Category Archives: refugees

Human migration will be a defining issue of this century. How best to cope?

Alexander Betts writes: Throughout the crisis, a debate has been on whether it is a “migrant” or a “refugee” crisis. It has been important for the public to understand that most people coming to Europe have been from refugee-producing countries and that “refugees” have a particular set of rights under international law. Furthermore, people have a right to seek asylum, and have their claims to refugee status adjudicated.

However, the stark dichotomy between “refugee” and “economic migrant” masks a growing trend: that many people coming fall between those two extremes.

The modern global refugee regime was established at a particular juncture of history, in the aftermath of the Holocaust and at the start of the cold war. The 1951 convention on the status of refugees defines a refugee as someone fleeing “persecution”, based on race, religion, nationality, membership of a social group, or political opinion. The interpretation of that definition has adapted over time. But at its core was the idea of protecting people whose own governments were either out to get them or unable to prevent persecution by others. Today, the sources of cross-border displacement are increasingly complex, and many fit poorly with the 1951 convention.

Environmental change, food insecurity, and generalised violence, for example, represent emerging sources of human displacement. In strong states, the government can usually provide some kind of remedy or resolution to people affected by these types of crisis. However, much less so in fragile states. People who fall outside the internationally recognised definition of a refugee but are nevertheless fleeing very serious socio-economic rights deprivations might be called “survival migrants”.

In the contemporary world, a significant proportion of the people we attempt to describe as economic migrants fall into this category.

Survival migration has been an emerging challenge. Nearly a decade ago, Zimbabwean asylum seekers fleeing Robert Mugabe’s regime made up the largest group of asylum seekers in the world. Most British people would probably assume that at the height of the crisis between 2003 and 2009 the majority would have been refugees. However, in South Africa, to where the overwhelming proportion fled, only about 10% were recognised as refugees and up to 300,000 people a year were deported back to Zimbabwe. The reason for this was simple: they were not judged to fit the 1951 convention definition of a refugee. However, on ethical grounds, it was incontrovertibly cruel to deport people back to a country in a state of socio-economic and political collapse.

This example illustrates how current policy responses bypass engagement with long-term trends. The world as a whole lacks a vision for how to respond to the changing nature of displacement. So much of the current “crisis” is not a crisis of numbers but a crisis of politics. We need bold leadership that correctly and honestly articulates the causes of movement and outlines global solutions. [Continue reading…]

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UN funding shortfalls and cuts in refugee aid fuel exodus to Europe

The New York Times reports: One of the prime reasons for the wave of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers washing into Europe is the deterioration of the conditions that Syrians face in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, a worsening largely caused by sharp falls in international funding from United Nations countries, officials and analysts say.

That shortfall in funding, in contrast with the greater resources provided by Europe, is prompting some to make the hazardous journey who might otherwise remain where they are. The United Nations Syria Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan, which groups a number of humanitarian agencies and covers development aid for the countries bordering Syria, had by the end of August received just 37 percent of the $4.5 billion appeal for needed funds this year.

António Guterres, the high commissioner for refugees, recently said that his agency’s budget this year would be 10 percent smaller than in 2014, and that it could not keep up with the drastic increase in need from the long Syrian conflict, which includes shelter, water, sanitation, food, medical assistance and education. The United Nations refugee agency’s funding for Syria this year is only at 43 percent of budgeted requirements. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: Najim Rahim says that when he looks around his neighborhood in the northern city of Kunduz now, “I feel lonely.”

His friend Ahmad Ulomi, who worked in the photo shop down the street, gave up his photography studies and left with five family members, striking out across the Iranian desert on the way to Europe. The shop’s owner, Khalid Ghaznawi, who was Mr. Ulomi’s teacher, decided to follow him with his family of eight, and he put his business up for sale. Mr. Rahim’s friend Atiqullah, who ran the local grocery shop, closed it and also left for Iran with his wife. Another neighbor, Feroz Ahmad, dropped out of college and last week called from Turkey to say he was on his way to Europe.

All of that happened in the past two weeks as people in Kunduz are rushing to seize what many see as a last chance to make it to Europe, just as others are doing throughout Afghanistan. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: Thousands of migrants poured into Austria on Saturday after being bounced around countries overwhelmed by their arrival and insistent that they keep moving.

