Massive Kritik am EU-Posten-Karussell (►https://www.heise.de/tp/feat...
▻https://diasp.eu/p/9310461
Massive Kritik am EU-Posten-Karussell
]]>GBC - Gibraltar News - GBC TV and Radio Gibraltar
▻https://www.gbc.gi/news/gib-authorities-and-royal-marines-board-and-detain-supertanker-en-route-syria
Gibraltar Port and Law Enforcement agencies, assisted by a detachmentof Royal Marines, boarded and detained a super tanker carrying crude oil to Syria in the early hours of Thursday morning.
This followed information giving the Gibraltar Government reasonable grounds to believe that the vessel, the Grace 1, was acting in breach of European Union sanctions against Syria.
The operation took place overnight as the giant vessel sailed into Gibraltar waters.
The Government says it has reason to believe that the Grace 1 was carrying its shipment of crude oil to the Banyas Refinery in Syria.The refinery is the property of an entity subject to European Union sanctions against Syria.
#piraterie #gibraltar reste un atout géopolitique
en arabe : ▻https://www.raialyoum.com/index.php/%d8%b3%d9%84%d8%b7%d8%a7%d8%aa-%d8%ac%d8%a8%d9%84-%d8%b7%d8%a7%d8%b1%d9%8
où il est précisé que le navire est sous pavillon de Panama et que le pétrole serait iranien.
View from Nowhere. Is it the press’s job to create a community that transcends borders?
A few years ago, on a plane somewhere between Singapore and Dubai, I read Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities (1983). I was traveling to report on the global market for passports—how the ultrawealthy can legally buy citizenship or residence virtually anywhere they like, even as 10 million stateless people languish, unrecognized by any country. In the process, I was trying to wrap my head around why national identity meant so much to so many, yet so little to my passport-peddling sources. Their world was the very image of Steve Bannon’s globalist nightmare: where you can never be too rich, too thin, or have too many passports.
Anderson didn’t address the sale of citizenship, which only took off in earnest in the past decade; he did argue that nations, nationalism, and nationality are about as organic as Cheez Whiz. The idea of a nation, he writes, is a capitalist chimera. It is a collective sense of identity processed, shelf-stabilized, and packaged before being disseminated, for a considerable profit, to a mass audience in the form of printed books, news, and stories. He calls this “print-capitalism.”
Per Anderson, after the printing press was invented, nearly 600 years ago, enterprising booksellers began publishing the Bible in local vernacular languages (as opposed to the elitist Latin), “set[ting] the stage for the modern nation” by allowing ordinary citizens to participate in the same conversations as the upper classes. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the proliferation (and popularity) of daily newspapers further collapsed time and space, creating an “extraordinary mass ceremony” of reading the same things at the same moment.
“An American will never meet, or even know the names of more than a handful of his 240,000,000–odd fellow Americans,” Anderson wrote. “He has no idea of what they are up to at any one time.” But with the knowledge that others are reading the same news, “he has complete confidence in their steady, anonymous, simultaneous activity.”
Should the press be playing a role in shaping not national identities, but transnational ones—a sense that we’re all in it together?
Of course, national presses enabled more explicit efforts by the state itself to shape identity. After the US entered World War I, for instance, President Woodrow Wilson set out to make Americans more patriotic through his US Committee on Public Information. Its efforts included roping influential mainstream journalists into advocating American-style democracy by presenting US involvement in the war in a positive light, or simply by referring to Germans as “Huns.” The committee also monitored papers produced by minorities to make sure they supported the war effort not as Indians, Italians, or Greeks, but as Americans. Five Irish-American papers were banned, and the German-American press, reacting to negative stereotypes, encouraged readers to buy US bonds to support the war effort.
The US media played an analogous role in selling the public on the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But ever since then, in the digital economy, its influence on the national consciousness has waned. Imagined Communities was published seven years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, twenty-two years before Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat, and a couple of decades before the internet upended print-capitalism as the world knew it (one of Anderson’s footnotes is telling, if quaint: “We still have no giant multinationals in the world of publishing”).
Since Trump—a self-described nationalist—became a real contender for the US presidency, many news organizations have taken to looking inward: consider the running obsession with the president’s tweets, for instance, or the nonstop White House palace intrigue (which the president invites readily).
Meanwhile, the unprofitability of local and regional papers has contributed to the erosion of civics, which, down the line, makes it easier for billionaires to opt out of old “imagined communities” and join new ones based on class and wealth, not citizenship. And given the challenges humanity faces—climate change, mass migration, corporate hegemony, and our relationships to new technologies—even if national papers did make everyone feel like they shared the same narrative, a renewed sense of national pride would prove impotent in fighting world-historic threats that know no borders.
Should the press, then, be playing an analogous role in shaping not national identities, but transnational ones—a sense that we’re all in it together? If it was so important in shaping national identity, can it do so on a global scale?
Like my passport-buying subjects, I am what Theresa May, the former British prime minister, might call a “citizen of nowhere.” I was born in one place to parents from another, grew up in a third, and have lived and traveled all over. That informs my perspective: I want deeply for there to be a truly cosmopolitan press corps, untethered from national allegiances, regional biases, class divisions, and the remnants of colonial exploitation. I know that’s utopian; the international working class is hardly a lucrative demographic against which publishers can sell ads. But we seem to be living in a time of considerable upheaval and opportunity. Just as the decline of religiously and imperially organized societies paved the way for national alternatives, then perhaps today there is a chance to transcend countries’ boundaries, too.
Does the US media help create a sense of national identity? If nationalism means putting the interests of one nation—and what its citizens are interested in—before more universal concerns, then yes. Most journalists working for American papers, websites, and TV write in English with a national audience (or regional time zone) in mind, which affects how we pitch, source, frame, and illustrate a story—which, in turn, influences our readers, their country’s politics, and, down the line, the world. But a news peg isn’t an ideological form of nationalism so much as a practical or methodological one. The US press feeds off of more pernicious nationalisms, too: Donald Trump’s false theory about Barack Obama being “secretly” Kenyan, disseminated by the likes of Fox and The Daily Caller, comes to mind.
That isn’t to say that global news outlets don’t exist in the US. When coaxing subscribers, the Financial Times, whose front page often includes references to a dozen different countries, openly appeals to their cosmopolitanism. “Be a global citizen. Become an FT Subscriber,” read a recent banner ad, alongside a collage featuring the American, Chinese, Japanese, Australian, and European Union flags (though stories like the recent “beginner’s guide to buying a private island” might tell us something about what kind of global citizen they’re appealing to).
“I don’t think we try to shape anyone’s identity at all,” Gillian Tett, the paper’s managing editor for the US, says. “We recognize two things: that the world is more interconnected today than it’s ever been, and that these connections are complex and quite opaque. We think it’s critical to try to illuminate them.”
For Tett, who has a PhD in social anthropology, money serves as a “neutral, technocratic” starting point through which to understand—and tie together—the world. “Most newspapers today tend to start with an interest in politics or events, and that inevitably leads you to succumb to tribalism, however hard you try [not to],” Tett explains. “If you look at the world through money—how is money going around the world, who’s making and losing it and why?—out of that you lead to political, cultural, foreign-policy stories.”
Tett’s comments again brought to mind Imagined Communities: Anderson notes that, in 18th-century Caracas, newspapers “began essentially as appendages of the market,” providing commercial news about ships coming in, commodity prices, and colonial appointments, as well as a proto–Vows section for the upper crust to hate-read in their carriages. “The newspaper of Caracas quite naturally, and even apolitically, created an imagined community among a specific assemblage of fellow-readers, to whom these ships, brides, bishops, and prices belonged,” he wrote. “In time, of course, it was only to be expected that political elements would enter in.”
Yesterday’s aristocracy is today’s passport-buying, globe-trotting one percent. The passport brokers I got to know also pitched clients with the very same promise of “global citizenship” (it sounds less louche than “buy a new passport”)—by taking out ads in the Financial Times. Theirs is exactly the kind of neoliberal “globalism” that nationalist politicians like Trump have won elections denouncing (often hypocritically) as wanting “the globe to do well, frankly, not caring about our country so much.” Isn’t upper-crust glibness about borders, boundaries, and the value of national citizenship part of what helped give us this reactionary nativism in the first place?
“I suspect what’s been going on with Brexit and maybe Trump and other populist movements [is that] people. . . see ‘global’ as a threat to local communities and businesses rather than something to be welcomed,” Tett says. “But if you’re an FT reader, you see it as benign or descriptive.”
Among the largest news organizations in the world is Reuters, with more than 3,000 journalists and photographers in 120 countries. It is part of Thomson Reuters, a truly global firm. Reuters does not take its mandate lightly: a friend who works there recently sent me a job posting for an editor in Gdynia, which, Google clarified for me, is a city in the Pomeranian Voivodeship of Poland.
Reuters journalists cover everything from club sports to international tax evasion. They’re outsourcing quick hits about corporate earnings to Bangalore, assembling teams on multiple continents to tackle a big investigation, shedding or shuffling staff under corporate reorganizations. Perhaps unsurprisingly, “more than half our business is serving financial customers,” Stephen Adler, the editor in chief, tells me. “That has little to do with what country you’re from. It’s about information: a central-bank action in Europe or Japan may be just as important as everything else.”
Institutionally, “it’s really important and useful that we don’t have one national HQ,” Adler adds. “That’s the difference between a global news organization and one with a foreign desk. For us, nothing is foreign.” That approach won Reuters this year’s international Pulitzer Prize for uncovering the mass murder of the Rohingya in Myanmar (two of the reporters were imprisoned as a result, and since freed); it also comes through especially sharply in daily financial stories: comprehensive, if dry, compendiums of who-what-where-when-why that recognize the global impact of national stories, and vice versa. A recent roundup of stock movements included references to the US Fed, China trade talks, Brexit, monetary policy around the world, and the price of gold.
Adler has led the newsroom since 2011, and a lot has changed in the world. (I worked at Reuters between 2011 and 2013, first as Adler’s researcher and later as a reporter; Adler is the chair of CJR’s board.) Shortly after Trump’s election, Adler wrote a memo affirming the organization’s commitment to being fair, honest, and resourceful. He now feels more strongly than ever about judiciously avoiding biases—including national ones. “Our ideology and discipline around putting personal feelings and nationality aside has been really helpful, because when you think about how powerful local feelings are—revolutions, the Arab Spring—we want you writing objectively and dispassionately.”
The delivery of stories in a casual, illustrated, highly readable form is in some ways more crucial to developing an audience than subject matter.
Whether global stories can push communities to develop transnationally in a meaningful way is a harder question to answer; it seems to impugn our collective aptitude for reacting to problems of a global nature in a rational way. Reuters’s decision not to fetishize Trump hasn’t led to a drop-off in US coverage—its reporters have been especially strong on immigration and trade policy, not to mention the effects of the new administration on the global economy—but its stories aren’t exactly clickbait, which means ordinary Americans might not encounter them at the top of their feed. In other words, having a global perspective doesn’t necessarily translate to more eyeballs.
What’s more, Reuters doesn’t solve the audience-class problem: whether readers are getting dispatches in partner newspapers like The New York Times or through the organization’s Eikon terminal, they tend to be the sort of person “who does transnational business, travels a good deal, is connected through work and media, has friends in different places, cares about what’s going on in different places,” Adler says. “That’s a pretty large cohort of people who have reason to care what’s going on in other places.”
There are ways to unite readers without centering coverage on money or the markets. For a generation of readers around the world, the common ground is technology: the internet. “We didn’t pick our audience,” Ben Smith, the editor in chief of BuzzFeed, tells me over the phone. “Our audience picked us.” He defines his readers as a cohort aged 18–35 “who are on the internet and who broadly care about human rights, global politics, and feminism and gay rights in particular.”
To serve them, BuzzFeed recently published a damning investigative report into the World Wildlife Fund’s arming of militias in natural reserves; a (not uncontroversial) series on Trump’s business dealings abroad; early exposés of China’s detention of Uighur citizens; and reports on child abuse in Australia. Climate—“the central challenge for every newsroom in the world”—has been harder to pin down. “We don’t feel anyone has cracked it. But the shift from abstract scientific [stories] to coverage of fires in California, it’s a huge change—it makes it more concrete,” Smith says. (My husband is a reporter for BuzzFeed.)
The delivery of these stories in a casual, illustrated, highly readable form is in some ways more crucial to developing an audience than subject matter. “The global political financial elites have had a common language ever since it was French,” Smith says. “There is now a universal language of internet culture, [and] that. . . is how our stuff translates so well between cultures and audiences.” This isn’t a form of digital Esperanto, Smith insists; the point isn’t to flatten the differences between countries or regions so much as to serve as a “container” in which people from different regions, interest groups, and cultures can consume media through references they all understand.
BuzzFeed might not be setting out to shape its readers’ identities (I certainly can’t claim to feel a special bond with other people who found out they were Phoebes from the quiz “Your Sushi Order Will Reveal Which ‘Friends’ Character You’re Most Like”). An audience defined by its youth and its media consumption habits can be difficult to keep up with: platforms come and go, and young people don’t stay young forever. But if Anderson’s thesis still carries water, there must be something to speaking this language across cultures, space, and time. Call it “Web vernacular.”
