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Bitcoin Cash-Accepting Mayoral Candidate ‘Nobody’ Hosts Keene’s 420 Rally – Bitcoin News

Posted on September 25, 2019 by Danzig

Theres an individual called Nobody competing to be the next mayor of Keene, the libertarian enclave and crypto mecca located in New Hampshire. On September 21, the bitcoin cash-accepting mayoral candidate announced the 10th anniversary of the annual 420 Rally will be held this weekend on September 28. Nobody and the events organizers are hoping to see some civil disobedience during the annual pot rally at Central Square.

Also read: Market Update: Low Volumes and Uncertainty Shake Crypto Traders

On Saturday, September 28, the mayoral candidate named Nobody has announced the 10th anniversary 420 Rally will be held at 4:20 p.m. EDT. The candidate is a libertarian activist who formerly went by the surname Rich Paul but legally changed his name to Nobody. The Keene campaigner asserts that if he is elected he will reduce the size and scope of government as much as he possibly can.

If Nobody gets elected hes told the public that he will attempt to end the war on drugs and laws against prostitution. In addition to his staunch libertarian stance, Nobody accepts cryptocurrencies for donations. Currently, Nobody accepts cryptocurrencies like bitcoin cash (BCH), BTC, DASH, and XLM. The candidates website explains why people should vote for Nobody to be Keenes next mayor:

Nobody will end the foreign wars and Nobody will end the war on drug users. Nobody will end the war on prostitutes and Nobody will end the war on gamblers. Nobody will let you live your life your way and Nobody will fix the economy. Nobody will tell you the truth and Nobody knows the trouble youve seen, because Nobody does it better.

For the 10th anniversary 420 Rally in Keene, Nobody, Executive Director, and the 420 Foundation plan to host a peaceful assembly to demand redress of the grievances of the victims of the drug war. We have made a lot of progress in 10 years, but we have a long way left to go, Nobodys announcement details. We have gained medical, we have gained decriminalization, we have, most recently, loosened the cruel and pointless constraints on medical marijuana Most importantly, we have won the hearts and minds of the people but we are not done. Nobody insists that his plan to win the war on drugs will emulate the examples in Sweden and Portugal. Moreover, his mayoral candidacy is not the end of his campaign. Nobody revealed he will be speaking about his race for governor and vice-president at the 420 Rally on Saturday.

Nobody was arrested for selling cannabis in 2013 and was jailed when he first moved to the libertarian enclave. They threw me in jail for a while and they let me out, Nobody explained to the Union Leader in August. Nobody told the public at his trial that there was an FBI conspiracy that was targeting the Free State movement activists residing in the region. The Union Leader notes that court records indicate the informant who Nobody sold the drugs to worked for the FBI. Free Keene blog author Ian Freeman (the co-host of Free Talk Live) also announced the 420 Rally scheduled for Saturday and wrote that Nobody is a veteran Free Stater who promotes marijuana and cryptocurrencies. Nobody is a longtime Keene resident that loves cannabis, cryptocurrency, and freedom, Freeman wrote on September 21. Hes a blogger here at Free Keene and has also launched a campaign website at electnobody.com. Freemans blog post added:

Definitely stay tuned to the hottest and likely most entertaining mayoral race in Keene for years.

Keene and New Hampshire, in general, is called the Free State because many freedom-loving residents have changed laws for the better and its people consider the state one of the freest in the country. Theres also a very dense population of libertarians who live there and cryptocurrencies are thriving in the state. A few Bitcoin Cash developers reside in the Free State and the payment processor Anypay is also based in New Hampshire.

In addition to BCH proponents, the Free State has a decent number of Dash community members residing there. Nobody is also one of the rare politicians to accept cryptocurrency donations, and not just one but four different assets. The 420 Rally in Keene aims to have participants meet up at Keenes Central Square at 4:20 p.m. to smoke cannabis in an act of mass civil disobedience protesting New Hampshires insane drug prohibition, according to Freeman. Both Freeman and Nobody hope people can join the rally and the mayoral candidate reminded people to bring some marijuana to share.

Bring your own bud, and some to share, Nobody concluded. Even though [New Hampshire] is safer due to decriminalization, be careful if you have more than 21 grams.

What do you think about Nobodys campaign and the 420 Rally being held on September 28th? What do you think about Nobodys candidacy for Keenes mayoral seat? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Image credits: Shutterstock, Free Keene, Nobody, Sentinalsource.com,

Do you need to track down a Bitcoin transaction? With our Bitcoin Explorer tool, you can search by transaction ID, address, or block hash to find specific details, and for a look at the broader crypto space explore our Bitcoin Charts tool.

Jamie Redman is a financial tech journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open source code, and decentralized applications. Redman has written thousands of articles for news.Bitcoin.com about the disruptive protocols emerging today.

Bitcoin Cash-Accepting Mayoral Candidate 'Nobody' Hosts Keene's 420 Rally - Bitcoin News

Bitcoin Price Plunges Through Support; ETH, XRP & LTC Slide Similarly – DailyFX

Posted on September 25, 2019 by Danzig

Bitcoin Price Forecast:

Bitcoin prices cratered over 10% on Tuesday as an area of longstanding support around $9,545 was breached. The initial break was gradual but bears quickly took control and pressured prices comfortably beneath the area of technical support resulting in the subsequent bloodbath. Falling from $9,300 to $8,600 in just 15 minutes, the afternoon price action was enough to put BTCUSD on pace for its worst daily performance since July 16 when the coin dropped more than 13%.

Suffering a bearish break, the coin will now look for subsequent support in an attempt to stem further losses. An immediate level of note is the 200-day moving average which currently resides around $8,300. A break below this level could see losses accelerate as bearish momentum builds. If pierced, Fibonacci support around $7,100 may look to provide secondary support. BTC still enjoys a year-to-date return of 126% but Tuesdays breakdown is a worrisome development for cryptocurrency believers.

To that end, Ethereum, XRP and Litecoin suffered similar losses as the cryptocurrency market endures another rout akin to the crypto selloff in late August.While Bitcoin and the various altcoins apart from XRPUSD - have enjoyed positive returns in the year-to-date, the recent string of losses will likely work to further undermine market sentiment and could bring about a continuation lower barring a fundamentally bullish development to shift the tide.

While the abrupt declines are undoubtedly concerning, the quick recovery effort from XRPUSD could suggest some factions of the crypto market believe the selloff is overdone creating potential for a period of consolidation before continuing lower. As Bitcoin looks to regain its footing, follow @PeterHanksFX on Twitter for further updates and analysis.

--Written by Peter Hanks, Junior Analyst for DailyFX.com

Contact and follow Peter on Twitter @PeterHanksFX

Read more:Dow Jones Forecast: Nike Earnings to Deliver Trade War & Retailer Insight

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Bitcoin Price Plunges Through Support; ETH, XRP & LTC Slide Similarly - DailyFX

These iAngels Are Bringing New Heavyweights Into Bitcoin Investing – CoinDesk

Posted on September 25, 2019 by Danzig

A former lawyer, software engineer and Wall Street veteran walk into a bar. By the time they leave, everyone there is jazzed about bitcoin.

Thats how the three founders of the Israeli investment platform iAngels are promoting crypto adoption, by working with blockchain startups to secure investment and educating traditional venture capitalists about the space.

Were building the crypto ecosystem together with them, iAngels co-founder Mor Assia said of her firms startupportfolio, which includes an equity stake inmining hardware manufacturer Bitmain and token holdings in everything from Tezos toTelegram. Having an engineering background is very helpful when talking with entrepreneurs, especially when doing deep dives on specific technologies.

Plus, according to the team, the iAngels subsidiary fund 21M Capital has more than $60 million in assets under management, with bitcoin making up 20 percent of the portfolio. Co-founder Agada Nameri, the former lawyer, told CoinDesk that the fund has provided 40 percent returns this year to investors who were skeptical about holding crypto assets directly.

Most of our investors are more traditional, Nameri told CoinDesk in Tel Aviv. We are able to provide portfolio management in this industry. Were the bridge between the old world and this new industry.

The third co-founder, Shelly Hod Moyal, added:

I definitely see myself as a bitcoiner. We manage funds for thousands of investors from 50 countries. Weve been very active in explaining and educating. Ive had talks in elderly homes explaining to them what is bitcoin, and what is blockchain.

Regardless of how they view themselves, these investors dont match how most people expect bitcoiners to look and act. They arent bitcoin purists, having participated in initial coin offerings by startups like Orbs and Bancor. Yet even beyond being a woman-led investment firm, a rarity in its own right, these women acknowledge theres a delicious irony coloring their participation in the space.

In particular, Assia, wife of eToro founder Yoni Assia, is also the daughter-in-law of First International Bank of Israel board member David Assia. Even as part of one of the most powerful banking families in Israel, Assia is educating her four children to value decentralized technology more than traditional financial institutions.

This is the way theyre going to live their lives, she said. Theyre not going to be reliant on traditional banking.

Image: iAngels co-founders Agada Nameri, Shelly Hod Moyal and Mor Assia (left to right) via Ali Powell for CoinDesk

Interior ministers demand EU response to new migrant crisis – Vatican News

Posted on September 24, 2019 by Danzig

Italy and Malta are pressuring fellow European Union nations to help them with migrants rescued at sea. Their countries' interior ministers and those from France and Germany are in Malta to develop some automatic mechanism to distribute often desperate people within the EU, despite opposition among several member states.

By Stefan J. Bos

The Interior Ministers of Italy, Malta, France, and Germany are meeting at a time of concerns about a growing influx of migrants fleeing war, persecution, and poverty.

They demand that those rescued at sea will be distributed among other countries and not only be the responsibility of the nations where they land.

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said they want an "emergency mechanism" for the coming months until the incoming EU's executive European Commission starts working on a permanent arrangement.

Seehofer said thorny questions include which ports can be used, how to distribute the migrants in Europe and also fight human traffickers.

Ahead of the gathering, Italy's prime minister urged Giuseppe Conte urged more unity within the EU. "We must remove propaganda from the migration issue. The propaganda that is also anti-European. We must continue to offer a rigorous response against the trafficking of human lives," he said.