Hungary — which had taken the most draconian and visible measures to turn back the exodus, notably the construction of a razor-wire fence along its border with Serbia — partly caved Friday evening. It grudgingly allowed at least 11,000 migrants to enter from Croatia, and then sent them by bus and train to processing centers along its border with Austria.

The Austrian authorities said that about 10,000 people entered the country on Saturday, from Slovenia and Hungary. [Continue reading…]

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The roots of German openness

Dominique Moisi writes: “Germany, Germany,” shout thousands of refugees, faced with the obvious bad will of Hungary’s political authorities, in front of Budapest’s Keleti railway station. They are dreaming of Germany – not any European country, but specifically Germany – the way, more than a century ago, Europe’s poor, fleeing misery – and, in some cases, pogroms – dreamed of America.

This represents a dramatic shift from the past. What a contrast between the photo, taken less than 80 years ago in the Warsaw Ghetto, of a small Jewish child with raised arms and fearful eyes, and one taken a few days ago in Munich of a smiling refugee boy, his head protected by a policeman’s hat. For the first child, Germany meant certain death; for the second, it offers hope for a better life.

And Germany does not represent just an abstract hope; the country is welcoming more migrants than any of its European counterparts, with Chancellor Angela Merkel having announced that the country will take at least 800,000 asylum-seekers this year. How can a country move so rapidly from darkness to light?

No one can deny the role of schools, civic and business leaders, and, of course, external forces in bringing about this change. But nor should one underestimate the importance of political leadership. [Continue reading…]

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Open and shut: How Germany plays politics with its borders

By Holger Nehring, University of Stirling

Was it just a dream? Only last week, Germany made it clear that all refugees were welcome, and chancellor Angela Merkel became the Mother Teresa of European politics.

The country was able to bask in the glory of being an example of the good European – only months after Merkel had been chided for her politics of austerity towards Greece and after she had, to much criticism worldwide, told a young Palestinian girl that “we cannot take everyone in”.

But barely a week after the hearty welcome, the country closed its borders with Austria, the route by which the majority of refugees were arriving. Police forces and helpers in Bavaria were simply unable to cope with the massive influx of people – more than 20,000 refugees had arrived in Munich alone over the course of the weekend, more than UK prime minister David Cameron said his country was prepared to take in over the next five years.

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Abandoning Syria: Few options left for stopping the war

Christoph Reuter reports: Both men were Syrians — a taxi driver and his passenger. They met during an hour-long drive in April from the airport in the southern Turkish city of Adana toward the east. Within a few minutes, they realized that they were from the same place, the northern port city of Latakia, which is controlled by the Syrian regime.

Things got tricky when the two men began to wonder whose side the other had been on.
They avoided direct questions for a while. Before, on the other side of the border, they may have shot at each other. But now they were sitting in the same car. Eventually, the driver began to tell his story. He had been a bank manager and had told jokes about Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. After an informer betrayed him to the government, a man from Syrian intelligence gave him a warning, saying: “Get out now. They’re coming to get you in half an hour.”

Then the second man told his story. He had been an architecture student. “I had nothing against Assad,” he said. But checkpoints had been erected everywhere in recent weeks, where young men were forcibly recruited into the army. “I didn’t want to die,” he explained. The driver chuckled briefly, and then the two men went silent for a while.

“It’s over,” the driver finally said. “Yes,” his passenger replied. They spent the rest of the trip discussing the best routes to Europe. [Continue reading…]

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EU nations pull welcome mats for migrants, imposing new restrictions

The Washington Post reports: European nations once friendly to refugees abruptly yanked their welcome mats Thursday, as Germany considered slashing its benefits and Croatia announced it was closing most of its road links with Serbia “until further notice.”

The German measures would overhaul asylum codes to stem the massive flow of migrants into Europe, scaling back the generous policies that have made Germany a beacon for desperate war refugees and economic migrants pouring out of the Middle East, Africa and beyond.

In a 128-page draft law produced by the German Interior Ministry and obtained by The Washington Post, the government would speed asylum procedures, cut cash benefits, hasten deportations and punish those with false claims and phony paperwork. [Continue reading…]

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Britain welcomed Huguenots, Jews, Vietnamese. So why not Syrians?

Robert Winder writes: The headlines grow ever more macabre. Tear gas, water cannon and razor wire in Hungary add a horrifying edge to the chaos in Croatia, mayhem in Macedonia or death by asphyxiation in an Austrian layby. Next to these disasters, the odd jostle to climb on to a refrigerated lorry in Calais, which recently was depicted as a hideous national crisis, is a minor issue. The few thousand souls who have made it as far as the French coast are no longer the headline act.