In 2013, during one of the many recent and lengthy US government shutdowns, Joshua Keating, a journalist at Slate, began a series, “If It Happened There,” that imagined how the American media would view the shutdown if it were occurring in another country. “The typical signs of state failure aren’t evident on the streets of this sleepy capital city,” Keating opens. “Beret-wearing colonels have not yet taken to the airwaves to declare martial law. . . .But the pleasant autumn weather disguises a government teetering on the brink.”
It goes on; you get the idea. Keating’s series, which was inspired by his having to read “many, many headlines from around the world” while working at Foreign Policy, is a clever journalistic illustration of what sociologists call “methodological nationalism”: the bias that gets inadvertently baked into work and words. In the Middle East, it’s sectarian or ethnic strife; in the Midwest, it’s a trigger-happy cop and a kid in a hoodie.
His send-ups hit a nerve. “It was huge—it was by far the most popular thing I’ve done at Slate,” Keating says. “I don’t think that it was a shocking realization to anyone that this kind of language can be a problem, but sometimes pointing it out can be helpful. If the series did anything, it made people stop and be conscious of how. . . our inherent biases and perspectives will inform how we cover the world.”
Curiously, living under an openly nationalist administration has changed the way America—or at the very least, a significant part of the American press corps—sees itself. The press is a de facto opposition party, not because it tries to be, but because the administration paints it that way. And that gives reporters the experience of working in a place much more hostile than the US without setting foot outside the country.
Keating has “semi-retired” the series as a result of the broad awareness among American reporters that it is, in fact, happening here. “It didn’t feel too novel to say [Trump was] acting like a foreign dictator,” he says. “That was what the real news coverage was doing.”
Keating, who traveled to Somaliland, Kurdistan, and Abkhazia to report his book Invisible Countries (2018), still thinks the fastest and most effective way to form an international perspective is to live abroad. At the same time, not being bound to a strong national identity “can make it hard to understand particular concerns of the people you’re writing about,” he says. It might be obvious, but there is no one perfect way to be internationally minded.
Alan Rusbridger—the former editor of The Guardian who oversaw the paper’s Edward Snowden coverage and is now the principal at Lady Margaret Hall, a college at Oxford University—recognizes the journalistic and even moral merits of approaching news in a non-national way: “I think of journalism as a public service, and I do think there’s a link between journalism at its best and the betterment of individual lives and societies,” he says. But he doesn’t have an easy formula for how to do that, because truly cosmopolitan journalism requires both top-down editorial philosophies—not using certain phrasings or framings that position foreigners as “others”—and bottom-up efforts by individual writers to read widely and be continuously aware of how their work might be read by people thousands of miles away.
Yes, the starting point is a nationally defined press, not a decentralized network, but working jointly helps pool scarce resources and challenge national or local biases.
Rusbridger sees potential in collaborations across newsrooms, countries, and continents. Yes, the starting point is a nationally defined press, not a decentralized network; but working jointly helps pool scarce resources and challenge national or local biases. It also wields power. “One of the reasons we reported Snowden with the Times in New York was to use global protections of human rights and free speech and be able to appeal to a global audience of readers and lawyers,” Rusbridger recalls. “We thought, ‘We’re pretty sure nation-states will come at us over this, and the only way to do it is harness ourselves to the US First Amendment not available to us anywhere else.’”
In employing these tactics, the press positions itself in opposition to the nation-state. The same strategy could be seen behind the rollout of the Panama and Paradise Papers (not to mention the aggressive tax dodging detailed therein). “I think journalists and activists and citizens on the progressive wing of politics are thinking creatively about how global forces can work to their advantage,” Rusbridger says.
But he thinks it all starts locally, with correspondents who have fluency in the language, culture, and politics of the places they cover, people who are members of the communities they write about. That isn’t a traditional foreign-correspondent experience (nor indeed that of UN employees, NGO workers, or other expats). The silver lining of publishing companies’ shrinking budgets might be that cost cutting pushes newsrooms to draw from local talent, rather than send established writers around. What you gain—a cosmopolitanism that works from the bottom up—can help dispel accusations of media elitism. That’s the first step to creating new imagined communities.
Anderson’s work has inspired many an academic, but media executives? Not so much. Rob Wijnberg is an exception: he founded the (now beleaguered) Correspondent in the Netherlands in 2013 with Anderson’s ideas in mind. In fact, when we speak, he brings the name up unprompted.
“You have to transcend this notion that you can understand the world through the national point of view,” he says. “The question is, What replacement do we have for it? Simply saying we have to transcend borders or have an international view isn’t enough, because you have to replace the imagined community you’re leaving behind with another one.”
For Wijnberg, who was a philosophy student before he became a journalist, this meant radically reinventing the very structures of the news business: avoiding covering “current events” just because they happened, and thinking instead of what we might call eventful currents—the political, social, and economic developments that affect us all. It meant decoupling reporting from national news cycles, and getting readers to become paying “members” instead of relying on advertisements.
This, he hoped, would help create a readership not based on wealth, class, nationality, or location, but on borderless, universal concerns. “We try to see our members. . . as part of a group or knowledge community, where the thing they share is the knowledge they have about a specific structural subject matter,” be it climate, inequality, or migration, Wijnberg says. “I think democracy and politics answers more to media than the other way around, so if you change the way media covers the world you change a lot.”
That approach worked well in the Netherlands: his team raised 1.7 million euros in 2013, and grew to include 60,000 members. A few years later, Wijnberg and his colleagues decided to expand into the US, and with the help of NYU’s Jay Rosen, an early supporter, they made it onto Trevor Noah’s Daily Show to pitch their idea.
The Correspondent raised more than $2.5 million from nearly 50,000 members—a great success, by any measure. But in March, things started to get hairy, with the publication abruptly pulling the plug on opening a US newsroom and announcing that staff would edit stories reported from the US from the original Amsterdam office instead. Many of the reasons behind this are mundane: visas, high rent, relocation costs. And reporters would still be reporting from, and on, the States. But supporters felt blindsided, calling the operation a scam.
Today, Wijnberg reflects that he should have controlled the messaging better, and not promised to hire and operate from New York until he was certain that he could. He also wonders why it matters.
“It’s not saying people who think it matters are wrong,” he explains. “But if the whole idea of this kind of geography and why it’s there is a construct, and you’re trying to think about transcending it, the very notion of Where are you based? is secondary. The whole point is not to be based anywhere.”
Still: “The view from everywhere—the natural opposite—is just as real,” Wijnberg concedes. “You can’t be everywhere. You have to be somewhere.”
And that’s the rub: for all of nationalism’s ills, it does instill in its subjects what Anderson calls a “deep, horizontal comradeship” that, while imagined, blossoms thanks to a confluence of forces. It can’t be replicated supranationally overnight. The challenge for a cosmopolitan journalism, then, is to dream up new forms of belonging that look forward, not backward—without discarding the imagined communities we have.
That’s hard; so hard that it more frequently provokes a retrenchment, not an expansion, of solidarity. But it’s not impossible. And our collective futures almost certainly depend on it.
▻https://www.cjr.org/special_report/view-from-nowhere.php
#journalisme #nationalisme #Etat-nation #communauté_nationale #communauté_internationale #frontières #presse #médias
L’#Open_science au prisme de la #Commission_européenne
Appuyée par diverses politiques publiques, la notion de science ouverte mobilise aujourd’hui de nombreuses initiatives visant à promouvoir de nouvelles pratiques, de nouveaux enjeux pour la recherche et la société en ouvrant très rarement le débat public de façon plus contradictoire sur ces conceptions, sur les visions et les représentations qui y sont associées.Un récent numéro de la Revue française des sciences de l’information et de la communication (Chartron & Schöpfel 2017) a rassemblé différentes contributions utiles pour ces débats. L’article d’Anne Clio et Sartita Albagi (2017) a tracé des repères généalogiques sur ce mouvement, relatant les pratiques pionnières de Jean-Claude Bradley, chimiste de l’Université de Drexel, initiant des “carnets de laboratoire publics” dans les années 1990. Bradley peut être considéré comme un initiateur d’une certaine science ouverte, il avait la conviction qu’il fallait, autant que possible, mettre toutes les recherches à la disposition du public,..…
▻https://www.cairn.info/article.php?ID_ARTICLE=ES_041_0177
#édition_scientifique #UE #EU #Union_européenne #open_source
#Globalisation is dead and we need to invent a new world order - Open Future
▻https://www.economist.com/open-future/2019/06/28/globalisation-is-dead-and-we-need-to-invent-a-new-world-order
The Economist : Describe what comes after globalisation—what does the world you foresee look like?
Mr O’Sullivan : Globalisation is already behind us. We should say goodbye to it and set our minds on the emerging multipolar world. This will be dominated by at least three large regions: America, the European Union and a China-centric Asia. They will increasingly take very different approaches to economic policy, liberty, warfare, technology and society. Mid-sized countries like Russia, Britain, Australia and Japan will struggle to find their place in the world, while new coalitions will emerge, such as a “Hanseatic League 2.0” of small, advanced states like those of Scandinavia and the Baltics. Institutions of the 20th century—the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation—will appear increasingly defunct.
The Economist : What killed globalisation?
Michael O’Sullivan : At least two things have put paid to globalisation. First, global economic growth has slowed, and as a result, the growth has become more “financialised”: debt has increased and there has been more “monetary activism”—that is, central banks pumping money into the economy by buying assets, such as bonds and in some cases even equities—to sustain the international expansion. Second, the side effects, or rather the perceived side-effects, of globalisation are more apparent: wealth inequality, the dominance of multinationals and the dispersion of global supply chains, which have all become hot political issues.
]]>Architectural Review : The Irish issue
▻https://www.architectural-review.com/my-account/magazine-archive/the-irish-issue-is-here/10042957.article
Un numéro intéressant consacré à l’Irlande
Avec cette carte de Belfast en page 106
‘If there is a canon in Irish architecture, it seems to be one of ambiguity, of refined cross-pollinations, of great thought in small things’, writes Andrew Clancy. He offers an Irishness in relation, between home and away, one that traverses and returns, to stand at the edge of Europe and before the open ocean. By sending this issue to press at the end of May, the idea was to have caught the islands just two months after the UK’s formal departure from the European Union, with whatever strained solution might have been wrought into the land around the border. We remain, however, afloat in the unknown; and as the interminable process grinds on – as Maria McLintock writes – our language around it remains insufficient, the messy and pulsating borderlands collapsed into ‘backstop’.
Ignoring the rigid, often arbitrary, frontiers dividing countries, choosing to encompass instead the entirety of ‘the islands of Ireland’ is itself a provocation. But in this issue, we ramble the land from end to end and over the sea to Inis Mór, the ambiguity of our appelation proving productive, to rove around rich seams and difficult terrain to cast an eye over a land in the middle of something.
In the keynote, Shane O’Toole traces the developments of a critical culture of architecture across Ireland, starting in November 1974 when the AR paid a visit to Dublin, and following on through to the threats posed to the culture today. ‘How long can architects survive on house extensions and other small private commissions before their potential atrophies?’, he asks. In reflection, Eleanor Beaumont considers the ambitious architecture packed into Dublin’s domestic projects, such as those by Clancy Moore, TAKA, Ryan W Kennihan Architects, and Arigho Larmour Wheeler Architects, and Noreile Breen features as this issue’s AREA profile. Going back to Group 91, and the introduction of Irish architecture to an international scene, we also feature a retrospective on Grafton Architects, and their offers of silence in the cacophony of the city.
We go to Galway, on the Republic’s western coast, to review the recently-completed Pálás cinema by dePaor, a small and fantastical gem fourteen years in the making. Further out in the remote western reaches of Rosmuc and the Aran isle of Inis Mór, we also feature two new school buildings by Paul Dillon, the simplicity and clarity of which does not undermine their value. Looking back to a school rooted in 1970s ideals, we revisit Birr Community School by Peter and Mary Doyle, a school found to be ‘no museum piece’, as John McLaughlin and Aiobheann Ní Mhearáin write: ‘the values it embodies are as pertinent today as they were when it was first built.’
In Belfast, Mark Hackett asserts that the roads that profess to connect the city can be as divisive as its walls, and Gary A Boyd reviews the transport hub designed by Hackett’s former partners, Hall McKnight, as part of a masterplan hoped to catalyse regeneration of the city’s dislocated fringe. In Outrage, Dawn Foster writes that inequalities in access to social housing continue to perpetuate the divide between Catholics and Protestants. In Cantrell Close in Belfast for example, the banners hung around the purportedly mixed community constitute a warning: symbols become violent, even lethal. As Darran Anderson writes, the land is one of iconographers – but also one of iconoclasts, the violence of the conflict mirrored by symbolic acts of destruction carried out on architecture as a receptacle of collective memory.
In this issue we also feature The raingod’s green, dark as passion, a lyrical story of Cork by Kevin Barry, while Reputations looks at the life of States-based architect, Pritzker laureate and County Cork native, Kevin Roche.
]]>Enclave with no way out of the Irish hard border dilemma | News | The Times
▻https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/drummully-polyp-enclave-with-no-way-out-of-the-irish-hard-border-dilemma
If leaving the EU has become something of a preoccupation for most of us, in Drummully Polyp it will soon be as unavoidable as popping to the shops.