However, EU member states such as Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland oppose the redistribution of migrants.

But with tens of thousands of people arriving in Europe from by boat so far this year, the interior ministers meeting demand adifferent approach to what they view as a humanitarian crisis.

EU officials are also participating at the Malta meeting.

The gathering comes while elsewhere in Greece, security and municipal services on the Greek island of Lesbos were to hold an emergency meeting. They are worried after administrators of a refugee camp said, they were overwhelmed by the number of arrivals from nearby Turkey.

The camp at Moria on the Aegean Sea island began turning away new arrivalsFridayas the number of people at the site exceeded 12,000, four times its intended capacity.

Authorities say that the rapidly rising numbers had created the worst crisis on the island since the massive influx of refugees into Europe four years ago.

The government has promised stricter sea patrols. But is also seeks additional international support, including resources from the EU border protection agency Frontex.

They attempt to hold the influx while also rescuing people at sea who often use clumsy and dangerous boats in an attempt to reach Europe.

Many men, women, and children have drowned.

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Interior ministers demand EU response to new migrant crisis - Vatican News

Mitsotakis Want’s Help With Greece’s Refugee, Migrant Crisis – The National Herald

Posted on September 24, 2019 by Danzig

By TNH Staff September 23, 2019

FILE - In this Wednesday, March 15, 2017 file photo, migrants walk at the Moria refugee detention center on the northeastern Greek island of Lesbos. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis, file)

As he headed to the United States for the United Nations General Assembly Annual opening in New York, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said he would seek international help to deal with surging numbers of refugees and migrants overwhelming detention centers and camps.

Before he left, he headed an emergency meeting of his top staff and is expected to meet on the sidelines of the UN meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country is the source for refugees and migrants pouring onto Greek islands, with the European Union having closed its borders to them.

Erdogan, irritated with UN soft sanctions over his countrys drilling for energy in Cypriot sovereign waters and unmet conditions from a swap deal that has seen only a relative handful of refugees and migrants return to Turkey where they first went fleeing war and strife in their lands warned he would unleash 5.5 million more if he doesnt get concessions.

With the EU having abandoned the refugees and migrants largely on Greece, as well as Spain and Italy, and other countries reneging on promises to help take some of the overload, it wasnt clear what else could be done to aid Greece.

Mitsotakis, though, reportedly wants the EU to provide additional incentives for Turkey although it hasnt yet fulfilled all the terms of an essentially suspended 2016 swap deal that has seen only a relative handful returned to Turkey.

He said earlier this his government, which took over from the former ruling Radical Left SYRIZA after winning July 7 snap elections, would speed deportations as well as faster processing of asylum applications with most of the more than 75,000 refugees and migrants in Greece including almost 26,000 on islands seeking asylum to prevent being returned.

Mitsotakis meeting with Erdogan his first since becoming premier will also be closely watched for signs of Turkeys intent about the refugees and migrants as well as with Cyprus, with the drilling challenging the legitimate governments licensing of foreign companies.

The meeting before Mitsotakis left, said Kathimerini, focused on how to transfer more refugees and migrants to mainland camps and centers although thats technically a violation of the swap deal but with the pressure building with more arrivals in the summer and now into autumn.

Greece also plans to boost Coast Guard patrols in the Eastern Aegean although that hasnt worked yet to keep more people from risking the perilous journey from Turkey on rickety craft and overcrowded rubber dinghies with scores having drowned over the past few years.

Greece also wants additional aid from the EU and more help from the blocs border patrol Frontex which has already been active in the seas but also unable to do much to keep more people from continuing to come.

Theres special worry about the Moria camp on the island of Lesbos which is housing some 12,000 people in a facility designed for 2500 and officials saying the new recent arrivals couldnt be housed so were sleeping in the open or in makeshift tents.

The rest is here:

Mitsotakis Want's Help With Greece's Refugee, Migrant Crisis - The National Herald

A dangerous red flower is driving record numbers of migrants to flee Guatemala – USA TODAY

Posted on September 24, 2019 by Danzig

SAN ANTONIO, Guatemala Surrounded by green fields of potatoes, oats and corn on his small farm, Carlos Lopez recalled the decent money he was earning before last year,cultivating a different crop he referred to simply as the plant."

The plants,oneswith the bright red flowers, are worth a lot more than these other crops, Lopez said, wearing a blue baseball hat, sitting on a plastic chair behind his two-room,mud-splattered house.

Amapola, said Lopez, speaking the Spanish word for poppy.

SAN ANTONIO, Guatemala Poppies in a Guatemalan field in June 2018. Locals say narco gangs sometimes take advantage of impoverished farmers, encouraging them to grow poppies to seed the heroin trade.Nick Oza, USA TODAY Network

For years, Mexican drug cartels persuaded poor indigenous farmers in the western highlands of Guatemala to replace their crops with poppies. The plants produce a milky fluid used to make heroin, although farmers were often told the plant was used to produce medicine.

The Guatemalan government, under pressure from the United States, then came in and eradicated the poppy fields. With no other high-value crop to replace the poppies, and no program available to help replacefarmers' income, the crackdown shoved indigenous farmers such as Lopez and his familyback into poverty.

The loss of poppy revenue is just one of many reasons Guatemalans have poured across the border by the thousands into the United States. This year,more migrantshave come from Guatemala than any other country, as family members, unaccompanied children or single adults.

People are fleeing widespread government corruption, poverty and violence.Six in 10 Guatemalans live in poverty, and more than 50% of the country's poor are indigenous people, according to the World Bank. Twenty percent of Guatemala's population lives in extreme poverty. Indigenous communities are most affected by poverty, with 79% living in poverty, on less than $5.50 a day,and 40% living in extreme poverty, on less than $1.90 a day.

But some are also arriving because of thedangerous, profitable flower that wasforced intoand then ripped out oftheir lives.

Most of the Guatemalans coming to the U.S. are from the countrys western highlands, which border the southern tip of Mexico, according to experts who study the region. The area is known for its breathtaking scenery and volcanic mountains, including 13,945-foot Tajumulco, the highest volcano in Central America. It also has the worst poverty in Guatemala.

Salvador Alexander Juarez Velasquez oversees the National Police for Ixchiguan, Tajumulco and San Jose Ojetenam in the department of San Marcos.

The government's declaration of a state of emergency, called theestado de sito, was an excellent idea, the police chief said.The amapola created disputes, as farmers fought over water to irrigate their crops. The disputes sometimes turned violent, he said.

Now its more peaceful here, the police chief said.

But the peace came at a cost.By June, he was seeing it all the time:People selling everything and trekking north.

I dont really know how many families have left, but its a lot, said Juarez Velasquez. The poppy "was the main source of income for them.

We got rid of the drug problem, but replaced it with another problem, he said.

The region has long been neglected by the federal government, because it is the farthest away from Guatemala City, the capital, Juarez Velasquez said.

SAN ANTONIO, Guatemala San Antonio is a small village in the western highlands of Guatemala. Carlos Lopez lives there with his family.Nick Oza, USA TODAY Network

He said the region also has been completely overlooked for a long time by the powerful group of business owners who control most investment and economic development in Guatemala. He blames the neglect on institutional racism against the local indigenous Mayan people.

Poppy farming gave poor farmers an economic self-sufficiency they couldn't have found in Guatemala. That opportunity turned the green hills of the western highlands bright red, as poppy flowers spread.

With profits from growing poppy, neighbors pooled their money to buy cobblestones to pave the rutted dirt roads that were impassable every time it rained hard, Lopez, the farmer, said.

Then last year, Lopez said, everything changed. Police and soldiers sent by the federal government came in and cut down all of the poppy plants. Lopez and the other farmers in this region returned to growing potatoes and other crops.

Lopez figures he was making about 5,000 quetzales a year, or about $650, growing poppy plants on one 5,000-square-foot cuerda.That was three or four times as much as a cuerda of potatoes.

At one point, Lopez estimates, 75 percent of the six cuerdas on his farm were dedicated to growing poppy plants. He wasnt getting rich. But the money was enough to buy food, clothes, medicine and school supplies for his wife and their three young children.

The loss of revenue from growingpoppies was the main reason Lopez decided to leaveand join the huge wave of Guatemalans migrating to the U.S.

Because there is no work here. There is no income, Lopez said. And now they took away the poppy. These potatoes are hardly worth anything.

In June, Lopez planned to bring along one of his three sons to the U.S. He heard from others in his village who migrated earlier that "some sort of law" allowed parentstoenter legally if they arrived at the border with children andthatimmigration authorities would take them to whatever state they wanted.

Lopez also had heard that as long as these parents showed up for their immigration court hearings, they could stay in the U.S. and work while their kids went to public school for free, a bonus becausein Guatemala, attending school after sixth grade costs money.

"They say this way you don't have to risk going through the desert," Lopez said. "With this law, they are letting us enter."

No such law exists. In reality, U.S. immigration authorities, as ofSept. 9,had released more than226,400migrant family members acrossthe U.S.because of a lack of detention capacity to hold them even temporarily, reinforcing the false perception that undocumentedparents with children were being allowed to enterthe U.S.and remain.

Lopez said he still hadnt made up his mind which son to bring. At first he said the second oldest wanted to go. Lopez leaned down and scrawled the 12-year-old boys name in the dirt: Yeyso Deybi.

But Lopez said he was leaning toward bringing the oldest son, 15-year-oldSaudy Fernando. The youngest, 8-year-old CarlosJr., was too young, Lopez said.

His plan: Find work in the United States andthen send some of his earningshome to his wife, Marcilina, 33, and their remaining two children.

Lopez's story partially explains the unprecedented wave of Central Americans migrating to the U.S., and crossing the border illegally to seek refuge.

Through August of this fiscal year,Border Patrol agents have apprehended 811,016 migrants. Of those about a third were from Guatemala.

Most of the migrants from Guatemala are arriving as families or unaccompanied minors.