Politicians still squirm as if there are burglars coming up the drive, but concede that it is a humanitarian crisis. Television presents it half as a heart-tugging parable of children in need, and half as a criminal riot. Everyone knows that something must be done. No one knows what. We live in an age that likes simple solutions, but in this case there isn’t one. Is it possible, though, that the suddenness of this convulsion is harming our sense of proportion? There were 26,370 knife crimes in Britain last year, yet a few thousand hungry mouths from war zones (many of them children) are widely held to present the graver threat to our way of life. [Continue reading…]

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Are jihadists hiding among refugees? Unlikely, analysts say

AFP reports: Warnings that jihadists bent on violence may be sneaking into Europe disguised as refugees are growing louder, but analysts say extremists do not need to board rickety rubber dinghies to infiltrate the continent.

Politicians have for weeks been sounding the alarm over the risk of bloodthirsty radicals making their way to Europe undetected in the flood of desperate migrants, and even Pope Francis warned this week of the “risk of infiltration”.

While experts say this scenario is not impossible, they argue that groups such as the Islamic State have far more sophisticated means to reach Europe to carry out attacks. [Continue reading…]

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‘Syria is emptying’

The Washington Post reports: Analysts say it was inevitable it would come to this, that Syrians would eventually tire of waiting for a war of such exceptional brutality to end. At least 250,000 have been killed in four ferocious years of fighting, by chemical weapons, ballistic missiles and the barrel bombings by government warplanes that are the biggest single killer of civilians, according to human rights groups.

Men on both sides die in the endless battles between the government and rebels for towns, villages and military bases that produce no clear victory. The Islamic State kills people in the areas it controls with beheadings and other brutal punishments. The United States is leading a bombing campaign against the Islamic State but has shown scant interest in solving the wider Syrian war, which seems destined to only escalate further with the deepening involvement of Russian troops.

“It should surprise no one. Hopelessness abounds,” said Fred Hof, a former State Department official who is now with the Atlantic Council. “Why would any Syrian with an option to leave and the physical ability to do so elect to stay?”

There are other nationalities, too; refugees from conflict zones such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia, alongside a small number of economic migrants from countries that include Bangladesh, Pakistan and Senegal.

But overwhelmingly this is a crisis of people fleeing war, and above all, the one in Syria, Fleming said.

“In the absence of the Syrians coming in the numbers they are coming, there wouldn’t be this huge surge in numbers,” she said. “This is why we are calling it a refugee crisis, not a migrant crisis.” [Continue reading…]

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Fortress Hungary: Orbán profits from the refugees

Der Spiegel reports: On Monday, Hungary closed the last remaining hole in the 175-kilometer (109 mile) fence it has been built along the southern border to Serbia, one of the final stations on the Western Balkan route to Europe that has been the focal point in recent days of tens of thousands of refugees making their way from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and North Africa. On Tuesday, a new law went into effect in Hungary making illegal border crossings an offense punishable by up to three years in jail. The developments came as Germany and Austria both imposed border controls to stem the massive influx of refugees on the final leg of the path to Western Europe.

Hungary’s closure of its border with Serbia has led to confusion and desperation among refugees who had hoped to cross into Europe there. For the moment, nobody is being let through at all and Hungary has declared a state of emergency in two counties bordering Serbia to allow for the deployment of the military to assist police there. As part of its new crackdown, Hungary says it has arrested 60 people for damaging the border fence or attempting to cross.
The scenes of chaos the border closure has generated are consistent with those that have played out in Hungary over much of the last couple of weeks. And the cause is clear. The country, under the leadership of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, is downright inhospitable — even hostile — toward refugees. [Continue reading…]

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Refugee crisis: Thousands may lose right of asylum under EU plans

The Guardian reports: European governments are aiming to deny the right of asylum to innumerable refugees by funding and building camps for them in Africa and elsewhere outside the European Union.

Under plans endorsed in Brussels on Monday evening, EU interior ministers agreed that once the proposed system of refugee camps outside the union was up and running, asylum claims from people in the camps would be inadmissible in Europe.

The emergency meeting of interior ministers was called to grapple with Europe’s worst modern refugee crisis. It broke up in acrimony amid failure to agree on a new system of binding quotas for refugees being shared across the EU and other decisions being deferred until next month.