A quirk of history has landed this pocket of Co Monaghan, in the Irish Republic, on the front line of Brexit.
]]>Opinion | The Law© ? - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/25/opinion/copyright-law.html
Très drôle. J’avais écrit un papier sur un cas similaire en France, quand la loi se retrouvait appartenir à Reuters, quand le concessionnaire exclusif de la diffusion sur internet s’était fait racheter par Reuters. Heureusement, la concession s’est éteinte et n’a par chance pas été renouvelée.
In the last century, a number of lower courts issued lofty proclamations on how the law belongs to the people and the people alone. Meanwhile, copyright laws passed in 1909 and 1976 explicitly excluded any “work of the United States government.” But that exclusion applies only to the federal government.
So when the nonprofit organization Public.Resource.Org purchased, scanned and uploaded all 186 volumes of the annotated Georgia state code to its website, the state sued to take it down. The code was already available free online through the state’s partnership with LexisNexis. As part of the deal, Georgia gave LexisNexis exclusive rights to official “annotations” that elaborate on the law but aren’t legally binding. LexisNexis allowed users to read the law free and it sold the annotated code for $404 per copy.
Public.Resource.Org is no stranger to litigation. For years, it has been embroiled in lawsuits over its publication of fire and electrical safety standards, air duct leakage standards, nonprofit tax returns and European Union baby pacifier regulations. The founder of Public.Resource.Org was once labeled a “rogue archivist.” But if publishing building safety standards online is an act of roguery, it is time for the courts to take a hard look at what copyright is for.
Much of the litigation against Public.Resource.Org falls into an ever-expanding gray zone of the law, created by government outsourcing bits and pieces of its regulatory function to the private sector. Regulations for everything from student loan eligibility to food additives can use standards written by trade groups.
]]>EASO | La situation de l’asile dans l’UE en 2018
▻https://asile.ch/2019/06/25/easo-la-situation-de-lasile-dans-lue-en-2018
Le rapport annuel de l’EASO sur la situation en matière d’asile dans l’Union européenne en 2018 offre une vue d’ensemble complète des évolutions dans le domaine de la protection internationale à l’échelle européenne et au niveau des régimes d’asile nationaux. À partir d’un large éventail de sources, le rapport examine les principales tendances statistiques et […]
]]>"#Sous-traitance" de la #politique_migratoire en Afrique : l’Europe a-t-elle les mains propres ?
Depuis 2015, l’Union européenne a renforcé sa coopération avec l’Afrique pour lutter contre les migrations « irrégulières » et bloquer les migrants avant qu’ils ne traversent la Méditerranée. Mais l’Europe a-t-elle les mains propres dans cette « sous-traitance » de sa politique migratoire ?
▻https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/dimanche-et-apres/dimanche-et-apres-emission-du-dimanche-23-juin-2019
#externalisation #asile #migrations #réfugiés #Afrique #Europe #EU #UE #frontières #contrôles_frontaliers
Ajouté à la métaliste
►https://seenthis.net/messages/731749
The European benchmark for refugee integration: A comparative analysis of the National Integration Evaluation Mechanism in 14 EU countries
The report presents a comparative, indicator-based assessment of the refugee integration frameworks in place in 14 countries: Czechia, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden.
Conclusions cover the full range of integration dimensions, such as housing, employment, education and aspects of legal integration, and refer to recognized refugees and beneficiaries of subsidiary protection.
Legal and policy indicators are the focus of analysis, as well as indicators on mainstreaming, coordination and efforts to involve refugees and locals.
Results are presented in terms of concrete steps that policymakers need to take in order to establish a refugee integration framework in line with the standards required by international and EU law.
#rapport #intégration #France #Grèce #République_Tchèque #Hongrie #Italie #Lettonie #Lituanie #Pays-Bas #Pologne #Portugal #Roumanie #Slovénie #Espagne #Suède #réfugiés #migrations #asile #regroupement_familial #citoyenneté #logement #hébergement #emploi #travail #intégration_professionnelle #éducation #santé #sécurité_sociale
ping @karine4
Brexit Is for Boys – Foreign Policy
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/06/19/brexit-is-for-boys-boris-johnson-jeremy-hunt-michael-gove-tories
Since 2016, the campaign to leave the European Union has been led primarily by men. The remaining candidates for prime minister are all male—and they’re not talking about the grave consequences of Brexit for women.
[…]
Without European courts and standards, it is not hard to imagine the next government of Brexiteers, in their zeal to cut red tape, trimming protections for women through deregulation. Already a minister in the department in charge of Brexit, Martin Callanan, has suggested that the U.K. “scrap” such protections, including the pregnant workers’ directive, because they are “barriers to actually employing people.”
There are also logistical problems. One collateral loss of Brexit could be the European Protection Order, which ensures that restraining orders apply across EU member states—allowing, for instance, a British woman who moves to Germany to be protected from an abusive partner there. Another is EU funding to British women’s civil society groups, including those that work to combat domestic violence. What is more, a projected 28,000 caregivers who hail from EU member states will no longer be able to work in the U.K., which means some British women will likely have to leave their jobs to look after aging relatives, according to the Department of Health. Most of all, the EU withdrawal process is a time-and resource-sucking distraction, which has stalled policymaking on issues concerning women as it has in nearly every other legislative area.
]]>Sudan: Behind the Massacre in Khartoum : The Backstory, the Perpetrators, the Movement
▻https://fr.crimethinc.com/2019/06/14/sudan-behind-the-massacre-in-khartoum-the-perpetrators-and-the-backst
The following text, translated and adapted from the Sudanese-French project Sudfa, explores the origins of the janjawids, the paramilitary force behind the massacre of June 3. In the process, it offers a chilling glimpse of how the border regimes we experience in the United States and European Union function on the other side of the global apparatus of repression, in the zones designated for resource extraction and the containment of the so-called surplus population. Source: CrimethInc.
]]>L’externalisation des politiques européennes en matière de migration
L’externalisation des politiques européennes en matière de migration : échanges de vue entre la société civile, les décideurs politiques et le monde académique
Cette publication, produite par le CIRÉ dans le cadre du projet “Challenging deprivation of liberty and externalisation as tools for migration management and advocating for dignified reception in the EU”, vise à dénoncer les politiques migratoires européennes d’externalisation du contrôle des frontières.
Quelles sont les mesures d’externalisation mises en œuvre par l’Union européenne afin de retenir les migrants le plus loin possible de ses frontières ? Avec quels pays tiers l’Union européenne négocie-t-elle, et quel est le contrôle démocratique et parlementaire sur ces accords ? Quelle est la réalité des hotspots et quelles sont les atteintes au droit d’asile et d’accueil ?
Sur base de cette publication, nous interrogeons la compatibilité de ces mesures d’externalisation du contrôle des frontières et du droit d’asile avec le respect des droits des personnes migrantes et réfugiées et questionnons fondamentalement leur légitimité. Nous en appelons au respect des principes fondamentaux et à l’interdiction des traitements inhumains et dégradants.
Nous demandons à l’Union européenne et à ses pays membres d’œuvrer pour garantir la protection des droits des personnes migrantes et réfugiées et pour réaffirmer la primauté du droit d’asile et d’accueil sur la détention des migrants.
▻https://www.cire.be/lexternalisation-des-politiques-europeennes-en-matiere-de-migration
#UE #EU #Europe #externalisation #frontières #asile #migrations #hotspots #droits_fondamentaux #droits_humains #rapport
Ajouté à la métaliste :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/731749
Oman attack: Iran is the immediate, but unlikely, suspect - Iran - Haaretz.com
Oman attack: Iran is the immediate, but unlikely, suspect
U.S. officials rushed to point to Tehran, but somehow the world’s leading intelligence services failed to discover who is actually behind the strike. And even if they knew, what could be done without risking all-out war?
Zvi Bar’el | Jun. 14, 2019 | 8:36 AM | 3
▻https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/iran/.premium-oman-attack-iran-is-the-immediate-but-unlikely-suspect-1.7368134
Who, then, struck the tankers? Whom does this strike serve and what can be done against such attacks?
In all previous attacks in the Gulf in recent weeks Iran was naturally taken to be the immediate suspect. After all, Iran had threatened that if it could now sell its oil in the Gulf, other countries would not be able to ship oil through it; Tehran threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, and in any case it’s in the sights of the United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel. But this explanation is too easy.
The Iranian regime is in the thrones of a major diplomatic struggle to persuade Europe and its allies, Russia and China, not to take the path of pulling out of the 2015 nuclear agreement. At the same time, Iran is sure that the United States is only looking for an excuse to attack it. Any violent initiative on Tehran’s part could only make things worse and bring it close to a military conflict, which it must avoid.
Iran has announced it would scale back its commitments under the nuclear deal by expanding its low-level uranium enrichment and not transferring the remainder of its enriched uranium and heavy water to another country, as the agreement requires. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s reports reveal that it has indeed stepped up enrichment, but not in a way that could support a military nuclear program.
It seems that alongside its diplomatic efforts, Iran prefers to threaten to harm the nuclear deal itself, responding to Washington with the same token, rather than escalate the situation to a military clash.
Other possible suspects are the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, who continue to pound Saudi targets with medium-range missiles, as was the case last week with strikes on the Abha and Jizan airports, near the Yemeni border, which wounded 26 people. The Houthis have also fired missiles at Riyadh and hit targets in the Gulf. In response, Saudi Arabia launched a massive missile strike on Houthi-controlled areas in northern Yemen.
The strike on the oil tankers may have been a response to the response, but if this is the case, it goes against Iran’s policy, which seeks to neutralize any pretexts for a military clash in the Gulf. The question, therefore, is whether Iran has full control over all the actions the Houthis take, and whether the aid it gives them commits them fully to its policies, or whether they see assaults on Saudi targets as a separate, local battle, cut off from Iran’s considerations.
The Houthis have claimed responsibility for some of their actions in Saudi territory in the past, and at times even took the trouble of explaining the reasons behind this assault or the other. But not this time.
Yemen also hosts large Al-Qaida cells and Islamic State outposts, with both groups having a running account with Saudi Arabia and apparently the capabilities to carry out strikes on vessels moving through the Gulf.
In the absence of confirmed and reliable information on the source of the fire, we may meanwhile discount the possibility of a Saudi or American provocation at which Iran has hinted, but such things have happened before. However, we may also wonder why some of the most sophisticated intelligence services in the world are having so much trouble discovering who actually carried out these attacks.
Thwarting such attacks with no precise intelligence is an almost impossible task, but even if the identity of those responsible for it is known, the question of how to respond to the threat would still arise.
If it turns out that Iran initiated or even carried out these attacks, American and Saudi military forces could attack its Revolutionary Guards’ marine bases along the Gulf coast, block Iranian shipping in the Gulf and persuade European countries to withdraw from the nuclear deal, claiming that continuing relations with Iran would mean supporting terrorism in general, and maritime terrorism in particular.
The concern is that such a military response would lead Iran to escalate its own and openly strike American and Saudi targets in the name of self-defense and protecting its sovereignty. In that case, a large-scale war would be inevitable. But there’s no certainty that U.S. President Donald Trump, who wants to extricate his forces from military involvement in the Middle East, truly seeks such a conflict, which could suck more and more American forces into this sensitive arena.
An escape route from this scenario would require intensive mediation efforts between Iran and the United States, but therein lies one major difficulty – finding an authoritative mediator that could pressure both parties. Russia or China are not suitable candidates, and ties between Washington and the European Union are acrimonious.
It seems that all sides would be satisfied if they could place responsibility for the attacks on the Houthis or other terror groups. That is not to say that the United States or Saudi Arabia have any magic solutions when it comes to the Houthis; far from it. The war in Yemen has been going on for five years now with no military resolution, and increased bombardment of concentrations of Houthi forces could only expand their efforts to show their strength. But the United States would pay none of the diplomatic or military price for assaults on the Houthis it would for a forceful violent response against Iran itself.
If sporadic, small-scale attacks raise such complex dilemmas, one can perhaps dream of an all-out war with Iran, but it is enough to look at the chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan to grow extremely cautious of the trajectory in which such dreams become a nightmare that lasts for decades.❞
#Oman #Iran
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/786937
Info sur la refonte de la #Directive_Retour et les futurs projets de réforme du #régime_d'asile_européen_commun
info sur la prochaine étape européenne en matière de politique migratoire. Plus précisément sur la refonte de la Directive Retour qui va passer au vote en #LIBE et aussi des infos sur l’évolution du Régime d’Asile Européen Commun (#RAEC), histoire d’informer de ce vers quoi l’on tend probablement pour la prochaine législature (donc le prochain mandat).
Dans un effort pour réformer le Régime d’Asile Européen Commun (RAEC) et tendre vers une #uniformisation du droit d’asile au niveau européen, les directives sont revues une à une depuis quelques années (Directive Accueil, Procédure, Qualification et Retour + le règlement Dublin qui est au point mort depuis 2017 à cause du Conseil Européen).
Ces #révisions rentrent dans le cadre de l’#agenda_européen_pour_les_migrations qui a été élaboré en 2015 par la Commission sous ordre du Conseil Européen.
Le package est en état d’avancement prochain et l’étape la plus proche semble concerner la refonte de la Directive Retour.