Through August of the current fiscal year, the Border Patrol apprehended 457,871 migrants arriving as family units, a 406 percent increase from the previous year. Of those, almost 40% came from Guatemala, the largest share of any country.

Another 72,873 unaccompanied minors were apprehended by the Border Patrol through August, 40%of them from Guatemala.

The western highlands mostly indigenous Mayan population also has been hurt economically by climate change-induced drought, said U.S. Rep. Norma Torres, a Democrat from California who was born in Guatemala. The drought has especially hurt coffee crops, forcing farmers and laborers to look for work in the U.S. to feed their families, Torres said. She founded the Central America Caucus in the U.S. House to address the root causes of migration.

Coffee is one of the crops that grow there, and those types of jobs have sustained families but coffee rust, the disease that has affected the crops in the region, has really caused a lot of these farmers to go under and some of those jobs are no longer available because of the impact of the weather patterns there and this disease, she said.

She blames Guatemalas federal government for perpetuating the regions deep-seated poverty by failing to respond to the needs of the rural indigenous Mayan population. The area also bore the brunt of Guatemalas 36-year civil war, which killed more than 200,000 before ending in 1996.

A two-tiered system exists in Guatemala, where the indigenous population is looked down upon and they are marginalized.So when there is no access to justice, when there is no access to very basic infrastructure or jobs that is what folks from these reasons are citing as the reasons they are leaving, Torres said.

Most of Guatemalas problems driving illegal immigration tothe U.S. stem from deeply entrenched political corruption, she said. But the Trump administration, she said, looked the other way when current Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales, facing corruption allegations of his own, tried to shut down a U.N.-backed commission established in 2006 to battle corruption in the country. Morales' term ends at the end of 2019.

We have empowered these very corrupt leaders by not holding them accountable for the things they are doing or for what they are not doing, Torres said.

The Guatemalan governments neglect of the western highlands has made it easy for criminal organizations and drug cartels from neighboring Mexico to move into the area, said Adriana Beltran, director for citizen security at the Washington Office on Latin America.

As you get closer to the border, there is also the lack of real state presence in these areas, so you have a greater presence of criminal organizations that are just able to take over these regions. That includes cartels, Beltran said.

Supported by funding from the United States, the Guatemalan government has in recent yearstried to stamp out poppy production in the western highlands.

Guatemalan authorities reported seizing 80 hectares, or nearly 200 acres, of poppy plants during the first 10 months of 2018, according to a March 2019 report by the U.S. State Departments Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

In February 2018, Guatemalan soldiers and police officers destroyed 31 million poppy plants worth $105 million in two municipalities in the department of San Marcos, according to Dialogo, a U.S. Southern Command-website covering U.S. military cooperation and collaborationin Latin America.

Guatemalan soldiers and police eradicated 10 million poppy plants worth $33 million in 23 communities in the department of San Marcos during a mega operation that took place between July and August 2018, according to Dialogo.

One of those communities includes San Antonio, where Lopez lives.

"Here there is nothing," Lopez said. "And there in the United States, there are opportunities to work."

But his plan hit a snag.

In June, under pressure from the Trump administration, Mexico began aggressively intercepting and deporting Central Americans caughttraveling toward the U.S. without documents.

Lopez heard about the crackdown on the newsand interpreted it to mean that the U.S. had closed the border to parents arriving with children.

"That's what we heard, that they've closed the border and they aren't letting people enter," Lopez said. "That's what I want to know. Is it the same as last year or have they shut the border?"

He decided to put his plan to travel to the U.S. on hold. As of September, he was still in Guatemala.

Reach the reporter at daniel.gonzalez@arizonarepublic.com or at 602-444-8312. Follow him on Twitter @azdangonzalez. Support local journalism. Subscribe to azcentral.com today.

One week. Thousands of migrants. A system on the brink of collapse.

What happens to migrant children detained by the US government? One immigrant's story

How the USA TODAY Network spent a week reporting on the border to learn more about migrants

Local governments spend millions caring for migrants dumped by Trump's Border Patrol

US border crisis: Who are the migrants, why are they coming and where are they from?

Under surveillance: The lives of asylum-seekers and undocumented immigrants in the US

Is President Trump provoking illegal immigration by cutting aid to Central America?

See the article here:

A dangerous red flower is driving record numbers of migrants to flee Guatemala - USA TODAY

EU ministers meet in Malta to discuss migrant crisis – Times of Malta

Posted on September 24, 2019 by Danzig

Updated 12.38pm -

Interior ministers from several EU countries are meeting in Malta to try to work out an automatic system to determine which countries will welcome migrants rescued in the central Mediterranean.

The ministers from France, Germany, Italy and Malta hope to end the long, drawn-out negotiations that have seen vulnerable asylum seekers including babies stranded at sea, sometimes for weeks.They take place ahead of a European summit in October in Luxembourg.

On his way into the meeting in Vittoriosa Dimitris Avramopoulos, the European Commissioner responsible for migration, seemed optimistic.

I believe that at the end of this meeting today we shall be in a position to make some strong and clear announcements of how we can move forward, he said.

The Greek commissioner said his priority was to save lives and to find ways to improve the fight against human traffickers.

Home Affairs Minister Michael Farrugia meanwhile displayed a more cautious optimism.

There are some political issues which we will have to decide on today. But this only be the first step. This will be a direction, a policy. Eventually we will have to present it in Luxemburg on October 8, during the next council meeting for home affairs. And then we have to get all the other countries to accept this agreement, he said.

Asked what he expected to come out of todays meeting, Dr Farrugia said he hoped ministers would be converging on one common position.

As the ministers gathered at Fort St Angelo in Vittoriosa, a big protest banner was displayed from Senglea, across the creek, by members of the NGO rescue ship Lifeline who have been stranded in Malta by legal issues. They insisted that action needs to be taken by the EU because people are dying in the Mediterranean.

The mooted automatic distribution system would only be a temporary solution until the current system, the "Dublin regulation", can be revised.

Its critics have long argued that it places an unfair burden on the Mediterranean frontier countries Italy, Malta, Greece and Spain.

Italy's new, pro-EU government has moved quickly to turn the page on the anti-migrant policies pursued by former far-right interior minister Matteo Salvini, who closed the ports to those rescued.

After a meeting last week, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and French President Emmanuel Macron both called for a reform of Europe's "ineffective" policy.

Countries that did not volunteer to take migrants should face financial penalties, they argued.

At an informal meeting of foreign and interior ministers in Paris in June, 15 countries agreed to the creation of a "European Solidarity Mechanism".

Croatia, Finland, France, Ireland, Germany, Lithuania, Luxembourg and Portugal said they would "actively" take part.

But Hungary's nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orban, rejected redistribution quotas in comments made during a visit to Rome Saturday.

Monday's meeting in Malta will try to decide where those rescued can be relocated - and whether that covers just those fleeing war and persecution, or economic migrants too.

France and Germany are reportedly willing to receive 25 percent of people plucked from vessels in the Mediterranean.

But they are not keen on Italy's idea for migrants to be sent to countries across southern Europe on a rotation basis.

Italy could take 10 percent of new arrivals - a lower proportion because it has already hosted tens of thousands of new arrivals.

The number of migrants arriving in Europe via the Mediterranean has dropped sharply in recent years. The UN's refugee body recorded nearly 115,000 arrivals in 2018, down from 170,000 in 2017 and over one million in 2015.

European migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos will also attend the Malta talks, as will Finland's interior minister - as they hold the EU presidency.

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EU ministers meet in Malta to discuss migrant crisis - Times of Malta

Trump Admin Ignored Its Own Data Linking Migrant Crisis to Climate Change – EcoWatch

Posted on September 24, 2019 by Danzig

The Problem

Over the long history of human conflicts, a set of ethical standards and legal constraints have evolved to try to limit or ban certain actions, behaviors and weapons, and to protect certain populations and assets from destruction. In theory, these rules and codes of conduct, referred to as jus in bello ("the law in waging war") or "international humanitarian laws," help to protect civilian populations, prisoners of war, medical personnel and facilities, and non-military property and infrastructure including the environment.

In practice, however, these laws have largely failed to prevent attacks on basic civilian infrastructure and the natural environment, and they do not appear to impose accountability on governments in a way that limits military operations. Extensive evidence shows the growing effects of armed conflicts on civilians, built infrastructure and the natural environment especially water. Similarly, threats such as climate change are worsening the risks of agricultural failure, coastal flooding, population displacement, economic disruption and political failures contributing to violent altercations. Over the past few decades, persistent war and violence by nation-states and subnational groups has led to the "de-development" of entire countries, including Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan and others. Infrastructure has been destroyed, incomes and quality of life has plummeted, fertility and life expectancies rates have fallen, infant mortality and unemployment has soared, large numbers of people have been physically displaced from their homes and lives, and even the most rudimentary aspects of survival have been challenged, including access to basic energy and safe water and sanitation. In Yemen, for example, attacks on civilian water systems have led to a massive epidemic of cholera, with over 1 million cases reported and over 2,000 deaths.

Three core problems exist: The current international laws of war inadequately protect natural resources and the environment in the context of civil war or local conflicts. Militaries and armed groups inconsistently identify and differentiate among legitimate and illegitimate targets and ambiguous language in current laws and agreements creates loopholes for the military. And the enforcement of laws of war and punishment of violators of these laws are rare and subjective.

Yet disdain for and prohibition against intentionally targeting civilian infrastructure is rooted in custom, religious rules and ethical codes of behavior that go back thousands of years, to early Sanskrit, Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and other cultures. In the fourth century BC, Alexander the Great tore down defensive weirs built by the Persians along the Tigris River, describing attempts to block access along the river as "unbecoming to men who are victorious in battle." In 1439, Charles VII of Orleans instituted a law holding officers responsible for "the abuses, ills and offences" committed by the men they commanded. The Lieber Code of 1863, promulgated by President Lincoln during the U.S. Civil War, provided guidance for Union armies in the field, stating in part: "Military necessitydoes not admit of the use of poison in any way, nor of the wanton devastation of a district. It admits of deception, but disclaims acts of perfidy; and, in general, military necessity does not include any act of hostility which makes the return to peace unnecessarily difficult The use of poison in any manner, be it to poison wells, or food, or arms, is wholly excluded from modern warfare. He that uses it puts himself out of the pale of the law and usages of war."

