#and humanitarian issues following like natural disasters are also political...

[maddy-ferguson]

i'm so sick of the human rights aren't political crowd if you think a country's government, its army, killing people and politicians all over the world encouraging it isn't political you're an actual idiot. stupid. unintelligent

[mariacallous]

On March 5, Haiti’s acting prime minister took off on a chartered Gulfstream jet from a New Jersey airport with nowhere to go.

Ariel Henry—Haiti’s unelected leader since July 2021—had spent weeks traveling in Africa and the Americas trying to rally international support for his country, which has been mired in chronic poverty, political instability, and an insurgency of criminal groups led by a former Haitian police officer turned gang leader, Jimmy Chérizier, known as “Barbecue.”

While Henry was out of the country, Barbecue and his allies coordinated an armed assault calling for Henry’s ouster. They stormed police stations and prisons, released around 3,700 inmates, and attacked the airport in the capital, Port-au-Prince, making it too dangerous for Henry to land there.

Instead, Henry tried to negotiate a plan to land in neighboring Dominican Republic, but he was rebuffed at the last minute by the government there, according to U.S. officials, Caribbean officials, and regional experts familiar with the matter. Other Caribbean countries reacted coolly to the prospect of hosting Henry as his support domestically and abroad began collapsing. Finally, he landed in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, where he remained in limbo until March 12, when he announced his intention to resign.

The chaos and uncertainty of Henry’s final flight as prime minister underlined the political tumult that has gripped Haiti—and the tepid response to Haiti’s downward spiral by an overstretched international community reluctant to tackle yet another crisis.

If Haiti isn’t yet formally deemed a failed state, it’s well on its way. Government institutions and basic services have broken down and gang violence has sparked one of the worst humanitarian and refugee crises in the Western Hemisphere.

“It’s an extremely dangerous situation,” said Bocchit Edmond, Haiti’s former foreign minister who now runs the Haitian Observatory of International Relations think tank. “Without a change, we are facing a possibility of an entire nation becoming a big open-air jail run by gangs.”

Yet what that change should look like—and who might be willing and able to step in to make it happen—remains as unclear now as it has for more than two years.

Haiti’s near collapse has led to frantic meetings among regional leaders in recent weeks and heated debates between the Biden administration and Congress over what role, if any, the United States should play in the unfolding emergency in its own backyard. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Jamaica on Monday to meet with Caribbean leaders on the issue, and he pledged an additional $100 million in U.S. funds to finance the deployment of a multinational force to help stabilize the country.

The Biden administration is urging Congress to unlock even more funds. Two powerful Republican lawmakers—Sen. Jim Risch, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee—argue that the administration doesn’t have adequate plans for how it would use those funds. They also charge that the administration let its Haiti policy fester in indecision for too long, exacerbating the country’s current predicament.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, has faced chronic instability for decades, fueled in part by devastating natural disasters and international aid mishaps, including a U.N. mission that brought a deadly cholera outbreak to the country as well as sexual exploitation and abuse of women and children by U.N. peacekeepers, and a 2010 earthquake that killed an estimated 300,000, followed by bungled international relief efforts that sparked a cycle of mismanagement and stunted development projects.

In 2021, then-President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated by a group of gunmen in his home, sparking the current political crisis in the country. (A Haitian judge last month indicted three prominent individuals—Moïse’s widow, an ex-prime minister, and a former Haitian chief of police—for involvement in the assassination, charges they have denied as baseless political reprisals.) Henry took over as acting president shortly after and soon began pleading with foreign powers for a military intervention to address the country’s spiraling instability.

Gangs have taken control of much of Port-au-Prince, and rights groups say the gangs have used rape and torture as weapons against the civilian population. Thousands of Haitians have been killed and kidnapped.

“It is difficult to overstate the gravity of the political, security, human rights and humanitarian situation in Haiti today,” the U.N. mission in Haiti wrote in a report to the U.N. Security Council in January, a copy of which was obtained by Foreign Policy. The violence has led to a surge in Haitians fleeing the country; the report noted that the number of Haitians fleeing to Central America with the aim of making it across the U.S. southern border increased 23-fold in 2023—from 1,550 people in July to 35,500 people in October.

The U.S. Embassy in Haiti this week evacuated some diplomats and nonessential personnel as well as deployed a specialized detachment of U.S. Marines to bolster the embassy’s security. Gen. Laura Richardson, commander of U.S. Southern Command, told lawmakers in a hearing on Thursday that the U.S. military had plans ready to evacuate U.S. citizens if the crisis worsened.

“It’s absolute chaos. People are crying out for even some basic level of security,” said Nicole Widdersheim, deputy Washington director at Human Rights Watch. “We need to see the international community doing something very rapid to bring security and stability and protection from the violence.”

The international community, meanwhile, procrastinated on the matter for over two years, officials and experts said.

After Moïse’s assassination, the United States balked at the prospect of leading a multinational force. In 2023, U.S. President Joe Biden privately asked Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau if Canada would take the lead, current and former officials said. Canada declined, but it offered to contribute $100 million to help fund such a force. No other country in South or Central America stepped up. Haiti, coordinating with the Biden administration, then turned to Africa. Kenya agreed to lead a mission and deploy 1,000 police officers to Haiti as part of an effort that would be coordinated and bankrolled mostly by the United States.

That plan stalled when Kenyan opposition politicians challenged the program’s legality. The U.S. government, meanwhile, already overstretched by the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, let Haiti fall by the wayside, current and former U.S. officials told Foreign Policy. Biden didn’t nominate a U.S. ambassador to Haiti until May 2023, nearly two years after Moïse’s assassination. Biden’s nominee, career diplomat Dennis Hankins, was confirmed to the post by the U.S. Senate on Thursday.

“A lot of countries at the beginning were reluctant to take the lead, though Haiti needs urgent help,” Edmond said. But, he added, “At the end of the day, we also need to take our own responsibilities for our own country. I don’t think I will throw the blame only on the international community.”

Henry’s resignation announcement was quietly seen as a relief by some U.S. and regional officials, but it also created new challenges as the region tries to cobble together a temporary governance structure from afar to lead Haiti out of its crisis.

His announcement came after quiet pressure from the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), officials said, as well as repeated threats from gang leaders should he return to the country. (The White House has denied reports that it also pressured Henry to resign.)

Now, CARICOM is helping craft a new presidential transitional council composed of seven voting members and two observers, according to a copy of the agreement obtained by Foreign Policy. Candidates for the council would be put forward by at least five active Haitian political parties with input from CARICOM-screened civil society organizations. Once appointed, the new council, in theory, would help restore legitimacy to Haiti’s absent government and lead the country on a path toward stability and, eventually, elections. Henry has said he’ll officially step down once the new council is in place.

Almost immediately, though, current and former officials said, those efforts hit a wall as Haitian elites began wrangling with CARICOM officials over who should make the final cut, and some potential member candidates voiced fear for their families’ lives if they joined the council. On Friday, Blinken said that most of the parties have named their representatives for the council but that several still have not.

Edmond said many Haitians are skeptical of the plan and “don’t believe it’s the right solution.” Edmond said he believes a better alternative would be for the Haitian Supreme Court to take temporary control and appoint a technocrat as prime minister to strengthen Haiti’s national police forces and lead the country into elections.

Meanwhile, Henry’s resignation has put on hold the U.S.- and U.N.-backed plan for Kenya to deploy a police force to Haiti to help restore order to the country. Kenyan President William Ruto said he remained committed to the plan but that it would only occur after the transitional council was established. It’s unclear whether Henry’s resignation will create new legal hurdles for Ruto to carry out the deployment.

Biden administration officials also considered offers from Senegal and Rwanda to lead the security assistance force, but those proposals were ultimately rejected in favor of Kenya, current and former U.S. and Haitian officials said. Rwanda faces widespread criticisms over its checkered record on human rights and authoritarian bent, and Senegal is currently mired in its own political crisis over delayed elections. However, Kenya’s police have also been accused of committing abuses at home by human rights groups, including the use of excessive force and the killing of more than 100 people in 2023.

The planned Kenyan operation, even if it is able to commence, faces significant practical and logistical challenges, U.S. officials and congressional aides said. For starters, neither Kenya, the United States, nor other regional powers have stated what the rules of engagement would be for Kenyan forces once they are deployed to the country, where they face the daunting task of quelling powerful and heavily armed gangs and a weakened and embattled local police force.

There is also the broader question of whether adding more police will solve the deeper systemic issues that led to the current situation. “The police cannot make significant inroads against gangs absent a broader political breakthrough,” Pierre Espérance, the executive director of the National Human Rights Defense Network in Haiti, argued in Foreign Policy last July. “In Haiti, gang members are not independent warlords operating apart from the state. They are part of the way the state functions—and how political leaders assert power.”

An unclassified U.S. intelligence assessment released this week predicted that Haitian gangs “will be more likely to violently resist a foreign national force deployment to Haiti because they perceive it to be a shared threat to their control and operations” and that Haiti’s national police have been “unable to counter gang violence and [have] been plagued by resource issues, corruption challenges, and limited training.”

Any deployment of Kenyan forces would also require substantial logistical support from the U.S. military, U.S. officials and congressional aides familiar with the matter said. Administration officials have told Congress that once given the green light, Kenyan police could be deployed to Haiti in a matter of 45 to 60 days in ideal conditions—and without U.S. boots on the ground. But Haiti has no clear base or logistics hub for the Kenyan police to be deployed to, particularly after gangs seized control of major power centers in Port-au-Prince.

Another complicating factor is the funding mechanism. After balking for nearly two years on proposals to deploy their own forces to Haiti, the U.S. and Canadian governments have both pledged to fund the Kenyan-led force, but no funding mechanism has been set up yet to do that. A multinational police mission in Haiti could cost an estimated $500 million to $800 million per year, State Department officials have told congressional oversight committees.

Risch has held up an estimated $40 million of the first tranche of U.S. funding for the Kenya-led mission. “[A]fter years of discussions, repeated requests for information, and providing partial funding to help them plan, the administration only this afternoon sent us a rough plan to address this crisis,” Risch said in a joint statement with McCaul. The administration “owes Congress a lot more details in a more timely manner before it gets more funding,” they said.

John Kirby, White House National Security Council spokesperson, said the situation is getting worse in the meantime. “The violence has been increasing, not decreasing, as well as the instability. And, of course, the Haitian people are the ones that are suffering as a result,” he told reporters on Thursday.

Edmond said that even if the Kenya-led mission gets underway, the United States has a “moral obligation to consider, before the arrival of the Kenyan forces, a way to help the national police forces that are now being overwhelmed by the gangs.”

“The United States is the leader of the free world. Haiti is a member of that world, one of the closest neighbors to the U.S. There is a moral obligation here to step in.”

Widdersheim said the United States can’t dodge responsibilities. “Half measures won’t be good enough this time,” she said. “The U.S. government hasn’t in the past seemed to care enough to truly invest in Haiti’s long-term development, and it’s to our detriment because nothing ever sticks; we just get stuck doing half measures that always fail.”

[stepstart1]

World News Headlines Today Online: Navigating Global Events in Real Time

In today's interconnected world, staying informed about global events is essential for understanding the dynamic forces shaping our lives. Online platforms have revolutionized the way we consume news, enabling us to access a wealth of information, analysis, and insights from around the world instantly. From political developments to technological breakthroughs and humanitarian crises, the world news headlines today online offer a comprehensive snapshot of the global landscape.

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While online news offers numerous benefits, it also presents challenges. The sheer volume of information can be overwhelming, leading to information overload or the spread of misinformation. It's crucial for readers to verify sources, cross-reference information, and critically evaluate the credibility of news outlets. Responsible consumption of news is essential in an age where sensationalism and clickbait can distort the truth.

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For More Info:-

Politics News Online India Today

Latest Career News Online Today

Latest Political News Today India

Science News Headlines Today India

[eslemans-blog]

The Biden Africa Team’s Ethiopia Regime ‘Change’ Folly Undermines US National Security

—-Ethiopians must counter this plot by closing ranks—–

Aklog Birara (Dr)

 “The media is the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent.”

  Malcom X, African American Civic Leader

“There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice.”

  Montesquieu. French Political Philosopher

The setting in a nutshell (አያ ጅቦ ጅቦ ሳታማኻኝ ብላኝ)

Western media (BBC, CNN, the New York Times etc.), Western human rights organizations (Amnesty international, Human Rights Watch and others), UN specialized agencies (UNICEF, WFP, WHO etc.) as well as the Governments of the United States and members of the European Union have literally operated in concert “to make the innocent guilty and the guilty innocent,” ever since the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) that the West brought to power committed treason and  genocide on November  4, 2020. Their depictions of the causes and the devastating effects of the war in Ethiopia continues unabetted to this day. For example, I was aghast to hear the Chief of Human Rights Watch in East Africa recently singling out the Government of Ethiopia for the humanitarian disaster in Tigray caused by the TPLF. She deliberately left out the real culprits, namely the TPLF and its allies. She commended the Biden Administration for its planned punitive measures against Ethiopian, Eritrean and Amhara entities and officials.

Eight months after President Joe Biden took office that incidentally converged with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front’s treasonous act on Ethiopia’s Northern Command on November 4, relations between the United States of America and Ethiopia have gone from bad to worse. President Biden sent a congratulatory message to the Ethiopian people welcoming Ethiopia’s New Year 2014. On September 17, the President devalued the message when he issued an Executive Order to punish culprits for the atrocities in Tigray. He empowered Congresswoman Karen Bass, an African America and one of the most influential members in Congress, who met with Ethiopian officials and conveyed his message.

