An important story reported earlier this month (November, 2021), features the impact of climate change on the children of southern Madagascar. This is a report primarily about famine caused by climate change, not war, economic oppression or pestilence. Regrettably, the story also includes more than a trace of self-congratulations from and by ABC News Anchor David Muir.

Those of us who don’t have a phobic distaste for modern science recognize that climate change is causing world-wide land use change. Coastal communities are threatened by rising seas. Once fertile farmland is lying fallow because insufficient rain falls. Five-hundred-year floods are occurring one a decade, not twice a millennium.

It is interesting how in the United States and most other industrialized countries, increasing emphasis is placed on rebuilding and expanding its built infrastructure. When it comes to roads and bridges, an important question is largely going unasked. Where do these ribbons of concrete take us, and do their paths take into consideration how our land is changing due to climate change.

For instance, the metropolitan area of Houston, TX has been battered over the past ten years by hurricanes. Isaac devastated Texas’ Gulf Coast in August, 2012. Hurricane Harvey struck in August, 2017 and Hurricane Laura in August, 2020. Despite some enlightened leadership in the area with County Judge [Supervisor, Harris County] Lina Hidalgo and Mayor Sylvester Turner, the private sector seems to believe that nothing bad can happen again for another 500 years, and they rebuild in the areas that have been flooded and destroyed. They are aided by state-wide science deniers like Governor Greg Abbott and Senator Ted Cruz.

People who are homeless or starving are not the only displaced people in the world. The world’s population continues to grow, and that puts people in tighter confines with one another. We like to believe that we live in nation-states, but perhaps our second tightest bond to family is our tribes. And as the global population expands and arable land compresses, more tribes are running up against other tribes – ones whose company they would prefer not to keep.

The result is more war and violence. It may be cloaked under the guise of religious differences, or political differences, or economic disparities. In any event, it is more and more difficult for peace-loving people to find areas to live where they are not threatened by other groups of humans.

When people who don’t want to be neighbors are cramped together, anthropologically we know that peaceful resolution of problems is a hard sell. More often than not, violence is the likely modus operandi of settlement. Conflict and violence lead to displacement. Necessary relocation means refugees – often millions of people moving, often by foot, to new places where they think that they will be physically safe and will be able to find gainful work.

Frequently this traffic rapidly changes directions. In the early 2000s when the U.S. invaded Iraq for no particular reason, millions of Iraqi civilians headed west to Syria where they were welcome in many small villages. But just a few years later, Iraq was more at peace while Syria was engaged in a gruesome civil war with a external counties such as the United States and Russia adding to the mayhem and destruction. By the mid two-thousand-teens, millions of Syrians were fleeing their country, often heading east to Iraq to a land that is similar to their own.

However, in both incarnations of this Middle East refugees-in-motion, many moved toward what they saw as a better life in Europe. In some places, and in cases where the numbers were not too large, the migration to Europe worked, especially since the E.U. was looking for people to fill low-paying jobs. But as the numbers jumped into the millions, the inevitable happened. Refugees were seen as foreigners who were outsiders to their staid communities, and new conflict was born.

Just as the world needs to create new ways to find homes for local, regional, or global refugees, it needs to do the same for those who are displaced by politics as well as climate. These problems become only more severe as population growth creates more crunches. So, what options to people of the world have?

There are basically two ways to find venues where displaced people can live:

1. Find existing land on our planet which currently is largely uninhabited and has the natural resources to sustain a significant number of human beings.
2. Where arable and otherwise resourceful land does not exist, humanity needs to find ways to create new land masses where refugees can move and comfortably live, at least until they are able to find another part of the planet on which to live.

China has built three man-made islands in the South China Sea for military bases against Taiwan and other potential adversaries in the Pacific Rim. Reaction to their construction has ranged from enormous fear of expansion to mockery because there are reports that the islands are falling apart and sinking into the ocean.

Regardless, humankind, under the aegis of the United Nations, needs to find largely unoccupied places for refugees to live. These new homes can be temporary; to give political or climate factors time to reverse themselves. Equally plausible is for them to become “permanent” homes so that they can be free from the strife that caused them such misery in their most recent homes.

Countries large in area such as the United States, Canada, Russia, Greenland, Australia, and others have room for refugee settlements. China is so residentially over-built that it literally has high-rise cities that are vacant and capable of housing literally millions of people.

However, virtually all land on Planet Earth is accounted for. It is either owned by a private enterprise or the government is holding it for recreation, environmental protection or future development.