It must be noted, of course, that these guidelines failed to prevent or constrain extensive human rights abuses during the Civil War, including General Sherman's historically destructive march across Georgia laying waste to towns, farms and all symbols of civilian society acts that still reverberate in the region today.

Modern versions of international principles and laws evolved from these early guidelines. The humanitarian justification for these protections rests on the understanding that access to basic resources like water and sanitation, or protection of the environment, is critical for human health and the prevention of enormous human suffering. The first Geneva Convention in 1864 called for protecting non-combatants, prisoners of war and wounded soldiers. As time went on, these protections became more well-defined: The1868 St. Petersburg Declaration states "the necessities of war ought to yield to the requirements of humanity" and "the only legitimate object which States should endeavor to accomplish during war is to weaken the military forces of the enemy." The 1874 Brussels Protocol forbids "any destruction or seizure of the enemy's property that is not imperatively demanded by the necessity of war." The first Hague Conventions and Declarations (of 1899 and 1907) sought "to diminish the evils of war, as far as military requirements permit" and included the famous Martens Clause:

"Until a more complete code of the laws of war has been issued, the High Contracting Parties deem it expedient to declare that, in cases not included in the Regulations adopted by them, the inhabitants and the belligerents remain under the protection and the rule of the principles of the law of nations, as they result from the usages established among civilized peoples, from the laws of humanity, and the dictates of the public conscience."

After the Second World War, efforts were made to develop even stronger legal protections for civilians and infrastructure. The 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention's Article 53 prohibits deliberate or indiscriminate destruction of property belonging to individuals or "the State, or to other public authorities" and Article 147 bans "extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly." Even more explicit civilian and environmental protections were developed with the 1977 Protocols to the Geneva Convention, including Protocol I, which limits warfare that causes "superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering" or "widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment"), prohibits indiscriminate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure and protects civilian infrastructure critical to the survival of civilian populations. The 1977 Protocols also prohibit military actions when the "collateral damage" to civilian objects and noncombatants is excessive in relation to the military gains.

Other international declarations, laws and agreements explicitly protect the environment and natural resources from war and conflict. The 1976 Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques includes specific protection of the "hydrosphere" and bans "weather modification" with the intent of causing damage or destruction. The World Charter for Nature and similar language in the Stockholm Declaration and Rio Declaration says that States shall "ensure that activities within their jurisdictions or control do not cause damage to the natural systems located within other States" and "nature shall be secured against degradation caused by warfare or other hostile activities."

But the question remains: Are these protections relevant or sufficient to address the threat of human-caused climate changes and related threats to resources?

The State of Current International Laws of War

All these efforts, legal statements and principles fail to adequately protect civilians and the environment during armed conflicts. The 1991 civil war in Somalia destroyed the water system, which in turn contributed to outbreaks of cholera affecting 55,000 people. The destruction of Yemen's urban water system between 2016 and 2019 has led to massive cholera outbreaks and suffering. ISIS attacked major dams along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and used them as weapons to either deny downstream populations of water or to flood areas for military purposes.

Recent trends related to water offer insights into the weaknesses and limitations of current international humanitarian environmental law. The Water Conflict Chronology database identifies water as a trigger, weapon and casualty of armed conflict. The chart shows the number of recorded events, per year, since 1930 and the dramatic increase in recent years. When characterized by the type of conflicts, we also see a shift from nation-to-nation conflicts toward sub-national events including riots, civil wars, and terrorism.

The chart shows a large increase in the number of reported events after the mid-1980s. Conclusions about trends in water-related conflicts should be made with caution because of changes in media coverage, access to broader sources of information and increased attention focused on the problem. Nevertheless, incidences of water-related conflicts have been rising rapidly. While the use of water as a weapon and attacks on water systems can be found in every time period and continent (except Antarctica), the past decade has seen a dramatic increase in such attacks focused in the Middle East and North Africa particularly in Iraq, Syria, Yemen involving civil conflicts with major outside and proxy forces.

These trends suggest serious limitations to the protections offered by current humanitarian laws of war.

Most constraints on actions during conflict have been formulated in the context of interstate war, not civil wars, subnational conflicts, or local internal violence. Yet most recent violence has been subnational, not nation-to-nation.

The ambiguity of language in the laws makes it easier to exploit loopholes. Militaries inconsistently identify and differentiate among legitimate and illegitimate targets and fall back on claims of military "necessity" and "proportionality."

Even when violations seem clear, enforcement and punishment of violators of these laws are rare. Parties to the Geneva Conventions have an obligation to enforce its provisions and to bring to trial persons who have allegedly violated its provisions. but nations have been unable or unwilling to enforce relevant provisions. Consequently, a new Environmental Geneva Convention is needed, focused on protecting the environment, natural resources and vital civilian infrastructure that supports basic needs like water, food, and energy.

Two modest international efforts at strengthening protections of the environment and resources during conflicts have recently moved forward. The first is adoption by the International Law Commission of the United Nations of draft principles governing protection of the environment during armed conflict. The second is a set of principles for the protection of water infrastructure developed by the Geneva Water Hub of the University of Geneva.

The International Law Commissions draft principles apply to the protection of the environment before, during and after armed conflict. They broadly require States to protect land and resources, constrain military operations that may damage the environment, prevent and mitigate environmental degradation where populations are displaced, and avoid engaging in environmental modification techniques having severe, long-term effects. Following armed conflicts, the principles call for States to repair, compensate, and remediate all environmental damages and remove hazardous remains of war.

The Geneva List of Principles on the Protection of Water Infrastructure is an effort to broadly develop rules to protect crucial water supply and sanitation infrastructure and systems and was developed in part due to the recent increase in attacks on such infrastructure. Unlike the ILC's principles, which focus on State actors, the Geneva List of Principles is designed to apply to both State and non-State actors.

Among its key principles are that parties to conflicts should refrain from using water-related infrastructure as a means of warfare, and the use of poison against water and water infrastructure is prohibited. Water systems and water-system personnel are presumed to be civilian and must not be attacked. Parties to conflicts must take all feasible precautions to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure, avoid locating military objectives near water-related infrastructure, and establish protected zones around water-related infrastructure. Water infrastructure containing "dangerous forces" such as dams and dikes, should not be objects of attack. Control over water delivery or access must not be used to force the displacement of civilians. Humanitarian relief efforts and personnel involved in water-related activities must be respected and protected.

And occupying powers must provide and maintain basic water and sanitation services.

It remains to be seen whether any newly crafted or strongly worded principles will be more effective at protecting natural resources and the environment than the previous 150 years of efforts to design effective international humanitarian laws of war. Comprehensive principles must be universally accepted, taught to military commanders and their political counterparts, and especially, actively enforced by the international community with punishments for violations meted out by States themselves or the international criminal court system.

Until then, the growing value and importance of climatic systems, water, energy, food and other vital environmental resources will continue to make them vulnerable as targets or weapons of war, or as triggers of violence and armed conflict.

From Your Site Articles

5 EU Countries Agree on Distribution of Migrants – VOA News

Posted on September 24, 2019 by Danzig

ROME - Interior ministers from five European countries reached a preliminary agreement on how to distribute migrants picked up in the central Mediterranean. The agreement was reached Monday during a meeting in Malta and is scheduled to be discussed by all European Union members next month.

EU Migration and Home Affairs Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said good progress was made in Malta towards a predictable and structural set of arrangements to deal with migrants rescued in the Mediterranean.

He said the ministers worked to find practical solutions to respond together, in a spirit of solidarity, to the migratory challenges.

We all agree that the current ad hoc approach consisting of the commission coordinating solidarity efforts each time a vessel with migrants is at sea is simply not sustainable, said Avramopoulos.

Italian Police Arrest Three Accused of Torturing Migrants in Libya

Prosecutors in Sicily ordered arrests of two Egyptians and one Guinean after several people identified them as suspects

Maltas Interior Minister Michael Farrugia, who hosted the meeting, which also included Germany, France, Italy and Finland, said an agreement was reached on the disembarkation of migrants following search and rescue operations. He said a paper was ready to be presented to the other EU members.

"There is an agreement of a common paper that will be presented to the Council of Ministers of home affairs on October 8," Farrugia said.

Under the preliminary agreement, vessels which rescue people at sea will be given a safe harbor to disembark passengers without delay, avoiding additional hardships to migrants. The agreement also calls for the swift relocation of asylum-seekers, on a voluntary basis, to other member states.

Avramopoulos said the migrant crisis is a responsibility for all of the EU which must be addressed collectively.

He added that the European Commission would continue to provide active support to member states struggling with the burden of migration, adding that this support would be operational, financial and political.

I remain convinced that the structural and permanent solution embedded in the common European asylum system remains necessary and is the only viable solution in the medium term, said Avramopoulos.

Italy and Malta have in recent months closed their ports to NGO vessels that rescued migrants but those policies are likely to change with the new agreements now being discussed.

Thousands of migrants from Africa and the Middle East continue their efforts to reach European shores, sometimes on very unsafe vessels. Both Italy and Malta have long accused other EU nations of dragging their feet on the migration burden they face on a daily basis.

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5 EU Countries Agree on Distribution of Migrants - VOA News

No end in sight: Mass exodus of Venezuelan refugees flood into neighboring countries – Big Think

Posted on September 24, 2019 by Danzig

Latin America is suffering one of the largest refugee crises in its history. Venezuela's outpouring of refugees is only second to that of Syria. Already four million Venezuelans have escaped their homeland, the brunt of the exodus started in 2015. A staggering 12 percent of the country's entire population have already fled.

Running away from a collapsed economy and a repressive government, more than one million Venezuelans have left since the end of 2018. The UN predicts that this number will rise to 5.4 million before the year is through. Other sources project that several hundred thousand to millions more may join the fold by the early 2020s.