Some argue that the Biden Administration has not yet imposed sanctions on Ethiopia. I say to them “Where there is smoke; there is fire.”  ያልጠረጠረ ተመነጠረ! Those of us who believe in Ethiopia’s just cause cannot afford to be callous.

Is not the statement by Human Rights Watch and or the Executive Order by President Joe Biden unjust and blatantly biased? Do these not reflect the existence of a concert of Western actors that are determined to go after those who are determined to defend Ethiopia’s sovereign rights and the honor and dignity of the Ethiopian people?

Whether coincidental or not the TPLF instigated treason that occurred just one day after President Biden was elected. The TPLF strategic document now made public in its entirety by Ethiopian activists reveals a deliberate and well-planned attack to dismantle the Ethiopian Government and State. The TPLF did not initiate its assault on the Ethiopian state and Government in isolation. It had internal and external partners and proactive supporters. In my assessment, these external actors are part of the problem. I no longer trust what they say. I watch what they do.

Who is the target?

The BBC, CNN, the New York Times, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch as well as UN specialized agencies were lethal in their unverified depictions of “war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, executions on innocent civilians, rapes” and other atrocities in Tigray. These relentless and deliberate depictions targeted the following three entities:

The Ethiopian National Defense Forces led by Prime Minister Dr. Abiy Ahmed

The Eritrean Military led by President Isaias Afewerki, an Ethiopian ally

The Amhara Special Forces, Fano and militia defending the Amhara region

The concert of actors identified earlier never gave credence to counter arguments and authentic evidence from the Ethiopian side. Montesquieu is right when he said, “There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice” The tyranny of ideas and the application of punitive measures go hand in hand with the leverage the donor community can apply to impose its will on the beggar nation, in this case Ethiopia. As the saying goes, “Beggars cannot be choosers.” The mistaken assumption in setting US policy in this case is that it underestimates the resolve and resiliency of the Ethiopian people. When faced with external adversaries, ordinary Ethiopians are like a “sleeping lion.” When challenged, disturbed, and provoked by a clueless wild animal; they rise and fight back to the bitter end. Most Ethiopians are doing exactly that.

A second fallacy that is grounded in the conventional wisdom of Ethiopia’s self-serving political and social elites, the country’s timid and fragmented intellectuals as well as the West is this. When I was in elementary school in Ethiopia, the mistaken and repetitive word uttered incessantly was that Ethiopia’s myriad of problems will be over once Emperor Haile Selassie is deposed or is replaced. The Emperor was deposed but the country’s problems remained intact. When I was in college abroad, the same mantra occurred. The stubborn conventional wisdom associated all of Ethiopia’s institutional and structural problems with Mengistu Haile Mariam, an individual. He proved to be an Ethiopian nationalist who warned his countrymen and women that the TPLF was a treasonous cancer poised to destroy Ethiopia. Mengistu’s other weaknesses, including his brutality against his political opponents notwithstanding, his assessment of the marriage between internal and external forces against Ethiopia is unassailable. Mengistu fled to Zimbabwe. Ethiopia’s institutional and structural problems mushroomed this time led by ethnic nationalists with the TPLF at the top.

Fast forward to the era led by the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and dominated by the TPLF from 1991-2018, the same phenomenon persisted. Conventional wisdom repeated the same cultural ethos that the passing of Meles Zenawi will end the era of newly minted “ethnic princes” that fragmented Ethiopia into antagonistic ethnic and linguistic enclaves. Meles passed but the system remained unaffected and unchallenged. It had in fact produced new beneficiaries of the system. It is this menace that never accepts the will of the Ethiopian people that the West is supporting today.

I find it troubling that President Biden who is accused by his predecessor as having stolen the election is unable to accept the verdict of tens of millions of Ethiopians who voted freely and independently last June.

The ensuing reform process in Ethiopia that the West had welcomed initially more than three years ago, brought into power the new Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. He inherited a state and Government that was literally bankrupt and conflict prone. Who bankrupted it? It is the TPLF and its cohort. Sadly, the honeymoon did not last long. Ethiopia entered a new and dangerous phase caused by the TPLF and not by Abiy. The TPLF was deposed from power through popular resistance. Is this not how democracy is supposed to work?

What did the TPLF do?

It is worth repeating that the TPLF committed treason and genocide in Mai Kadra. When the Federal Government of Ethiopia declared a “unilateral ceasefire” in June, the TPLF refused to reciprocate. Instead, the TPLF expanded its insurgency to the Afar and Amhara regions.

Below is a sample that attests to the barbaric nature of the TPLF that the Biden Team ignores:

Destroyed more than 3,000 health facilities in the Amhara region alone.

Burned down or caused irreparable damage to thousands of elementary and secondary schools as well as colleges. The intent is to ensure that Amhara children and youth (the next generation) remains permanently disabled, disempowered, and impoverished.  

Burnt Churches and Mosques and plundered precious religious treasures; and desecrated iconic places of worship including Lalibela.

Committed a dozen Mai Kadra like atrocities in the Afar and Amhara regions.

Captured hundreds of relief vehicles, including those owned by UN specialized agencies and blamed it on the innocent, namely the Ethiopian National Defense, the Eritrean military, and the Amhara Special Forces.

Destroyed numerous physical infrastructures financed by the Ethiopian poor, etc., etc.

Appalled by TPLF’s mercilessness and cruelty, the USAID Administrator in Ethiopia accused the TPLF leadership of confiscating and utilizing food supplies and other essentials intended for Tigrean and other victims. More galling, the TPLF destroyed what it cannot haul back to Tigray.  

Deployed child soldiers and used them as human shields.

Raped Amhara spouses in front of their husbands. This abominable act is intended to inflict permanent psychological pain to the Amhara population.

 Worsened the humanitarian crisis in Tigray; and opened a Pandora’s box of imminent famine that may be far worse than other human made famines in Ethiopian history.

Unintended consequences

This takes me to the irony and the folly in the Biden Africa policy that I challenge in this commentary. The scheme that removing Abiy from power would resolve Ethiopia’s intractable institutional and structural problems is a fallacy. It will not. On the contrary, his forcible removal from office against the wishes of most of the Ethiopian people will in fact aggravate the situation even further. The additional unintended consequence I project is that such a misguided policy by the Biden Africa Team will push Ethiopia far away from the United States of America. I also estimate that those Ethiopians at home and abroad who do not always agree with Abiy’s leadership will move to his camp in droves.

What do I suggest?

In the light of the above, I urge the Biden Africa Team not to associate a single person regardless of his or her role in Ethiopian society with Ethiopia’s problems. I have shown why this conventional wisdom is patently false, misleading, and dangerous as a policy and decision-making tool.

Ethiopia’s fate can only be determined by the Ethiopian people, and not by any external power regardless of its military and financial means. To do otherwise is tantamount to ignorance and a lack of understanding of the Ethiopian mindset. Ethiopia’s poverty and income level are not mirror images of the national resolve of the Ethiopian people. Therefore the “sleeping lion” analogy is appropriate. Ethiopia has gone through similar hurdles before. I do not underestimate the myriad of problems Ethiopia is facing currently and is likely to face in the future. Ethiopia is an investment capital deficit country. Estimated at $30 billion,

Ethiopia’s foreign debt level is unsustainable. Instead of imposing punitive measures, it is advisable for the Biden Administration to anchor its Ethiopia policy on the following:

a. Refrain from advancing its program of regime change. Ethiopians resent such gross interference in their domestic affairs. The Biden Administration’s unparallel pronouncement of putting the TPLF at par with the Government of Ethiopia is a black mark in US-Ethiopian relations. I do not believe that President Biden wants to be remembered by generations of Ethiopians as the man who squandered a golden opportunity to do the right thing concerning Ethiopia! 

President Joe Biden’s zeal for human dignity and human worth is an admirable quality that I too share. His admonition of the debilitating impacts of state thieves and corruption on society that he highlighted during his address of the UN General Assembly on September 21, 2021, is shared by hundreds of millions of poor people across the globe. In the case of Ethiopia, US aid monies and monies from the donor community were literally squandered and more than $30 billion siphoned off by the TPLF. In turn, this has diminished the productive capacity of the poorest of the poor, including Tigrean Ethiopians.

Accordingly, the Biden Administration does not want to be remembered as the one that supported state thieves and diminished human dignity in Ethiopia. This is the reason why I urge President Biden to walk his talk.

b. Refrain from weaponizing humanitarian aid in support of US policy. There is very little evidence to support that the Ethiopian people will trade their freedom, sovereign rights, territorial integrity, honor, and dignity for humanitarian aid.

c. The Biden Ethiopia foreign policy team will serve America’s long term strategic interests in Ethiopia and the rest of the Horn of Africa if it facilitates debt relief measures for Ethiopia, instead of applying financial punitive measures against Ethiopia. Ethiopia’s massive youth that is fighting the TPLF and OLF/Shane will remember both. Siding with them at a time of greatest need will advance America’s interests in all of Africa. Doing the exact opposite will strengthen America’s adversaries including China, Iran, Russia, and others.

d. I agree with those including American civic, academic, media, policy and decisionmakers that Ethiopia’s path forward is not the prolongation of war, but rather the pursuit of constructive dialogue for national peace, reconciliation, and national consensus among all Ethiopian stakeholders. However, the Biden Ethiopia policy team has not yet showed the moral and ethical courage to demand that the TPLF core leadership and its allies declare and commit to peace instead of the pursuit of insurrection. Failure to single out the TPLF for the war and destruction is tantamount to emboldening it.

e. In his Executive order of September 17, 2021, President Joe Biden whom I supported during the Presidential Election last year “authorized broad sanctions against those involved in perpetrating the ongoing conflict in Ethiopia as reports of atrocities continue to emerge from the Tigray region.”

 I understand that the punitive measures are dire warnings rather than as a done deal. CNN reported that “The administration did not immediately impose sanctions under the new order; but it is prepared to take aggressive action” unless the parties, including the Ethiopian government, the Eritrean government, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, and the Amhara Regional Government “take meaningful steps to enter into talks for a negotiated ceasefire and allow for unhindered humanitarian access.”

Forgotten in President Biden’s directive is the fact that the Government of Ethiopia had declared a “unilateral ceasefire” without reciprocity from the TPLF. Why did the President fail or ignore to demand that the TPLF abandon its aggressive and brutal people’s war program and agree to negotiate for peace?

Is it not hypocritical to declare that the United States is committed to Ethiopia’s territorial integrity and sovereignty on the one hand; and to place the TPLF that vows to dismantle Ethiopia and crush the Amhara population at par with the Government of Ethiopia and the Amhara regional government?

The core question I shall pose to the Biden Administration is this. Is it prudent, fair, or just to put the Governments of Ethiopia and Eritrea at par with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) that committed treason and genocide, expanded its insurgency to the Afar and Amhara regions; and that declared its alliances with Ethiopia’s arch enemies as well as with the OLF/Shane and Al-Shabab? Is there any parallel that the Biden Administration can cite to defend such an indefensible foreign policy? Can the Biden Ethiopia Team afford to make a policy blunder in Africa’s second most populous country in the aftermath of the Afghanistan fiasco?

By all accounts, the Biden Administration’s Ethiopia policy is flawed. The American people deserve to know that their Federal Government leaders are undermining America’s long-term relations with Ethiopia, a country that has been a steadfast friend of the USA for more than 100 years.

The generous American people must also know that their monies that are intended to support victims of war and other ailments are being weaponized by both the TPLF and by the Biden Administration. This weaponization of aid to achieve strategic objectives is a disservice to the American people. Weaponization corrodes and erodes America’s core values of justice, humanity, and fair play. It also curtails the advancement of democracy and a competitive market economy in Ethiopia. Finally, the American public ought to know that the pursuit of regime change by the Biden Administration perpetuates the universal international perception that the United States Government is narrow minded and arrogant in its treatment of poor and capital starved nations regardless of location. It goes without saying that only the Ethiopian people possess the right to change their leaders if they so choose. Ethiopia is not “a Banana Republic.”

US Administration policy failures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and other countries teach me that repeating the same misguided policies in the Horn and the rest of Africa is counterproductive.

In an increasingly multipolar world that is changing the balance of power, Montesquieu’s eternal guide “There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice” is appropriate to here. The Biden Ethiopia Team is doing exactly this under the pretext of defending the rule of law and advancing the cause of justice.

Ordinary Ethiopians ask righty “Whose rule of law, whose justice and for whom?”

September 21, 2021

Watch the following video to understand the depth of agony in the Amhara region.

[architectuul]

The Greek Experiment

The first initiative for an architecture exhibition within the Venice Biennale was taken by La Biennale di Venezia in 1975 when Vittorio Gregotti was appointed as a director of Visual Arts. Since his appointment three major exhibitions were organised between 1975 and 1978 and finally in 1980 the Architecture department got detached from the Art Biennale and became independent under the presidency of Giuseppe Galasso (1979-1982), who appointed Paolo Portoghesi as director. 

Read also “What Fundamentals? Revisiting Treasures in Disguise” and “The Introverted Seismograph”

It was that year when the 1st International Architecture Exhibition was held in Venice titled La presenza del passato. During the first 15 years there were no national pavilions participating to the Biennale, until its 5th edition in 1996 under the curation of Austrian architect Hans Hollein, who decided to follow the standards of the Visual Arts Biennale and hosted national participations for the first time. 

