Refugees, Migrants and helping (Merged Thread)
TechNewsWorld, 8 Apr 08: The Whole World Is Watching: Google Shines Light on Refugee Camps
Quote:
Google and the
UN High Commission for Refugees -- the United Nations agency responsible for tracking and caring for refugees from the world's conflicts -- unveiled a Web-based mapping tool Tuesday meant to help raise awareness of displaced populations.
The
tool, Google Earth Outreach, will help to highlight efforts to help millions of people forced to flee their homes because of war and other conflicts.
Moderator at work
This thread was called U.N. High Commission for Refugees, even though on a quick glance it covers more than that. Today I have changed the title to Refugees, Migrants and helping (Merged Thread) and closed it. The catalyst was a new thread in another forum.
Using Google Earth and Maps, the agencies can create multimedia presentations by layering text, audio and video over maps showing where refugee hotspots are located......
Pitfalls of a hi-tech fix?
Sounds like the UNHCR has succumbed to a technological fix and without considering what impact publicity has had in refugee situations. Will graphics really have an impact on Darfur? Yes, the Biafra -v- Federal Nigeria war had awful footage; did it change what happened? No. The Pakistani military action in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) was well reported; did the footage affect India's decision to intervene?
Since the publicity sought appears to be aimed at a web aware public, how effectrive has that been to date?
Returning to Darfur, will better graphics that lead to greater public protest cause governments to forcefully intervene?
davidbfpo
Question about Afghan refugee camps inside Pakistan
Tom:
Appreciate your UN rules change ideas as in Africa.
QUESTION: Do you know proximity or lack of proximity of the "in general" Afghan refugees in Pakistan since the Afghan-USSR war? While many have gone back to Afghanistan there are still several thousand, I think, still in Pakistan, having had a few more generations of youngsters in the meanwhile inside the camps so to speak.
Thanks.
Thanks for your input David
David:
Thanks much for your input.
Here is some info I found on the Internet about both Pakistan and Iranian Afghan refugee camps. I think this source is from the UN.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=70450
It would be helpful if Iran, which is majority Shiia, would in some pecuniary way help with the cost of reconstruction and other needs today of and inside Afghanistan.
If Tom has some additional insight or info I would be glad to know of that, too. I am very interested in Tom's idea of changed guidance for UN refugee camps worldwide. Proactively that makes very good sense.
Just had an e-mail from John McCain saying his staff are in receipt of and will work with the Voice of America ideas I've been pushing which you have already seen, MOAA article and CBS TV-42 clip. Every bit of help from my perspective is of benefit to our boys and girls on the ground there, as VOA can and should lead to more illiterate population goodwill, that is my hope, anyhow.
George
Thanks for interpolated numbers
Many thanks to Rex our Montreal, Canada fellow Council Member, for his interpolated fiscal info regarding the value [interpolated] of Iran's contributions to help with Afghan related issues.
I agree with the fact [Rex makes] that Iran is doing anything at all is good news, fiscally speaking.
However, I disagree as to the literal vs. interpolated dollar value of Iran's involvement. Being a theocratic [Islamic] nation Iran has a Muslim duty to do much more in dollar value of assistance to Afghanistan and it's refugees formerly and still inside Iran, in my opinion nothing to do with interpolated dollar values.
But, I have learned from our Canadian friend's observations and in no way mean to be discourteous.
ASIDE: The late Canadian Brigadier General Denis [Denny] Whitkaker [Toronto area] was my late first cousin, Jim Singleton's, father in law. Have you, Rex, read any or all of Denis Whitaker's six books on his experiences in WW II? As you know, Whitaker as a Captain, Canadian Army was involved in and managed to somehow escape from the fiasco at Dieppe on the French coast in 1942.
Here are B/G Whitaker's six books in case any other SWJ followers may be unaware of or interested in reading all or some of them:
- Normandy: The Real Story of How Ordinary Allied Soldiers Defeated Hitler by Denis Whitaker, Shelagh Whitaker, and Terry Copp
-Victory at Falaise: The Soldier's Story by Denis Whitaker and Shelagh Whitaker with Terry Copp
- Tug of War: The Allied Victory That Opened Antwerp by Denis Whitaker and Shelagh Whitaker
- Dieppe: Tragedy to Triumph by Denis Whitaker and Shelagh Whitaker
- Rhineland: The Battle to End the War by Denis Whitaker and Shelagh Whitaker
- The Battle of the Scheldt by Denis Whitaker
Refusing Refugees: Why are We Building Walls Instead of Bridges
Should Migrants Fleeing Gang Violence in Central America Be Accorded Refugee Status?
Entry Excerpt:
--------
Read the full post and make any comments at the SWJ Blog.
This forum is a feed only and is closed to user comments.
Refusing Refugees: Why are We Building Walls Instead of Bridges
Refusing Refugees: Why are We Building Walls Instead of Bridges
Entry Excerpt:
--------
Read the full post and make any comments at the SWJ Blog.
This forum is a feed only and is closed to user comments.
On Refugees and Terrorists
On Refugees and Terrorists
Entry Excerpt:
--------
Read the full post and make any comments at the SWJ Blog.
This forum is a feed only and is closed to user comments.
Forget the Syrian Refugees. America Needs to Bring its Afghan and Iraqi Interpreters
Syrian Refugees and Good Strategy
Syrian Refugees and Good Strategy
Entry Excerpt:
--------
Read the full post and make any comments at the SWJ Blog.
This forum is a feed only and is closed to user comments.
The U.S. and U.N. Have Abandoned Christian Refugees
The U.S. and U.N. Have Abandoned Christian Refugees
Entry Excerpt:
--------
Read the full post and make any comments at the SWJ Blog.