No country has been left unaffected by the impact of Venezuela's downfall. Colombia, which shares the longest border with Venezuela, at the moment hosts 1.3 million refugees. This is followed by roughly another 800,000 in Peru, 300,000 in Chile, and 260,000 in Ecuador. A number of Caribbean states have a high number of refugees relative to their total population, as well.

Colombia expects to take in up to 3 million refugees by 2021. Ambassador Francisco Santos recently told reporters, "To be very sincere, if it goes to 3 million, we don't have the money."

Only a fraction of international assistance has been devoted to the Venezuelan refugee crisis. Indeed, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) need an additional $738 million to assist migrant-receptive countries in both Latin America and the Caribbean region.

The joint UNHCR-IOM special representative for Venezuelan migrants, Eduardo Stein, recently stated, "We are looking at a complex set of needs for the next two years, even if there is a political solution today."

The UN has repeatedly put out calls for more funding: "Latin American and Caribbean countries are doing their part to respond to this unprecedented crisis, but they cannot be expected to continue doing it without international help," Stein declared.

Millions are roving and crossing borders as the days go by. Some estimate that the exodus could, in all, exceed 8 million people. A number of bordering countries have already begun to tighten their entry requirements and put up further barriers. Ecuador, for instance, upped its requirements Venezuelans now need to present a passport and a clear criminal record in order to get into the country. So far, both Brazil and Colombia have kept their open border policy.

A majority of the migrants have stayed in the region. Yet, as the crisis continues, these once open destination countries are becoming less welcoming. Dealing with their own problems of slow economic growth, scare jobs, and overtaxed health and education infrastructures, many of these countries can't support the influx of migrant entrants.

Recent waves of refugees are poorer than those that had come before. Lack of jobs and unstable environments, historically, lead to exploitation and the rise of crime. Colombia with its 1,400-mile border with Venezuela, is now dealing with disorder on one end of their country and a build up of refugees on its southern border, as Peru and Ecuador increasingly turn more Venezuelans away.

Brazil has been systematically relocating migrants to the border state of Roraima, where Venezuelans sometimes have been able to work informal jobs and ease labor shortages. The region's capital city, Boa Vista, with a population of 400,000, now has more than 50,000 displaced Venezuelans.

Photo credit: Juan David Moreno Gallego / Anadolu Agency / Getty Images

Venezuelan migrants gather at the Colombian Border

As a result of the roiling in the region, there has been a surge of homelessness in many of the towns on the border. "We lost control of the city," says Teresa Surita, the mayor of Boa Vista.

Colombia's government officials estimate that 0.5 percent of their GDP goes to providing health care, schooling, and other infrastructural services to Venezuelans. Ecuadoran leaders, who recently went to the IMF for increased financial assistance, estimate that their nation spends about $170 million a year or .16 percent of its GDP on health and education for Venezuelan migrants with an exceptional humanitarian visa.

There has also been an increase of negative public sentiment regarding the refugees. Amparo Goyes, a resident of Quito, Ecuador's capital states, "People used to feel sorry for [Venezuelans], but now there's fear of crime."

Politicians and citizens are calling for tighter controls on migrants and restrictions on immigration.

Even so, amidst the changing attitudes and growing crisis, Colombia has been issuing permits that'll allow 700,000 Venezuelans the right to work and receive public services for a minimum of two years. Politicians in Colombia have even signed a pact that they won't stir anti-Venezuelan campaigns in the coming elections.

The crisis is Latin America seems to have only begun. Those most touched by the events occurring are urging the global community to assist them in coping with this crisis.

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Leading aid agency calls for urgent EU action to tackle the migration and asylum crisis – The Parliament Magazine

Posted on September 24, 2019 by Danzig

Photocredit: International Rescue Committee

The call on Monday comes as EU interior ministers from four countries met to discuss the latest migrant and asylum crisis.

At the meeting, ministers from Germany, France, Italy and Malta hope to strike a deal on the relocation of people rescued at sea and migrants crossing the Mediterranean.

According to a draft of the agreement the aim is to set up a more predictable and efficient temporary solidarity mechanism in order to ensure the dignified disembarkation of migrants taken aboard on the high seas.

On Sunday, the EUs Commissioner responsible for Migration, Dimitris Avramopoulos travelled to Malta where he met with the countrys President George Vella. On Monday, Avramopoulos visited the European Asylum Support Office as well as participating in the meeting with the four interior ministers.

Climate Migrants May Number 143 Million by 2050 – The Daily Beast

Posted on September 24, 2019 by Danzig

This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 220 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story.

ROMEManu remembers vividly the grim conditions he faced when he left coastal Bangladesh just three years ago to try to start a new life in Europe. The 45-year-old woodworker was one of millions of people in his South Asian country who had, for years, adjusted to seasonal flooding, moving in and out of their homes as the higher tides passed with the seasons. But in recent years, the rising seas didn't subside, and Manu lost his home, his belongings and finally his livelihood when trees vital to his craft disappeared under the rising sea.

In 2016, Manu made his way to Italy where he requested asylum, which very likely wont be granted. There isnt even a category on the application to request protection from the changing climate, he told The Daily Beast. No one even recognizes the problem.

Some do, in fact, but too few, and global society cannot ignore the problem much longer. The World Bank estimates that by the year 2050, at least 143 million additional migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Latin Americaalready the greatest migrant and refugee-producing areaswill be on the move because of rising seas, droughts, and extreme weather.

Adding to the injustice for those most affected is the fact that the climate change crisis is not the fault of those on the move. Founder and executive director of the Environmental Justice Foundation, Steve Trent, tells The Daily Beast that the poorer communities, affected first and worst, are those least able to mitigate the impacts of the heating planet.

The worlds least developed countries produce only a fraction of greenhouse gas emissions and have had far fewer of the benefits reaped by richer countries from our addiction to carbon, yet they are suffering the worst impacts of the climate crisis, says Trent. This summer, entire villages in India were abandoned, leaving only the sick and the elderly, as the country baked in 50C [122F] heat. Right now in the Bahamas, the death toll in the wake of Hurricane Dorian is expected to [continue to] rise dramatically.

Trent points to the fact that the European Union alone was responsible for 40 percent of all global C02 emissions between 1850 and 2011. Yet in an unjust world, 99 percent of all deaths from weather-related disasters occur in the worlds 50 least developed countries, he says. Countries that have contributed less than 1 percent of global carbon emissions. This is not justice.

A new doomsday report by the World Banks climate scientists, migration experts and statistical researchers paints a picture of what's to come so dire it verges on the apocalyptic. According to Kanta Kumari Rigaud, the World Banks lead environmental specialist who compiled the report, events like crop failures due to droughts or floods will create what he calls hotspots that force people to move at first within national borders. Most will be go from rural to urban areas, but that influx will create new concentrations of poverty and cause people to start moving beyond borders.

To meet this challenge, the report suggests, many urban areas and their environs need to prepare for an influx of people with improved housing and transportation infrastructure, social services, and employment opportunities. If managed correctly, the migration could create a positive momentum in some areas facing depopulation. But in others, it will only put additional burdens on already overwhelmed systems.

Look at the recent global migration crises that have relatively little to do with climate change, and the way those have shaken developed nations. The rise of the xenophobic extreme right in Europe was spawned in part by the 2015 influx of a million refugees, largely from war-torn Syria.

Central Americans trying to reach the United States by way of Mexico have faced a figurative and perhaps soon-to-be physical wall. Rohingya people fleeing inter-communal wars in Burma were met by some of the most abhorrent human rights violations since the Holocaust.

To date, sub-Saharan Africans fleeing war and poverty trying to reach Europe though Italy have been met with harsh policies and closed ports, but only a fraction were fleeing the impact of a changing climate. Now, as a recent report by UNHCR, the U.N. refugee agency, points out, drought is compounding security woes and people are fleeing to Ethiopia. Many will then try to move on to Europe.

Now imagine the extra migration pressures imposed by natural disasters related to climate change. The U.N. today counts 68.5 million forcibly displaced people in the world due to war, poverty, and natural disasters. Imagine tripling that figure.

Some migrants will have it much harder than others. The United Nations special rapporteur on poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, warns of a disaster made worse by wage disparity. We risk a climate apartheid scenario where the wealthy pay to escape overheating, hunger and conflict while the rest of the world is left to suffer, he wrote in a report to the U.N. in June. Perversely, while people in poverty are responsible for just a fraction of global emissions,they will bear the brunt of climate change, and have the least capacity to protect themselves.

Alston also warns that climate change will impact democracies as governments try to cope with the consequences. Aid agencies have yet to define what it means to be a climate migrant or refugee, and without crucial designations there won't be policies and legal protections.

Most human rights bodies have barely begun to grapple with what climate change portends for human rights, and it remains one on a long laundry list of issues, despite the extraordinarily short time to avoid catastrophic consequences, Alston said when he presented his report. As a full-blown crisis that threatens the human rights of vast numbers of people bears down, the usual piecemeal, issue-by-issue human rights methodology is woefully insufficient.

UNHCR has been reluctant to designate the new category for people moving due to climate change.

John Podesta, founder and director of the Center for American Progress, outlined the issue of classification in a recent report for the Brookings Institution.

The UNHCR has thus far refused to grant these people refugee status, instead designating them as environmental migrants, in large part because it lacks the resources to address their needs, Podesta wrote. But with no organized effort to supervise the migrant population, these desperate individuals go where they can, not necessarily where they should. As their numbers grow, it will become increasingly difficult for the international community to ignore this challenge.

He believes the international community will be forced either to redefine what a refugee is to include climate migrants or create a new category and institutional framework to protect climate migrants.

However, opening that debate in the current political context would be fraught with difficulty, he said in the report. Currently, the nationalist, anti-immigrant, and xenophobic atmosphere in Europe and the U.S. would most likely lead to limiting refugee protections rather than expanding them.

All agencies that eventually will be tasked with managing the new migration have reached the same conclusion: the developed world has to act to cut emissions and stave off the apocalyptic disaster in the making. But vulnerable countries need to act, too.