Since then, most of the national pavilions throughout the years have attempted to demonstrate each country’s architecture history and special qualities by responding to each year’s curatorial agenda. However, very often there have been cases when architecture itself was 'overshadowed' by a socio-political condition (e.g a war, a revolution, a natural disaster, an economic crisis, etc.) affecting one or multiple countries. In these cases, national pavilions became bold statements and curators used them as pretext to express their ideas responding to the emergent condition. In the past two decades the European economy has suffered from a deep recession followed by a migrant crisis which triggered a general instability across the continent. As a result, Architecture Biennale reflected both on a national and an international level on these cases examining how the profession and built environment have been affected by these conditions.

Since 2010 Greece faced a great recession and among other countries has suffered extreme austerity measures that led ultimately to a humanitarian crisis. On top of that, the turmoil in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq pushed migrant flows towards Europe through Greece result into a refugee crisis after 2012. Within this context in the 13th Architecture Biennale curated by David Chipperfield under the theme Common Ground Athens was brought to the spotlight. As a response to the Greek crisis and economic meltdown, Panos Dragonas and Anna Skiada, the curators of the Greek pavilion, tried to address issues like the Athenian living standards and the deteriorating quality of public space focusing mainly on the typology of the Athenian apartment building, the fragmentation and decay of Athenian public space which led to the need to redefine the priorities of architectural design. In the following Biennale in 2014 under the topic Fundamentals by Rem Koolhaas, the appointed commissioner Yannis Aesopos shifted the focus from the ongoing crisis to tourism, examining how it has influenced the country’s modernisation through constructed tourism landscape.

One year later, on top of the economic crisis, Greece had to face immigration flows from Syria and Middle East which affected dramatically the economy and society. At the end of the same year, the Ministry of Environment and Energy appointed the Association of Greek Architects – Greek Union of Architects for the first time as commissioner of the Greek Pavilion for the 15th Architecture Biennale under the topic Reporting from the Front by Alejandro Aravena. At the beginning of 2016 with only 5 months remaining till the Biennale’s opening, the Association launched an open call for ideas and a few days later held an open conference where all contributors could present their ideas and proposals. In the following days, as there was neither agenda nor structure for the project's management, the Association announced that the preparation of the curatorial proposal and pavilion structure would be determined collectively through an open dialogue between the participants. 

After the first meetings in which over 200 architects participated, smaller groups were formed and assigned with different tasks in order to manage Press and Communication, Pavilion’s Design, Sponsorships, Events and Catalogue’s editing. The different teams were supposed to work closely and come together once per week to brief all participants on the project's progress. Through this process the curatorial team had the chance to ‘re-discover collective procedures, the participatory spirit, the unification, the consultation (…) and democracy through an on-going dialogue which did not stop at physical presence but extended to the Internet framework of communication’. Five months later, while the initial conference attracted more than 200 architects, after an extensive process only 140 participants managed to follow up until the end and make it to the pavilion’s opening in May.

There’s room for all of us was the motto which had inspired the Greek participation. However, there were times during the process when the collective body couldn’t agree or decide collectively. There were times when individual voices were calling for a sabotage of the Biennale or suggesting for a bold statement to raise awareness regarding the refugees. There were even times when the collective was split, and the polyphony was creating confusion and chaos. Within the preparation period thousands of emails have been exchanged between participants and hundreds of hours were spent on web and live meetings in order for 140 people to conclude on complicated theoretical and technical issues. We quarrelled, we made it up, we quarrelled again. We were disappointed, we took fresh courage. During that lengthy and draining process some people left the group, while others who met for the first time became friends and work partners and there were even cases of people who were opposed or confronted during the overheated debates. It was definitely a difficult and challenging procedure which pushed most participants to their limits.

Only a few days before the opening the Pavilion was not ready and the number of participants who voluntarily would travel to Venice was not confirmed. A number of scheduled events was at risk and the funding had become a major issue while at the same time capital controls introduced in June in Greece made the situation even more complicated. Finally, the pavilion was completed just on time and some participants managed to get the funding and sponsorships to travel and organise their events in Venice. However, even within the 7-month period of the Biennale the collective had several arguments and numerous issues kept coming up. 

Most participants ended up having bittersweet memories of their participation, but we could all agree that it was a useful experience through which certain lessons have been learnt especially on horizontal, non-hierarchical bodies and how they operate. There are definitely limitations in such schemes and balance is hard to be achieved between the individual and the collective. We could all agree that we would do a lot of things differently next time, however #ThisisACo_op was a very representative approach expressing the spirit and challenges of the time in a very critical moment for Greece.

♯ThisIsACo_op

The title of the Greek entry at the 15th Venice Architectural Biennale - ♯ThisIsACo_op - attempts to give expression to the nature of the process by means of which this participation has been realised, and also to express its basic argument on the importance of collective, co-operative, and democratic action. The choice of the title arose for an additional reason: as a reversal of the familiar hashtag ♯ThisIsACoup, which predominated on the internet after the frustration of the will of the overwhelming majority of the Greek people in the referendum of 5/7/2015, when it said ‘OCHI’ to the proposals of the creditors (the European Union and International Monetary Fund) for the imposition on Greece of new and extreme policies of austerity. 

The logic of the use of the title as a hashtag is a further expression of an endeavour by means of which, as is the case with a hashtag, many different apprehensions people, and situations give rise to a common resultant, express themselves in the same space, and make up a unified body.

***

VAB 08: Dimitris Grozopoulos

Dimitris Grozopoulos is an Architect and Urban Designer. He studied Architecture at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and holds a Master’s in Landscape & Urbanism from Kingston University London. After his graduation he has been teaching at the Master programme in Kingston University and has participated in crits and design workshops. His work has been featured in magazines, conferences and exhibitions such Architecture Drawing Prize exhibition at Sir John Soane’s Museum in London (2018), Future Architecture Platform programme (2017), Venice Architecture Biennale (2016), 3rd Think-Space Unconference in Zagreb (2013), etc. His main interest is focused on urban decay, regeneration strategies and brownfield sites. Within the last few years, he has been involved in several architecture and masterplan projects as well as in in numerous international competitions.

[newstfionline]

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

First Arctic Navigation in February (Bloomberg) A tanker sailed through Arctic sea ice in February for the first time, the latest sign of how quickly the pace of climate change is accelerating in the Earth’s northernmost regions. The Christophe de Margerie was accompanied by the nuclear-powered 50 Let Pobedy icebreaker as it sailed back to Russia this month after carrying liquified natural gas to China through the Northern Sea Route in January. Both trips broke navigation records. The experimental voyage happened after a year of extraordinarily warm conditions in the Arctic that have sent shockwaves across the world, from the snowstorm that blanketed Spain in January to the blast of cold air that swept through Canada in mid-February, moving deep into the South as far as Texas. The Arctic is warming more than twice as quickly as the rest of the world and the area covered by ice there has reached historic lows multiple times over the past 12 months. The melting in the region is already in line with the worst-case climate scenarios outlined by scientists.

Biden mourns 500,000 dead, balancing nation’s grief and hope (AP) With sunset remarks and a national moment of silence, President Joe Biden on Monday confronted head-on the country’s once-unimaginable loss—half a million Americans in the COVID-19 pandemic—as he tried to strike a balance between mourning and hope. “We often hear people described as ordinary Americans. There’s no such thing,” he said Monday evening. “There’s nothing ordinary about them. The people we lost were extraordinary.” The president, who lost his first wife and baby daughter in a car collision and later an adult son to brain cancer, leavened the grief with a message of hope. “This nation will smile again. This nation will know sunny days again. This nation will know joy again. And as we do, we’ll remember each person we’ve lost, the lives they lived, the loved ones they left behind.” He said, “We have to resist becoming numb to the sorrow. We have to resist viewing each life as a statistic or a blur or, on the news. We must do so to honor the dead. But, equally important, to care for the living.”

Texans Needed Food and Comfort After a Brutal Storm. As Usual, They Found It at H-E-B. (NYT) The past week had been a nightmare. A winter storm, one of the worst to hit Texas in a generation, robbed Lanita Generous of power, heat and water in her home. The food she had stored in her refrigerator and freezer had spoiled. She was down to her final five bottles of water. But on Sunday, as the sun shined and ice thawed in Austin, Ms. Generous did the same thing as many Texans in urgent need of food, water and a sense of normalcy: She went to H-E-B. “They’ve been great,” she said, adding with just a touch of hyperbole: “If it hadn’t been for the bread and peanut butter, I would have died in my apartment.” H-E-B is a grocery store chain. But it is also more than that. People buy T-shirts that say “H-E-B for President,” and they post videos to TikTok declaring their love, like the woman clutching a small bouquet of flowers handed to her by an employee: “I wish I had a boyfriend like H-E-B. Always there. Gives me flowers. Feeds me.” For many Texans, H-E-B reflected the ways the state’s maverick spirit can flourish: reliable for routine visits but particularly in a time of disaster, and a belief that the family-owned chain—with a vast majority of its more than 340 locations inside state lines—has made a conscious choice to stay rooted to the idea of being a good neighbor. “It’s like H-E-B is the moral center of Texas,” said Stephen Harrigan, a novelist and journalist who lives in Austin. “There seems to be in our state a lack of real leadership, a lack of real efficiency, on the political level. But on the business level, when it comes to a grocery store, all of those things are in place.”

Hunger in Central America skyrockets, U.N. agency says (Reuters) The number of people going hungry in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua has nearly quadrupled in the last two years, the United Nations said on Tuesday, as Central America has been battered by an economic crisis. New data released by the UN’s World Food Program (WFP) showed nearly 8 million people across the four countries are experiencing hunger this year, up from 2.2 million in 2018. “The COVID-19-induced economic crisis had already put food on the market shelves out of reach for the most vulnerable people when the twin hurricanes Eta and Iota battered them further,” Miguel Barreto, WFP Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, said in a statement.

Prison riots in Ecuador leave 62 dead (AP) Sixty-two inmates have died in riots at prisons in three cities in Ecuador as a result of fights between rival gangs and an escape attempt, authorities said Tuesday. Prisons Director Edmundo Moncayo said in a news conference that 800 police offices have been helping to regain control of the facilities. Hundreds of officers from tactical units had been deployed since the clashes broke out late Monday. Moncayo said that two groups were trying to gain “criminal leadership within the detention centers” and that the clashes were precipitated by a search for weapons carried out Monday by police officers.

Mount Etna eruption lights up Sicily's night sky (BBC) Mount Etna is erupting again, and its hot lava fountains are illuminating the Sicilian sky. The eruption began earlier this week, and Etna has since been spewing massive orange plumes of smoke and thick clouds of ash. Etna is Europe's most active volcano, and it erupts relatively often. The last major eruption was in 1992. Its eruptions have rarely caused damage or injury in recent decades - and officials believe this eruption is no exception. Stefano Branco, the head of the National Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) in the nearby city of Catania, told Italian news agency AGI earlier this week: "We've seen worse."

Cow science (Foreign Policy) A new national exam on cows developed by the Indian government-backed National Cow Commission has been shelved following controversy over its less-than-scientific contents. The curriculum for the test involved erroneous claims about the virtues of Indian cows that were widely ridiculed by the country’s scientific community. Among the “facts” on display: That Indian cows have a special “solar pulse” in their humps which can supposedly convert sun rays into vitamin D that is then passed on to milk, and an assertion that Indian cows are “strong” whereas foreign cows are “lazy.” The issue of cows, considered sacred by Hindus, and their treatment has become even more of a cultural wedge issue in India following the rise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government, with sometimes deadly results. Attacks by vigilante “cow protection” groups killed 44 people between 2015 and 2018 according to Human Rights Watch, with Muslims among the majority of those targeted.

Japan creates Minister of Loneliness to fight COVID-19 suicides (New York Post) Japan just appointed a Minister of Loneliness—to try to combat its exploding suicide rate amid COVID-19. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga named Tetsushi Sakamoto, a cabinet member already trying to beef up the depressed country’s birthrate, to the post. Suga noted earlier this month that Japanese women, in particular, have been struggling with depression since the coronavirus pandemic began about a year ago—with nearly 880 female suicide victims in the country alone in October, a 70 percent increase over the year before, the BBC reported. Japanese suicide expert Michiko Ueda told the BBC that part of the problem involves an increasing number of single women in the country who don’t have stable employment. “A lot of women are not married anymore,” she said. “They have to support their own lives, and they don’t have permanent jobs.”

Facebook Strikes Deal to Restore News Sharing in Australia (NYT) Facebook said on Monday that it would restore the sharing and viewing of news links in Australia after gaining more time to negotiate over a proposed law that would require it to pay for news content that appears on its site. The social network had blocked news links in Australia last week as the new law neared passage. The legislation includes a code of conduct that would allow media companies to bargain individually or collectively with digital platforms over the value of their news content. Facebook had vigorously objected to the code, which would curb its power and drive up its spending for content, as well as setting a precedent for other governments to follow. The company had argued that news would not be worth the hassle in Australia if the bill became law. But on Monday, Facebook returned to the negotiating table after the Australian government granted a few minor concessions.

U.S.-Saudi ties (Foreign Policy) The families of the three U.S. service members killed and 13 others injured by Mohammed Alshamrani, a Saudi airman who went on a shooting spree at Naval Air Station Pensacola in 2019, are suing Saudi Arabia’s government, alleging that the kingdom failed to screen him appropriately before sending him to the United States for training. The families are filing the lawsuit against Saudi Arabia based on a 2016 law that allows U.S. citizens to sue foreign governments over terrorist attacks—legislation that was initially passed in order to allow the families of 9/11 victims to bring a civil suit against Saudi Arabia.