Néanmoins, il y a également un nombre assez important de dispositifs prévus dont il est peut-être pas inintéressant d’évoquer dans le sillage de l’analyse sur cette Directive.
Il y a donc deux parties dans ce mail d’info : la première sur le Régime d’Asile Européen Commun (RAEC) et ce qu’il préfigure ; la seconde sur le texte de la Directive Retour plus précisément.
Le Régime d’Asile Européen Commun :
Il y a de nombreux discours actuellement autour de la mise en place d’un droit d’asile "harmonisé" au niveau européen.
C’est une obsession de Macron depuis son élection. Il a réaffirmé, lors de la restitution du Grand Débat, sa volonté d’une Europe au régime d’asile commun : "c’est aussi une Europe qui tient ses frontières, qui les protège. C’est une Europe qui a un droit d’asile refondé et commun et où la #responsabilité va avec la #solidarité."
▻https://www.elysee.fr/emmanuel-macron/2019/04/25/conference-de-presse-grand-debat-national
La confusion est telle que les journalistes ne semblent pas toujours comprendre si ce régime d’asile commun existe ou non.
Sur france inter par exemple :
"Cela fait plusieurs années que l’on parle de la mise en place d’un régime d’asile européen commun. Nous en sommes encore très loin mais plusieurs textes sont actuellement en discussion, sur les procédures, sur l’accueil, les qualifications, les réinstallations, la création d’une agence européenne pour l’asile "
▻https://www.franceinter.fr/emissions/cafe-europe/cafe-europe-24-fevrier-2018
Et non... ça ne fait pas plusieurs années qu’on en parle... ça fait plusieurs années qu’il existe !
Historique :
En vérité, cette tentative d’harmonisation des législations est ancienne et date à peu près du Conseil Européen de #Tampere en 1999 qui donna les premières impulsions pour la mise en place du Régime d’Asile Européen Commun avec tout ce que l’on connait maintenant à savoir par exemple, le #règlement_Dublin.
Ici le résumé des orientations du Conseil sont claires :
"il faut, pour les domaines distincts, mais étroitement liés, de l’#asile et des #migrations, élaborer une politique européenne commune (...) Il est convenu de travailler à la mise en place d’un régime d’asile européen commun, fondé sur l’application intégrale et globale de la Convention de Genève. (...) Ce régime devrait comporter, à court terme, une méthode claire et opérationnelle pour déterminer l’Etat responsable de l’examen d’une demande d’asile, des normes communes pour une procédure d’asile équitable et efficace, des conditions communes minimales d’#accueil des demandeurs d’asile, et le rapprochement des règles sur la reconnaissance et le contenu du statut de réfugié."
▻http://www.europarl.europa.eu/summits/tam_fr.htm#a
Vous avez ici les bases du RAEC et notamment du règlement Dublin qui vise justement à la détermination de l’#Etat_responsable de l’asile afin de lutter contre le "#shopping_de_l'asile", un """"fléau""""" qui avait déjà touché l’Europe durant les années 90 avec la crise des Balkans (en 1992, 700 000 personnes environ ont demandé l’asile en Europe, ce qui signifie par ailleurs que non... 2015 n’est pas une situation si inédite. La situation s’est stabilisée après 1993 où 500 000 personnes ont demandé l’asile, puis 300 000 dans les années qui ont suivi, mais pas au point de ne pas "forcer" les pays à réagir au niveau européen).
▻https://www.persee.fr/doc/homig_1142-852x_1996_num_1198_1_2686
Cet acte fondateur du #Conseil_de_Tampere est corroboré par plusieurs documents et on peut en trouver aussi confirmation par exemple dans le rapport sur la #politique_européenne_de_Retour (rédigé tous les trois ans) qui commence par :
"L’Union européenne s’efforce depuis 1999 de mettre au point une approche globale sur la question des migrations, qui couvre l’#harmonisation des conditions d’admission, les droits des ressortissants de pays tiers en séjour régulier ainsi que l’élaboration de mesures juridiques et le renforcement d’une coopération pratique en matière de prévention des flux migratoires irréguliers."
▻https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/FR/TXT/?uri=celex:52014DC0199
Bref, à partir de 1999 et donc du Conseil de Tampere, la direction est prise de mener une politique migratoire à l’échelle européenne pour renforcer le contrôle des frontières extérieures.
Les Textes du RAEC, l’échec de l’harmonisation et les règlements qui nous attendent en conséquence :
Le Conseil (donc les États) ordonné à Tampere et donc la Commission exécute en proposant plusieurs textes qui vont dessiner le paysage actuel du droit d’asile européen commun.
Un ensemble de textes est donc créé et adopté :
Le règlement Dublin succède donc à la convention de Dublin en 2003
▻https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A8glement_Dublin_II
Avec son frère le règlement #Eurodac qui permet la mise en oeuvre de #Dublin aussi en 2003 (logique) :
▻https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurodac
#Frontex est lancé en 2004 :
▻https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agence_europ%C3%A9enne_pour_la_gestion_de_la_coop%C3%A9ration_op%C3%A9
Et les directives qui constituent le coeur du Régime d’Asile Européen Commun avec le règlement Dublin sont lancées dans la foulée :
La #Directive_Accueil en 2003 (puis réformée en 2013)
▻https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/FR/TXT/?uri=celex%3A32013L0033
La #Directive_Procédure en 2005 (réformée aussi en 2013)
▻https://www.easo.europa.eu/sites/default/files/public/Procedures-FR.pdf
La #Directive_Qualification en 2004 (réformée en 2011)
▻https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/FR/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32011L0095
La Directive Retour en 2008 (qui va être réformée maintenant)
▻https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/FR/TXT/?uri=LEGISSUM%3Ajl0014
L’ensemble de ces textes avait pour but d’harmoniser les législations nationales européennes (pour le meilleur et pour le pire d’ailleurs).
Le problème concerne donc, non pas l’absence de législations européennes communes, mais plutôt les marges de manoeuvres des Etats dans l’interprétation des Directives et leur transposition dans les législations nationales. Cette marge de manoeuvre est telle qu’elle permet aux Etats de retenir ce qui les arrange dans tel ou tel texte, de sorte que toute tentative d’harmonisation est impossible.
Dès lors, la diversité des procédures est toujours la norme d’un pays à l’autre ; un pays comme les Pays-Bas donne 4 ans de protection subsidiaire, tandis que la France avant la loi Asile n’en donnait qu’une ; la liste des pays sûrs n’est pas la même selon les Etats .... etc etc etc
Les Etats ont tellement la main que finalement, on peut assez facilement conclure à l’#échec total des tentatives d’harmonisation et donc du RAEC, tant les Etats ont, du début à la fin, fait un peu près ce qu’ils voulaient avec les textes.
(voir également Sarah Lamort : ▻https://www.amazon.fr/Europe-terre-dasile-Sarah-Lamort/dp/2130734669)
La Commission a elle-même très bien compris ces faiblesses.
Exaspérée elle déclare en 2016 que malgré ses efforts pour la mise en place effective du RAEC : " il existe encore des différences notables entre les États membres dans les types de procédures utilisés, les conditions d’accueil offertes aux demandeurs, les #taux_de_reconnaissance et le type de protection octroyé aux bénéficiaires d’une protection internationale. Ces #divergences contribuent à des #mouvements_secondaires et à une course à l’asile (« #asylum_shopping »), créent des facteurs d’attraction et conduisent en définitive à une répartition inégale entre les États membres de la responsabilité d’offrir une protection à ceux qui en ont besoin.(...) Ces #disparités résultent en partie des dispositions souvent discrétionnaires qui figurent dans la version actuelle de la directive relative aux procédures d’asile et de celle relative aux conditions d’accueil." et de toutes les autres en vérité pouvons-nous ajouter...
L’objectif est donc de "renforcer et harmoniser davantage les règles du régime d’asile européen commun, de façon à assurer une plus grande égalité de traitement dans l’ensemble de l’Union et à réduire les facteurs d’attraction injustifiés qui encouragent les départs vers l’UE" (les facteurs d’attraction étant le "shopping de l’asile")
Et pour cela la Commission propose de transformer quasiment toutes les Directives citées plus haut en Règlement... :
" la Commission proposera un nouveau règlement instituant une procédure d’asile commune unique dans l’Union et remplaçant la directive relative aux procédures d’asile ; un nouveau règlement relatif aux conditions que doivent remplir les demandeurs d’asile remplaçant l’actuelle directive du même nom, et des modifications ciblées de la directive relative aux conditions d’accueil."
▻https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regdoc/rep/1/2016/FR/1-2016-197-FR-F1-1.PDF
La différence entre la Directive et le Règlement étant que justement la Directive est soumise à une interprétation des Etats dans la transposition au sein des législations nationales de la dite Directive (dont on voit qu’elle est large), tandis qu’un Règlement est contraignant et s’applique sans interprétation, ni marge de manoeuvre whatsoever à tous les Etats (comme le règlement Dublin).
Ici par exemple, la Commission propose de changer la Directive Procédure en un Règlement, histoire par exemple, que tous les pays aient la même liste de pays d’origine sûrs une bonne fois pour toute : ▻https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/FR/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52016PC0467
Ce processus d’abrogation des #directives pour en faire des #règlements est en cours et il est très important puisque cela signifie qu’il va falloir surveiller de très près les dispositions qui vont apparaitre dans ces nouveaux textes qui vont TOUS s’appliquer stricto sensu.
Ce n’est pas forcément une bonne nouvelle.
Reste que les Etats pourraient s’opposer à l’imposition de textes aussi coercitifs et d’ailleurs, ils ont eux-mêmes bloqué la révision du règlement Dublin. Cela pose la question de l’Etat d’avancement.
Etat d’avancement :
Depuis l’annonce de la transformation des Directives en Règlements en 2016, les dossiers ne semblent pas avoir tant avancés que cela pour autant que je sache sauf concernant quelques dossiers majeurs, notamment la Directive Retour.
Concernant la mise en place des règlements, la Commission est très vague dans sa dernière communication sur l’état d’avancement de l’agenda européen matière de migrations de mars 2019 : ▻https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2019:0126:FIN:FR:PDF
En décembre 2017, elle disait :
"Présentées il y a un an et demi, ces propositions en sont à des stades d’avancement différents dans le processus législatif. Certaines, comme la proposition concernant l’Agence de l’Union européenne pour l’asile et la réforme d’Eurodac, sont sur le point d’être adoptées. D’autres, à savoir le cadre de l’Union pour la réinstallation, le règlement relatif aux conditions que doivent remplir les demandeurs d’asile et la directive relative aux conditions d’accueil, progressent. En revanche, la proposition de règlement sur les procédures d’asile et, comme pierre angulaire, la proposition de révision du règlement de Dublin, nécessitent encore un travail considérable. Dans ce contexte, il convient aussi de progresser dans les travaux sur la notion de pays tiers sûr au sens de l’UE, en tenant compte des conclusions du Conseil européen de juin"
▻https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regdoc/rep/1/2017/FR/COM-2017-820-F1-FR-MAIN-PART-1.PDF
Il y a donc fort à parier qu’en à peine 1 an et demi, les choses n’aient pas beaucoup avancées concernant les règlements.
Bref, comme il était assez attendu, ce qui ne contraint pas totalement les Etats avancent et le reste piétine pour le moment.
Par contre, elles avancent concernant la politique des retours et donc la Directive Retour !
Politique des retours et externalisation de l’asile :
Après le Conseil de Tampere en 1999, vient la "crise des migrants" en 2015, qui ne fera qu’accélérer les constatations de l’échec du RAEC.
Le Conseil européen lance donc une réunion spéciale en avril 2015 qui annonce un changement de stratégie vers l’extérieur avec notamment un renforcement de la coopération avec les pays tiers pour le "contrôle de l’immigration". Ordre est donné à la Commission de mobiliser tous les moyens nécessaires pour mettre cette nouvelle stratégie en oeuvre.
Ce n’est pas le lancement officiel de l’externalisation de l’Asile puisque le processus de Khartoum et de Rabat sont antérieurs et déjà lancés.
Néanmoins, il me parait assez évident personnellement qu’un coup d’accélérateur à la stratégie d’externalisation sera donné à partir de ce Conseil qui sera entièrement tourné vers la coopération internationale :
▻https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2015/04/23/special-euco-statement
Dans le prolongement logique des décisions prises lors du Conseil d’avril 2015 et de l’orientation stratégique vers l’extérieur, le Conseil Européen lancera le Sommet de la Valette en novembre où il invitera un nombre conséquent de pays africains.
Ainsi le Sommet de la Valette, "fut l’occasion de reconnaître que la gestion des migrations relève de la responsabilité commune des pays d’origine, de transit et de destination. L’UE et l’Afrique ont travaillé dans un esprit de partenariat afin de trouver des solutions communes aux défis d’intérêt commun."
▻https://www.consilium.europa.eu/fr/meetings/international-summit/2015/11/11-12
C’est après ce Sommet que seront initiés le Fond Fiduciaire, les accords avec la Turquie, la Libye, les garde-côtes, la transformation de Frontex etc
Bien que tout cela ait été préparé en amont.