The post Finding New Settlement Areas for Refugees appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Something monumental, and not in a good way, is going on in Venezuela. You might need to get out a map of South America for this one. Suffice it to say that we have never had a refugee crisis of this magnitude in the Americas before.

Just imagine for a minute that you are living in Venezuela right now, a country where the International Monetary Fund Is estimating a 1,000,000% inflation rate by  December. Is that even possible to imagine? A loaf of bread that today might cost 50 cents, if you’re lucky enough to find bread, will by the end of this year cost $5,000.

Cash has disappeared, doctors have fled, medicines are scant, children are dying, poverty and malnutrition are skyrocketing, crime is spiraling, electricity is intermittent (just last week residents of some neighborhoods in Caracas went 36 to 40 hours without power) and the ability of citizens to obtain a Venezuelan passport – the most essential document increasingly required to enter a neighboring country – has evaporated. By the end of the year, how on earth will you come up with $5,000 to buy a loaf of bread?

You can’t. And you won’t.

And now just for another minute, imagine that you also have aging parents who need medicines that are more and more difficult to find. You decide to cross the border with the meager pay that you have scraped together working two or three makeshift jobs, driving a taxi, working a lunch shift at a restaurant where basic ingredients are hard to come by, or standing in endless lines just to be able to buy something as basic as rice as proxy for someone who is somehow better off than you, someone who can pay you something minimal, and we are talking about cents not dollars – money most likely wired home from family abroad.

You cross the border to Cúcuta in Colombia only to find that your money has no value. Zero.

30 pills of the generic version of a common hypertension drug, Losartan, are available in Colombia for $15,500 Colombian Pesos, approximately $5 US, or for about a $1 if you have the most basic Colombian health care coverage. Arriving in Colombia last month and attempting to buy this drug for your Venezuelan parents and paying with the Colombian exchange rate for your hard-earned Venezuelan Bolivars, you would have found that 30 Losartan pills would cost you the equivalent of 15,500,000 Bolivars, or 1,085 times the average monthly salary in Venezuela, an untenable amount of money that you just don’t have.

The situation is unconscionable.

Unable to buy 30 pills of Losartan, only one among various other medications that you were hoping to purchase in Colombia, you give up. You head home to Venezuela to the expectant hopes and needs of your mother and father with not one pill to offer.

You are beginning to think that President Maduro, the former bus driver leader-in-chief now in charge of your country, might just be in charge of the genocide of his own people. And after a pause to let that sink in, you might just begin to believe that you are right.

Wikipedia defines genocide as the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious or national group.

Venezuelans as a national group fall within this definition, and Venezuelans are being systematically decimated by the policies of Maduro and his cohorts. There is a deliberate and systematic destruction of the Venezuelan people afoot at the behest of Maduro. And remember that Venezuela is a country just over 1,600 miles south of Key West, well within the historic umbrella of US interest and responsibility.

Venezuela is our neighbor just as Canada is.

In this unfathomable fall from grace for Venezuela, a fall from what was once the richest country in Latin America and a country still sitting on the largest petroleum reserves on the planet to 1,000,000% inflation by December, what makes sense? Damn little.

Despite US sanctions on Maduro’s honchos, and despite reports that Trump was gung-ho to invade Venezuela last August, the United States continues to import oil from Venezuela and thus still provides the money that keeps Maduro’s regime afloat.

Even now when the UN is estimating that more than 2.5 million Venezuelans will decide to, have to or need to leave their country by the end of this year. Colombia is already home to well more than 1 million fleeing Venezuelans. Right now, on pretty much every Bogotá articulated bus of its extensive Transmilenio system of transport, you are going to hear Venezuelans singing, begging, soliciting and asking for humanitarian help. Every day. On every bus.

Up to now, just this year, Ecuador has admitted more than 500,000 Venezuelans. And the situation just got more complex, with both Peru and Ecuador now admitting only those Venezuelans entering their countries holding the Holy Grail, a Venezuelan passport. A passport is a luxury item in Venezuela. Because of corruption and a so-called paper shortage within SAIME, the Venezuelan entity in charge of issuing passports, your passport may cost you, through pay-offs of up to $2,000 – money that you absolutely don’t have – and may take up to 2 or 3 years to process, and ultimately may never arrive. This is money and years to survive that you as a Venezuelan don’t have at your disposal.

And just as a matter of interest, how many Venezuelan refugees has the US admitted this year? Zero.

No passport. No money. No medicine. No food. No pretty much nada. Imagining yourself as a Venezuela citizen right now, how are you feeling about yourself, your prospects and your future? Pretty much screwed, I think.