Italian Ambassador Among Three Killed in Attack on U.N. Convoy in Congo (NYT) For Luca Attanasio, Italy’s ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo, humanitarian work was at the core of his mission. The 43-year-old had moved with his wife to the capital, Kinshasa, in 2017, where their family grew to include three young daughters. He rose to the rank of ambassador in 2019, the pinnacle of his diplomatic career. On Monday, Mr. Attanasio was among three people killed in an attack on a humanitarian convoy near the city of Goma, the World Food Program and Italy’s Foreign Ministry said, the latest in a wave of violence in that part of the central African nation. The deaths of Mr. Attanasio; an Italian Embassy official, named by the Foreign Ministry as Vittorio Iacovacci; and Mustapha Milambo, a driver for the World Food Program, have rattled the international diplomatic community and drawn condemnation from across the globe.

Flood damage and insurance (NPR) Right now, over 4 million houses and small apartments in the contiguous United States are at substantial risk of expensive flood damage, and the cost of flood damage to homes will increase by 50 percent over the next 30 years according to the First Street Foundation. As the climate changes, places that were perfectly safe to live in will no longer be as sure of bets as they once were, and the costs are about to be a serious reality check. The National Flood Insurance Program is $36 billion in debt because of underestimated risks. Over the next several years, FEMA plans to raise rates up to 18 percent a year until prices are accurate, starting this October.

[southeastasianists]

The persecution of minority groups.

The celebration of ancient heritage.

Muslim communities driven from Rakhine state and forced to seek refuge in neighbouring Bangladesh.

Buddhism’s sacred landscapes and living traditions recognised by the international community.

Human rights and heritage – two issues that appear so unrelated as to be irreconcilable. In the face of human suffering, heritage can feel like… an indulgence. How can we think about visiting historic monuments when hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced? Why protect and preserve old temples when homes and places of worship are being deliberately burnt down? Why worry about the effect of natural disasters on heritage sites when manmade disasters enacted upon real people are equally destructive and – theoretically anyway – more easily avoided?

The usual response to such questions is that access to and enjoyment of cultural heritage is a human right, one that is guaranteed by international human rights law, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and protected from destruction during times of conflict through international instruments like the 1954 Hague Convention. So central is heritage to human rights discourses that scholars have used the term ‘cultural genocide’ to describe the intentional vandalism of heritage sites. Such destruction has been framed as part of ‘a systematic attempt to scrub away the identity, history and memory of entire peoples’. Not only can heritage tell us who we are and who we were, but the ways in which we manage it – whose stories we choose to tell, and whose are elided – also tell us about who we want to be.

This approach, in which heritage is a human right, is a valid response. Heritage – including intangible and underwater heritage – does have a place in the discussion of priorities and resources, even in countries that are dealing with past or ongoing human rights abuses.

In fact, these discussions are even more important in such countries. Rather than limiting ourselves to the idea of heritage as a human right, I am increasingly interested in using human rights as a productive methodology for thinking about heritage. This is because the different ways a state manages human rights issues and heritage issues can tell us about how that state understands diversity and identity, and about the effectiveness of international engagement in achieving desired outcomes. Cultural tourism of heritage sites can also improve livelihoods when undertaken judiciously.

There is no better place to bring these issues into conversation with each other than Myanmar, where the Government has been grappling with the transition from military to civilian rule for the past decade. In the past year alone, the Government has been accused of genocide on a massive scale at the same time as it has been recognised on the world stage for the ancient and sacred landscape of Bagan.

Just last month, State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi appeared at the International Court of Justice in The Hague to defend Myanmar’s human rights record amidst allegations of genocide against its Rohingya minority in 2017. In what Amnesty International has described as the biggest human rights catastrophe in the region, up to 1 million people are believed to have been affected by ‘cleansing’ operations undertaken by military and security forces in 2017. A report delivered by the International Independent Fact-Finding Mission in Myanmar in September 2019 drew attention to the situation of ethnic minorities in not only Rakhine but also Chin, Kachin and Shan States, all of whom ‘have suffered human rights violations and violations of international humanitarian law at the hands of the Tatmadaw [armed forces of Myanmar].’ The Report’s authors noted with regret the failure of Myanmar to engage or respond to communications.

Sitting in contrast to this reluctance to engage were the celebrations in Naypyitaw that accompanied the inscription of the ancient city of Bagan on the UNESCO World Heritage list in July 2019, in the process becoming Myanmar’s second World Heritage property (the other being the Pyu Ancient Cities, recognised in 2014). The inscription recognises the significance of Bagan’s landscape, material evidence and continuing religious and cultural practices, which together create a site of ‘outstanding universal value’.

At stake here is nothing less than the question of Burmese identity. This is exemplified by Aung San Suu Kyi’s framing of Bagan as a ‘hub of diversity of cultures, people and ideologies of the world’.She also highlighted the role of heritage in bringing people closer together and generating mutual respect. These remarks pay lip service to diversity but are at odds with the human rights violations experienced by many of Myanmar’s ethnic minorities. They also gloss over the way in which Bagan has been used as a powerful symbol of a deep historical and ethnically-based nationalism. What remains unclear, therefore, is how Bagan’s ‘outstanding universal value’ at the macro-level can accommodate diversity at the micro-level. Indeed, some scholars have drawn attention to how such universal valuations are ‘a means by which local stakeholders and communities with a particular interest in heritage places can be excluded from having a role in making decisions about managing them’ (Rodney Harrison, Heritage: Critical Approaches, p. 110).

In Myanmar, issues of diversity and inclusion have been ‘at the heart of Burmese politics since the start of modern Burmese politics a hundred years ago’, resulting in ‘an identity crisis that has not yet been resolved’ (Thant Myint-U, The Hidden History of Burma, p. 256). Hence the UNESCO inscription of Bagan, a Buddhist site in a majority Buddhist country, is used by Myanmar’s leaders to demonstrate diversity at the same time as it reaffirms the centrality of a certain type of (religious, racial and cultural) identity within the national narrative. In embracing the opportunities presented by the world heritage inscription, we must move past these prevailing narratives and towards a new imagining of Myanmar as a country that is profoundly multiracial and multicultural, in which ‘race, ethnicity, and identity [are] mutable, evolving and contingent’ (Thant Myint-U, The Hidden History of Burma, p. 188).

The juxtaposition of human rights and heritage in the context of Myanmar can also tell us about the efficacy of isolation versus engagement in global relations. The inscription of Bagan suggests that carrots work better than sticks. From Myanmar’s perspective, the inscription is affirmation that the international community remains willing to engage despite decades of self-imposed isolation, external sanctions and a deteriorating human rights situation. Furthermore, the inscription is indicative of Myanmar’s ability to respond to international expectations. Myanmar began the Bagan nomination process in 1994-5, but it was not progressed by UNESCO due to a lack of appropriate heritage legislation and reservations about Myanmar’s ability to manage the site in accordance with international heritage standards. UNESCO is now sufficiently convinced that such concerns have been addressed, although evidence of earlier mismanagement can be seen to this day in the water-hungry golf course, unerringly straight road laid across archaeologically-rich areas and many tourist hotels that populate the templed landscape, including in the Bagan Archaeological Zone.

The takeaway message here is that Myanmar is willing and able to respond to international pressure in the field of heritage governance and protection. We must continue to hope that positive engagement in relation to human rights remains a possibility.

Finally, bringing human rights into conversation with heritage can help us think beyond the knee-jerk travel boycotts that are already beginning to affect local communities and tour operators in Myanmar. When the inscription was announced, President U Win Myi expressed high expectations that ‘Arrival of tourists to the Bagan region would surely increase, helping the economic development of the local people’. But instead of seeing an increase in visitors as is often the case following a World Heritage listing, tourist numbers have dropped. Anecdotal evidence suggests that local tour operators in Yangon and Bagan have declined by up to 70% in the past twelve months, affecting what was a burgeoning tourist economy. For many would-be visitors, it has been difficult to reconcile visiting heritage sites in a country where significant human rights abuses are occurring.

But now is not the time for tourists to boycott Myanmar. Instead, visitors should visit Myanmar’s acclaimed heritage sites, and should foreground human rights as they do so. This creates the opportunity to learn: about the dominance of Buddhism in the national narrative, about Myanmar’s complex histories, about the racial, linguistic and religious diversity of this country, and about its competing internal nationalisms. And about the ways that ethical and sustainable tourism can benefit those who rely on such income for their livelihoods, for better health outcomes, and for their education. In this way, the message of Bagan’s preservation sits not in juxtaposition to, but alongside, the destruction that is taking place in other parts of the country.

Note: I am grateful to participants of the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre’s Workshop on Human Rights (September 2019) and to the Master of Human Rights students who presented at the Land of a Thousand Pagodas event (October 2019) for encouraging me to integrate human rights more deeply into my research and teaching practices.

[orbemnews]

Analysis: What the immigration 'crisis' debate is missing Cillizza: How did we get here so quickly? Biden has only been president for 51 days! Is this the result of one specific policy change? Or a series of them? Shoichet: People who follow immigration closely will tell you the latest situation at the border has been building for a while. We were seeing numbers climbing in late 2020, too. It’s really important to remember that people migrate for many reasons, and who is president of the United States is often not a huge part of the equation. Sure, it might be a factor that nudges someone who’s undecided one way or the other. And some migrants near the Mexico-Guatemala border who recently spoke to CNN did mention that they were hopeful that the new administration would be more sympathetic to immigration. But we have seen a number of major events recently impacting the region of the world where many of these migrants are coming from — two devastating hurricanes and endemic poverty issues that were exacerbated by a pandemic being chief among them. Experts call these “push factors” (compared to “pull factors,” which would be things in the US that incentivize people to come). And they really should be a big part of the conversation about what’s happening right now and why. In terms of what has changed during the Biden administration, a significant policy change that’s led to some of what we’re seeing is that the US is no longer using the pandemic to immediately turn away children at the border — many of whom are seeking asylum. That’s something the Trump administration did pretty early on, along with a lot of other changes that used the pandemic to crack down on immigration. The Biden administration has been very clear that they want to take a more humanitarian approach at the border. And that means they are no longer turning away the unaccompanied minors that are showing up. Cillizza: Is it fair to describe what is happening on the southern border right now as a crisis? Why or why not? Shoichet: I am very careful about using that word because when we call things a “crisis” the conversation goes into a pretty hyperbolic place very quickly, where the facts sort of fade into the background and political debate takes over. I’ve been covering immigration for years and we’ve seen periodic frenzy around the border over and over again. At a certain point, you have to ask, is this a crisis, or is this a regular migration pattern that ebbs and flows because of a number of factors? Having said that, there are very serious issues going on at the border that we should all be paying attention to. Among them: * There’s a record high number of kids in [Customs and Border Protection] facilities, and they’re being held there longer than [the limit] the law requires. * There are still thousands of people waiting in Mexico — many of them in dire and dangerous conditions — while their immigration cases make their way through US courts. * There appears to be an uptick in the number of migrants arriving (though we need to be careful about these numbers, because they may be counting individuals multiple times). And climate change and natural disasters are likely one reason why. Cillizza: What is the Biden administration doing — in terms of concrete actions — to deal with what is happening? Shoichet: This is a fast-moving situation and we’re still waiting to learn more about what the Biden administration is doing. One effort that was discussed at a White House press briefing this week is an effort to address the “root causes” of immigration (these are the push factors I mentioned earlier). Ambassador Roberta Jacobson, special assistant to the president and coordinator for the southern border, said the administration wants to spend $4 billion over four years to do this (one big question to keep in mind about this: We’ve heard other administrations say they’re going to do this before, too — and they’ve tried. What could the Biden administration do differently this time?) Jacobson also said the administration is trying to open up more avenues for people to immigrate legally, such as the Central American Minors program, which provides a pathway for children in the region to reunite with parents in the United States. Cillizza: Republicans have seized on the border situation and Biden’s immigration plan as “left-wing amnesty.” How fair is that? Or not? Shoichet: I don’t want to get into putting a value judgment on political rhetoric on either side of the aisle. But one thing I can say is the Biden administration would feel that’s an unfair characterization for a number of reasons. It’s certainly true that from the beginning of this administration they have said they’re prioritizing immigration and pushing to create a more just and humane and functional system. Legislation President Biden has proposed would provide a pathway to citizenship for millions of people. That would be a huge change, the likes of which we haven’t seen since President Reagan’s amnesty measure in the 1980s. There was a brief honeymoon period at the very beginning of the Biden administration. But advocates on the left have started to become increasingly critical of this administration and I think would argue that there’s nothing radical about various things that are being proposed — and also that there’s a big gap still between words and actions. They’re waiting for this administration to start really walking the walk. But one key point is that painting immigration as a partisan issue is problematic. I have traveled all over the country talking to people on many sides of this topic, and when you are actually talking with people about their communities it ends up being a lot less political than you might think. Back in 2011, for example, I profiled the Republican mayor of a small town in Georgia — a farming community — who counted a family of undocumented immigrants among his closest friends. And if you look at polling data, there are a lot of people who agree that the existing immigration system isn’t working. Cillizza: Finish this sentence: “The single best metric to watch as it relates to when we will know the border situation is improving is ________.” Now, explain. Shoichet: I’ll take a stab at answering this question, but one thing I would like to point out first is that we get really caught up in numbers and data about the border because it’s information that’s more readily available and of course it gives us some sort of big-picture indicator of the situation. But these are people’s lives we’re talking about — many of whom have fled danger, or who are desperately seeking economic opportunities, or who are doing what they can to survive. And I fear sometimes the focus on numbers is so abstract that it’s dehumanizing and also gets us away from talking about what is really going on and what that means for a person’s life or for a community. OK, now I’ll fill in that blank. I’d say at this moment the best metric to watch is a number our colleague Priscilla Alvarez has been following very closely — the total number of kids in CBP custody and the average length of time they’re being held. The reason why this is so important is because right now, there’s sort of a perfect storm of circumstances that could really put people’s safety at risk. In part because of the pandemic, and in part because of the sheer number of people arriving, there isn’t enough bed space in the shelters for unaccompanied minors run by the Department of Health and Human Services. So children are being held on average in CBP facilities longer than the 72-hour limit the law requires. The reason there are those limits is because there have been a lot of concerns about making sure children who are in US custody are adequately cared for. And we’ve seen and heard alarming things about conditions in CBP custody before when there have been increases in the number of immigrants held in facilities that don’t have enough capacity or aren’t designed, for example, to take care of children. And I think no matter where someone stands on immigration as an issue, everyone should be able to agree that it’s extremely important for children not to be put at risk by any government policy. Source link Orbem News #Analysis #crisis #debate #Immigration #Missing #Politics #Whattheimmigration'crisis'debateismissing-CNNPolitics

[dipulb3]

Analysis: What the immigration 'crisis' debate is missing

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/analysis-what-the-immigration-crisis-debate-is-missing/

Analysis: What the immigration 'crisis' debate is missing

Cillizza: How did we get here so quickly? Biden has only been president for 51 days! Is this the result of one specific policy change? Or a series of them?