Après les ordres du Conseil, la Commission s’exécute avec l’Agenda Européen en Matière de Migrations et la focale sur les retours :
Devant la stratégie d’orientation du Conseil qui demande des réformes fortes et des actions pour transformer la politique européenne d’asile, la Commission s’exécute en mai 2015 avec l’Agenda Européen des migrations :▻https://ec.europa.eu/france/node/859_fr
Cet agenda met l’emphase sur un nombre impressionnant de points, mais une large part est également réservée aux retours page 11 et 12 (puisqu’il faudrait s’assurer que les retours soient efficaces et effectifs d’après la Commission).
▻https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/sites/homeaffairs/files/what-we-do/policies/european-agenda-migration/background-information/docs/communication_on_the_european_agenda_on_migration_fr.pdf
Dans la foulée la Commission lance donc une réflexion sur la politique des retours qui culminera la même année en 2015 avec The Action Plan of Return.
L’action plan partira d’un principe assez simple, si les migrants viennent, c’est parce qu’on ne les renvoie pas...
"The European Agenda on Migration, adopted by the European Commission on 13 May 2015, highlighted that one of the incentives for irregular migration is the knowledge that the EU’s system to return irregular migrants is not sufficiently effective"
▻https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52015DC0453
Ce plan est censé résoudre ce problème.
Mais il sera aussi un relatif échec, ce qui n’empêchera pas la Commission d’insister en lançant un nouveau plan en 2017, The Renewed Action Plan on return :
"Despite this, the overall impact on the return track record across the European Union remained limited, showing that more resolute action is needed to bring measurable results in returning irregular migrants. "
▻https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/sites/homeaffairs/files/what-we-do/policies/european-agenda-migration/20170302_a_more_effective_return_policy_in_the_european_union_-_a_renewed_
Toujours dans la foulée d’une politique d’expulsion efficace, il sera discuté plus tard (en mars 2019 sur l’évaluation de l’application de l’agenda européen) de la meilleure façon d’exécuter les retours en Europe. C’est là où nous en sommes.
Pour la mise en place d’une politique de retour efficace, il y a donc deux stratégies :
1) renforcer les accords de réadmission avec des accords bilatéraux ou par le biais des accords de Cotonou (qui vont être révisés et qui ont beaucoup tourné autour des migrations justement...on en reparlera un jour).
"Concernant donc "les retours et la réadmission, l’UE continue d’œuvrer à la conclusion d’accords et d’arrangements en matière de réadmission avec les pays partenaires, 23 accords et arrangements ayant été conclus jusqu’à présent. Les États membres doivent maintenant tirer pleinement parti des accords existants."
►http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-19-1496_fr.htm
2) renforcer les procédures de retour depuis l’Europe.
La Commission espère en conséquence que "le Parlement européen et le Conseil devraient adopter rapidement la proposition de la Commission en matière de retour, qui vise à limiter les abus et la fuite des personnes faisant l’objet d’un retour au sein de l’Union"
►http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-19-1496_fr.htm
C’est pourquoi la Commission propose de revoir la Directive Retour.
La Directive Retour :
La directive retour est donc la prochaine directive sur la liste des refontes.
Ce sera un gros sujet a priori puisque la prochaine étape c’est le vote en Commission LIBE avant donc le vote en plénière.
L’échéance est donc proche et les discussions bien avancées.
Un texte problématique :
Article 6 et 16
En gros, les problèmes qui se posent avec ce texte ont surtout à voir avec l’article 6 qui décrit une liste de 16 critères de "risque de fuites", les derniers étant particulièrement dangereux puisqu’il semblerait que "résister aux procédures de retour" ou "refuser de donner ses empreintes" peuvent représenter des risques de fuites....
Cet élargissement des critères est à mettre en lien avec l’article 18 qui permet la détention de toutes les personnes qui représentent un risque de fuite. Avec un élargissement pareil des critères de "fuites", je crains que l’on ne se donne le droit d’enfermer tout le monde.
Article 7
L’article 7 oblige les Etats tiers à coopérer dans les procédures de retour.
L’application de cet article me semblait complexe mais le Brief du Parlement sur la Directive au paragraphe "Council" (donc sur les discussions au Conseil) ajoute que les Etats réfléchissent à la possibilité de sanctions pour les pays tiers en cas de non-respect de cette obligation de coopération.
Et à ce moment-là j’ai compris.... Ma théorie c’est qu’un chantage quelconque pourra être mis en place pour établir une pression forçant les Etats tiers à coopérer.
Tout le problème tient sur l’amplitude des sanctions possibles. Je n’en vois pas beaucoup, sauf à menacer de rompre des accords commerciaux ou de développement.
C’est déjà plus ou moins le cas via le Fond Fiduciaire ou les fonds d’aide au dvp puisque l’on voit parfois que l’aide au dvp dépend de la mise en place d’accords de réadmission.
Par exemple : l’UE et l’Afghanistan ont signé un accord de réadmission en Octobre 2016 : ▻https://eeas.europa.eu/sites/eeas/files/eu_afghanistan_joint_way_forward_on_migration_issues.pdf
Et dans la foulée d’octobre, 5 milliards d’aide au dvp étaient débloqués pour la période 2016-2020 à la conférence de Bruxelles (▻https://eeas.europa.eu/sites/eeas/files/eu-afghanistan_march_2019.pdf).
Avec une opération pareille, des soupçons de chantage à l’aide au dvp me paraissent tout à fait légitime.
Cependant, ils existaient une séparation dans la forme. C’est-à-dire que même si les liens peuvent sembler évidents, les accords de réadmission n’établissaient pas directement de chantage entre l’un et l’autre. Il n’était pas écrit que des "sanctions" étaient possibles (du moins pas dans l’exemple de l’Afghanistan ni même dans l’accord de Cotonou - exception faite de ce qui concerne l’article 96 et le respect des droits—et dans aucun autre texte à ma connaissance).
Ici le Conseil veut faire un pas de plus dans la direction d’une politique assumée de pressions via des sanctions et donc, indirectement semble-t-il, de chantage.
Les Pays Tiers-Sûrs
Un autre élément dangereux dans ce paragraphe sur le Conseil dans le Brief du Parlement : c’est que les Etats de leur côté réfléchissent aussi à la possibilité de renvoyer une personne dans un pays tiers considéré comme sûr qui ne soit pas le pays d’origine.
En d’autres termes, renvoyer les soudanais par exemple, en Egypte par exemple légalement.
Cela rejoint a priori les discussions sur la notion de pays tiers sûrs que la Commission et le Conseil continuent de vouloir développer depuis très longtemps malgré les oppositions franches des ONG (▻http://www.forumrefugies.org/s-informer/actualites/le-concept-de-pays-tiers-sur-une-remise-en-cause-profonde-de-l-acces-) ou même l’avis défavorable de la Commission Nationale Consultative des Droits de l’Homme en 2017 (▻https://www.cncdh.fr/sites/default/files/171219_avis_concept_pays_tiers_sur_5.pdf)
On ferait ici un pas de plus au sein du creuset initié par la politique des "pays d’origine sûrs" et on s’offrirait le droit de renvoyer des personnes dans des pays qui n’auraient pas les conditions pour les accueillir dignement (tant matériellement que du point de vue du respect des droits...).
Article 22
L’article 22 est aussi très problématique puisque les dispositions aux frontières devraient changer :
Les migrants en zone d’attente devraient recevoir une décision de retour simplifiée plutôt qu’une explication motivée.
Il ne devrait plus y avoir aucune chance de départ volontaire, sauf si le migrant possède un document de voyage en cours de validité (remis aux autorités) et coopère pleinement (car s’il ne coopère pas, on l’a vu, il peut être déclaré en "tentative de fuite" ou en "fuite").
Concernant les recours, les migrants ne disposeront que de 48 heures pour faire appel d’une décision de retour fondée sur un rejet de l’asile à la frontière, et l’effet suspensif ne s’appliquera qu’à la présentation de nouvelles conclusions importantes (type CNDA) ou qu’il n’y a pas déjà eu de contrôle juridictionnel effectif.
Article 16
D’ailleurs, les recours peuvent subir un changement relativement dramatique à cause de l’article 16. Selon le brief de la Commission :
" Proposed Article 16(4) imposes a general obligation on Member States to establish ‘reasonable’ time limits. In relation to appeals lodged against return decisions adopted as a consequence of a decision rejecting an application for international protection, Member States would have to establish a time limit for lodging an appeal of a maximum of five days, but would be free to fix a shorter period."
►http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2019/637901/EPRS_BRI(2019)637901_EN.pdf
Une manière de réduire encore plus les possibilités de recours.
Article 13
L’article 13 apporte aussi des changements aux refus d’entrée : " the proposal would allow Member States to impose an isolated entry ban, not accompanied by a corresponding return decision, if the irregularity of a stay is detected when the third-country national is exiting the territory of a Member State"
►http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2019/637901/EPRS_BRI(2019)637901_EN.pdf
Néanmoins, j’ai pour le moment du mal à évaluer l’étendue de cette proposition à l’article 13 et il faudrait peut-être en discuter avec l’anafé par exemple.
Reçu par email via la mailing-list Migreurop, le 06.06.2019
]]>Le #budget de l’#UE pour #2020 : la Commission centre sa proposition sur l’emploi, la croissance et la #sécurité
Je mets ici uniquement ce qui concerne #frontières #migrations #réfugiés :
Renforcer la sécurité et la #solidarité dans l’UE et au-delà
Nombreux sont les défis européens qui ne connaissent pas de frontières. L’UE a recouru à plusieurs reprises à toute la flexibilité possible dans le budget pour faire face aux catastrophes, relever les défis de la migration et renforcer ses #frontières_extérieures. En mobilisant ses différents instruments, le budget 2020 de l’UE continuera à investir dans la solidarité et la sécurité en Europe et au-delà :
- 420,6 millions € (+34,6 % par rapport à 2019) en faveur de l’#Agence_européenne_de garde-frontières_et_de garde-côtes (#Frontex), à la suite de l’accord dégagé en mars 2019 par le Parlement européen et le Conseil en vue de la mise en place d’un #corps_permanent de 10’000 garde-frontières d’ici à 2027 ;
- 560 millions € pour les personnes dans le besoin en #Syrie ainsi que pour les #réfugiés et leurs communautés d’accueil dans la région. Il s’agit de la réponse budgétaire à un engagement pris lors de la conférence de Bruxelles III sur l’avenir de la Syrie en 2019 (le budget de l’UE pour 2019 prévoit déjà 2,01 milliards € de financements en faveur de la Syrie) ;
- la poursuite du soutien du développement du système d’entrée/sortie, du système européen d’information et d’autorisation concernant les voyages, de la version modernisée du système d’information Schengen et du Fonds européen pour le développement durable, l’objectif global étant d’améliorer l’#interopérabilité des #systèmes_d'information de l’Union afin de préserver la sécurité de ses citoyens.
▻http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-19-2809_fr.htm
#EU #Europe #coût
ping @karine4
Why the UK cannot see that Brexit is utterly, utterly stupid. (http...
▻https://diasp.eu/p/9165830
Why the UK cannot see that Brexit is utterly, utterly stupid.
How did Remain voters become effectively disenfranchised? Why is the lunacy of what this country is doing only apparent to foreigners? [...] What we have that foreigners do not is a public discourse shaped by a handful of newspaper proprietors who just happen to be intensely hostile to the EU. Partly through intimidation by that same press and their political allies, the BBC follows this discourse. This is where the “will of the people” came from. It was this press that puts rebel Conservative MPs on their front pages, and that uses language like saboteurs and traitors. It is intimidating MPs in order to influence the democratic process, but of course few in the media call it (...)
]]>#Métaliste sur les articles publiés sur seenthis et qui traitent des #coûts des #expulsions...
2019, #France :
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/785519
2019, #Suisse :
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/752500
#renvois_Dublin
#renvois #asile #migrations #réfugiés
2018, France :
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/685243
2017, #Europe (#EU #UE) :
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/627980
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/601023
2017, #Italie :
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/627099
2016, #UK #Angleterre :
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/525051
2015, Suisse :
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/387607
2015, #Espagne :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/353583
2015, France :
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/382279
2014, #Australie :
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/282782
2014, #Belgique :
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/234972
2013, France :
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/156778
#déboutés #expulsions #renvois #asile #migrations #réfugiés #business
Et il y en a peut-être que j’oublie...
Afghan Migration to Germany: History and Current Debates
In light of the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, Afghan migration to Germany accelerated in recent years. This has prompted debates and controversial calls for return.
Historical Overview
Afghan migration to Germany goes back to the first half of the 20th century. To a large extent, the arrival of Afghan nationals occurred in waves, which coincided with specific political regimes and periods of conflict in Afghanistan between 1978 and 2001. Prior to 1979 fewer than 2,000 Afghans lived in Germany. Most of them were either businesspeople or students. The trade city of Hamburg and its warehouses attracted numerous Afghan carpet dealers who subsequently settled with their families. Some families who were among the traders that came to Germany at an early stage still run businesses in the warehouse district of the city.[1]
Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the number of Afghans seeking refuge and asylum in Germany increased sharply. Between 1980 and 1982 the population grew by around 3,000 persons per year. This was followed by a short period of receding numbers, before another period of immigration set in from 1985, when adherents of communist factions began facing persecution in Afghanistan. Following a few years with lower immigration rates, numbers started rising sharply again from 1989 onwards in the wake of the civil war in Afghanistan and due to mounting restrictions for Afghans living in Iran and Pakistan. Increasing difficulties in and expulsions from these two countries forced many Afghans to search for and move on to new destinations, including Germany.[2] Throughout the 1990s immigration continued with the rise of the Taliban and the establishment of a fundamentalist regime. After reaching a peak in 1995, numbers of incoming migrants from Afghanistan declined for several years. However, they began to rise again from about 2010 onwards as a result of continuing conflict and insecurity in Afghanistan on the one hand and persistently problematic living conditions for Afghans in Iran and Pakistan on the other hand.