As a Venezuelan, you are perfectly within your rights to think of doing whatever you can to leave this corrupt, disgraced, inhumane dictatorship that you live under. But what about your incapacitated parents? What’s to happen to them? Can you leave them and just go? Of course not.

What to do? Keep that map out. Many Venezuelans are now walking the length of Colombia and Ecuador to reach Peru, where they feel their prospects might be better. The journey can take months on foot. Venezuelans are camped out in parks and football fields in towns and cities along the way causing increasing xenophobic tensions in all of the countries affected by the Venezuelan exodus. Just last week, in Pacaraima, a Brazilian border town, makeshift Venezuelan encampments were attacked and destroyed. Venezuelans were chased back across the border. Days later, the numbers of Venezuelans arriving had increased three-fold.

Hunger will make you do terrible things. Hunger will make you take your chances – even where you are not wanted. But with aging dependents in Venezuela, you can’t even attempt the arduous journey to Peru, and then possibly on to Chile, where you might be able to sell Chiclets on street corners to send money home to your family. Chiclet money is real money in Venezuela.

The post Imagine yourself in the nightmare that is Venezuela today appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The U.S-Mexico border wall may or may not be under construction, but it’s not the only contemporary attempt at a barrier between countries. According to some reports, there are currently 65 international border walls either completed or under construction. Compare that number to the 16 border fences in existence around the world when the most famous concrete barrier of the 20^th Century—the Berlin Wall—came down in 1989.

What’s going on? The Daily Mail explains it this way:

Globalisation was supposed to tear down barriers, but security fears and a widespread refusal to help migrants have fueled a new spate of wall-building across the world, with a third of the worlds’ countries constructing them along their borders.

While walls built in previous millennia aimed at keeping attacking armies out, and while the Berlin Wall was built to keep people in, modern-day walls have other purposes. Our current US President thinks that a wall on the US-Mexico border will keep out ostensible “drug dealers, rapists and murderers.” Some European countries are fencing themselves off to prevent migrants—mostly fleeing from the war in Syria—from entering their territory.

RadioFreeEurope has created an interactive depiction of the European immigration crisis and the razor-wire barriers and walls that began rising in 2013. You can see the presentation here.  The accompanying article details border-wall efforts in six countries:

Bulgaria: The country built a wall along the Turkish border, which was completed in August 2015. It marks the beginning of the walling off of Europe, as some are referring to it.

Hungary: Hungary completed its wall along the Serbian border on 14 September 2015, and the wall along the Croatian border a month later.

Slovenia: Slovenia built a razor sharp fence, cutting across the Croatian border in November 2015.

Macedonia: At the end of November 2015, Macedonia completed a wall along the Greek border topped with barb wire.

Austria: In April 2016, Austria began construction of a ‘fence’ along the Italian border.

France: Now France joins them, funded by the UK.

Beyond Europe

We’re all familiar with the wall between Israel and the West Bank. But there are many more that receive far less publicity. “A Brief History of Border Walls,” describes barriers between many other countries, such as:

Botswana-Zimbabwe border: Building began in 2003 of this electric fence, which is about 300 miles long.

The official reason Botswana began building a fence along its western border with Zimbabwe is purportedly to stop the spread of foot-and-mouth disease among livestock. However, Zimbabweans believe that it is really intended to keep people from migrating into Botswana since the 2000 land reform policy in Zimbabwe resulted in an economic crisis, leaving many desperate and in search of employment.

India-Bangladesh border: Building began in 2005. 12,116 miles of barbed wire and concrete

India is constructing a barrier to prevent illegal immigration and the smuggling of weapons and narcotics from Bangladesh to the Indian state of Assam. In recent years, it has been a site of particular focus for Human Rights Watch (HRW) because of the border patrol’s controversial shoot on sight policy. HRW reported in 2010 that over 900 Bangladeshi, including children, had been killed by both sides along the border in the last decade alone.

Kuwait-Iraq border: Building began 1991. Electrified fencing, concertina wire, trenches, dirt berms.

After the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, international military intervention and the defeat of Iraq, the Kuwait-Iraq barrier was constructed by the United Nations Security Council to prevent future invasion by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. The separation barrier extends six miles into Iraq, three miles into Kuwait, across the full length of their mutual border from Saudi Arabia to the Persian Gulf and is guarded by hundreds of soldiers, several patrol boats, and helicopters.

Iran:

In July 2010, the Iranian Interior Minister…announced that the country would be building walls along its entire border with Iraq, Turkey, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The government has purportedly allocated 150 million dollars for this purpose.

Pakistan-Iran barrier: Building began in 2007. Reinforced concrete, earth and stone embankments, deep ditches, observation towers and garrisons.