The lacklustre response to a refugee emergency that is turning into a full-blown European crisis focussed on “Fortress Europe” policies aimed at excluding refugees and shifting the burden of responsibility on to third countries, either of transit or of origin. [Continue reading…]

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Refugees still set on Germany despite border controls

Der Spiegel reports: Evrim, a refugee from the ravaged Syrian city of Aleppo, has wrapped herself in a wool blanket, her red sweatshirt no longer offering sufficient protection against the cold. The young woman with dyed-blonde hair would rather spend the night in front of Vienna’s Westbahnhof Station than sleep in an emergency shelter. She is planning on taking the very first train to Germany the next morning.

“We heard that Germany has closed the border,” Evrim says. But she doesn’t really want to believe it. She heard the news from Mohammed, who is also from Aleppo and is part of the group of 15 Kurds from Syria she is traveling with. The group coalesced on the refugee trail, which leads from Turkey across the Western Balkans to Hungary and beyond. Mohammed, for his part, heard the news from a British journalist who had interviewed the group in the early evening right after they crossed into Austria from Hungary. “Maybe he misunderstood (the journalist),” Evrim says.

But he wasn’t mistaken. On Sunday evening, Germany introduced temporary border controls along its frontier with Austria in response to the massive numbers of refugees that have been making their way to Germany in recent weeks. Officials from Germany’s 16 states sounded the alarm back on Thursday, warning that refugee hostels were full and that they could no longer process the huge numbers of newcomers.

The temporary border controls — which could last as long as two weeks, according to Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann, who spoke on public radio on Monday morning — are intended to give Germany a chance to catch its breath while at the same time ratcheting up the pressure on other European Union member states to accept a quota system for the distribution of asylum recipients across the bloc. EU interior ministers are meeting on Monday to try to find a solution. [Continue reading…]

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Escape from Yarmouk: A family’s journey to Germany from hell on Earth in Syria

Vice News reports: As the train packed with refugees left Budapest’s Keleti station in the direction of Austria, only one family remained on the platform. “We couldn’t buy tickets because we don’t have any money, armed thieves took everything from us,” said Tarek al-Hajj Khalil, a Palestinian from the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus, Syria.

The 19-year-old refugee sat flanked by his five sisters: Nour, 18, Reem, 17, Rama, 16, Raneem, 15, Bayan, 4, and her twin brother Aamer. The group arrived the night before after being released from a Hungarian detention facility, and looked to continue onward to Germany, where they hope to receive asylum.

“Everything is broken from the trip,” Tarek said as he banged away at a Samsung phone with a cracked screen and missing battery cover.

He tried desperately to reach his brother Mustafa, who had crossed into Austria three days earlier with their mother. The family became separated after they were robbed on the Serbia-Hungary border. Thieves took nearly $5,000 in cash, and now the family had only $1,000 left hidden on one of Tarek’s sisters. A smuggler demanded exactly that much to drive his mother and brother Mustafa to Budapest after they crossed into Hungary. [Continue reading…]

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The big myth about refugees

The Washington Post reports: Europe is now struggling with the most severe refugee crisis in decades, as millions of people flee violence in Syria and Iraq. Even as German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel outlined a proposal this week to place 160,000 refugees in nearly two dozen countries, he acknowledged that the plan was merely “a drop in the ocean.” Germany alone expects to receive 800,000 applications from asylum seekers this year. The U.S. government announced Thursday it would take in 10,000.

Refugees are often described as a “burden” for the countries they settle in. The usual thinking is that they are drain on limited government coffers and a weight on sluggish economies, but that countries ought to take them in for moral and legal reasons. Even those in favor of expanding help for refugees, like the former British foreign secretary David Miliband and the executive director of Human Rights Watch for the Middle East and North Africa, have referred to sharing the “burden” of refugees.

However, research that has looked at the effect of refugees around the world suggests that, in the longer run, this view is often wrong. From Denmark to Uganda to Cleveland, studies have found that welcoming refugees has a positive or at least a neutral effect on a host community’s economy and wages. [Continue reading…]

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Islamists in Germany trying to recruit young refugees

AFP reports: Muslim radicals in Germany are trying to recruit some of the growing numbers of asylum seekers reaching the country, according to intelligence services quoted by the German news agency DPA.