Shoichet: People who follow immigration closely will tell you the latest situation at the border has been building for a while. We were seeing numbers climbing in late 2020, too.

It’s really important to remember that people migrate for many reasons, and who is president of the United States is often not a huge part of the equation. Sure, it might be a factor that nudges someone who’s undecided one way or the other. And some migrants near the Mexico-Guatemala border who recently spoke to Appradab did mention that they were hopeful that the new administration would be more sympathetic to immigration.

But we have seen a number of major events recently impacting the region of the world where many of these migrants are coming from — two devastating hurricanes and endemic poverty issues that were exacerbated by a pandemic being chief among them. Experts call these “push factors” (compared to “pull factors,” which would be things in the US that incentivize people to come). And they really should be a big part of the conversation about what’s happening right now and why.

In terms of what has changed during the Biden administration, a significant policy change that’s led to some of what we’re seeing is that the US is no longer using the pandemic to immediately turn away children at the border — many of whom are seeking asylum. That’s something the Trump administration did pretty early on, along with a lot of other changes that used the pandemic to crack down on immigration. The Biden administration has been very clear that they want to take a more humanitarian approach at the border. And that means they are no longer turning away the unaccompanied minors that are showing up.

Cillizza: Is it fair to describe what is happening on the southern border right now as a crisis? Why or why not?

Shoichet: I am very careful about using that word because when we call things a “crisis” the conversation goes into a pretty hyperbolic place very quickly, where the facts sort of fade into the background and political debate takes over. I’ve been covering immigration for years and we’ve seen periodic frenzy around the border over and over again. At a certain point, you have to ask, is this a crisis, or is this a regular migration pattern that ebbs and flows because of a number of factors?

Having said that, there are very serious issues going on at the border that we should all be paying attention to. Among them:

* There’s a record high number of kids in [Customs and Border Protection] facilities, and they’re being held there longer than [the limit] the law requires.

* There are still thousands of people waiting in Mexico — many of them in dire and dangerous conditions — while their immigration cases make their way through US courts.

* There appears to be an uptick in the number of migrants arriving (though we need to be careful about these numbers, because they may be counting individuals multiple times). And climate change and natural disasters are likely one reason why.

Cillizza: What is the Biden administration doing — in terms of concrete actions — to deal with what is happening?

Shoichet: This is a fast-moving situation and we’re still waiting to learn more about what the Biden administration is doing.

One effort that was discussed at a White House press briefing this week is an effort to address the “root causes” of immigration (these are the push factors I mentioned earlier). Ambassador Roberta Jacobson, special assistant to the president and coordinator for the southern border, said the administration wants to spend $4 billion over four years to do this (one big question to keep in mind about this: We’ve heard other administrations say they’re going to do this before, too — and they’ve tried. What could the Biden administration do differently this time?)

Jacobson also said the administration is trying to open up more avenues for people to immigrate legally, such as the Central American Minors program, which provides a pathway for children in the region to reunite with parents in the United States.

Cillizza: Republicans have seized on the border situation and Biden’s immigration plan as “left-wing amnesty.” How fair is that? Or not?

Shoichet: I don’t want to get into putting a value judgment on political rhetoric on either side of the aisle. But one thing I can say is the Biden administration would feel that’s an unfair characterization for a number of reasons.

It’s certainly true that from the beginning of this administration they have said they’re prioritizing immigration and pushing to create a more just and humane and functional system. Legislation President Biden has proposed would provide a pathway to citizenship for millions of people. That would be a huge change, the likes of which we haven’t seen since President Reagan’s amnesty measure in the 1980s.

There was a brief honeymoon period at the very beginning of the Biden administration. But advocates on the left have started to become increasingly critical of this administration and I think would argue that there’s nothing radical about various things that are being proposed — and also that there’s a big gap still between words and actions. They’re waiting for this administration to start really walking the walk.

But one key point is that painting immigration as a partisan issue is problematic. I have traveled all over the country talking to people on many sides of this topic, and when you are actually talking with people about their communities it ends up being a lot less political than you might think. Back in 2011, for example, I profiled the Republican mayor of a small town in Georgia — a farming community — who counted a family of undocumented immigrants among his closest friends. And if you look at polling data, there are a lot of people who agree that the existing immigration system isn’t working.

Cillizza: Finish this sentence: “The single best metric to watch as it relates to when we will know the border situation is improving is ________.” Now, explain.

Shoichet: I’ll take a stab at answering this question, but one thing I would like to point out first is that we get really caught up in numbers and data about the border because it’s information that’s more readily available and of course it gives us some sort of big-picture indicator of the situation.

But these are people’s lives we’re talking about — many of whom have fled danger, or who are desperately seeking economic opportunities, or who are doing what they can to survive. And I fear sometimes the focus on numbers is so abstract that it’s dehumanizing and also gets us away from talking about what is really going on and what that means for a person’s life or for a community.

OK, now I’ll fill in that blank. I’d say at this moment the best metric to watch is a number our colleague Priscilla Alvarez has been following very closely — the total number of kids in CBP custody and the average length of time they’re being held.

The reason why this is so important is because right now, there’s sort of a perfect storm of circumstances that could really put people’s safety at risk. In part because of the pandemic, and in part because of the sheer number of people arriving, there isn’t enough bed space in the shelters for unaccompanied minors run by the Department of Health and Human Services.

So children are being held on average in CBP facilities longer than the 72-hour limit the law requires. The reason there are those limits is because there have been a lot of concerns about making sure children who are in US custody are adequately cared for. And we’ve seen and heard alarming things about conditions in CBP custody before when there have been increases in the number of immigrants held in facilities that don’t have enough capacity or aren’t designed, for example, to take care of children.

And I think no matter where someone stands on immigration as an issue, everyone should be able to agree that it’s extremely important for children not to be put at risk by any government policy.

[tourismonline]

immigration

In simple and slang language, migration can be defined as moving from one place to another, and Rajab applies to all living beings. But in the case of humans, every year people from their current place of residence decide to migrate to the city or even to another country, which depends on many factors. These factors include security, population, human rights, poverty or climate change.

In this article, we try to examine the reasons why people decide to immigrate. Stay with us.

Know more: Tourist trip to Canada

Investigate the reasons for migration

People decide to emigrate for many reasons, but the main reasons that influence their decision are the pressure factors, which are also divided into different categories, which we will mention below.

Socio-political factors

One of the factors that drive migration is socio-political factors. Persecution because of ethnicity, religion, race, politics or culture can encourage people to leave their country. One of the main causes of war is conflict, government harassment or significant danger from them. People fleeing armed conflict, human rights abuses or persecution are more likely to be humanitarian asylum seekers. This will affect where they are stationed because some countries have more liberal approaches to humanitarian warfare than others. In the first place, these people are prone to move to the nearest safe country that accepts asylum seekers, as is the case in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, for example. In recent years, people have fled to European countries from conflict, terror, war and harassment at home. In 2019, about 295,000 asylum seekers received protection status in the European Union and took refuge in countries in this area.

Demographic and economic factors

Other factors that play a role in human migration are population and economic factors. Population change determines how people move and migrate. Issues such as growing or decreasing population and aging or youth, economic growth and job opportunities in countries of origin or immigration policies in destination countries have a significant impact on human migration. Population and economic migration is directly related to labor and unemployment standards and the overall health of the country's economy. Traction factors include higher wages, better job opportunities, higher living standards, and educational opportunities. If economic conditions are not favorable and there is a risk of further decline, more people are likely to migrate to countries with better prospects. According to the United Nations International Labor Organization, migrant workers defined as people migrating for employment in 2019 were about 164 million worldwide, representing almost two-thirds of those international migrants.

Environmental factors

Other influential factors in migration include environmental factors. The environment has always been the cause of migration because people are fleeing natural disasters such as floods, floods and earthquakes. However, climate change is expected to exacerbate severe weather events, meaning more people can migrate. According to the International Organization for Migration, environmental migrants are those who, due to sudden or gradual changes in the environment that negatively affect their lives or living conditions, are forced to leave their normal homes temporarily or permanently inside. Does their country or abroad. For the future, the number of environmental migrants around the world is projected to increase due to influential factors such as population growth, poverty, sovereignty, human security and conflict.

Types of migration

People who decide to immigrate can apply for immigration in different ways, which we will mention below.

Work migration

Labor migration is defined as people leaving their country of residence for work and employment in another country. There are millions of migrant workers around the world, most of them international migrants. These people are immigrants who move internally within the borders of the country, go from rural areas to urban centers and cross national borders.

Asylum or forced migration

Asylum or forced migration occurs when events such as public violence, human rights violations, or natural or man-made disasters occur. The number of refugees and internally displaced persons has increased by about 50 percent in the last 10 years, with one in every 100 becoming a refugee.

Modern human trafficking and slavery

Human trafficking, or in other words modern slavery, is defined as the act or method of illegally transferring people from one country or region to another for the purpose of forced labor or sexual exploitation.

Many people lose their lives in this way and there are few who have managed to escape to another country.

Environmental migration

Environmental migration is defined as a person migrating temporarily or permanently within or outside his or her home country.

This article addresses the issue of migration and its reasons, as well as the types of migration that we hope you have used. In the following articles, we will try to introduce the types of visas that are used for immigration.

Know more: The best amazing attractions in the world

Source

https://www.radio-visa.com/

https://greencard-lottery.ir/

[phgq]

Duterte ready to work constructively with EU

#PHnews: Duterte ready to work constructively with EU

MANILA – President Rodrigo Duterte on Wednesday expressed readiness to work with the European Union (EU) for the “greater good” of the people as he accepted the credentials of newly-installed EU Ambassador to the Philippines Luc Véron.

In a speech in Malacañan Palace, Duterte emphasized the need to continue to reinforce Philippine-EU ties in face of new challenges and opportunities.

“The Philippines and the EU share a deep respect for democracy and the rule of law. This will serve as a solid foundation for robust cooperation on the basis of mutual trust, respect, and benefit. Ours is a long-standing relationship dating back to 1964,” he said.

He said he was encouraged by the launch of the sub-committee on good governance, rule of law and human rights under Manila and EU’s Partnership and Cooperation Agreement last Feb. 5, which serve as a formal platform where views and concerns on issues related to human rights will be raised and discussed.

The next Philippines-EU Sub-Committee meeting is expected to be held in the country in 2022.

“This signifies our shared resolve to implement this landmark agreement notwithstanding the pandemic,” he said.

Duterte emphasized the need to prioritize efforts to intensify trade and investment through a free trade agreement.

He expressed his desire to partner with the EU to protect and promote all rights of all especially the human rights of migrant workers.

He said the Philippines is willing to further enhance cooperation on climate change and the humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.

“Those most responsible for climate change must be held to account even as we work together to build our communities, resilience, and preparedness,” he said.

Duterte also thanked the EU for its support to the country’s justice sector, peace-building and development efforts in Mindanao, particularly the Bangsamoro.

“Excellency, the Philippines is ready to work constructively with the EU for the greater good of our peoples,” he said.

Meanwhile, Ambassador Véron expressed eagerness to pursue the effective implementation of its Partnership and Cooperation Agreement with the Philippines in all areas.

“By developing closer political relations, we together will strengthen multilateralism and cooperation by binational and global issues. And we will be true to our shared pledge to a rules-based international order,” Véron said.

He said the EU is working with the Philippines to expand trade and investment, to promote maritime security, and to maintain open and safe shipping routes.

He cited how the EU and the Philippines have developed a strong economic and trade partnership.

“Since 2014, the EU has provided the Philippines with preferential trade access to the EU market based on sustainable development, principles, good governance and human rights. The EU with its business community is also the first foreign investor to the Philippines,” he said.

The Ambassador also cited how the EU has recently established a Strategic Partnership with Asean and is looking forward to engaging closely with the Philippines during its role as Asean coordinator for dialogue with EU starting in August.

On global warming, he said the EU is at the forefront of international efforts to fight climate change and share strategic interest with the Philippines on environment.