The Iran-Pakistan barrier is a separation barrier which Iran in the process of reconstructing and fortifying along its border with Pakistan. The Pakistani Foreign Ministry has said that Iran has the right to erect border fencing in its territory to deter drug smuggling and illegal crossings. However, the Provincial Assembly of Balochistan (Pakistan) opposes the wall. They maintain that it will create problems for the Baloch people, whose lands straddle the border region, dividing them politically and impeding trade and social activities.

Iran-Iraq barrier: Construction began in 2007

The Iranian government has built a long wall on its border with Iraq to stop drug and weapons smuggling. However, according to Iraqis and Iranians living near the border, the wall has created employment problems for the Iraqis. It is also reported that Iran has issued IDs to Iranian smugglers to regulate their activities.

Saudi Arabia-Yemen barrier: Construction, by Saudi Arabia, began in 2003, but stopped in 2004, when Yemen objected , stating that it violated a border treaty signed in 2000.

The border-wall movement continues

Other European countries appear to be climbing on the border-wall bandwagon. In 2015, the Baltic nation of Latvia was reported to be building a large-scale fence along its Russian border to keep out migrants who attempt to illegally cross the border.

Recent reporting indicates that Lithuania also plans to build an 81-mile border fence, along its Russian border.

…Such a fence would provide little defense against a full-blown military assault but said it underscored Lithuanians’ concerns about a more assertive Russia and could also help prevent lesser cross-border incursions.

In addition, Estonia says it wants to build a 70-mile-long fence along its eastern border with Russia, “to boost security and protect the EU’s passport-free Schengen zone.” Construction reportedly will begin in 2018.

When is a border wall not a border wall?

The barriers we’re most familiar with are those that exist on official borders between nations. But you can also create a “green line” or a territory wall to separate your country from occupied territories or lands that are claimed by one and disputed by another. Israel’s “West Bank Separator” is a prime example. But there are others, as well:

The Indian Line of Control Fencing: A double-row of electrified fencing and concertina wire 8-12 feet high, landmines and surveillance systems. 340 miles along the disputed border. The Line of Control separates Indian and Pakistani states that both countries would like to claim as their own.

The Berm: Constructed in 1980. 10-ft.-high sand walls, landmines.

The Moroccan Wall, or The Berm, divides the entire area of Western Sahara. Morocco built the wall in response to  efforts to establish Western Sahara’s independence. The wall initially contained just a small northwestern part of the territory, but by building a succession of six different walls, the Moroccans expanded their occupation to the majority of the contested land.

Ceuta and Melilla Borders [Spain-Morocco]: Built around 2000. Three rows of high wire barricades ranging from 16 to 20 ft high. Six miles, surrounding both cities.

Ceuta and Melilla are free port cities on the northern tip of Africa under Spanish control since 1986. Both cities are surrounded by Morocco, which disputes Spanish sovereignty over them. Spain built the fences to deter Africans from migrating to Iberia through these ports. In 2005, fifteen people were killed trying to cross over the barrier. Still many try to make it over, some getting caught in the process or drowning while attempting to make the sea crossing. Human trafficking is common.

Those are just examples of a burgeoning trend. One enterprising researcher at World Atlas has compiled a very helpful chart listing every country with a border wall, the country it is trying to keep out, and the status of the wall, as of 2017. I found it surprising and informative. For example, I didn’t know that Kazakhstan has a border wall with Uzbekistan.

Why all these border walls? Why now?

Nations—even cities—have attempted to wall themselves off from marauders, migrants and criminals for thousands of years. Sometimes the walls worked, but usually not forever. If you grew up in America in the Post World War II era, you may have thought that walls were quaint relics of an ancient past, and that we lived in a more enlightened, more connected world than one that could be fenced off.

Unfortunately, we were wrong—as we learned when the Berlin Wall went up in the 1960s. But even that didn’t last forever. And when that wall came down, many of us thought that the era of walls was finally over.

Wrong again. We now live in a world in which countries, nationalities, ethnic groups, religions, and political parties are retreating into a defensive, some might say paranoid, crouch. New border walls are a physical, institutionalized manifestation—on a grand scale—of that attitude, even if the new walls are more theater than they are true barriers.  But self-preservation is a powerful motivator, and building a wall is a primal reaction. Maybe peaceful co-existence behind an electrified, razor-wire-festooned, concrete barrier is a good solution. But I hope not.

