Refugees, Migrants and helping (Merged Thread)

TechNewsWorld, 8 Apr 08: The Whole World Is Watching: Google Shines Light on Refugee Camps

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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......

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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

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Originally Posted by davidbfpo

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

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David,

They certainly played large roles in Somalia and the Rwanda saga. Of course such roles in both cases were both good and bad, depending on one's perspective.

The UNHCR is such a wierd duck to begin with; its charter means that it legally cannot work itself out of business. It does great work in meeting crises but then it tends to sustain those crises and create more.

In that way it is very much like UN peacekeeping with the exception that UNDPKO relies on donor contingents for forces and that tends to limit interventions in some cases (certainly not all, not even most).

Admittedly I speak from a jaundiced view after Goma and the UNHCR's role in those camps. But overall it seems like the UNHCR never met a refugee it didn't do its best to keep a refugee.

Tom

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Originally Posted by Tom Odom

But overall it seems like the UNHCR never met a refugee it didn't do its best to keep a refugee.

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UNHCR certainly is an odd duck, but they are also caught up in some even weirder political issues. Consider, by way of example, the need for refugees to have government issued papers in order to claim refuge status in many nations (kind of hard to do in many cases these days...). Consider also the role of the safe third nation ruling that has been adopted by the US, Canada, EU, etc. For many of these countries, the UNHCR acts as a para-government to certify that a refugee is actually a refugee. Furthermore, they make a convenient political intermediary to blame and yet, at the same time, they have almost no actual power at all (look at what's happening in the refugee camps in Uganda as an example....).

Do they keep people as refugees? Sure they do - the entire system is structured that way and they don't have the power to change it even though I know some of their senior bureaucrats at least want to.

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Do they keep people as refugees? Sure they do - the entire system is structured that way and they don't have the power to change it even though I know some of their senior bureaucrats at least want to.

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Agree fully. That was the source of the great frustration in the Congo with the camps. Funny that the UNHCR folks inside Rwanda supported closing the IDP camps inside the country--they were not "refugees" so the UNHCR charterv did not apply. UNREO however was against forced closure along with key NGOs MSF inside Rwanda. MSF in Goma support closing the camps in Zaire (Congo). All of this cause gridlock until the new Rwandan government said enough--along with the Tanzanians.

What is needed is a clause in their charter which says that when a refugee camp becomes a political and then military entity it is then subject to other measures. Of course the big problem in Goma was the proximity of the camps to Rwanda in the first place. Their placement was a factor of the exhausted and dying refugees stopping and refusing to move; later attempts to move them ran into oppostion from the hardliners controlling the camps as well as from Mobutu who of course supported the hardliners.

Best

Tom

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.

George,

I will rely on others to be experts, but I do recall late 2007 Iran announced it was time that Afghan refugees went home and the figures were hundreds of thousands. Coercion was in prospect. I also know that anecdote suggests some of these Afghans are now trying to flee to Europe and claim to be escaping from the Taliban.

davidbfpo

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Originally Posted by George L. Singleton

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.

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George

Good report on that subject from HRW, one of the better human rights NGOs

CLOSED DOOR POLICY:
Afghan Refugees in Pakistan and Iran

Welcome

Tom

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

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Originally Posted by George L. Singleton

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.

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Actually, Iran is a fairly substantial aid donor to Afghanistan, having pledged and disbursed some $570 million in 2002-2006, and another $100 million plus for 2007.

The US is providing roughly $1 billion per year in (non-military) aid, and about $4 billion per year in security assistance to Afghanistan. This, of course, excludes direct US military costs.

Given that the US economy is almost 50 times larger than that of Iran (GDP $13.8 trillion vs $278 billion), Tehran's contribution is actually quite generous--indeed, likely a larger proportion of GDP than most NATO countries are contributing.

(And yes, I realize that had nothing at all to do with UNHCR!)

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

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Originally Posted by Tom Odom

George

Good report on that subject from HRW, one of the better human rights NGOs

CLOSED DOOR POLICY:
Afghan Refugees in Pakistan and Iran

Welcome

Tom

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Tom:

This very detailed Human Rights Watch link/posting is very much appreciated.

George

This April 8, 2008 UN report surprised me, as I just now noted it mentions road blocks in NWFP. There are tribal disagreements mentioned which the off-site private e-mails I still get from the NWFP area tell me that both Taliban and al Qaida fighters are a factor in some tribes trying to seal off their villages at present, for what it is worth.

Should Migrants Fleeing Gang Violence in Central America Be Accorded Refugee Status?

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Refusing Refugees: Why are We Building Walls Instead of Bridges

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On Refugees and Terrorists

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Forget the Syrian Refugees. America Needs to Bring its Afghan and Iraqi Interpreters Here First.

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Syrian Refugees and Good Strategy

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The U.S. and U.N. Have Abandoned Christian Refugees

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Fears Growing Islamic State Successfully Weaponizing Refugees

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Trump, Refugees, and the Truth

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Three small SWJ Blog pointers merged into this closed thread, prompted by the next post - so the thread has been re-opened.

Refugees / Migrants have become a more charged issue, primarily with the exodus from Syria and those attempting to enter Europe from North Africa. Especially as terrorists are suspected to have "hidden" within them.

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:

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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.

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Link:https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/03/...days-refugees/

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Originally Posted by davidbfpo

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:
Link:https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/03/...days-refugees/

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Firstly, Collier does not truly distinguish between migrants and refugees. The Iraqis and Syrians displaced in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey are indeed refugees. But once they decide to seek their fortunes in Europe, they become migrants along with the greater number of welfare migrants who comprise 50% to 60% of the flows across the Mediterranean. Moreover, these migrants care not for the comparatively secure, free and prosperous countries of the Balkans or Central Europe: no, they demand only the best welfare available, which is in the wealthiest European countries. More than 2.6 million migrants crossed into Europe illegally from 2014-2016, and yet 14% of the world’s population still wants to migrate, including a further 170 million to the EU and Switzerland.