“The EU has decided to cut further its emissions by 55 percent by 2030.The EU stands prepared for all times to support the Philippines in case of natural emergencies like most lately following Typhoon Goni and Vamco. The EU is ready to work as well with the Philippines --- with the Philippine government on disaster preparedness,” he said.

He expressed readiness to have a productive political relationship with the Philippine government, notably to support the Philippines in its effort to overcome the Covid-19 crisis and its effort to restart its economy.

“The EU and its member-states will continue their efforts to contribute to the international response to the pandemic including by guaranteeing affordable and fair access to vaccines for all,” he said.

He promised that the EU would continue its participation in supporting peace and development in Bangsamoro through a comprehensive and inclusive approach.

Véron also assured that the EU will be a “strong and reliable partner” and vowed to build on robust foundations to move their ties forward. 

Brazil, Korea, France, Colombia

Duterte also accepted the credentials of four other envoys—Brazilian Ambassador to the Philippines Antonio Jose Maria De Souza E Silva, South Korean Ambassador to the Philippines Kim In-Chul, French Ambassador to the Philippines Michéle Boccoz, and Colombian Ambassador to the Philippines Marcela Ordoñez.

Describing Brazil as an “old friend and partner” of the Philippines, Duterte said the two countries should work together to intensify trade and investment exchanges, especially in agriculture, biofuels, business process outsourcing, and logistics, as well as to ensure universal access to the Covid-19 vaccine.

Ambassador de Souza e Silva, in turn, said Brazil looks forward to further enhancing ties with the Philippines on agriculture, tourism, renewable energy, as well as trade and investments.

He said he looks forward to deeper cooperation between the Philippines and Brazil, citing their special roles in inter-regional cooperation through ASEAN and the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR).

He also lauded the Philippine government for its effort and diligence in fighting the pandemic.

Duterte hailed South Korea as a valued friend and partner of the country while accepting the credentials of Ambassador Kim.

The President thanked the Korean government for its exceptional commitment to the Build, Build, Build program and support for the country’s defense modernization, as well as efforts to combat the Covid-19 pandemic.

Kim, meanwhile, thanked the Philippines for its historic contributions to the country, from Filipino soldiers’ bravery in the Korean War to advocating for the Republic of Korea during the advent of its democracy.

He assured the President of the Korean government’s continuing support for Philippine infrastructure initiatives, including the ongoing Panguil Bay Bridge construction project in Mindanao.

Duterte welcomed French Ambassador Boccoz and assured her of the Philippines’ keen interest to further strengthen cooperation with France.

He welcomed France’s active participation in the country’s “Build, Build, Build” and defense modernization programs and encouraged closer cooperation on defense, trade and investments, public health, tourism, and collaboration in these unprecedented times.

Boccoz noted that France will continue to step up its defense and strategic cooperation with the Philippines, within its broader commitment to contribute to stability, free trade, the peaceful settlement of disputes, development, the fight against climate change and freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region.

Duterte accepted the credentials of Colombian Ambassador Fernandez and acknowledged the longstanding friendship between the two countries.

He encouraged deeper bilateral and regional engagement between the two nations, particularly with the ambassador’s designation as Colombia’s Resident Ambassador to the Philippines and Colombia’s recent accession to the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia (TAC).

He also said the Philippines is looking forward to stronger ties with Colombia in terms of trade and investment, defense and addressing nontraditional security issues, including terrorism and other transnational crimes, as well as furthering the peace process given Colombia’s experience.

Ambassador Ordoñez conveyed that she hopes to strengthen bilateral relations between the two countries, by sharing Colombia’s best practices on the reintegration of former combatants, engaging the youth through sports and cultural and technological activities, and breakthroughs in education.

She also stressed the importance of opening a Philippine Embassy in their country. (PNA)

  ***

References:

* Philippine News Agency. "Duterte ready to work constructively with EU ." Philippine News Agency. https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1130321 (accessed February 11, 2021 at 05:08AM UTC+14).

* Philippine News Agency. "Duterte ready to work constructively with EU ." Archive Today. https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1130321 (archived).

[khalilhumam]

Hunger striking surgeon struggles to reform Nepal's inadequate health care system

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/hunger-striking-surgeon-struggles-to-reform-nepals-inadequate-health-care-system/

Hunger striking surgeon struggles to reform Nepal's inadequate health care system

“They compelled me to do so”

Dr. Govinda KC on the 13th day of his eighth hunger strike at the Institute of Medicine, Maharajganj. Image by Esushant via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

On September 14, activist and retired surgeon Dr. Govinda KC — who has been routinely leveraging his own well-being to demand reform of the country's health care system — began his 19th hunger strike at a temple in Ranichaur, a village in Nepal's Jumla district. Doctorstory Nepal, the collaborative social media account of several Nepali doctors, tweeted:

beloved ones without access to health service. He has spend his 150 days in hunger to bring justice to people. He is in his 19th fast onto death and we call him “Pagal” I wish I could be pagal like him. But I don’t have such strength. But why not support him and his cause, — Doctorstory Nepal-सेवा नै धर्म होl (@DocstoryNepal) September 25, 2020

“Pagal” is a term meaning “mad” or “crazy” in Nepali. Dr. KC's demands include providing timely treatment to both COVID-19 patients and those with general ailments, putting an end to the country's lockdown and preventing a surge of infections by taking safety precautions. He is also advocating for medical services to be free and accessible to the public, and wants those involved in corruption in the medical sector to be exposed. On September 22, as Dr. KC's health began to deteriorate, Nepal police forcibly took him to the National Trauma Center in Kathmandu, where he refused all treatments. Instead, he went to the Maharajgunj Teaching Hospital, where he continued his hunger strike. In a press conference on October 1, Minister for Foreign Affairs Pradeep Gyawali urged Dr. KC to end the strike, saying that some of his demands have already been met and the government is working to fulfil the rest.

Leading by example

A former senior orthopedic surgeon and professor at Nepal's Tribhuwan University Teaching  Hospital, Dr. KC retired in October 2019, after 26 years of service. In the wake of several natural disasters, he was part of international humanitarian missions to India, Myanmar, Pakistan, the Philippines and Haiti. In Nepal, he has used his own savings to visit remote villages and provide free medical treatment for the poor. Despite the fact that Dr. KC has waged several hunger strikes over the past nine years, there has been limited progress. On each occasion that the government negotiated with him and reached an agreement, he would end his strike — but the government never implemented the promises it made. In an interview with Image channel in October 2019, Dr. KC explained:

In the beginning, I thought politicians were unaware of the challenges people in remote villages face; I later realized that politicians are not here to serve the country, but to serve their own personal agenda and make money. That's the reason I have to return to my hunger strikes, again and again — they compelled me to do so.

Public vs. private health care

The COVID-19 pandemic has put additional pressure on Nepal's already shaky public health system, which lacks infrastructure, resources and transparency. Staff and resources are spread so thin that many people are losing their lives in the absence of timely medical attention. The Ministry of Health has come under fire for making what many feel are irresponsible and unethical decisions with regard to the pandemic, including its decision to expand the use of ineffective rapid test kits. There have also been irregularities in the purchase of certain medicines. Although stories of the government's positive actions occasionally make headlines, public hospitals in Nepal are generally poorly equipped and still centralised, making access difficult for citizens in remote areas. In contrast, private hospitals — which are often owned by political leaders and other powerful people — are unregulated, expensive, and free to operate without government interference. Most wealthy Nepalis, including politicians, travel overseas for medical treatment, raising questions about whether public funds are used to pay for these trips. In a tweet addressing the unreliability of care in private hospitals, netizen Sudin Sayami, who posted a graphic in solidarity with Dr. KC, noted:

मेरो छिमेकी कोर्ना भएर वयोदा अस्पतालमा ७ दिन सुतेको ५ लाख सकायो, निको भयो। अर्को छिमेकी टेकु अस्पतालमा ६ दिन सुत्यो पैसाको नामै लिएन, निको भयो एकजना आफन्त ग्राण्डी अस्पतालमा ८ दिन सुतेको १५ लाख तिर्यो र मर्यो। बिरामी हेर्न नि दिएन, लाश पनि हेर्न दिएन यसैको लागी लड्दैछ पागल बुढो pic.twitter.com/Ki15X5g2R1 — सुदिन

(@SudinSayami) September 29, 2020

My neighbor had corona; he spent seven days in Voyoda Hospital and spent 500,000 Nepali rupees [4,270 United States dollars]; he recovered. Another neighbor who spent six days in Teku Hospital recovered and was not charged for his treatment. A relative who spent eight days in Grandi Hospital paid 1,500,000 rupees [US $12,810] died. No one was allowed to see either the patient or the dead body. That's what the crazy old man is fighting for.”

Public support for Dr. KC

Thousands of Nepalis who have followed Dr. KC's journey — including medical doctors, politicians, celebrities and members of the public — believe that his demands are legitimate. They have therefore taken to social media platforms to support the cause, using hashtags like #IAmWithDrKC, #WearewithDrKC, and #SaveDrKc to speak out and call for action:

सरकार कम्तीमा हामी ३ करोड नेपालीको लागि भए पनि डा. केसीको माग पुरा गरी जीवन रक्षा गर ! यस्ता चिकित्सक शायद अब फेरी जन्मिदैनन ! #IAmwithDrKC #SaveDrKC pic.twitter.com/BVV9CQqC9u  — Punya Bhandari (@PunyaBhandari1) September 30, 2020

[The] government should fulfil Dr. KC's demands and save his life, at least for the sake of 30 million Nepalis! Such doctors may not be born again!

The National Human Rights Commission has also urged the government to protect Dr. KC's life and make public the details of agreements signed with him in the past. In addition, it has asked for a progress report on the government's implementation of the agreed-to demands.

Efforts not in vain

Despite the challenges, Dr. KC's efforts have brought about some positive changes — most notably, the passing of the National Medical Education Act, which finally paved the way for reforms and standardisation efforts in medical education. This new legislation means that issues like admissions, examinations and fees will be decided by the country's Medical Education Commission. Scholarship quotas for medical education and the monitoring of university faculty have also been increased. Dr. KC's ongoing journey, however, indicates that there is still work to be done: his protests aren’t being fully heard and pressing issues in the country's health care sector are still not being given the attention they deserve. Until they do, Nepal will continue to fall behind global health standard and Dr. KC will, quite likely, continue his hunger strikes.

Written by Benju Lwagun

[ridersintheskies]

The R.i.t.S

The Riders in the Skies (abbreviated as R.i.t.S) is an international organization composed of above human entities from all around the world. The purpose of the Organization is to protect the Earth, ensure global peace, and progress mankind forward. Publicly its members are known as, Riders

Due to the nature and scope of the R.i.t.S’s duties, only above human entities are permitted to engage in combat operations, normal human personnel are typically restricted to non-combat roles. Despite its member’s dangerous powers and its impressive display of hardware the R.i.t.S is not a military organization and will only involve itself in conflicts if evidence of either side committing war crimes comes to light. Despite this, it does possess the capacity to engage in large scale battles with criminal organizations and sometimes nations, if the situation calls for it. How many agents are sent to resolve a situation depends on the nature of the situation and said agent(s) powers and abilities.

The official R.i.t.S symbol is a Capital R. Their badges are this symbol, with R.i.t.S on the bottom and their rank at the top.

History 

The R.i.t.S’s origins date back nearly 1000 years ago. A group a 7 individuals banded together to help the oppressed and downtrodden. The group called themselves Riders. They did so because the rapid social and political changes brought by the awakening threatened to tear society apart. The heroic actions of the Riders helped bring it together. Whenever new threats arose the Rider would be there to stop them.

They fought off power mad despots, protected the weak and innocent from disasters, and intervened in wars when crimes against humanity were being committed. They travelled all around the world and attracted many followers. As their ranks expanded they established a new global organization, the Riders in the Skies. And for the next several centuries the R.i.t.S were the guardians of peace and justice, not just on Therrat, but sometimes through the entire system.

The Riders and the R.i.t.S was not beholden to any nation or Lord. They served the people and always worked towards good. They weren’t perfect, and these imperfections lead to a mass defection of vigilantes who felt that the R.i.t.S was not going far enough, about 700 years ago. They called themselves the Outlaws, and it too grew into a greater organization, The Order of the Outlaws. But eventually it lost sight of its goal and became host to criminals, scoundrels, and despots.

However the organizations greatest test occurred some 40 years before the start of the story. A complex interplanetary war occurred. At first the R.i.t.S chose to watch but not intervene. When it evolved into total war the Riders had no choice but to act. With no Allies and multiple enemies the Riders found themselves stretched thin as the races and nations of Therrat and the greater system marched towards oblivion. At the wars conclusion Therration global society had all but collapsed, the other worlds fared little better.

The Riders own numbers were utterly devastated and few of them remained. But there was one man who was able to bring it all together. A low ranking private, Bworo Kess whose combat prowess was so great many considered him to be a living war deity (some still do), rose through the ranks of what remained of the Riders. He rallied the organization together and brought Therrat from the brink, all the while saving the people from the same would be tyrants and apocalypses that always plagued them. He established new and stronger connections with the other worlds and helped usher in a new golden age for the R.i.t.S.

Duties

The R.i.t.S engages in international law enforcement, investigation, search and rescue, Humanitarian aid, research/development, exploration, and education.

As time has moved on the R.i.t.S has handed more and more responsibility for carrying out these duties to newly (re)formed governments. In situations where a conflict of interest occurs or the government in question can’t provide a sufficient response to a situation in an acceptable timeframe then the R.i.t.S will handle it.