The post Where the border walls are: Spoiler alert — everywhere appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Donald Trump probably doesn’t want his supporters to know this, but the US State Department has just decided to increase the number of refugees allowed into the country. According to the New York Times,  “the result could be a doubling of refugees entering the country, from about 830 admitted during the first three weeks of [May 2017] to about 1,500 people per week by the end of [June 2017].”

That is good news for the tens of thousands of refugees waiting to enter the United States — and for the cause of human rights — but perhaps bad political news for Trump. And that’s probably why the State Department made this change as quietly as it did, announcing it not in the customary press conference, but via an under-the-radar email sent to private agencies that help resettle refugees.

Trump’s public pronouncements on refugee resettlement are well known: He’d prefer zero refugees from Syria and other Muslim-majority countries, and he and his staff have formalized that wish in his controversial — and probably unconstitutional — “Muslim ban,” which has now been rejected three times by federal courts. Short of being allowed to implement a total ban, the Trump administration initially cut the total number of allowable refugees from all countries to a meager 50,000 per year — down from the previous quota of 110,000.

Now, the State Department has undercut his cut, notifying refugee groups that they could begin bringing people to the US “unconstrained by the weekly quotas that were in place.”

The change in policy came on the same day that a third federal court rejected Trump’s “Muslim ban,” but the New York Times says that the two are not related. In fact, says the Times article,

The department’s quotas on refugee resettlement were largely the result of budget constraints imposed by Congress in a temporary spending measure passed last fall. But when Congress passed a spending bill this month that funded the government for the rest of the fiscal year, the law did not include any restrictions on refugee admissions.

For people concerned about refugees’ suffering and human rights, it’s a positive step.  For Trumpsters — if they notice [and it seems clear from the surreptitious rollout that the administration doesn’t want them to notice] — it could be seen as a betrayal of yet another campaign promise [a promise that the rest of us would be happy to see unfulfilled].

Did Trump know that this move was coming? [Does he know anything at all?] Did Secretary of State Rex Tillerson know? [Does he care about anything except oil?] You have to wonder if this under-the-radar shift is further evidence that, in Trumpworld, the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.

But if one of those hands ends up doing the right thing, that’s perfectly okay by me.

The post Under the radar, State Department to allow more refugees to enter US appeared first on Occasional Planet.

These days, there’s an app for just about everything—even for being a refugee. According to the United Nations High Command on Refugees [UNHCR], apps and websites have become a common tool for refugee assistance.

It all started several years ago, when aid workers realized that the vast majority of displaced Syrians were using smartphones. That’s when aid organizations began partnering with developers to create free apps aimed at helping refugees navigate the complexities of starting a new life in unfamiliar territory. According to a recent article in The Atlantic, the most successful of the resulting technologies are helping refugees gather crucial information, reconnect with lost relatives, and establish a legal identity in new countries.

Here’s an incomplete rundown on what’s out there, which ones are working best, and some examples of failures:

What’s out there

The most useful apps and websites are the result of collaborations among well-established aid agencies, says UNHCR:

Refugeeinfo.eu is an online platform providing useful information to refugees making their way through Europe, including services provided by local NGOs and details regarding asylum processes. The website, which is the result of a partnership between Mercy Corps, Google and The International Rescue Committee among others, currently receives up to 3,000 visitors per day.

Refugee Aid app collects and shows information on the location of services provided by humanitarian agencies in several European countries, thus helping aid providers coordinate their efforts, and refugees locate points of assistance. The app has been built in collaboration with several organizations including the British and Italian Red Cross, Save the Children and Médecins du Monde.

Many other apps exist as well—created by well-meaning developers and organizations—but it can be hard to gauge their effectiveness. At Apps For Refugees, you’ll find a variety of options, including:

First-contact.org, a website that “provides refugees with essential information during their journey. It covers data and information about NGOs and situation reports about all countries in Asia andd Europe, refugees might pass through.Countries covered: Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Germany, Greece. Available in Arabic, English and Pashto.

InfoAid  an app with “up to date information for refugees on their way through south-east Europe. It covers all countries on the Balkan route, including updates about the situation at the borders, weather reports for the Turkish Sea, ferry strikes, transportation information, security advisories, information for children traveling alone and many more topics.”

Scanbot, an app that allows refugees to “scan all their important documents with a smartphone and store them as PDF local or in the cloud. Free App and free storage.”

Refunite,  “a web-based platform whose mission is to reconnect refugee families across the globe with missing loved ones.” The organization has projects in 9 countries: Kenya, Uganda, South Sudan, Somalia, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the Philippines.