The World Bank is helping Bangladesh, which is projected to produce a third of South Asias climate migrants by 2050, to develop a Perspective Plan for 2041, that, while pessimistic, recognizes that people need to start moving away from coastal areas in order to integrate and find new skills. Mexico is also working on a plan towards adaptation, which will help retrain workers who rely on industries that will disappear as the real effects of climate change take hold.

The World Bank says that if the industrialized world starts to act by cutting greenhouse gases now and integrating a climate migration contingency into all development plans, the inevitable disaster does not have to become a worst case scenario.

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Climate Migrants May Number 143 Million by 2050 - The Daily Beast

Migrants in Limbo – Commonweal

Posted on September 24, 2019 by Danzig

But consider it from the perspective of those who find themselves detained there. Libya not only has one of the worlds worst records on human rightsit is also in the middle of a civil war. Reports have emerged of African migrants being sold by smugglers into manual labor or sexual slavery. Many are held for ransom until their families pay for their release; if families cant or wont pay, migrants are killed or abandoned. Those held in detention centers run by the Libyan governmenta number estimated at 5,600fare little better. Theyre confined to cramped and unsanitary spaces, deprived of food, and regularly suffer torture, beatings, and sexual violence at the hands of guards. Some are pressed into manual labor inside the camps, while others are sold into slavery outside them. The plight of detainees went largely unnoticed until earlier this year, when General Khalifa Haftars army conducted airstrikes on detention facilities, killing dozens.

The EU insists that it is doing all it can to protect migrants and fairly evaluate the asylum claims of those waiting in limbo. And in response to international outcry after the airstrikes, it is expected to make another deal, this time with Rwanda, to accept migrants evacuated from Libyathough only a mere five hundred. Theyre expected to be transferred as they await resettlement in Europe or, more likely, deportation to their countries of origin. But, as in Libya, Turkey, and Niger, migrants can expect no guarantee of safety; by the EUs own admission, Rwanda also has a record of serious human-rights abuses. As Judith Sunderland of Human Rights Watch put it, Theres not much hope then that the exact same process in Rwanda would lead to dramatically different outcomes.

Human-rights activists have called on the EU to change its approach entirely, to stop outsourcing the care of the displaced to underequipped and dangerous countries. The same demand could be made of the United States, Australia, and other wealthy nations enacting similar policies. Better still would be a truly international reckoning with the fact that mass migration is only likely to increase thanks to factors like climate change and food insecurity. People dont want to flee their homes unless they have to, and then they need somewhere to go.

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Migrants in Limbo - Commonweal

France’s Macron Toughens Immigration Stance Amid Fears of More Asylum Seekers – VOA News

Posted on September 24, 2019 by Danzig

LONDON - Frances Emmanuel Macron is telling his centrist party that it must shed what he calls its bourgeois stance towards immigration and distinguish between deserving asylum-seekers fleeing war and economic migrants, saying it will otherwise drive voters into the arms of far-right populists.

His warning comes amid mounting evidence that the periphery of south-eastern Europe could soon be faced with a new surge of asylum-seekers, sparking fears that the continent could be on the brink of a new migration crisis, roiling European politics more and adding to the appeal of far-right populists.

In the past few weeks, there has been an abrupt increase in the numbers of refugees making the perilous sea crossing from Turkey to Greece, adding to overcrowding in squalid refugee camps on the Greek Aegean islands of Lesbos and Samos.

France, Greece to Push for EU Solidarity on Migrant Crisis

French President Emmanuel Macron and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis agreed to push for more solidarity in the European Union over the migrant crisis

Talking Monday to lawmakers from his ruling party, La Rpublique en Marche, the French president said, The question is whether we want to be a bourgeois party or not. The bourgeoisie doesnt have a problem with [immigration]. They never come across it. The working classes live with it. He added: The left has not wanted to look at this problem for decades. The working classes have therefore moved to the far right.

French officials worry that France could see a further surge in asylum seekers because of a tightening of admission and resettlement policies by neighboring Germany. More than a quarter of a million migrants received residency permits in France last year, up nearly 4% compared with 2017. A further 123,625 refugees made asylum claims, up 22.7% from 2017.

An opinion poll conducted for Le Monde newspaper found that 64% of respondents say they no longer feel at home in their country. Macron is said to be especially frustrated with an increase of asylum claims from Albanians and Georgians, economic migrants in search of a better life.

Charity: Italy Allows Rescue Ship to Disembark Migrants in Lampedusa

'An ad hoc European agreement between Italy, France, Germany, Portugal and Luxembourg has been reached to allow the landing,' says French official

The French government is shaping measures to deter asylum seekers, including a 25% cut in welfare payments that are given to refugees and migrants while their claims and appeals are being processed.

Left wing critics rounded on Macron, accusing him of adopting an extreme right-wing position on immigration.

Marine Le Pen accused Macron of electioneering ahead of local elections next year, saying he was doing too little, too late. She noted last year saw a jump in legal arrivals from citizens from other EU countries as well. A total of 360,000 people entered France last year legally, she said. If we carry on like that, two million will have entered legally by the end of his term of office, not to mention the countless illegal immigrants, she added.

The political battle in France over immigration coincides with signs that Europe may be facing another uptick in arrivals from the Middle East, adding to the woeful conditions of asylum- seekers, mainly from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, trapped on Greece's Aegean islands.

Italian Police Arrest Three Accused of Torturing Migrants in Libya

Prosecutors in Sicily ordered arrests of two Egyptians and one Guinean after several people identified them as suspects

Aid workers say that life for the 24,000 refugees detained on Lesbos by the Greek authorities is unbearable and unsanitary and is turning into a humanitarian disaster with food shortages and a sharp rise in suicide attempts and self-harm. On Tuesday, Mdecins Sans Frontires, the international medical humanitarian organization, called on Greece and European Union states to relocate the most vulnerable and sick refugees immediately.

People's health is deteriorating due to poor access to health services and being trapped in overcrowded and inhumane living conditions, MSF said in a tweet. Katryn Bubrakk, one of the organizations aid workers, said, I have seen the development of the situation for the last four years. And whats really worrying is the status of the mental situation for people now.

She added: Its a lot more severe now. People have lost hope, they cant see how they are going to get away from here. She said that due to insufficient resources many who need help are turned away.

Hundreds of Migrants Arrived on Greek Island in One Afternoon

Greek authorities and aid groups say hundreds of people arrived on the eastern Aegean island of Lesbos in more than a dozen boats in one afternoon, a significant increase in the numbers of refugees and migrants heading to Greek islands

In the past two months, more than 13,000 refugees have landed on Greek shores, many of them unaccompanied minors. That is a fraction of landings at the height of the migration crisis in 2016 when Greece was seeing 2,000 disembarkations a day from unsafe and rickety smugglers boats. But it is the first significant jump in numbers since the EU signed an accord with Turkey in which Recep Tayyip Erdoan agreed to staunch the flood of asylum-seekers into Europe in return for $6.6 billion.

There is some suspicion among European diplomats that the spike now may be a warning to the EU from Ankara. With Turkeys economic woes mounting, and some reluctance by some EU states to hand over the money amid Erdoans crackdown on dissidents and critics, the Turkish president has repeatedly warned he will open the refugee floodgates again if the EU doesnt fulfill its promise.

Erdoan is urging European countries to back his plan to establish a larger safe zone in northern Syria where war refugees could be kept. Turkey is hosting four million Syrians and Ankara fears a redoubled offensive in the province of Idlib, abutting the Turkish border, by forces loyal and allied to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will only increase the tens of thousands of Syrians heading to the border.

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France's Macron Toughens Immigration Stance Amid Fears of More Asylum Seekers - VOA News

US not facing deep crisis in own neighbourhood: Central Americans denied asylum and aid – Norwegian Refugee Council

Posted on September 24, 2019 by Danzig

Last year alone, 10,500 people were killed in Northern Central America. Nearly 700,000 Central Americans are estimated to be internally displaced. Natural disasters also increase the need for humanitarian assistance in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. Large communities face armed gangs, extortion, trafficking, child recruitment and sexual and gender-based violence.

The number of asylum applications from the North of Central America are only comparable with countries at war, according to UNHCR. In 2018, Hondurans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans and Mexicans were among the top ten nationalities claiming asylum in the world, alongside people from Syria, Venezuela, South Sudan and Afghanistan.

To leave or to stay and die is the only choice left for thousands inthe North of Central America. Inefficient, expensive and abusive border control measures in addition to counterproductive political rhetoric from the U.S. must be replaced with solidarity and support for their own vulnerable neighbourhood. We have to call a spade a spade: The U.S. and a number of European nations are now burial squads for the ancient right of asylum for fellow human beings who flee for their life, said Egeland.

Militarisation at the borders, cuts in humanitarian aid, restricted access to documents and non-functioning so called safe-third-country agreements make it virtually impossible for people displaced by violence to reach safe havens.

Despite the massive needs, NRC and humanitarian actors present in the region have little funding. The limited international aid is allocated to long term development and disaster-response programs.

Hope of a better future at home is leaving large and vulnerable groups of youth across this violence-stricken region. The misguided U.S. funding cuts for programs that provide education, livelihoods and local peace-making are enormously counter-productive. It will fuel the migration north. We therefore need a UN-led regional humanitarian response plan to mobilise funding and improve humanitarian coordination so people receive critically needed aid, said Egeland.

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US not facing deep crisis in own neighbourhood: Central Americans denied asylum and aid - Norwegian Refugee Council

Number of migrants now growing faster than world population, new UN figures show – UN News

Posted on September 24, 2019 by Danzig

The figures reflect a jump from 2010, when the global number was at 221 million, and currently international migrants defined as anyone who changes their country of usual residence make up 3.5 per cent of the global population, compared to 2.8 per cent in the year 2000, according to the latest figures.

Estimates are based on official national statistics of foreign populations gathered from censuses. These numbers reflect any person who is moving or has moved across an international border, regardless of citizenship status or motive - meaning the data encompass people who have moved either intentionally or involuntarily.