The Islamic extremists “are trying to approach the young unaccompanied refugees, who arrive in our country without their families and are particularly looking for contacts and support,” a spokesman for the intelligence service in the southern state of Bavaria told DPA.

He said many of the youths are approached around reception centres but also at Munich railway station where many of the asylum seekers have arrived from Hungary and Austria in recent days.

The Islamic extremists “want to take advantage of the insecurity and distress of the refugees,” he said. [Continue reading…]

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Compassion for refugees isn’t enough

Nicholas Kristof writes: As things stand, we’re on a trajectory for Syria to become even more horrific than it is now. Many experts expect the war to drag on for years, kill hundreds of thousands more people, and lead to an exodus of millions more refugees. We’re likely to see street-to-street fighting soon in Damascus, lifting the suffering and emigration to a new level.

I’m shaken by pleas I’ve seen from women in the besieged Syrian city of Zabadani, which for months has been surrounded by forces supporting the government. They fear that if the government forces take Zabadani, there will be massacres.

So hundreds of women in Zabadani have signed a statement calling for a cease-fire, international protection and evacuation of the wounded. They bravely use their names, despite the risk that they will be murdered or raped if the city falls.

“I’ve never been so depressed,” said Emile Hokayem, a Middle East analyst and author of a book on Syria. “There were options early on. But the options today are all costlier, riskier and come with lower returns.”

Yet as long as we’re talking about Syrian dysfunction, let’s also note European and American dysfunction. The Obama administration has repeatedly miscalculated on Syria and underestimated the problem, even as the crisis has steadily worsened. And some leading Republicans want to send in troops to confront the Islamic State (think Iraq redux).

The least bad option today is to create a no-fly zone in the south of Syria. This could be done on a shoestring, enforced by U.S. Navy ships in the Mediterranean firing missiles, without ground troops.

That would end barrel bombings. Just as important, the no-fly zone would create leverage to pressure the Syrian regime — and its Russian and Iranian backers — to negotiate. [Continue reading…]

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Obama’s Syrian nightmare

Roger Cohen writes: Syria will be the biggest blot on the Obama presidency, a debacle of staggering proportions. For more than four years now, the war has festered. A country has been destroyed, four million Syrians are refugees, Islamic State has moved into the vacuum and President Bashar al-Assad still drops barrel bombs whose shrapnel and chlorine rip women and children to shreds.

For a long time, those who fled waited in the neighborhood. They wanted to go home. They filled camps in Turkey and Jordan and Lebanon. When it became clear even to them that “home” no longer existed, nothing could stop them in their desperate flight toward the perceived security of Europe. The refugee crisis is the chronicle of a disaster foretold.

The refugees do not care what “Christian” Europe thinks. They are beyond caring about Europe’s hang-ups or illusions. They want their children to live. In their homeland, more than 200,000 people have been killed. Statistics numb, but less so when you know the dead. This evisceration of a state is a consequence of many things, among them Western inaction.

American interventionism can have terrible consequences, as the Iraq war has demonstrated. But American non-interventionism can be equally devastating, as Syria illustrates. Not doing something is no less of a decision than doing it. [Continue reading…]

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Who’s responsible for the refugees?

Steve Hilton writes: While we can argue forever about the causes of conflict in the Middle East, it is impossible to ignore the impact of American foreign policy on what’s happening in Europe. It was shocking to see an “expert” from the Council on Foreign Relations quoted on Saturday saying that the situation is “largely Europe’s responsibility.” How, exactly? The Iraq invasion (which could reasonably be described as “largely America’s responsibility”) unleashed a period of instability and competition in the region that is collapsing states and fueling sectarian conflict.

European leaders wanted, years ago, to intervene directly in Syria in order to check President Bashar al-Assad’s cruelty; the United States didn’t. You can understand why — I wouldn’t for one second question the judgment of American political leaders that their country was reluctant to participate in another military conflict. But at least acknowledge the consequences of nonintervention: the protracted Syrian civil war, the emergence of a lawless territory ripe for exploitation by the sick zealots of the Islamic State, and the resulting flood of millions of displaced people.

So it’s a bit rich for American commentators to lecture Europeans when part of the reason the refugees are arriving on Europe’s doorstep is American foreign policy. It’s great that the United States is by far the largest provider of humanitarian assistance to Syrians, but America is bigger than Europe, and wealthier. Why should Europe be expected to take around a million refugees practically overnight and the United States, hardly any? [Continue reading…]

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