campaign (“The Way Out”), described the government as a “dictatorship” and called on Venezuelans to “rise up” emulating the example of January 23, 1958 (when a popular uprising overthrew the Perez Jimenez dictatorship). The message was clear: Venezuela was a dictatorship, the government had to be overthrown by force. The Guardian also reported on Lopez: Security agents have since seized two opposition leaders from their homes after they called for protests against the vote. Joe Emersberger pointed out some telling omissions: Umm no. Leopoldo Lopez – while already under house arrest – made a video in which he called for a military coup. Don’t try this while under house arrest in the UK, where you can get put away for Facebook posts advocating a riot (even if you are not under house arrest at the time). Writing for OffGuardian, Ricardo Vaz asked of corporate media performance: Why is there never a mention that the opposition leadership is full of protagonists from that US-backed military coup that ultimately failed? Quite simply because it would undermine the entire “democracy vs. dictatorship” propaganda narrative. Numerous journalists have attempted to use the Venezuelan crisis to also attack Jeremy Corbyn as part of the relentless smear campaign against him. In The Times, David Aaronovitch wrote of the Venezuelan revolution: I believe we need to know why you [Jeremy Corbyn] think it’s failed. This from the columnist who has tirelessly backed wars of ‘liberation’ generating mass death and utter disaster in Iraq, Libya and Syria. Conclusion: Enforcing “The Truth” The goal of a mass media propaganda campaign is to create the impression that ‘everybody knows’ that Saddam is a ‘threat’, Gaddafi is ‘about to commit mass murder’, Assad ‘has to go’, Corbyn is ‘destroying the Labour party’, and so on. The picture of the world presented must be clear-cut. The public must be made to feel certain that the ‘good guys’ are basically benevolent, and the ‘bad guys’ are absolutely appalling and must be removed. This is achieved by relentless repetition of the theme over days, weeks, months and even years. Numerous individuals and organisations are used to give the impression of an informed consensus – there is no doubt! Once this ‘truth’ has been established, anyone contradicting or even questioning it is typically portrayed as a shameful ‘apologist’ in order to deter further dissent and enforce conformity. A key to countering this propaganda is to ask some simple questions: Why are US-UK governments and corporate media much more concerned about suffering in Venezuela than the far worse horrors afflicting war-torn, famine-stricken Yemen? Why do UK MPs rail against Maduro while rejecting a parliamentary motion to suspend UK arms supplies to their Saudi Arabian allies attacking Yemen? Why is the imperfect state of democracy in Venezuela a source of far greater outrage than outright tyranny in Saudi Arabia? The answers could hardly be more obvious. * ‘Oil giants face reserves blow in Venezuela grab,’ Evening Standard, April 30, 2007. http://clubof.info/

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lucarioinwonder-blog · 8 years

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The “Lesser” of the Less

In recent years, few political events triggered as many controversial debates throughout the whole world as the refugee problem in Syria. Ever since the local Civil War began in 2011, millions of refugees have left their home in war and moved to countries like Turkey, Greece and the Western world beyond. As a result of the increasing number of immigrants into Europe and North America, our media and people started to pay massive attentions on the issue, which soon arose to the headline of every newspaper and the topic of every social science class in university. Liberals immediately came out to defend for their human rights, while Conservatives across the Atlantic tried all means to shut their doors. The whole concept of “refugee” has never been as clear and urgent as today, and we are more concerned and active than ever, in this age of Refugee Crisis.

However, in the context of global history, the current status of social concern is actually a rather abnormal case, given that the Syrian Civil War was for not the whole refugee problem, nor is the refugees in Germany and America the only displaced people in the world. Despite of the sheer number of 3.88 million Syrian refugees in the world nowadays, they only account for about one-fourth of the entire refugee population; they are neither the largest group historically: Afghan refugees, persecuted by a series of conflicts including the Soviet War in Afghanistan and Taliban’s rule later, peaked with more than six million in the 1990s and still remains the second largest group today. Then follow the refugees from Somalia, with a population of one million. Many of us might feel rather shocked by these facts, since they are told and discussed not nearly as much as the Syrian case. While the extremely severe disaster in Aleppo definitely explains a lot, I am afraid that another reason tells more: most of these “forgotten” refugees did not come to the First World, but to their poor neighbors also from the Third World.

Take the situation of Afghan refugees as an instance. After the invasion of Soviet Union in 1979, millions of Afghans had fled crossed the border into other countries, especially Pakistan, who holds more than 1.5 million refugees today, and Iran. Apparently, these displaced people had no less agonies and tragedies in lives than their later counterparts from Syria, but they received much less attentions and relieves, just because they and their stories did not to reach the Westerners. Similarly, the Somalian refugees successfully making their ways to the First World were a minuscule portion of the whole refugee population, which mostly chose other African countries like Kenya and Ethiopia as destinations. As a result, few of our media and people heard about or even cared about the lethal dangers these Somalians faced on the vast savanna of East Africa, while we wrote long articles discussing the Syrian refugees dying crossing the Mediterranean. If we acknowledge that all humans are created equal and that the refugees struggling Europe are no less than everyone else, why should we let the same struggling people suffer and die obscurely in Pakistan and Kenya? Are they really the “lesser of the less”?

The answer to the second question, however, might be confirmative, as these forgotten immigrants are indeed “lesser”, not in their natural human rights but from the perspective of economic status and social mobility. While absolutely there are people who migrated from countries like Afghanistan and Somali to the Western world, they are either the luckiest or the wealthiest ones. For those who chose to stay in their countries in war and turmoil or to move to other underdeveloped neighbors, the lack of resources and pathways built the invisible wall between them and the West. Moreover, look at the map, and you would find that the distances between these two countries and either Europe or North America are way farther than that from Syria to Turkey, Greece and beyond. Even in Syria only a small amount of people could make to Europe, not to mention those in Africa and South West Asia.

In the end I would like to clarify one thing. By no means have I thought that Syrian refugees do not matter or should matter less; in fact, they need much more helps and supports than have ever been provided. Nonetheless, the whole idea of liberalism would lose meaning if we only care about crisis happening right in front of us, while neglecting, deliberately or not, the same cases beyond our sights. To be a liberal is far more than cleaning up our own room; it’s about carrying out the whole word.

Sources

The UN Refugee Agency’s website

http://www.unhcr.org/en-us

These two websites are UN’s official database on refugees

https://data.unhcr.org/dataviz/

http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?d=UNHCR&f=indID%3AType-Ref

An article recapitulating the world’s refugees

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/06/daily-chart-13?zid=312&ah=da4ed4425e74339883d473adf5773841

An article about Syrian refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/31/more-than-2500-refugees-and-migrants-have-died-trying-to-cross-t/

An article about Somalian refugees in Kenya and Ethiopia

http://www.resettlement.eu/page/somali-refugees-kenya-ethiopia

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