Europe hosts the largest number of international migrants, at 82 million; followed by North America, at 59 million; with 51 million in the United States alone - the largest number in a single nation. Finally, North Africa and Western Asia host around 49 million migrants, and along with sub-Saharan Africa, are seeing the most significant influx in foreign populations.

The share of international migrants in the total population varies considerably across regions, the report shows, where foreign-born individuals comprise 21 per cent of the population of the Oceana region (Australia and New Zealand included), and 16 per cent of all people in Northern America.

With forced displacements continuing to increase, refugees and asylum seekers account for close to a quarter of global increases, which have risen by 13 million in number from 2010 to 2017.

Although migration is global, most journeys are taking place within a limited set of countries, with the US, Germany, and Saudi Arabia making up the top three.

The link between migration and development is very well established, Director for DESAs Population Division, John Wilmoth told reporters at the UN, echoing the message from the Departments Under-Secretary General ahead of the report release.

The data are critical, Llu Zhenmin said, for understanding the important role of migrants and migration in the development of both countries of origin and destination.

Facilitating orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility of people will contribute much to achieving the Sustainable development Goals, he urged.

Mr. Wilmoth said as a general observation, the contribution of migrants both in host countries and countries of origin, includes sending valuable remittances back to countries of origin, and a major social contribution through transmission of ideas.

The United Nations is committed to supporting safe migration, through international agreements to safeguard refugees and people on the move at large. The Global Compact on Refugees, and Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, were adopted in December of last year. DESAs full 2019 migration data set, available here.

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Number of migrants now growing faster than world population, new UN figures show - UN News

US, El Salvador Sign Asylum Deal – DTN The Progressive Farmer

Posted on September 24, 2019 by Danzig

"El Salvador is not safe for many of its own nationals and is struggling to meet their needs, which is why many seek asylum in the United States. It is unrealistic to expect El Salvador to be able to offer protection to asylum-seekers fleeing conditions comparable to those in El Salvador."

El Salvadorans are excluded from the agreement, according to the draft.

McAleenan, who called the agreement "a big step forward," and Hill Tinoco discussed U.S. assistance in making El Salvador a safer and more prosperous place for its citizens. Hill Tinoco talked about ending gang violence.

"I mean, those individuals threaten people, those individuals kill people, those individuals request for the poorest and most vulnerable population to pay just to cross the street," she said, adding that her country needs more investment from the U.S. and other nations.

The agreement, first reported by The Associated Press, could lead to migrants from third countries obtaining refuge in El Salvador if they pass through that country on their way to the U.S., Hill Tinoco said in an interview with the AP.

But she said most migrants who travel north don't pass through El Salvador, which is on the western edge of Central America and is much smaller geographically than its neighbor to the east, Honduras.

She told The AP the details would need to be hammered out, including border security, asylum procedures and potential aid from the U.S. She said the agreement is a starting point, and they expected negotiations on possible aid to continue.

"It has to be a real partnership," she said, which means the U.S. would have to give something.

The country's new president, Nayib Bukele, has made clear he wishes to be an ally to the U.S., Hill Tinoco said.

"It is a complete 180 in terms of foreign policy," she said.

McAleenan said the agreement advanced El Salvador's commitment to developing an asylum framework, with help from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

"This will build on the good work we have accomplished already with El Salvador's neighbor, Guatemala, in building protection capacity to try to further our efforts to provide opportunities to seek protection for political, racial, religious or social group persecution as close as possible to the origin of individuals that need it," he said.

Guatemala officials are still working on how to implement a "safe third country" agreement with the U.S. signed earlier this summer.

The arrangement with El Salvador was not described as a safe third country agreement, under which nations agree that their respective countries are safe enough and have robust enough asylum systems, so that if migrants transit through one of the countries they must remain there instead of moving on to another country.

The U.S. officially has only one such agreement in place, with Canada.

The Trump administration this year threatened to withhold all federal assistance to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras unless they did more to end the migrant crisis.

The move was met by stiff resistance in Congress as experts had said the cuts would likely only exacerbate the number of migrants seeking to make the hazardous journey to the U.S. because of a further lack of resources.

On Thursday, the U.S. announced a plan to promote economic development in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador as long as fewer migrants end up at the U.S. border.

Mauricio Claver-Clarone, national security adviser in charge of Latin America, said U.S. investment would occur soon but it was contingent on a continued reduction in the number of migrants. He didn't specify how much Washington plans to give to promote economic growth in those countries.

In June, the State Department announced that the Trump administration was reversing some of the cuts but would not approve future aid to those nations. The State Department said then that some $370 million from the 2018 budget will not be spent and instead will be moved to other projects.

El Salvador is plagued by gangs and is among the world's deadliest countries, with one of the highest homicide rates on the globe.

According to a 2018 State Department report, human rights issues included allegations of "unlawful killings of suspected gang members and others by security forces; forced disappearances by military personnel; torture by security forces; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; lack of government respect for judicial independence."

(KR)

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US, El Salvador Sign Asylum Deal - DTN The Progressive Farmer

The End of Asylum? – Foreign Policy In Focus

Posted on September 24, 2019 by Danzig

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It was unforgettable.

A little boy living in a refugee camp, essentially in exile. In a city known for kidnappings and murders, and in a shelter with inadequate resources and supplies.

Most striking were the circumstances: The child was an American citizen, yet the shelter he resided in was located a few miles from the United States. Why, then, was he not living in his own country?

This is the distorted result of Remain in Mexico officially called the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) in which the administration forces asylum seekers from Central America to stay in Mexico to await their court dates, rather than allowing them to stay with sponsors in the United States.

In Mexico these migrants have nearly no access to family members, lawyers, or other support. Shelters and employment are woefully inadequate.

This child, a U.S. citizen, faced the heart-wrenching choice of either staying in the United States motherless, or remaining in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, with his mother, who was seeking refuge in the United States after fleeing violence in Honduras.

Asylum Under Threat

In international law, the principle of non-refoulement means that a person should not be returned to danger, whether in their country of origin or in another country.

Yet migrants are being sent to parts of Mexico with high levels of violence, as documented by Human Rights Watch and Human Rights First. Asylum officers from the Department of Homeland Security have themselves criticized the policy as unlawful, with some refusing to implement it at the risk of losing their jobs.

The outcome of a lawsuit from The American Civil Liberties Union, Southern Poverty Law Center, and Center for Gender & Refugee Studies is still pending. Meanwhile the numbers of people waiting in Mexico are growing both due to MPP, and to a process called metering, which limits the number of asylum seekers admitted each day.

And those are the people who at least in theory can be considered for asylum in the United States. Others opportunities have been curtailed by the Supreme Courts decision to allow implementation of a rule that makes people ineligible to request asylum in the United States if they have passed through another country without applying for and being denied asylum there.

This means that, with few exceptions, anyone crossing the U.S. southern border who is not from Mexico would not be eligible if they presented themselves after July 16, 2019. To further intensify the situation, the United States has signed an agreement with El Salvador and seeks to do so with Honduras in which migrants entering that country would need to seek asylum there, not in the United States. Given the intense gang violence in El Salvador, it is in little position to provide safety.

Courts in Tents

For those awaiting U.S. court dates in Mexico, what happens next?

The administration has opened courts in tents on the U.S. side in places such as Brownsville and Laredo, Texas. Lawyers have limited access, the hearings are not open to the public, and media have not been allowed inside. Judges are beamed in remotely through video conference.

Even more remote than the judges locations is the likelihood that any justice will be done.

Experts believe that nearly all claims to asylum will be denied, since the purpose of the courts is not to protect people from violence in their home countries, but rather to ensure that the claimants do not remain in the United States.

Of the tens of thousands in the Remain in Mexico program, nearly none have been granted asylum; one who has is facing his case being appealed. University of Texas at Austin professor Denise Gilman calls the tent court process a sham, saying it is not intended to adjudicate claims but rather to exclude and deny asylum.

As such, it is the reverse of asylum. The policy takes people who are fleeing violence, makes them wait at the risk of their lives in a dangerous environment, and then sends them back to their countries of origin potentially to their deaths.

Its vital to remember that arriving as an asylum seeker is not illegal. On the contrary, being able to request asylum is a right. What is in violation of the law are current policies that seek to deny this right.

Not fairly hearing an asylum claim, and sending people to unsafe third countries, clearly violates international treaties such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the American Convention on Human Rights, and the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees.

It also contradicts U.S. law, including the Immigration and Nationality Act and the Refugee Act of 1980. And trampling on peoples rights to a fair hearing violates the Constitution of the United States, which says in the 14th Amendment that all persons (regardless of citizenship) are to receive due process and equal protection of law.

How to Take Action

The violation of rights at the border and throughout the country is directed at people of color, as part of a larger racist and xenophobic bout of white nationalism in our country. The shooting at a Walmart in El Paso is but one manifestation of the hateful discourse labeling the arrival of immigrants as an invasion. White people and citizens need to acknowledge privilege, speak out, and take action lest silence amount to complicity.

Yet it is all of us who risk living in a nation where our rights are removed, laws are undermined, the safety valve of asylum is denied, militarization creeps further and further into the interior, and fascism is ascendant. If equal protection, human rights, and due process are not preserved, then we all lose rights that we ultimately need.

In this sense, the border is a harbinger of things to come for everyone and whats at stake is the soul of the country, as Fernando Garcia, head of the Border Network of Human Rights, has said.

Given current policy, should efforts be directed toward getting legal representation to as many Remain in Mexico asylum seekers as possible? Or does that in itself legitimate an illegitimate system?

Access to lawyers is essential for getting people out of U.S. detention centers and helping them obtain asylum. The El Paso Immigration Collaborative (EPIC) may be an important step forward in that regard. So are bond funds to get people released from detention such as the Fronterizx Fianza Fund.

In the case of Remain in Mexico and the tent-court arrangement, some lawyers are refusing to participate, lest they legitimate the system. While appreciating the work that other attorneys do in representing clients who otherwise have scant access to legal representation and recognizing the vital role lawyers can plan in witnessing the court proceedings and bringing the problems to public light Gilman believes a priority is to protest and challenge the tent-system before it becomes institutionalized.