This forum is a feed only and is closed to user comments.
Fears Growing Islamic State Successfully Weaponizing Refugees
Fears Growing Islamic State Successfully Weaponizing Refugees
Entry Excerpt:
--------
Read the full post and make any comments at the SWJ Blog.
This forum is a feed only and is closed to user comments.
Trump, Refugees, and the Truth
Trump, Refugees, and the Truth
Entry Excerpt:
--------
Read the full post and make any comments at the SWJ Blog.
This forum is a feed only and is closed to user comments.
Why camps are the wrong way to help today’s refugees
Catching up on my reading of 'The Spectator' I found this April 2017 article by Ian Collier, a UK academic, who sometimes has a controversial opinion.
Here is a "taster" in the second passage:
Quote:
To rise to the challenge, we need to combine the instinctive compassion that mass suffering arouses with the dispassionate analysis necessary to craft an effective response. We need the heart supported by the head. The growing humanitarian crisis has come about because we’ve deployed one without the other. Our response has veered between the heartless head and the headless heart, and the results have been calamitous.
Link:https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/03/...days-refugees/
To be kind is to be cruel, to be cruel is to be kind: Spengler
David Goldman at The Asia Times: http://www.atimes.com/to-be-kind-is-...is-to-be-kind/
From April 14, 2016. Selected excerpts:
Quote:
Turkey’s President and de facto dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan last October threatened European officials with 10,000 to 15,000 drowned migrants...“We can open the doors to Greece and Bulgaria anytime and we can put the refugees on buses, What will you do with the refugees if you don’t get a deal? Kill the refugees? the EU will be confronted with more than a dead boy on the shores of Turkey. There will be 10,000 or 15,000. How will you deal with that?”
The leader of a prominent Muslim country who claims to speak for the Muslim world threatened the Europeans with 10,000 or 15,000 Muslim deaths. When in world history has one side in negotiations threaten to kill its own people in order to gain leverage?
This is the first time in the entire history of warfare that a combatant intentionally set out to maximize civilian casualties on its own side, the better to gain diplomatic leverage.
The more the West indulges its humanitarian sentiments–that is, its squeamishness in the face of absolute evil–the more calamities will befall Muslim civilians, because Muslim leaders from Raqqa to Ankara have learned to weaponize horror. Staging humanitarian catastrophes in order to blackmail the West has succeeded for the most part.
What would be required to persuade the likes of President Erdogan that the West will not accede to blackmail? Sadly, the West would have to watch with indifference as horrors unfolded on its borders.
To be kind is to be cruel: it encourages horrific outcomes staged to manipulate the Western conscience. Paradoxically, to be cruel is to be kind.
A hidden migrant crisis in the Gulf of Aden
A startling article, although years ago the movement of refugees into the Yemen was encountered. So here are two passages by a SME on the Yemen:
Quote:
more than 160,000 people arrived in Yemen in 2018 alone. Just to be clear this means that more desperate people crossed the Red Sea into Yemen than crossed the Mediterranean heading for Europe. Yemen is in the midst of an internationalised civil war and suffering from the world’s worst humanitarian crisis according to the UN’s Secretary General. There has been no outcry about a ‘migrant invasion’ from any Yemeni Minister of the Interior, whether from the internationally recognised government or the Huthi movement who control the capital Sana’a. Indeed Yemen has received and accepted close to a million Somali refugees since the 1990s, allowing them to work and live in the country, as Yemen is the only country in the Arabian Peninsula to recognise the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. Prior to the current war, the country’s authorities have been impressively hospitable to Somali refugees, though not to the thousands of Ethiopians and others who have crossed the Red Sea.
Near the end:
Quote:
Migrants heading into Yemen are facing extreme hardship conditions in addition to entering a country at war where most of the population are also suffering from famine conditions. What does all this say about living conditions and prospects in their own countries?
Link:https://www.opendemocracy.net/north-africa-west-asia/helen-lackner/migrant-crisis-in-europe-look-at-yemen?
Last Stronghold of ISIS: Can Love Win?
https://www.freeburmarangers.org/201...-can-love-win/
Last Stronghold of ISIS: Can Love Win?
Quote:
Bullets flew by our faces and smacked into the ground around us. Snipers were shooting at us from the tent-and-truck city that was Baghouz, the last physical stronghold of ISIS. Below, in a smoke-and-dust-shrouded valley at a bend in the Euphrates River, was the distillation of the most hard-core living ISIS members.
The battle being fought out in this little corner of the Syrian desert began when, with their families, ISIS had retreated from Mosul, Iraq, pushed out by the Iraqi Army and coalition forces, to Raqqa, Syria, the last capital of the ISIS caliphate. From there the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) had taken over the offensive and, with the help of air and artillery support from the coalition, had pushed ISIS out to Deir Ezzor. The fight had continued and the last remnants of ISIS had been steadily pushed back along the east side of the Euphrates to Baghouz on the Iraq/ Syrian border.
The photos of the ISIS truck and tent city is worth viewing, I would have a hard time visualizing if I didn't see them here. The article transitions into a discussion with photos on the refugees. Can love win? I have no idea, but the world has a problem regarding the large number of women and children refugees from ISIS or fleeing ISIS. We're obviously not going to pursue Hitler's solution and maintaining refugee camps indefinitely doesn't seem sustainable. Most countries don't want to help because if they bring back one refugee that commits an act of terrorism, it will politically devastate the politician and political party that agreed to bring them back. The odds of Assad's regime and his Russian, Iranian, and Chinese partners offering a solution is slim. Most likely it will be a problem dropped in the lap of a corrupt and often ineffective UN and various NGO groups. I don't see this ending well.