A particularly sharp increase occurred in the context of the ’long summer of migration’[3] in 2015, which continued in 2016 when a record number of 253,485 Afghan nationals were registered in Germany. This number includes established residents of Afghan origin as well as persons who newly arrived in recent years. This sharp increase is also mirrored in the number of asylum claims of Afghan nationals, which reached a historical peak of 127,012 in 2016. Following the peak in 2016 the Afghan migrant population has slightly decreased. Reasons for the numerical decrease include forced and voluntary return to Afghanistan, onward migration to third countries, and expulsion according to the so-called Dublin Regulation. Naturalisations also account for the declining number of Afghan nationals in Germany, albeit to a much lesser extent (see Figures 1 and 2).
The Afghan Migrant Population in Germany
Over time, the socio-economic and educational backgrounds of Afghan migrants changed significantly. Many of those who formed part of early immigrant cohorts were highly educated and had often occupied high-ranking positions in Afghanistan. A significant number had worked for the government, while others were academics, doctors or teachers.[4] Despite being well-educated, professionally trained and experienced, many Afghans who came to Germany as part of an early immigrant cohort were unable to find work in an occupational field that would match their professional qualifications. Over the years, levels of education and professional backgrounds of Afghans arriving to Germany became more diverse. On average, the educational and professional qualifications of those who came in recent years are much lower compared to earlier cohorts of Afghan migrants.
At the end of 2017, the Federal Statistical Office registered 251,640 Afghan nationals in Germany. This migrant population is very heterogeneous as far as persons’ legal status is concerned. Table 1 presents a snapshot of the different legal statuses that Afghan nationals in Germany held in 2017.
Similar to other European countrie [5], Germany has been receiving increasing numbers of unaccompanied Afghan minors throughout the last decade.[6] In December 2017, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) registered 10,453 persons of Afghan origin under the age of 18, including asylum seekers, holders of a temporary residence permit as well as persons with refugee status. The situation of unaccompanied minors is specific in the sense that they are under the auspices of the Children and Youth support services (Kinder- und Jugendhilfe). This implies that unaccompanied Afghan minors are entitled to specific accommodation and the support of a temporary guardian. According to the BAMF, education and professional integration are priority issues for the reception of unaccompanied minors. However, the situation of these migrants changes once they reach the age of 18 and become legally deportable.[7] For this reason, their period of residence in Germany is marked by ambiguity.
Fairly modest at first, the number of naturalisations increased markedly from the late 1980s, which is likely to be connected to the continuous aggravation of the situation in Afghanistan.[8]
With an average age of 23.7 years, Germany’s Afghan population is relatively young. Among Afghan residents who do not hold German citizenship there is a gender imbalance with males outweighing females by roughly 80,390 persons. Until recently, most Afghans arrived in Germany with their family. However, the individual arrival of Afghan men has been a dominant trend in recent years, which has become more pronounced from 2012 onwards with rising numbers of Afghan asylum seekers (see Figure 2).[9]
The Politicization of Afghan Migration
Prior to 2015, the Afghan migrant population that had not received much public attention. However, with the significant increase in numbers from 2015 onwards, it was turned into a subject of increased debate and politicization. The German military and reconstruction engagement in Afghanistan constitutes an important backdrop to the debates unfolding around the presence of Afghan migrants – most of whom are asylum seekers – in Germany. To a large extent, these debates revolved around the legitimacy of Afghan asylum claims. The claims of persons who, for example, supported German troops as interpreters were rarely questioned.[10] Conversely, the majority of newly arriving Afghans were framed as economic migrants rather than persons fleeing violence and persecution. In 2015, chancellor Angela Merkel warned Afghan nationals from coming to Germany for economic reasons and simply in search for a better life.[11] She underlined the distinction between “economic migrants” and persons facing concrete threats due to their past collaboration with German troops in Afghanistan. The increasing public awareness of the arrival of Afghan asylum seekers and growing skepticism regarding the legitimacy of their presence mark the context in which debates on deportations of Afghan nationals began to unfold.
Deportations of Afghan Nationals: Controversial Debates and Implementation
The Federal Government (Bundesregierung) started to consider deportations to Afghanistan in late 2015. Debates about the deportation of Afghan nationals were also held at the EU level and form an integral part of the Joint Way Forward agreement between Afghanistan and the EU. The agreement was signed in the second half of 2016 and reflects the commitment of the EU and the Afghan Government to step up cooperation on addressing and preventing irregular migration [12] and encourage return of irregular migrants such as persons whose asylum claims are rejected. In addition, the governments of Germany and Afghanistan signed a bilateral agreement on the return of Afghan nationals to their country of origin. At that stage it was estimated that around five percent of all Afghan nationals residing in Germany were facing return.[13] To back plans of forced removal, the Interior Ministry stated that there are “internal protection alternatives”, meaning areas in Afghanistan that are deemed sufficiently safe for people to be deported to and that a deterioration of security could not be confirmed for the country as such.[14] In addition, the BAMF would individually examine and conduct specific risk assessments for each asylum application and potential deportees respectively.
Country experts and international actors such as the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) agree on the absence of internal protection alternatives in Afghanistan, stating that there are no safe areas in the country.[15] Their assessments are based on the continuously deteriorating security situation. Since 2014, annual numbers of civilian deaths and casualties continuously exceed 10,000 with a peak of 11,434 in 2016. This rise in violent incidents has been recorded in 33 of 34 provinces. In August 2017 the United Nations changed their assessment of the situation in Afghanistan from a “post-conflict country” to “a country undergoing a conflict that shows few signs of abating”[16] for the first time after the fall of the Taliban. However, violence occurs unevenly across Afghanistan. In 2017 the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), registered the highest levels of civilian casualties in Kabul province and Kabul city more specifically. After Kabul, the highest numbers of civilian casualties were recorded in Helmand, Nangarhar, Kandahar, Faryab, Uruzgan, Herat, Paktya, Kunduz, and Laghman provinces.[17]
Notwithstanding deteriorating security conditions in Afghanistan and parliamentary, non-governmental and civil society protests, Germany’s Federal Government implemented a first group deportation of rejected asylum seekers to Afghanistan in late 2016. Grounds for justification of these measures were not only the assumed “internal protection alternatives”. In addition, home secretary Thomas de Maizière emphasised that many of the deportees were convicted criminals.[18] The problematic image of male Muslim immigrants in the aftermath of the incidents on New Year’s Eve in the city of Cologne provides fertile ground for such justifications of deportations to Afghanistan. “The assaults (sexualized physical and property offences) which young, unmarried Muslim men committed on New Year’s Eve offered a welcome basis for re-framing the ‘refugee question’ as an ethnicized and sexist problem.”[19]
It is important to note that many persons of Afghan origin spent long periods – if not most or all of their lives – outside Afghanistan in one of the neighboring countries. This implies that many deportees are unfamiliar with life in their country of citizenship and lack local social networks. The same applies to persons who fled Afghanistan but who are unable to return to their place of origin for security reasons. The existence of social networks and potential support structures, however, is particularly important in countries marked by high levels of insecurity, poverty, corruption, high unemployment rates and insufficient (public) services and infrastructure.[20] Hence, even if persons who are deported to Afghanistan may be less exposed to a risk of physical harm in some places, the absence of social contacts and support structures still constitutes an existential threat.
Debates on and executions of deportations to Afghanistan have been accompanied by parliamentary opposition on the one hand and street-level protests on the other hand. Non-governmental organisations such as Pro Asyl and local refugee councils have repeatedly expressed their criticism of forced returns to Afghanistan.[21] The execution of deportations has been the responsibility of the federal states (Ländersache). This leads to significant variations in the numbers of deportees. In light of a degrading security situation in Afghanistan, several governments of federal states (Landesregierungen) moreover paused deportations to Afghanistan in early 2017. Concomitantly, recognition rates of Afghan asylum seekers have continuously declined.[22]
A severe terrorist attack on the German Embassy in Kabul on 31 May 2017 led the Federal Government to revise its assessment of the security situation in Afghanistan and to temporarily pause deportations to the country. According to chancellor Merkel, the temporary ban of deportations was contingent on the deteriorating security situation and could be lifted once a new, favourable assessment was in place. While pausing deportations of rejected asylum seekers without criminal record, the Federal Government continued to encourage voluntary return and deportations of convicted criminals of Afghan nationality as well as individuals committing identity fraud during their asylum procedure.
The ban of deportations of rejected asylum seekers without criminal record to Afghanistan was lifted in July 2018, although the security situation in the country continues to be very volatile.[23] The decision was based on a revised assessment of the security situation through the Foreign Office and heavily criticised by the centre left opposition in parliament as well as by NGOs and churches. Notwithstanding such criticism, the attitude of the Federal Government has been rigorous. By 10 January 2019, 20 group deportation flights from Germany to Kabul were executed, carrying a total number of 475 Afghans.[24]
Assessing the Situation in Afghanistan
Continuing deportations of Afghan nationals are legitimated by the assumption that certain regions in Afghanistan fulfil the necessary safety requirements for deportees. But how does the Federal Government – and especially the BAMF – come to such arbitrary assessments of the security situation on the one hand and individual prospects on the other hand? While parliamentary debates about deportations to Afghanistan were ongoing, the news magazine Spiegel reported on how the BAMF conducts security assessments for Afghanistan. According to their revelations, BAMF staff hold weekly briefings on the occurrence of military combat, suicide attacks, kidnappings and targeted killings. If the proportion of civilian casualties remains below 1:800, the level of individual risk is considered low and insufficient for someone to be granted protection in Germany.[25] The guidelines of the BAMF moreover rule that young men who are in working age and good health are assumed to find sufficient protection and income opportunities in Afghanistan’s urban centres, so that they are able to secure to meet the subsistence level. Such possibilities are even assumed to exist for persons who cannot mobilise family or other social networks for their support. Someone’s place or region of origin is another aspect considered when assessing whether or not Afghan asylum seekers are entitled to remain in Germany. The BAMF examines the security and supply situation of the region where persons were born or where they last lived before leaving Afghanistan. These checks also include the question which religious and political convictions are dominant at the place in question. According to these assessment criteria, the BAMF considers the following regions as sufficiently secure: Kabul, Balkh, Herat, Bamiyan, Takhar, Samangan and Panjshir.[26]
Voluntary Return
In addition to executing the forced removal of rejected Afghan asylum seekers, Germany encourages the voluntary return of Afghan nationals.[27] To this end it supports the Reintegration and Emigration Programme for Asylum Seekers in Germany which covers travel expenses and offers additional financial support to returnees. Furthermore, there is the Government Assisted Repatriation Programme, which provides financial support to persons who wish to re-establish themselves in their country of origin. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) organises and supervises return journeys that are supported by these programmes. Since 2015, several thousand Afghan nationals left Germany with the aid of these programmes. Most of these voluntary returnees were persons who had no legal residence status in Germany, for example persons whose asylum claim had been rejected or persons holding an exceptional leave to remain (Duldung).
Outlook
The continuing conflict in Afghanistan not only causes death, physical and psychological hurt but also leads to the destruction of homes and livelihoods and impedes access to health, education and services for large parts of the Afghan population. This persistently problematic situation affects the local population as much as it affects migrants who – voluntarily or involuntarily – return to Afghanistan. For this reason, migration out of Afghanistan is likely to continue, regardless of the restrictions which Germany and other receiving states are putting into place.
▻http://www.bpb.de/gesellschaft/migration/laenderprofile/288934/afghan-migration-to-germany
#Allemagne #Afghanistan #réfugiés_afghans #histoire #asile #migrations #réfugiés #chiffres #statistiques #renvois #expulsions #retour_volontaire #procédure_d'asile
ping @_kg_
Eurotopia: Why the EU Needs a New Vision (2016)
▻https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/eurotopia-why-the-eu-needs-a-new-vision-2016
What is wrong with the EU and why does the EU need a new vision? Is the EU new vision to become a republic? Or what can we still expect from the EU?
The European Union is morally and culturally...
]]>ICC submission calls for prosecution of EU over migrant deaths
Member states should face punitive action over deaths in Mediterranean, say lawyers.
The EU and member states should be prosecuted for the deaths of thousands of migrants who drowned in the Mediterranean fleeing Libya, according to a detailed legal submission to the international criminal court (ICC).
The 245-page document calls for punitive action over the EU’s deterrence-based migration policy after 2014, which allegedly “intended to sacrifice the lives of migrants in distress at sea, with the sole objective of dissuading others in similar situation from seeking safe haven in Europe”.
The indictment is aimed at the EU and the member states that played a prominent role in the refugee crisis: Italy, Germany and France.
The stark accusation, that officials and politicians knowingly created the “world’s deadliest migration route” resulting in more than 12,000 people losing their lives, is made by experienced international lawyers.