But some of the sites on Apps for Refugees—as well as others not listed on the site—have proven to be failures, says UNHCR:

Take Refoodgee, an app launched by Berlin-based startup Memorado to connect newly arrived refugees with locals through food. It’s been praised by the media, but the app hasn’t been updated for months and only counts a few hundreds users. Refugees Welcome has been dubbed the “AirBnB for refugees” because it pairs refugees looking for a temporary place to stay with hosts in European cities. But one of the app’s employees told the Huffington Post the service couldn’t find enough hosts to keep up with the demand. The number of rooms listed on the app decreased significantly after an initial spike, she explained.

Then there are more blatant cases of failures. The “I Sea” app claimed to allow its users to scour the Mediterranean to spot migrant ships in distress by showing real-time satellite images. But the live feed turned out to be nothing more than a static image of the ocean, and the app was shut down after much uproar.

Why well-intentioned apps fail

“In many cases, well-intended developers find themselves confronted with the realities of operating in an unfamiliar and challenging context,” says UNHCR. Most developers are not prepared for the logistics of working in emergencies. Many agencies have to be involved. And refugees have virtually no internet access.

Another problem is that developers may assume that convenience will make an app successful. What they don’t understand, says UNHCR, is how refugees actually function day-today.

One clear example of this is the multiplication of information-sharing apps aimed at listing useful data such as access points for food, healthcare, or border crossings. We’ve noticed that refugees still prefer to speak with UNHCR staff and partners face-to-face, even when this information is made available online. That’s because rumors, changing rules and regulations, and fluctuating asylum policies have led refugees to seek accurate and up-to-date information from trusted sources. An app built by an outside developer may do little to fill that trust gap.

The future of refugee apps

Looking ahead, many emerging technologies could have applications that would help refugees. For example,

Red Cross and Red Crescent societies have their own reconnection initiative, called Trace the Face. It publishes pictures online of people looking for missing relatives and lets them search photos that others have posted of themselves, filtering by criteria like gender, age, and country of origin. Before long, facial-recognition software could transform this database and others like it into advanced people-finding machines.

Biometric identification tools hold promise, too:

Refugees who want to establish a legal identity in a new country confront countless obstacles—they may have fled without their birth certificate, for instance, if they ever had one. So the UNHCR Biometric Identity Management System, active in 25 countries, collects fingerprints, iris scans, and photographs, and can link them to citizenship records and dates of birth.

Undoubtedly, technology can be useful in humanitarian crises like the ongoing refugee debacle. But the best hope for helping refugees is, of course, to stop creating more of them.

The post Apps for refugees: merging technology and humanitarianism appeared first on Occasional Planet.

How does Trump’s refugee ban affect people’s lives? Two recent videos document the real impact. They take the viewer behind the partisan policy debates, behind factual distortions, and behind the spin, to demonstrate how lives have been altered by decisions made in Washington DC.

  “Starting a New Life in America: A Syrian Refugee Story,” follows the Abdo family of war-torn Aleppo who gained entry to the U.S. during the Obama presidency. Filmed and produced by a young Syrian-American, the video takes us into the Abdo home, where we learn of the family’s hopes for the future and of their deep gratitude to America and their successful adjustment to life in Lowell, Massachusetts.

The second video tells the story of Clemson University PhD graduate Nazanin Zinouri, an Iranian who found herself caught in the chaos and uncertainty of Trump’s disastrous first refugee ban. Zinouri, who has lived and worked in the U.S. for seven years, was taken off her return flight from Dubai and denied re-entry into the U.S. after traveling to Iran to visit her family. Following a public campaign on her behalf, which included the advocacy of Senator Lindsay Graham, Zinouri was allowed to return to her life and her home in South Carolina.

The post Videos document the human cost of Trump’s refugee ban appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Syrians—4.8 million of them–constitute the largest segment of the current world refugee population.  But there are many other refugees —16+ million — who are not getting equal media attention. We read a lot about people fleeing the war in Syria, who are taking dangerous boat trips across the Mediterranean to Europe and hoping to settle in safer parts of the world. But, worldwide, many other men, women and children are displaced outside of their countries. They’re just as desperate and just as in need. If you’re interested in the numbers, here’s a rundown of those other refugees, with data supplied by the United Nations High Command on Refugees [UNHCR].

Definitions matter: Refugee vs. migrant

Before looking at statistics, it’s important to get the definitions right. According UNHCR, politicians, news media and people in casual conversations often don’t make the proper distinction among refugees and migrants, and that can be a problem.