That could involve activism across communities by witnessing, documenting, and spreading the word about these abuses, including through a massive social media campaign and engaging politicians. Nationwide fury led to an executive order ordering the end of the family separation policy (although family separation itself has not ended), and a similar public response could have an impact here as well. One example is an action being organized by Catholic nuns for October 26 in Laredo, Texas.

Central to the work are organizations at the border, many of which have been active for decades. Among those engaged in the work are: the Border Network for Human Rights, the Hope Border Institute, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, Al Otro Lado, The Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), and the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project (ProBAR).

People I spoke to at various institutions during a trip to Texas for Moral Monday at the Borderlands highlighted the importance of education, saying that people around the country need to understand the politics and history of current policy, and comprehend what is actually happening as it unfolds. They emphasized that its crucial for allied groups throughout the United States to be in dialogue with border organizations.

Because there is no single solution to the crisis, ongoing conversation and relationships are vital. Witnessing, seeing, photographing, writing op-eds and letters to the editor, and sharing with others what has been learned plays an important role. Storytelling of peoples experiences is especially useful: It shifts the discourse from one that identifies migrants as threats to one that sees migrants as fellow humans; it replaces racist rhetoric with empathy.

And although people from different regions can go to the border to learn first-hand what is going on, they can also create welcoming environments in their own communities, as asylum seekers spread throughout the United States to join sponsors.

There are many concrete things to do funding bond and providing pro-bono legal services being priorities among them. Yet while physical donations like clothing and food can be useful, the main thing that can have an impact now is taking a moral stand against these atrocities and organizing for their transformation.

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The End of Asylum? - Foreign Policy In Focus

Stop Blaming Immigrants for Right-Wing Extremism – Just Security

Posted on September 24, 2019 by Danzig

On June 2, Walter Lbcke, a German politician who had defended Chancellor Angela Merkels policy of welcoming migrants, was murdered by a right-wing extremist. The incident was one of several such attacks against European politicians who had advocated for generous immigration policies, and one of many more right-wing attacks perpetrated directly against immigrant communities.

In response to the disturbing trend, a number of policymakers in the United States and in Europe have suggested that immigrants, rather than xenophobia or racism, are at the root of extremist violence. Whether immigrants are the perpetrators or the victims of an act of terrorist violence and regardless of the ideological motivation behind the attack their presence is portrayed as the primary problem.

While the connection between immigration and Islamist terrorism has been challenged, the assertion that immigrants are also to blame for right-wing extremism is just as dishonest and dangerous. It creates a false narrative of blaming victims for crimes perpetrated against them.

Such rhetoric has been particularly noticeable in Europe in the aftermath of the migrant crisis that peaked in 2015-2016 and resulted in more than 1.8 million migrants arriving in Europe from Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa from 2014 through November of last year. European policymakers too often link immigrants and refugees to crime, even when immigrants are the targets of violence. And as is the case in the United States, these statements may directly feed into security policies that negatively impact immigrant communities, all while failing to adequately address the threat of right-wing extremism.

This phenomenon is one of two key conceptual problems that has resulted in the failure of policymakers to take sufficient measures against right-wing extremists. The first problem is that the security data relied on by those policymakers fails to accurately convey the threat of right-wing extremism, both due to a disproportionate focus on other forms of violence (e.g. Islamist terrorism) and also due to the lack of a universal definition for what constitutes right-wing extremism. The second problem is the pre-existing tendencies of policymakers to interpret right-wing extremism as a symptom of immigration, rather than as a problem to be confronted in and of itself.

The Failure to Correctly Assess the Threat

Despite the clear threat of right-wing extremism, European policymakers have largely failed to give this phenomenon the attention it deserves, largely because of the lack of clear data and assessment of the risk. First, security discussions are generally more focused on the threat of Islamist terrorism and outsider threats, often underestimating or ignoring threats from groups seen as internal to the EU. Second, there is a lack of consensus regarding how to define right-wing extremism.

Several highly publicized refugee- and immigrant-perpetrated attacks in the aftermath of the migrant crisis helped fuel the nationalist narrative that immigrants pose a security threat to Europe. In spite of the fact that EU security apparatuses have recognized that right-wing terror attacks have increased, much of their reporting has remained focused on jihadist terrorism.

This problem is further exacerbated by the lack of consistent data. While the use of overly-simplified or ill-defined terms (e.g., terrorism, right-wing extremism, hate crimes) is problematic, the lack of consensus as to how to define right-wing extremist violence has made it difficult to assess the risks posed by far-right groups. Such attacks often are not included in terrorism databases. The 2018 report from the EU law enforcement agency Europol, regarded as a key source for terrorism and security data, recorded only one right-wing terror attack across Europe in 2018 as opposed to 24 jihadist attacks. This may be because episodes of right-wing violence are often defined as hate crimes, or because right-wing attacks remain highly underreported to begin with. Failure to accurately assess right-wing extremism skews the data, helping fuel the inaccurate narrative that Islamic extremism accounts for most extremist violence in the EU, and undercounting attacks that actually target immigrants.

Europol and the European Council, the EUs political body made up of heads of state and government from member countries, rely on these data sets in determining security policy. Data that underestimates the threat of right-wing violence may push security forces to dedicate a disproportionate amount of their resources to the threat of Islamist terrorism, as is the case in the United States.

These resources could be more effectively utilized to address the threat of right-wing extremism. Currently, most of the EUs security policies implemented since the beginning of the refugee crisis have focused on border control, including reinforced checks at external borders, strengthened cooperation with third countries, and the construction of more border fences than anywhere else on the globe. Better data-gathering, and thus a more accurate assessment of the danger posed by right-wing extremism, would give security policymakers the information needed to more effectively allocate resources and develop policies to better address this real risk.

Immigrants as Scapegoats

But EU policymakers acute focus on immigrant populations as a key security threat is not simply the result of bad data. Policy priorities are influenced by broader, simplistic political narratives that frame immigrants as the cause of right-wing extremism.

This rhetoric is not confined to Trump. A range of mainstream politicians, and even academics, have embraced similar views regarding the inevitable connection between immigrants and rising right-wing extremism. Hillary Clinton stated in a November 2018 interview, for example, that Europe needs to get a handle on migration because that is what lit the flame. While endorsing the generous and compassionate approaches of some European political leaders toward migrants, she argued that immigration proved fundamental to the election of populist leaders in the U.S. and Europe. Similarly, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has gone as far as to claim that immigrants in the United Kingdom must better integrate in order to mitigate the growth of far-right bigotry.

Such dangerously misguided responses may fuel further restrictions on migration. Political leaders who accept this assumption would, of course, focus more on curbing migration as a solution than on addressing the underlying racism motivating xenophobic violence.

The idea that right-wing violence increases with immigration has some merit, as demonstrated by Richard J. McAlexander in a study analyzing terrorism in Europe from 1990-2004. But this connection should not lead to the conclusion that immigrants are to blame, or that drastically reducing immigration is the solution. As Lorna Finlayson explains, efforts to draw a causal link between immigration and right-wing extremism get things backwards: they assume that racism against immigrants is caused by excessive multiculturalism, rather than being a continuation of racism already endemic in a society which, moreover, does not serve the interests of the majority of its people.

Refocusing Security Policy

Policymakers underestimation of the extent of right-wing attacks, coupled with a public discourse that operates on the premise that white supremacist ideology is an immutable aspect of Western society, contributes to a narrative in which immigrants are held responsible for the attacks against them. European policymakers, and the larger public, must move past these misconceptions in order to more effectively combat right-wing extremism. Rather than calling for reduced immigration, policymakers ought to fight against the underlying bigotry that gives rise to xenophobic violence and right-wing extremism. Until they do so, immigrants will continue to bear the brunt for EUs broad failure to take the threat posed by right-wing extremist groups seriously, leaving neither immigrants, nor Europe as a whole, any safer.

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Stop Blaming Immigrants for Right-Wing Extremism - Just Security

Germany looks to Mexico to help tackle nursing-care crisis – DW (English)

Posted on September 24, 2019 by Danzig

German Health Minister Jens Spahn on Saturday appealed to Mexican care workers to consider moving to Germany to work.

Spahn traveled to Mexico City last week as part of a recruitment drive aimed atredressinga shortage of nursing and ancillary staff in German care homes.

In a video posted to Twitter, he said the trip was about "helping to speed up the process by which nurses from Mexico can come to Germany."

He said visa procedures and the recognition of professional qualifications would be accelerated for qualified Mexican staff.

Read more:Conflicts grow in German care sector as more foreign workers come

The minister also met with 15 representatives of local training institutes and invited them to visit Germany to familiarize themselves with the German care system and recruit Mexican workers.

Sector shunned by workers

Germany's care sector is deeply unattractive for many domestic workers due to low wages, overworkandreports of mistreatment of staff and patients. The industry relies on thousands of foreign workers.

Read more:Nursing home abuse in Germany: 'I can't let my mother die of thirst'

Spahn said there were currently 50,000 to 80,000 vacancies in care homes and hospitals.

DW reported in January that the care sector was struggling to fill some 38,000 posts and that for every 100 vacant positions there were only 26 unemployed skilled workers on the market.

The German government hasset a targetto find 10% more trainees for the sector by 2023. Earlier this year, it tasked several ministries with addressing the shortage, prompting high-profile visits to countriessuch as Kosovo and the Philippines this summer.

Read more:Singapore 'maids for sale' ad sparks investigation

Aging population spurs action

Resolving the issue has become particularly urgent as the number of people who need care is expected to rise dramaticallyin the coming decades: from the 3.3 million in 2017to 4 million by 2030, and 5.3 million by 2050, according to official government projections.

The shortagepersists despite Germany's population growing by more than 2 million since2015, mostly as a result of Europe'smigrant crisis, which sawlarge numbers of people crossthe Mediterranean to seeka new life in Europe's largest economy.

mm/jlw (AFP, dpa)

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Germany looks to Mexico to help tackle nursing-care crisis - DW (English)

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