The two main authors of the submission are Juan Branco, who formerly worked at the ICC as well as at France’s foreign affairs ministry, and Omer Shatz, an Israeli lawyer who teaches at Sciences Po university in Paris.
Most refugees in Libyan detention centres at risk – UN
Read more
The allegation of “crimes against humanity” draws partially on internal papers from Frontex, the EU organisation charged with protecting the EU’s external borders, which, the lawyers say, warned that moving from the successful Italian rescue policy of Mare Nostrum could result in a “higher number of fatalities”.
The submission states that: “In order to stem migration flows from Libya at all costs … and in lieu of operating safe rescue and disembarkation as the law commands, the EU is orchestrating a policy of forced transfer to concentration camps-like detention facilities [in Libya] where atrocious crimes are committed.”
The switch from Mare Nostrum to a new policy from 2014, known as Triton (named after the Greek messenger god of the sea), is identified as a crucial moment “establishing undisputed mens rea [mental intention] for the alleged offences”.
It is claimed that the evidence in the dossier establishes criminal liability within the jurisdiction of the ICC for “causing the death of thousands of human beings per year, the refoulement [forcible return] of tens of thousands migrants attempting to flee Libya and the subsequent commission of murder, deportation, imprisonment, enslavement, torture, rape, persecution and other inhuman acts against them”.
The Triton policy introduced the “most lethal and organised attack against civilian population the ICC had jurisdiction over in its entire history,” the legal document asserts. “European Union and Member States’ officials had foreknowledge and full awareness of the lethal consequences of their conduct.”
The submission does not single out individual politicians or officials for specific responsibility but does quote diplomatic cables and comments from national leaders, including Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron.
The office of the prosecutor at the ICC is already investigating crimes in Libya but the main focus has been on the Libyan civil war, which erupted in 2011 and led to the removal of Muammar Gaddafi. Fatou Bensouda, the ICC prosecutor, has, however, already mentioned inquiries into “alleged crimes against migrants transiting through Libya”.
The Mare Nostrum search and rescue policy launched in October 2013, the submission says, was “in many ways hugely successful, rescuing 150,810 migrants over a 364-day period”.
Criticism of the policy began in mid-2014 on the grounds, it is said, that it was not having a sufficient humanitarian impact and that there was a desire to move from assistance at sea to assistance on land.
“EU officials sought to end Mare Nostrum to allegedly reduce the number of crossings and deaths,” the lawyers maintain. “However, these reasons should not be considered valid as the crossings were not reduced. And the death toll was 30-fold higher.”
The subsequent policy, Triton, only covered an “area up to 30 nautical miles from the Italian coastline of Lampedusa, leaving around 40 nautical miles of key distress area off the coast of Libya uncovered,” the submission states. It also deployed fewer vessels.
It is alleged EU officials “did not shy away from acknowledging that Triton was an inadequate replacement for Mare Nostrum”. An internal Frontex report from 28 August 2014, quoted by the lawyers, acknowledged that “the withdrawal of naval assets from the area, if not properly planned and announced well in advance – would likely result in a higher number of fatalities.”
The first mass drownings cited came on 22 January and 8 February 2015, which resulted in 365 deaths nearer to the Libyan coast. It is alleged that in one case, 29 of the deaths occurred from hypothermia during the 12-hour-long transport back to the Italian island of Lampedusa. During the “black week” of 12 to 18 April 2015, the submission says, two successive shipwrecks led to the deaths of 1,200 migrants.
As well as drownings, the forced return of an estimated 40,000 refugees allegedly left them at risk of “executions, torture and other systematic rights abuses” in militia-controlled camps in Libya.
“European Union officials were fully aware of the treatment of the migrants by the Libyan Coastguard and the fact that migrants would be taken ... to an unsafe port in Libya, where they would face immediate detention in the detention centers, a form of unlawful imprisonment in which murder, sexual assault, torture and other crimes were known by the European Union agents and officials to be common,” the submission states.
Overall, EU migration policies caused the deaths of “thousands civilians per year in the past five years and produced about 40,000 victims of crimes within the jurisdiction of the court in the past three years”, the report states.
The submission will be handed in to the ICC on Monday 3 June.
An EU spokesperson said the union could not comment on “non-existing” legal actions but added: “Our priority has always been and will continue to be protecting lives and ensuring humane and dignified treatment of everyone throughout the migratory routes. It’s a task where no single actor can ensure decisive change alone.
“All our action is based on international and European law. The European Union dialogue with Libyan authorities focuses on the respect for human rights of migrants and refugees, on promoting the work of UNHCR and IOM on the ground, and on pushing for the development of alternatives to detention, such as the setting up of safe spaces, to end the systematic and arbitrary detention system of migrants and refugees in Libya.
“Search and Rescue operations in the Mediterranean need to follow international law, and responsibility depends on where they take place. EU operations cannot enter Libya waters, they operate in international waters. SAR operations in Libyan territorial waters are Libyan responsibility.”
The spokesperson added that the EU has “pushed Libyan authorities to put in place mechanisms improving the treatment of the migrants rescued by the Libyan Coast Guard.”
▻https://www.theguardian.com/law/2019/jun/03/icc-submission-calls-for-prosecution-of-eu-over-migrant-deaths
#justice #décès #CPI #mourir_en_mer #CPI #cour_pénale_internationale
ping @reka @isskein @karine4
Ajouté à la métaliste sur les sauvetages en Méditerranée :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/706177
The guy who made a tool to track women in porn videos is sorry - MIT Technology Review
▻https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613607/facial-recognition-porn-database-privacy-gdpr-data-collection-poli
An anonymous programmer based in Germany caused outrage this week for supposedly using face-recognition technology to “catch” women who had appeared in porn. He says he’s since deleted the project and all its data, but that’s not an act of altruism. Such a project would have violated European privacy law anyway, though it would have been okay elsewhere.
There is still no proof that the global system—which allegedly matched women’s social-media photos with images from sites like Pornhub—actually worked, or even existed. Still, the technology is possible and would have had awful consequences. “It’s going to kill people,” says Carrie A. Goldberg, an attorney who specializes in sexual privacy violations and author of the forthcoming book Nobody’s Victim: Fighting Psychos, Stalkers, Pervs, and Trolls. “Some of my most viciously harassed clients have been people who did porn, oftentimes one time in their life and sometimes nonconsensually [because] they were duped into it. Their lives have been ruined because there’s this whole culture of incels that for a hobby expose women who’ve done porn and post about them online and dox them.” (Incels, or “involuntary celibates,” are a misogynistic online subculture of men who claim they are denied sex by women.)
The European Union’s GDPR privacy law prevents this kind of situation. Though the programmer—who posted about the project on the Chinese social network Weibo—originally insisted everything was fine because he didn’t make the information public, just collecting the data is illegal if the women didn’t consent, according to Börge Seeger, a data protection expert and partner at German law firm Neuwerk. These laws apply to any information from EU residents, so they would have held even if the programmer weren’t living in the EU.
Under GDPR, personal data (and especially sensitive biometric data) needs to be collected for specific and legitimate purposes. Scraping data to figure out if someone once appeared in porn is not that. And if the programmer had charged money to access this information, he could have faced up to three years in prison under German criminal law, adds Seeger.
Et toujours cette logique de l’excuse qui semble Zurkerbériser un grand nombre de programmeurs.
Reached last night via Weibo, the programmer (who did not give his real name) insisted that the technology was real, but acknowledged that it raised legal issues. He’s sorry to have caused trouble. But he’s not the only one able to build this technology, or the only one interested in using it for dangerous purposes. Policymakers concerned with global privacy law need to start thinking ahead.
]]>FAR RIGHT NETWORKS OF DECEPTION
▻https://avaazimages.avaaz.org/Avaaz%20Report%20Network%20Deception%2020190522.pdf?slideshow
Avaaz investigation uncovers flood of disinformation, triggering shutdown of Facebook pages with over 500 million views ahead of EU elections. Ahead of the EU elections, Avaaz conducted a Europe-wide investigation into networks of disinformation on Facebook. This was the first investigation of its kind and uncovered that far-right and anti-EU groups are weaponizing social media at scale to spread false and hateful content. Our findings were shared with Facebook, and resulted in an (...)
]]>’I had pain all over my body’: Italy’s tainted tobacco industry
Three of the world’s largest tobacco manufacturers, #Philip_Morris, #British_American_Tobacco and #Imperial_Brands, are buying leaves that could have been picked by exploited African migrants working in Italy’s multi-million euro industry.
Workers including children, said they were forced to work up to 12 hours a day without contracts or sufficient health and safety equipment in Campania, a region that produces more than a third of Italy’s tobacco. Some workers said they were paid about three euros an hour.
The Guardian investigation into Italy’s tobacco industry, which spanned three years, is believed to be the first in Europe to examine the supply chain.
Italy’s tobacco market is dominated by the three multinational manufacturers, all of whom buy from local producers. According to an internal report by the farmers’ organisation ONT Italia, seen by the Guardian and confirmed by a document from the European Leaf Tobacco Interbranch, the companies bought three-fifths of Italian tobacco in 2017. Philip Morris alone purchased 21,000 tons of the 50,000 tons harvested that year.
The multinationals all said they buy from suppliers who operate under a strict code of conduct to ensure fair treatment of workers. Philip Morris said it had not come across any abuse. Imperial and British American said they would investigate any complaints brought to their attention.
Italy is the EU’s leading tobacco producer. In 2017, the industry was worth €149m (£131m).
Despite there being a complex system of guarantees and safeguards in place for tobacco workers, more than 20 asylum seekers who spoke to the Guardian, including 10 who had worked in the tobacco fields during the 2018 season, reported rights violations and a lack of safety equipment.
The interviewees said they had no employment contracts, were paid wages below legal standards, and had to work up to 12 work hours a day. They also said they had no access to clean water, and suffered verbal abuse and racial discrimination from bosses. Two interviewees were underage and employed in hazardous work.
Didier, born and raised in Ivory Coast, arrived in Italy via Libya. He recently turned 18, but was 17 when, last spring, a tobacco grower in Capua Vetere, near the city of Caserta, offered him work in his fields. “I woke up at 4am. We started at 6am,” he said. “The work was exhausting. It was really hot inside the greenhouse and we had no contracts.”
Alex, from Ghana, another minor who worked in the same area, said he was forced to work 10 to 12 hours a day. “If you are tired or not, you are supposed to work”, otherwise “you lose your job”.
Workers complained of having to work without a break until lunchtime.
Alex said he wasn’t given gloves or work clothes to protect him from the nicotine contained in the leaves, or from pesticides. He also said that when he worked without gloves he felt “some sickness like fever, like malaria, or headaches”.
Moisture on a tobacco leaf from dew or rain may contain as much nicotine as the content of six cigarettes, one study found. Direct contact can lead to nicotine poisoning.
Most of the migrants said they had worked without gloves. Low wages prevented them from buying their own.
At the end of the working day, said Sekou, 27, from Guinea, who has worked in the tobacco fields since 2016: “I could not get my hands in the water to take a shower because my hands were cut”.
Olivier added: “I had pain all over my body, especially on my hands. I had to take painkillers every day.”
The migrants said they were usually hired on roundabouts along the main roads through Caserta province.
Workers who spoke to the Guardian said they didn’t have contracts and were paid half the minimum wage. Most earned between €20 and €30 a day, rather than the minimum of €42.
Thomas, from Ghana, said: “I worked last year in the tobacco fields near Cancello, a village near Caserta. They paid me €3 per hour. The work was terrible and we had no contracts”.
The Guardian found African workers who were paid €3 an hour, while Albanians, Romanians or Italians, were paid almost double.
“I worked with Albanians. They paid the Albanians €50 a day,” (€5 an hour), says Didier. “They paid me €3 per hour. That’s why I asked them for a raise. But when I did, they never called back.”
Tammaro Della Corte, leader of the General Confederation of Italian Workers labour union in Caserta, said: “Unfortunately, the reality of the work conditions in the agricultural sector in the province of Caserta, including the tobacco industry, is marked by a deep labour exploitation, low wages, illegal contracts and an impressive presence of the caporalato [illegal hiring], including extortion and blackmailing of the workers.
“We speak to thousands of workers who work in extreme conditions, the majority of whom are immigrants from eastern Europe, north Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. A large part of the entire supply chain of the tobacco sector is marked by extreme and alarming working conditions.”
Between 405,000 and 500,000 migrants work in Italy’s agricultural sector, about half the total workforce. According to the Placido Rizzotto Observatory, which investigates worker conditions in the agricultural sector, 80% of those working without contracts are migrants.
Multinational tobacco companies have invested billions of euros in the industry in Italy. Philip Morris alone has invested €1bn over the past five years and has investment plans on the same scale for the next two years. In 2016, the company invested €500m to open a factory near Bologna to manufacture smokeless cigarettes. A year later, another €500m investment was announced to expand production capacity at the factory.
British American Tobacco declared investments in Italy of €1bn between 2015 and 2019.
Companies have signed agreements with the agriculture ministry and farmers’ associations.
Since 2011, Philip Morris, which buys the majority of tobacco in Campania, has signed agreements to purchase tobacco directly from ONT Italia.