Refugees are persons fleeing armed conflict or persecution. There were 21.3 million of them worldwide at the end of 2015. Their situation is often so perilous and intolerable that they cross national borders to seek safety in nearby countries, and thus become internationally recognized as “refugees” with access to assistance from States, UNHCR, and other organizations. They are so recognized precisely because it is too dangerous for them to return home, and they need sanctuary elsewhere. These are people for whom denial of asylum has potentially deadly consequences Refugees are defined and protected in international law…

…One of the most fundamental principles laid down in international law is that refugees should not be expelled or returned to situations where their life and freedom would be under threat.

Migrants choose to move not because of a direct threat of persecution or death, but mainly to improve their lives by finding work, or in some cases for education, family reunion, or other reasons. Unlike refugees who cannot safely return home, migrants face no such impediment to return. If they choose to return home, they will continue to receive the protection of their government.

The distinction is important, says UNHCR, because

…conflating refugees and migrants can have serious consequences for the lives and safety of refugees. Blurring the two terms takes attention away from the specific legal protections refugees require. It can undermine public support for refugees and the institution of asylum at a time when more refugees need such protection than ever before.

Who’s fleeing, where are they, and how many are there?

After Syrians, the next largest group of refugees arriving in Europe are Afghanis fleeing Taliban rule. UNHCR reports that there are 1.5 million registered Afghan refugees in Pakistan, with hundreds of thousands more unregistered living in the shadows.

350,000 Somali refugees currently live in the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, making it the largest refugee facility in the world. Some residents of Dadaab have been there for as long as nine years.

About 2,000 refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria are confined by Australia on an essentially uninhabited island off its coast.

Between 200,000 and 500,000 members of Myanmar/Burma’s persecuted Rohingya minority are living in refugee camps in Bangladesh. Early this year, the Bangladesh government began moving forward with a plan to move the refugees to a remote island that is underwater for much of the year.

5.2 million Palestinians are registered as refugees by the UNRWA.

Which countries are hosting the refugees?

Ten countries are taking care of more than half of the world’s 21 million refugees. The top 10 are: [in rounded numbers]

• Jordan [2.7 million]
• Turkey [2.5 million]
• Pakistan [1.5 million]
• Lebanon [1.5 million]
• Iran [980,000]
• Ethiopia [736,000]
• Kenya [550,000]
• Uganda [477,000]
• Democratic Republic of Congo [383,000]
• Chad [369,000]

UNHCR also maintains large refugee camps in India, Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan, Mauritania, Jordan, Gaza and Ethiopia.

Personally, as a person of first-world privilege, I admit that I find these numbers unfathomable. To make the statistics relatable, I have to resort to a rather small-minded, ethnocentric comparison with cities I’ve been to:  Lebanon, for example, is hosting as many people as currently live in San Antonio, TX. If everyone living in Cleveland OH left the city, that number would equal Chad’s refugee population.

The conditions that have forced these people to run for their lives, and for the lives of their families, are as scary as they come. Can any of us sitting comfortably in front of our computers reading this imagine ourselves on the run, or living in the conditions the refugees are enduring? I can’t. I know, too, that writing about this situation isn’t much. But at the very least, we owe it to these other human beings to know that they exist and to reach beyond ourselves to try to help.

The post The other refugees we don’t hear as much about appeared first on Occasional Planet.

About 1,200 Afghani, Iraqi and Iranian refugees—currently housed in terrible conditions on islands near Australia—are supposed to come, over time, to the US, under an agreement signed by Barack Obama and Australia’s prime minister Malcom Turnbull. But Donald Trump doesn’t want them. Yesterday, he called the deal “dumb,” and says he will refuse to accept any of the refugees who come from countries banned by his Jan. 27 executive order.

So, who are these refugees? First of all, they are not “illegal immigrants,” as Trump labeled them during his disastrous phone call with Turnbull.  This Washington Post article helps clarify what’s really going on:

The measure was necessary because of Australia’s draconian immigration policies. Asylum seekers who reach the country by boat are never settled in Australia proper. Instead, they’re sent to Nauru or Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island for “offshore processing.” Right now, there are about 2,000 people between the two islands, including many children. The vast majority come from Iran, Afghanistan and Iraq. Many were transported to Australia by smugglers across a treacherous sea route hundreds of miles long. (At least 1,200 people have died trying to make the trip, one study found.)

After arrival, the migrants are thoroughly vetted; about 80 percent of those people are legitimate refugees, according to the Australian government. And most have been at a camp for more than a year, living in an immigration limbo. They are unable to leave their camps but also forbidden from settling for good.

Critics say that this amounts to indefinite and illegal detention; several reports have documented widespread abuse and mistreatment. Last year, a U.N. committee report found multiple cases of “attempted suicide, self-immolation, acts of self-harm and depression” among children who had lived in prolonged “detention-like conditions.”