Personnel

The minimum age necessary to engage in field work is 17. All R.i.t.S agents who wish to engage in field work but are not yet old enough or haven’t completed training are referred to as cadets. A cadet isn’t issued a codename until they complete their training. The R.i.t.S will also give codenames for those who frequently work engage in field work or used to.

R.i.t.S training consists of teaching one how to hone their powers/abilities, hand 2 hand, firearms, and cqc training. They also receive first aid training, survivalist training, and technical and mechanical training. All agents, field or otherwise, are required to be passable in at least 2 languages or fluent in 1 language outside their native tongues.

Specific Groups

As the organization grew it split up into different departments and groups. It possesses multiple orders of knights, an intelligence branch, a medical division, and even a paranormal unit.

The agents themselves use their own terms to refer to other agents based on their duties. Those who engage in normal field operations are called ‘Alphas’, maintenance personnel are ‘Betas’, research and medical staff are ‘Gammas’, intelligence agents and black ops members are ‘Deltas’, and those who handle administrative duties are ‘Echoes’. R.i.t.S knights are called ‘Jousters’.

The total number of R.i.t.S personnel is around 120,000, most of these are not field personnel.

The Riders

Calling themselves the Alphas, they make up the core of the R.i.t.S, they don’t require as much explanation as they carry out the general duties listed for field agents.

The total number of R.i.t.S alphas is around 7% of all R.i.t.S personnel. Their ranking system is as follows

Private<Sergeant<Lieutinent<Captain<Commander<Field Marshall

The Commander oversees all R.i.t.S Alphas at a given base, the Field Marshall is the Official leader of all Alphas and the unofficial leader of the R.i.t.S as a whole.

Intelligence

Agents under this wing are referred to as special agents. They perform detective work and espionage/infiltration/undercover work. They lack a rank and can only be commanded by the Chief Intelligence Officer for that base. The overall head of the Intelligence branch is the Director of Intelligence. This branch makes up 3% of the total R.i.t.S personnel.

The Roles are as follows.

Black Ops

Aside from the Intelligence branch’s special agents it also uses black ops agents. These agents carry out duties that normal field agents don’t due to their morally ambiguous nature or when secrecy is necessary to carry out future operations. Any and all black ops missions are strictly off the books and orders are officially issued via word of mouth and through vague and un-certain terms. They don’t have an emblem and they don’t have any kind of matching color scheme, when carrying out operations these members must take steps to hide their identities from the public, because of this masks, helmets, shades etc. are common among black ops members. These members are paid in cash only. Becoming a Black Ops member (as well as a special agent) requires one to be capable of more advanced tactics and forms of combat.

To counter act espionage and potential whistle blowers only agents ranked Captain and above are made aware of the existence of these operations and its members. Publicly black ops members are listed as Spec Ops, and are often required to engage in a number of public missions to avoid raising suspicion. Because they need to change their appearances, they will typically wear different uniforms and even use different equipment for public ops

Despite these precautions the existence of this sub-wing is not entirely secret. Much like the NSA or Delta force, people know of its existence and they know it’s done shady stuff, they just don’t know any specifics. They don’t know who its members are or what operations it’s taken place in (aside from high profile ones).

Detectives

Pretty straight forward. Reconnaissance missions typically fall under their purview as well.

Spies

Fairly straightforward. For reasons of security only Captains, Commanders, C.I.O’s and Intel operatives are made aware of their existence.

Retrievers

These Intel operatives perform a wide range of duties such as search and rescue, weapon or item retrieval, fugitive hunting, and hunting down rogue riders.

Research and Development

The research and development department is comprises the Science wing of the R.i.t.S and has been responsible for creating some of the greatest innovations known to Therrat. They help to provide the Riders with cutting edge technology. The gammas are known to take part in field operations, usually for the purpose of testing new equipment. The highest ranking R&D personnel per base is call Head of Research; for the entire R.i.t.S it’s the Director of Research.

They along with the Medical staff are referred to as ‘Gammas’. 5% of R.i.t.S staff are researchers.

Medical and Aid staff

The medical and aid wing speaks for itself. They take care of injured Riders and lie at the forefront of its humanitarian operations. Like the research and development wing this wing is composed mostly of humans and some AHE’s who are less comfortable with violence. Like the R&D wing it does have field medics. The highest ranking medical personnel per base are called the Chief Physicians; for the entire R.i.t.S it’s the Surgeon General.

They along with the R&D wing are referred to as ‘Gamma’. At least 10% of total R.i.t.S personnel are medical staff.

Knightly Orders

The Knightly Orders all have long histories, most of which predate the R.i.t.S. The original Riders made great friends and allies with various orders, and upon expansion many of these Orders chose to ally with the R.i.t.S. Many incorporated themselves into the organization though they still take orders from their High Masters. The orders possess their own unique ranking system, but for the purposes of greater unity and coordination, all R.i.t.S High Master take their orders from the Grand Master. The R.i.t.S is currently allied with 10 Knightly Orders.

Although the number of Knights varies from order to order, there are a total of 10,000 Knights in service to the R.i.t.S

Maintenance

Engineers, Janitors, Technicians, etc etc. They maintain the equipment, vehicles, and living spaces used by agents. Disrespect towards them is not tolerated and is grounds for citation and administrative action. Very few if AHE’s are in this branch.

This branch makes up 15% of the total R.i.t.S personnel.

Administrative

Administrative members perform the less dangerous, but no less crucial tasks of the R.i.t.S. Filing paperwork, corroborating with politicians and government officials, handling the budget. If someone wishes to file a complaint, it will be done through them. Known among the Riders as ‘echoes’ and sometimes derogatorily as ‘pencil pushers’

The highest ranking titles for this branch tend to be things like Director of Finance. Due to the nature of this branch, it is the most numerous and makes up around half of all total R.i.t.S personnel.

Facilities and Areas of operation

The R.i.t.S maintains multiple bases around the world. The bases are located in the major cities of the regions they operate in. Depending on said region, these bases can draw upon personnel from different countries with dozens of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

Bases

The R.i.t.S bases are their centers of operation for the regions they are located in. They are large, well-guarded buildings where agents live, undergo training, and carry out their duties. Each base has at least 1 commander ranked agent who oversee all duties for each branch (Chief Intelligence Officer, Head of Research). These bases contain the necessary supplies and vehicles needed to carry out missions. The purpose of these bases are to provide rapid and well organized responses to threats within a region. Each base has a highly advanced fully sapient A.I. that provides mission control for all field operatives. As such they are located within said regions major cities and draw upon personnel from that region. Personnel from other locations will be brought in in cases where their expertise and power sets are required. They do possess smaller research stations located in remote locations as well as hidden supply caches in the event an agent is stranded. The intelligence branch also makes use of various safe houses; it should go without saying that the location and quantity of these safe houses is not fully known.

I - Cupitor: Located in Ubar. (West Asia)

Base A.I.: Jasmine

COM: Nexus

C.I.O.: Zee

Nexus, Northstar, Swift, Zee, Phantom, Macabre, Zephyr

II- Fuschee: Located in Shambhala. (South Asia)

The building uses

Base A.I.: Esmeralda      

COM: Recoil

C.I.O.: Bristle

Recoil, Bristle, Kodak, Omen, Eke, Cyclone, Fairy

III - Zhonyx: Located in Penglai. (Central Asia)

The Zhonyx base uses chinese architecture. Mostly from its Xinjiang province. It also takes a hefty amount of influence from Mongol Architecture.

Base A.I.: Mulan

COM: Hellcat

C.I.O.: Odist

Hellcat, Odist, Pinnacle, Shatterpoint, Aries, Reach, Pixy,

IV- Sekmos: Located in Yamatai. (East Asia)

The Sekmos base utilizes architecture derived from Han Chinese, Korean, and Japanese architecture.

Base A.I.: Snow White

COM: Scarlet

C.I.O.: Blackjack

Cryos Pale, Scarlet, Greyhound, Bluejay, Orange Blossom, Yellow 13, Blackjack, Infrared, Ultraviolet, Evergreen,

V- The Unraung Islands: Located in Biringian City (Southeast Asia)

Base A.I.: Rapunzel

COM: Downpour

C.I.O.: Whirlwind

Downpour, Whirlwind, Cinder, Volt, Muck, Frigid, Lightshow

VI- Azshray: Located in Zerzura. (North Africa)

Base A.I.:

COM: Sandman

C.I.O.: Vulcan

Sandman, Talon, Freight, Juke, Vulcan, Grave, Gull, Lurk, Clipper, Act, Rapture

VII- Machunaan: Located in Houssa. (Central Africa)

Base A.I.: Tiana

COM: Sharptooth

C.I.O.: Talus

Sharptooth, Whitefang, Landslide, Judicator, Talus, Grim, Strider, Ranger, Perch, Valgus, Hone, Axe

VIII - Orentshi: Located in Kalahari. (South Africa)

Base A.I.: Nala

COM: Forecast

C.I.O.: Halfblood

Forecast, Atlas, Riot, Bash, Halfblood, Apex, Rust, Stingray, Oldschool, Cadet Erasmus,

IX – The Buluw Islands: Located in Themiscyra (Caribbean Islands)

Base A.I.: Kida

COM: Twister

C.I.O: Wraith

Twister, Hollow, Baron, Resound Wraith, Reef, Cobalt

X - Verqomer: Located in Paititi. (South America)

The base is a mixture of Incan, Spanish, and Portuguese architecture

Base A.I.: Aurora

COM: Argonaut

C.I.O.: Vesper

Argonaut, Vesper, Mustang, Lull, Anvil, Wardog, Ether, Nyx, Winche

XI- Veroxo: Located in Dorado. (Central America)

The Base is a mixture of Aztec, Mayan, and Spanish architecture

Base A.I.: Chel

COM: Mecha

C.I.O.: Melody

Mecha, Azteca, Windbreak, Luminose, Grisly, Melody, Nighthawk, Hush, Maiden,

XII – Caniu: Located in Cahokia (West America)

Base A.I.: Pocahontas

COM: Ursa

C.I.O.: Razzle

Ursa, Aero, Razzle, Brisk, Wolf Pack, Wile, Snowman

XIII - Polurb: Located in the 95 District (North East America)

The building is an enormous Skyscraper.

Base A.I.: Cinderella

COM: Ladyluck

C.I.O.: Nightstalker

Impulse, Ladyluck, Antique, Hollow, Virtua, Avion, Underscore, Aqua, Outrage, Nightstalker, Shinobi, Reset, Jester, Kodiak, X-Ray, Surge, Pathfinder, Hindsight, Deadpan, Kronos, Zero, Prism, Noir, Halcyon, Byte, Brink, Lector, Oddball, Organo, Miracle,

XIV – Romus: Located in Camelot. (Western Europe)

The Base is a castle

Base A.I.: Merida

COM: Ichor

C.I.O.: Cent

Ichor, Lighthammer, Junebug, Saber, Cent, Weaver, Nevermore, Edict,

XV - Albasia: Located in Kitezh. (Eastern Europe)

The Building is a Muscovite Style fortress.

Base A.I.: Anastasia

COM: Volken

C.I.O.: Shiver

Volken, Polaris, Onyx, Breeze, Shiver, Cold Kill, Bludshot,

XVI– The Columbia Islands: Located in Columbia City. (United States)

The building has Greco-Roman architecture, akin to what you would normally see in a DC building or monument.

Base A.I.: Ariel

COM: Lonestar

C.I.O.: Encore

Lonestar, Outcry, Longhorn, Trigger, Shepherd, Royal, Brimstone, Joyride, Dragoon, Quickdraw, Helix, Adonis, Archangel, Heatwave, Exultor, Retro, Bonfire, Rhine, Maverick, Lunatic, Fenrir, Rush, Token, Stormfall, Musketeer, Encore, Venue, Outlaw, Vale, Sage, Rasp, Prodigy, Quasi,

XVII– The Kaibis Islands: Located in Hawaiki. (Polynesia and Micronesia)

The Base is integrated into a volcano. Its self-destruct mechanism causes the volcano to erupt.

Base A.I.: Moana

COM: Nautica

C.I.O: Molten

Nautica, Molten, Albion, Quake, Azure, Nerve, Reaper,

XVIII - The Birangi Islands: Located in Atlantis (Australasia and Melanesia)

Base A.I.:

COM: Riptide

C.I.O.: Varment

Riptide, Varment, Wither, Foxtrot, Hardnock, Boggle, Longshot

XIX - Tsentro Islands

The R.i.t.S operates 4 special prisons for dangerous individuals. Listed in order from least to most secure.

Excalibur

An enormous tower prison located in the frozen tundras of Albasia. This tower also has a powerful weather manipulation that will conjure up extreme weather conditions in the event of a breakout.

Stonehenge

Located in the in the mountains of Machuunaan. Buried at least a mile underground. The only entry points into the prison are each guarded by small armies. It’s also surrounded by 4 R.i.t.S bases, ensuring a quick response in the event of a breakout.

Megalith

An artificial island prison located in the Tsentro Ocean. The Prison is located at the bottom of the Ocean. In the event of a breakout the elevator leading to the prison will be flooded with water, trapping the inmates inside.

Chandelier

A large space station re-purposed for holding the most dangerous of the above human entities. In the event of a breakout it’s set to fall into the sun.

Although the RitS maintains constant oversight of the 4 prisons their personnel don’t provide security, at least not the bulk of it. The falls under the jurisdiction of the countries that the prisons are located in. While the RitS presence has reduced corruption it is still very much an issue in the prisons.