Of course, the “migrants” do not include those who are in UNHCR refugee camps and are accepted and transported to Canada, the U.S. and other countries as refugees. These refugees tend to not have EUR 10,000 for the journey to Germany, or iPhones, and tend to include a more representative proportion of women, children and the elderly, rather than middle-class male draft dodgers and Assad’s gangsters who have grown weary of murder and pillage.

Secondly, Collier does not explain why Europe is obligated to “help” these migrants, while the Gulf Arab states do not. What of Iran and Russia, who are fueling these wars?

Thirdly, Collier refers to an obligation to “rescue” migrants. Yet that should entail airlifting tens of millions from Sudan, South Sudan, D.R. Congo and Burundi, as the wars there are worse than those in Iraq and Syria in terms of duration, intensity of killing, overall bodycount, and civilian casualty ratio.

Fourth, Collier makes unsubstantiated claims that these migrants accept Western social values. The spate of Muslim supremacist terrorism in the West perpetrated by Muslim migrants, refugees and their children, in addition to the sojourns to Iraq, Somalia and Syria, indicate otherwise. It would be reasonable to expect that migrants’ desire for economic change is not necessarily coupled with a desire for social change.

Lastly, Collier wants the West to integrate migrants into its societies so that they can gain employment and thereby autonomy. Yet I had been under the impression that full employment and improving living standards were the main objectives of all Western governments with regard to their own citizens. Are the unemployed former colliers (no pun intended) of Wales to be sent to the “back of the queue” as Westminster integrates migrants first? There are problems with opportunity and equality in England, and yet it subsidies Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, and Britain as a whole already subsidizes the European Union for the moment.

If these migrants truly want to integrate into a socially familiar society and have job opportunities, why not migrate to the Gulf Arab states, which are reliant upon migrant labor and where some 40 million already want to move to?

Collier is truly out to lunch...

Sources include: http://www.gallup.com/poll/211883/nu...0-million.aspx

David Goldman at The Asia Times: http://www.atimes.com/to-be-kind-is-...is-to-be-kind/

From April 14, 2016. Selected excerpts:

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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.

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LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Human smuggling often conjures up images of shady networks run by organized crime gangs, but new research reveals that independent operators rather than criminal kingpins control routes that bring migrants into Europe from Africa.
More than 600,000 migrants have reached Italy, mostly from Libya, since 2014. More than 20,000 are estimated to have died attempting the crossing in the past four years, making it the deadliest border for migrants in the world.

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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-a...-idUSKBN1FB003

Initial reports of recent shenanigans in Calais would seem to contradict this assertation.
http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...393#post210393

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel made a major concession to Europe's populist movement this week when she admitted the existence of so-called “no-go zones” in Germany.
Conservatives and populists have long warned of the existence of such zones as the partial consequence of mass Muslim migration from the Middle East and Africa, particularly after Merkel opened Germany’s borders in 2015 as a response to the Syrian refugee crisis. Such areas are said to be dogged by high-levels of crime and are described as "no-go zones" because outsiders, including police and other authorities, are unable to enter.

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http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/03...n-germany.html

By The Associated Press
BERLIN — Feb 28, 2018, 11:58 AM ET

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In an interview Monday with German broadcaster n-tv, Merkel said she favors a zero tolerance policy on crime and that includes preventing no-go areas, "that's areas where nobody dares to go."
She added: "There are such areas and one has to call them by their name and do something about them."
Asked to name the areas, Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters Wednesday that "the chancellor's words speak for themselves."

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https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/201...-go-areas.html

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South Sudan. Syria. Afghanistan. Myanmar. Somalia.

The mention of these nations conjures images of violent conflict — and of humanity on the move.

Many in the affluent West are fearful of a world in which they imagine refugees from these countries are flooding into Europe and the United States at record rates. Those anxieties have driven governments to tighten borders and slash refugee resettlements.

But in reality, the vast majority of the world’s refugees have not gone very far and are largely living in neighboring countries, a fact reasserted in an annual report from the United Nations refugee agency this week.

The report said 68.5 million people worldwide were classified in 2017 as having been forcibly displaced because of conflict and persecution, the highest number since the end of World War II. Among them are 25.4 million refugees — those who have fled to another country to escape war or persecution in their own country and who receive special protections under international law.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/w...-refugees.html

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:

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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.

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Near the end:

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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?

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Link:https://www.opendemocracy.net/north-africa-west-asia/helen-lackner/migrant-crisis-in-europe-look-at-yemen?

https://www.freeburmarangers.org/201...-can-love-win/

Last Stronghold of ISIS: Can Love Win?

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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.

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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.

Bill,

Good catch. First-hand reporting is important and I did wonder watching BBC reporting who was supporting the SDF's humanitarian work.

Now to the key question and citing you in part:

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the world as 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 destroy them politically. The odds of Assad's regime and his Russian, Iranian, and Chinese partners offering a solution is slim.

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I read somewhere that Russia is actually taking their nationals back, albeit with conditions. IIRC the men go to jail for ten years and the women can remain with their children till they reach 'X' age, whereupon they too go to jail.

Earlier today catching up with stored articles I listened to this thirty minute podcast with three experts adding their viewpoint. One is Richard Barrett, ex-SIS & UN and Aimeen Dean. Worth listening to IMHO.
Link:https://monocle.com/radio/shows/the-foreign-desk/273/