Australia has a very tough stance on refugees. Despite the inhumane conditions at the island detention facilities, the Australian government has remained “resolutely unwilling to resettle refugees in Australia.”

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull campaigned in 2013 on a vow to “stop the boats.” His posters bore slogans like, “No Way: You will not make Australia home.” Instead, his government looked to other countries willing to accept the refugees. And they didn’t have much luck until the United States stepped in. America has already begun their own vetting on the refugees that they will resettle. Several told CNN that they had already had one round of interviews with American officials.

So, what was in “the worst deal ever,” anyway?

The Guardian explains:

In November the US agreed to take an undisclosed number of refugees from Australia’s offshore detention regime. The resettlement option was only to be available for detainees who had been found to be refugees (under the refugee convention). Others who were assessed and found not to be entitled to protection would not be deemed eligible. Applicants were to be interviewed twice by US officials before being resettled, in a process that was to take between six and 12 months. If a refugee missed out on US resettlement, the existing options of Papua New Guinea and Cambodia were still available.

As the Telegraph reported:

It has never been clear whether Australia offered anything in return for Washington’s concession. There has been speculation that Australia could take asylum seekers who arrive in the US, or that Canberra may have volunteered to send extra troops to Iraq or to conduct a freedom of navigation exercise patrol near Chinese-claimed territories in the South China Sea.

Others suggested that Australia, which already hosts American troops and has followed the US into each of its wars since Second World War, offered nothing as part of the deal – and that it was this element which infuriated Mr Trump.

Then, during his first ever contact with Turnbull, Trump belligerently accused the Australian prime minister of “seeking to export the next Boston bombers.” And when he essentially hung up on Turnbull, he also disconnected from the island-bound refugees whose conditions, said a United Nations psychiatrist, are “akin to torture.”

No one is certain about what will happen to the refugee deal forged between Obama and Turnbull. It looks as though the Bannon-Trump presidency is on course to channel the hard-line, anti-refugee stance of Australia’s Turnbull. But there’s also talk that Bannon-Trump might honor the deal. Unfortunately, in the Bannon-Trump era of lies and alternative facts, it depends on what the meaning of “honor” is. The Guardian puts it this way:

“ Trump could still honour the deal but simply accept none of the refugees who apply.

The post Australian refugees: Who are they, and what are the terms of the deal? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Tony Dale, a Republican State Representative to the Texas legislature, wants to ban Syrian refugees from his state because it’s too easy for them to buy guns in Texas. According to Salon, in a letter he sent to other Texas lawmakers, Dale said that…

…the state should not accept any Syrian refugees because its lax gun-purchasing regulations would make it easy for any terrorists hiding among them to acquire a weapon and carry out an attack.

To be more specific, Think Progress notes that,

in a letter to Senator Jon Cornyn, [Dale] characterized as an insufficiently “robust” screening process and it’s not difficult to “imagine a scenario were [sic] a refugees [sic] is admitted to the United States, is provided with federal cash payments and other assistance, obtains a drivers license and purchases a weapon and executes an attack.”

But, of course, gun-purchasing laws in Texas are so lax that purported refugee/terrorists can them so easily precisely because legislators like Dale—who have “A” ratings from the NRA–have staunchly opposed gun-control legislation and have opposed background checks of any kind for decades.

Which brings us to another Republican meme: “We can’t let refugees in because we can’t do background checks on them.” [See: Marco Rubio]

So, let me get this straight: We should be doing deep background checks on Syrian refugees, because they might get guns, but we must not ever, ever, ever require background checks for American citizens–or anyone else–who want to buy guns at gun shows or from private individuals.

Interestingly, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 23 states whose governors are opposing the resettlement of Syrian refugees do not require background checks for firearms purchased at gun shows from private individuals. The Center also says:

Within our own borders, weak gun laws in most states make it easy for deadly firearms to fall into the wrong hands. And this fact is far from a secret—a senior al-Qaeda leader even lauded how simple it is to obtain firearms in America, releasing a video message to urge followers to buy guns in states without universal background checks.

Think Progress also notes that:

While those applying for refugee status must complete “the most stringent security process for anyone entering the United States,” those attempting to purchase guns through private sales at gun shows in Texas and many other states are not required to undergo any background checks whatsoever. Virtually none of the millions of refugees admitted into the United States since 1980 have become terrorists, but the U.S. leads the world in mass shootings — almost all of which are perpetrated by people born in America.

The post Ban Syrian refugees from gun-lax TX, says NRA-backed TX lawmaker appeared first on Occasional Planet.