[mindthisworld-blog]

The definition of a refugee from the Convention relating to the status of Refugee in today’s context.

Since its adoption in 1951, the Convention relating to the status of refugee has shown remarkable adaptability throughout the 20th century. Originally established to furnish protection to the millions of people uprooted by the Second World War in Europe, it was subsequently extended to refugees throughout the world without any temporal limitation by the 1967 protocol relating to the status of refugees. With the world in a constant evolution, questions around the relevancy of the convention’s definition of a refugee has been put into context. How can a convention, that was created to protect the displaced victims of the Second World War in Europe, furnish protection to the millions of people around the world fleeing their countries in the 21st century for a multitude of reasons?

The Convention Relating to the status of refugees, also known as the 1951 Refugee Convention, is an international treaty signed by 141 countries. The 1951 Convention is the legal base document that is meant to grant protection to over 70 million refugees around the world. The Convention defines a refugee as someone “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwillingly to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, only is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it”. Under international laws, refugees have the fundamental right of non refoulement to their country of origin if their safety cannot be ensured, they have the right not to be penalised for entering a country illegally if they request asylum and the right to life, security, religious expression, primary education, free access to court and to be treated equally as other citizens by the authority.

 It has been recorded in 2019 that around 70.8 million people were forced to flee their home and that among them, 25.9 million were refugees. The journalist Euan McKirdy, writing for CNN, wrote in his 2016 article that one of the main reasons for the high rate of displaced people around the world is due to “dramatic new or reignited situations”. In fact, most people fleeing their home are not fleeing because of the fear of being persecuted but because of violence and war zone. The conflict in Syria that started in 2011 has resulted in 6,8 million refugees. If we were about to respect the Convention’s definition of a refugee, these people will not fall into the category of refugee. The definition of a refugee has been criticized for being too restrictive and for its vagueness as millions of people are now forced to leave their country for a variety of reasons. As Joanne Van Selm Thorburn puts it in her book “there is no way to establish a single, valid or strict definition of ‘refugee”. The researcher of the Institute of Public Affairs agrees with this and says in his article called “Why cling on to an outdated refugee convention” that “the bulk of today’ s refugees are displaced because of economic hardship or conflict. They do not flee totalitarianism but poverty and insecurity”.

In 2019, the Internal Displacement monitoring centre recorded that 41.3 million people where internally displaced (IDP) because of violence. Quoting the UN Refugee Agency, an IDP is a person who has not crossed an internationally recognised border to feel and be safe. The United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner also adds that an IDP is a person that is forced to flee his home or habitual residence “to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or human man disasters”. The 1951 Convention clearly states that a person is only recognized as a refugee if he is outside the country of his habitual residence. An estimation of the number of IDP’s in Syria has been set to at least 6.2 million as of 2019. Article 1 from the Convention relating to the status of refugees does not state that people fleeing from war are refugees. 

The procedures for determining a refugee’s status can be long and costly. In spite of the fact that refugees have the right of non refoulement while their application is being processed, there are no laws that forces a state to grant them with refugee status. Another issue is the fact that most refugees are hosted by poor countries that have not signed the 1951 Convention relating to the status of refugees. With this said, this means that the Convention is irrelevant for most people running away from persecution or even violence or war and does not give them, among many rights, the right of being able to work or even to assimilate with their host country’s society. A clear and harmonized immigration and refugee policies would facilitate the management of today’s migration flow and help put an end to what looks like a haemorrhage that is only getting worse.

 Another argument that people tend to use when it comes to the relevancy of the 1951 Convention is the security argument. The convention has been criticized for being “insensitive to national, regional and international security concerns”. The 1951 Convention on the status of Refugee clearly states that a refugee can benefit from the rights in his new country of residence. Following the convention, when a person is acknowledged as a refugee in any EU member country, he has the right of freedom of movement within the entire union. Despite our responsibility and our duty to provide humanitarian assistance to refugees, we should not neglect that terrorist groups like ISIS are taking advantage of the geopolitical situation to “further their narrative of a civilizational war between Islam and the West. Europol and Interpol has publically written that there is an increased risk that “foreign terrorist fighters use migratory flows to (re)-enter the EU. It is obvious that the Convention was created to meet the demand of the displaced people because of the Second World War as it does not cover today’s concern around security. The world is in a constant evolution and with this comes globalization and the high risk of terror. The 1951 Convention does not cover security dilemmas especially when it comes to terror. The 1951 Convention does not mention anything when it comes to help securing the European Union or Schengen zones as the Convention was signed years before their creation. A lot of migrants tend to disguise themselves as refugees to come to Europe only to bomb Western cities. The 1951 Convention does not cover how to limit the high risks brought by a mass of refugees when it comes to security. But although the European continent is at risk when it comes to terror, they have done much to discourage refugees to apply for asylum in Europe and other western countries. …. Informs us that Western states employ a special visa requirement, “safe zones” inside conflict areas to limit the number of migrants and refugees to cross their own borders. People do not flee their country because they want to have a luxurious housing in Western countries while benefiting from society. They flee because their life is in danger and because they want the best for themselves and their families. Why would we put so many walls against people that just want to feel safe? 

These are some strong arguments that should be taken into consideration on whether the Convention is appropriate in the context of contemporary world.Due to the mass displacements in Africa and in South America, these two continents have recognized that the 1951 Convention was outdated. The 1984 Cartagena Declaration on Refugees and the 1969 Convention of the Organization of African Unity extended the definition of refugee to include people who have been forced to leave their country because of events which have “seriously disturbing or disrupting public order” rather than only by persecution. The author Andrew Schacknow also argues in his book that a person’s relationship with his state can be damaged in other ways than only by persecution. The professor of politics and forced migration also broadens the definition of the word refugee to include “harms of action or omission by states that seriously jeopardise personal security or subsistence needs”. The 1951 definition of a refugee does not include the new reasons behind the waves of people fleeing their countries due to various reasons not mentioned by the 1951 Convention. 

As these arguments indicate, there is some strong evidence that the current refugee convention is inapt to tackle the different vulnerabilities that can be addressed through international migration. The 1951 Convention does not cover issues around security or who could be a labelled as a refugee. As the official website for the Australian parliament puts it, the” Convention was developed in and for a different era”. It was clearly only a response on the mass displacements caused by the Second World War. We must understand that times are changing and with time changing, we need to make our policies and conventions adaptable to this new era. It is true that the 1951 Convention relating to the status of refugee offers a solid basis for refugees but we need to broaden our definition on who a refugee is and focus on how to protect civilians in host countries and creating a better security for everybody. 

[jesswritt]

Social Media Report for The Canadian Red Cross (draft)

Abstract/Synopsis

This report is an assessment of the Canadian Red Cross’s social media use and identifies which of the organization’s efforts are effective or not, and suggests ways to improve the organizations social media presence. The Canadian Red Cross’s primary strength lies in the organization’s trustworthiness, as it is a top Canadian charity with many followers and supporters. However, the charity lacks in aspects of interaction and engagement with online users. The most effective way for the Canadian Red Cross to achieve increased engagement would be to increase communication with target users and generally work towards a more positively viewed online presence.

Social Media Report for the Canadian Red Cross

The Canadian Red Cross (CRC) is a charitable non-governmental organization (NGO) that focuses on humanitarian action within Canada and abroad. It is part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the largest humanitarian network in the world (The Red Cross, 2019, par. 2). The Canadian Red Cross’s mission, as stated on their website, is “to improve the lives of vulnerable people by mobilizing the power of humanity in Canada and around the world” (2019, par. 1).

In order to draw attention to humanitarian issues, the CRC increasingly relies on social media. The nature of social media allows non-profits to “reach a larger audience on a relatively limited budget” (Digital Marketing Institute, 2019, par. 4) In order to connect with their target audience, NGOs, just like for-profit businesses, need to be an active online presence. The CRC has there own website from where they run their blog, and they are active on Youtube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Linkedin as well. The CRC generally uses these platforms to inform on recent disasters, ask for donations, and promote volunteer work.

Although the Canadian Red Cross is a popular and reliable NGO with thousands of followers and supporters, they have a low amount of interaction on their social medias. The CRC could further expand their reach and viewer-to-donator conversion rates by increasing their interaction with online users. According to Buffer, a social media management platform, “posts with more active and thoughtful interactions will get more reach” (2018, par. 9). This report details the CRC’s social media’s strengths and weaknesses and suggests improvements for the CRC’s social media presence in terms of identifying it’s audience, increasing viewership of the organization, and the way in which their message must be altered with these goals in mind.

Methodology

In order to assess the Canadian Red Cross’s social media presence, it is necessary to look at all of their social media platforms, which include their Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, blog, and website. Looking at their followers, likes, comments, reactions, and shares clearly indicated a pattern. It is also important to acknowledge existing research on the Canadian Red Cross, impacts of social media interaction, and what kind of online interaction is the most impactful. These resources combined help pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses of the Canadian Red Cross’s social media presence, as well as determine their audience and suggestions for improvement.

Results

Primary Research

Table 1. The CRC’s social media presence.

Screenshot 1. Sample social media post by the CRC (1).

Screenshot 2. Sample social media post by the CRC (2).

Screenshot 3. Sample social media post by the CRC (3).

Screenshot 4. Sample Followers of the CRC (1).

Screenshot 5. Sample Followers of the CRC (2).

Secondary Research

Table 2 (screenshot). Most Shared Emotions (Go-Gulf, 2014).

Graph 1. Correlation of Impressions and Engaged Users (Socialbakers, 2014).

Figure 1. Correlation Between Positive Feelings and Total Content Views (Buffer, 2016).

Discussion

The Canadian Red Cross provides many programs for Canadians, which isn’t often reflected in their social media posting. While some content provides helpful health and safety tips and suggestions, much of their content focuses on the need for donations for disaster relief. Most of their posts are accompanied by photos, and they often use relevant and popular hashtags (such as #photooftheweek) to bolster their online participation.

Despite being a popular NGO and having a good number of followers across multiple platforms, the CRC’s posts are not shared, commented on, or liked very often. The CRC has thousands of followers but only 10-300 likes, up to 30 shares, and up to 20 comments approximately. This may be because social media users are unsure of how to respond to a post about a disaster. They may feel inappropriate using the “like” or “heart” to express their feelings about a large number of people dying. Furthermore, posts which inspire positive feelings are the ones that get shared the most (CoSchedule, 2019, par.15). Since many of the CRC’s posts highlight disasters in need of relief (screenshot 1 & 2), the pictures and sad statistics that often accompany those posts are not set up to bring about feelings of happiness.

The Canadian Red Cross seems to get more comments/likes/shares on personal photos/posts (screenshot 3). This could be because these posts are perceived as more positive and opens up room for engagement with viewers. The use of hashtags paired with an engaging photo and story could have resulted in an increase of communication on the post, which in turn could also result in a further reach, and cycle on (Graph 1).

The audience of the Canadian Red Cross seems to be users of all ages who believe in humanitarianism and general world affairs. They like to keep updated in politics and could be creatives such as writers and artists or in medical/health fields, as well as professional fields (screenshot 5). Many large companies such as Telus and Starbucks Canada follow the CRC as well (screenshot 4), perhaps because they like to donate the the CRC or repost their information. It is also important to note that the target audience would have a surplus of money and time to donate to a nonprofit. However, the larger the reach within the CRC’s audience, the more likely the CRC is able to attract donators and volunteers.

Conclusion

To appeal to their audience, the CRC should emphasize posts that highlight their achievements and showcase the impact of donations and volunteers. While highlighting what disasters are most in need to relief, the CRC should make it clear where the donation money goes. They could achieve this a number of ways; for example, by stating what percentage of the money goes where or by defining what five dollars could buy for someone in need. By starting posts with a positive message, the CRC could further their reach and attract more viewers and engagement. The more engagement the CRC has, the higher the viewer-donator/volunteer conversion rates could be. In order to obtain more engagement, the CRC could push more posts such as screenshot 3, and overall write their posts with a more positive underlie. Instead of “hel- meet the humanitarian needs emerging after cyclone Eldai struck…donate now” (screenshot 1), the CRC could write “Our team is ready to help the people of Mozambique after the devastation of cyclone Eldai. Help us by donating and make a difference”, for example. For different posts, asking questions and sharing experiences could increase user engagement as well.

Works Cited

Canadian Red Cross. (n.d). About the Canadian Red Cross. Retrieved March 25, 2019, from https://www.redcross.ca/about-us/about-the-canadian-red-cross.

Ibrisevic, Ilma. (2018, July 13). 7 Nonprofit social media trends taking over 2018. Donorbox. Retrieved from https://donorbox.org/nonprofit-blog/7-nonprofit-social-media-trends-taking-over-2018/.

Patel, Neil. (2015, Dec. 14). The 6 types of social media content that will give you the greatest value. CoSchedule Blog. Retrieved from https://coschedule.com/blog/social-media-content/.

Digital Marketing Insitute. (n.d). How nonprofits can use social media to boost donations. Retrieved from https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/en-ca/blog/18-03-2018-how-nonprofits-can-use-social-media-to-boost-donations

Go-Gulf. (2014, July 14). What people share on social networks – statistics and trends. Retrieved from http://www.go-gulf.ae/blog/what-people-share-on-social-networks/

Eckstein, Mike. (2019, Jan 15). Social media engagement is the new social media marketing: how to do it well. Buffer. Retrieved from https://buffer.com/library/social-media-engagement. (Original work published 2018, Jun 7).

[tevnakurdi]

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

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

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

Health status.

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

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

Local parties.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

International parties:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Civil community. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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