Philip Morris buys roughly 70% of the Burley tobacco variety produced in Campania. Approximately 900 farmers work for companies who supply to Philip Morris.
In 2018, Burley and Virginia Bright varieties constituted 90% of Italian tobacco production. About 15,000 tons of the 16,000 tons of Italian Burley are harvested in Campania.
In 2015, Philip Morris signed a deal with Coldiretti, the main association of entrepreneurs in the agricultural sector, to buy 21,000 tons of tobacco a year from Italian farmers, by investing €500m, until 2020.
Gennarino Masiello, president of Coldiretti Campania and national vice-president, said the deal included a “strong commitment to respect the rights of employees, banning phenomena like caporalato and child labour”.
Steps have been taken to improve workers’ conditions in the tobacco industry.
A deal agreed last year between the Organizzazione Interprofessionale Tabacco Italia (OITI), a farmers’ organisation, and the ministry of agriculture resulted in the introduction of a code of practice in the tobacco industry, including protecting the health of workers, and a national strategy to reduce the environmental impact.
But last year, the OITI was forced to acknowledge that “workplace abuses often have systemic causes” and that “long-term solutions to address these issues require the serious and lasting commitment of all the players in the supply chain, together with that of the government and other parties involved”.
Despite the code, the migrants interviewed reported no change in their working conditions.
In 2017, Philip Morris signed an agreement with the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) to hire 20 migrants as trainees within the Campania tobacco producing companies, to “support their exit from situations of serious exploitation”. Migrants on the six-month trainee scheme receive a monthly salary of €600 from Philip Morris.
But the scheme appears to have little impact.
Kofi, Sekou and Hassan were among 20 migrants hired under the agreement. Two of them said their duties and treatment were no different from other workers. At the end of the six months, Sekou said he was not hired regularly, but continued to work with no contract and low wages, in the same company that signed the agreement with Philip Morris.
“If I didn’t go to work they wouldn’t pay me. I was sick, they wouldn’t pay me,” he said.
In a statement, Huub Savelkouls, chief sustainability officer at Philip Morris International, said the company is committed to ensuring safety and fair conditions in its supply chain and had not come across the issues raised.
“Working with the independent, not-for-profit organisation, Verité, we developed PMI’s Agricultural Labor Practices (ALP) code that currently reaches more than 350,000 farms worldwide. Farmers supplying PMI in Italy are contractually bound to respect the standards of the ALP code. They receive training and field teams conduct farm visits twice a month to monitor adherence to the ALP code,” he said.
“Recognising the complex situation with migrant workers in Italian agriculture, PMI has taken supplementary steps to gain more visibility and prevent potential issues through a mechanism that provides direct channels for workers to raise concerns, specifically funding an independent helpline and direct engagement programme with farm workers.”
On the IOM scheme, he said: “This work has been recognised by stakeholders and elements are being considered for continued action.”
Simon Cleverly, group head of corporate affairs at British American Tobacco, said: “We recognise that agricultural supply chains and global business operations, by their nature, can present significant rights risks and we have robust policies and process in place to ensure these risks are minimised. Our supplier code of conduct sets out the minimum contractual standards we expect of all our suppliers worldwide, and specifically requires suppliers to ensure that their operations are free from unlawful migrant labour. This code also requires suppliers to provide all workers, including legal migrant workers, with fair wages and benefits, which comply with applicable minimum wage legislation. To support compliance, we have due diligence in place for all our third-party suppliers, including the industry-wide sustainable tobacco programme (STP).”
He added: “Where we are made aware of alleged human rights abuses, via STP, our whistleblowing procedure or by any other channel, we investigate and where needed, take remedial action.”
Simon Evans, group media relations manager at Imperial Tobacco, said: “Through the industry-wide sustainable tobacco programme we work with all of our tobacco suppliers to address good agricultural practices, improve labour practices and protect the environment. We purchase a very small amount of tobacco from the Campania region via a local third party supplier, with whom we are working to understand and resolve any issues.”
ONT said technicians visited tobacco producers at least once a month to monitor compliance with contract and production regulations. It said it would not tolerate any kind of labour exploitation and would follow up the Guardian investigation.
“If they [the abuses] happen to be attributable to farms associated with ONT, we will take the necessary measures, not only for the violation of the law, but above all to protect all our members who operate with total honesty and transparency.”
▻https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/may/31/i-had-pain-all-over-my-body-italys-tainted-tobacco-industry?CMP=share_b
#tabac #industrie_du_tabac #exploitation #travail #migrations #Caserta #Italie #néo-esclavagisme #Pouilles #Campania
ping @albertocampiphoto @marty @reka @isskein
Italie : La capitaine Pia Klemp menacée de 20 ans de prison - Secours Rouge
▻https://secoursrouge.org/Italie-La-capitaine-Pia-Klemp-menacee-de-20-ans-de-prison
Pia Klemp a participé au sauvetage de réfugiés dans la méditerranée avec l’association Sea-Watch. Elle est maintenant accusée par la justice italienne d’aide à l’immigration illégale. Le parquet exige une peine de prison de 20 ans. Pour ses investigations, le parquet a eu recourt à des écoutes téléphoniques et à des agents infiltrés. Dans le cadre de ses six missions en tant que capitaine des bateaux de sauvetage Sea-Watch 3 et Iuventa, Pia Klemp dit avoir pu sauver les vies de 5000 personnes.
]]>Revealed : women’s fertility app is funded by anti-abortion campaigners
▻https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/30/revealed-womens-fertility-app-is-funded-by-anti-abortion-campaigners
The Femm app has users in the US, EU and Africa and sows doubt over the safety of birth control, a Guardian investigation has found A popular women’s health and fertility app sows doubt about birth control, features claims from medical advisers who are not licensed to practice in the US, and is funded and led by anti-abortion, anti-gay Catholic campaigners, a Guardian investigation has found. The Femm app, which collects personal information about sex and menstruation from users, has been (...)
##santé
▻https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/6d7b217e4327c0ac0a3aa51120797768e084a1fe/329_623_3228_1937/master/3228.jpg
Children whitening skin to avoid racial hate crime, charity finds
NSPCC says racial abuse and bullying of children in UK has risen by a fifth since 2015-16.
Children are whitening their skin to try to avoid a rising tide of racial hate crimes, in which even babies under one year old have been targeted, a charity has said.
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) said racial abuse and bullying of children had risen by one-fifth since 2015-16 to more than 10,000 incidents recorded by police last year.
The charity said some callers to Childline, its telephone help service, had tried to change their appearance by using makeup to whiten their skin.
Some children told counsellors they kept their pain a secret from their parents because they did not want to upset them.
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The NSPCC figures were compiled from freedom of information requests to police forces across the UK. The charity said children aged 12 to 15 were most likely to be affected.
It found that in 2017-18 there were 10,571 offences recorded by police as race hate crimes against children under the age of 18, about 29 a day. The previous year the figure was 9,752 and in 2015-16 it was 8,683.
One 10-year-old girl told the NSPCC: “I’ve been bullied ever since I started school. The bullies call me nasty names; it makes me feel so ashamed. My friends won’t hang out with me any more because people started asking why they were friends with someone who had dirty skin.
“I was born in the UK but bullies tell me to go back to my own country. I don’t understand because I’m from the UK. I’ve tried to make my face whiter before using makeup so that I can fit in. I just want to enjoy going to school.”
Tolga Yildiz, a senior Childline supervisor, said: “Children can experience this at school, out of school and online. They come up with different ways of coping.
“We hear that they tell a teacher, it stops, and then it starts again and they are not confident to report it again.”
The true figure is likely to be higher. Five police forces did not respond to the FoI request and police chiefs believe racial and faith hate crimes are underreported.
According to the NSPCC, another girl, 11, said: “I’m being bullied at school because I’m Chinese. The other kids say that my skin is yellow, call me names, and it gets me really down.
“I hate the way I look so much, I think if I looked different everyone would stop being mean to me and I’d fit in. I’ve tried to change the way that I look by using eyeliner so that I fit in more. I don’t want to tell my parents because I think it would upset them.”
One 16-year-old girl from a Muslim background said: “People call me a terrorist and keep telling me to go back to where I came from. I dress in traditional Muslim clothes and I think it singles me out. I usually just put my head down and get on with it but it’s getting to the point now where I genuinely feel like I might get attacked.”
It is the latest evidence to suggest a rise in racism in British society, which appears to have increased from about the time of the EU referendum in June 2016.
Research revealed last week showed 71% of people from ethnic minorities reported facing racial discrimination, compared with 58% in January 2016.
Atiyah Wazir, a Childline counsellor, said: “It is just as heartbreaking every single time a child tells you they wish they looked different. These children have been made to feel shame and guilt and sometimes daren’t tell their mums or dads about it because they don’t want to worry or hurt their feelings.”
The Liverpool Echo on Wednesday reported that an 11-year-old boy, Ashley Davies, was called a “slave” and the N-word by children at a school in Cornwall after moving there from Merseyside.
The child told the paper: “It makes me feel kind of sad because I am just trying to make friends. I’ve had loads of comments from people who don’t want me there. When I wake up in the morning, it’s like a burden.”
His mother, Natalie, said: “The school have said they talk to the other children but it keeps happening again and again.
“I am not saying all these kids are horrible racists but this is moulding my son now for how he is going to see the world. I think the school are trying but they don’t know what to do.”
Assistant chief constable Mark Hamilton, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for hate crime, said: “This criminality will not be tolerated. Police-recorded hate crime has increased in recent years. This is in part due to improvements in police recording, as well as spikes in hate crime following certain events such as the EU referendum and the terrorist attacks of 2017.”
▻https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/may/30/children-whitening-skin-to-avoid-racial-hate-charity-finds
#peau #racisme #discriminations #enfants #enfance #UK #Angleterre #peau_noire #peau_blanche #blanchissement_de_la_peau
Israel to auction prefab classrooms donated by EU to Palestinians | World news
Oliver Holmes in Jerusalem - Fri 31 May 2019 06.00 BST - The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/31/israel-to-auction-prefab-classrooms-donated-by-eu-to-palestinians
Israel’s defence ministry plans to hold an auction next week to sell two prefabricated classrooms that were donated to Palestinian schoolchildren by the EU.
The Civil Administration, the body tasked with running the occupation, tore down and confiscated the classrooms last October. They had been intended for 49 students, in grades one to six, in Ibziq, in the northern occupied West Bank.
An advertisement published in the Israeli newspaper Maariv said the sale would take place at Civil Administration offices in the West Bank.
After the classrooms were dismantled, the EU mission to Jerusalem and Ramallah condemned Israeli authorities and called on them to rebuild the structures in the same place “without delay”.
]]>UK: Johnson ordered to face accusations that he lied to the public ...
▻https://diasp.eu/p/9129729
UK: Johnson ordered to face accusations that he lied to the public
Source: National Public Radio [US state media]
“A British court is ordering Boris Johnson to face accusations that while holding public office, he lied in order to sway voter opinion on Brexit. The case was brought by a ‘private prosecutor’ who says Johnson abused the public’s trust while holding official posts. Johnson has quickly emerged as a front-runner to replace Prime Minister Theresa May, who is resigning next month. But with today’s ruling, he must also face charges of misconduct in public office. The case was brought by Marcus Ball — who has raised more than $300,000 to fund his effort. Ball says Johnson is guilty of ‘misleading the public by endorsing and making statements about the cost of European Union (...)
]]>Hundreds of Europeans ‘criminalised’ for helping migrants – as far right aims to win big in European elections
Elderly women, priests and firefighters among those arrested, charged or ‘harassed’ by police for supporting migrants, with numbers soaring in the past 18 months.
These cases – compiled from news reports and other records from researchers, NGOs and activist groups, as well as new interviews across Europe – suggest a sharp increase in the number of people targeted since the start of 2018. At least 100 people were arrested, charged or investigated last year (a doubling of that figure for the preceding year).
#Norbert_Valley #Christian_Hartung #Miguel_Roldan #Lise_Ramslog #Claire_Marsol #Anouk_Van_Gestel #Lisbeth_Zornig_Andersen #Daphne_Vloumidi #Mikael_Lindholm #Fernand_Bosson #Benoit_Duclois #Mussie_Zerai #Manuel_Blanco #Tom_Ciotkowski #Rob_Lawrie
L’article publié par @reka sur la situation des #citoyens_européens dans l’#Angleterre #après-Brexit m’a donné envie de créer une petite #métaliste sur le sujet, car il y a un peu de matériel sur seenthis déjà...
L’article signalé par Reka, donc :
EU citizens in UK at risk of ’Windrush-style catastrophe’
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/784118
#UK
ping @isskein
EU citizens in UK at risk of ’Windrush-style catastrophe’, say MPs | UK news | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/may/30/eu-citizens-in-uk-at-risk-of-windrush-style-catastrophe-say-mps
Rigolotte histoire d’arroseur arrosé.
The government has been urged by MPs to urgently change its policy on EU citizens in the country if it is to avert a “Windrush-style catastrophe” in the years after Brexit.
Politicians on the influential home affairs select committee said they had serious concerns about the design of the settlement scheme for EU citizens, launched by the Home Office two months ago.
]]>If mayors ruled migration : Promises and gaps
On 8th December 2018, two days before the UN Intergovernmental Conference to Adopt the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, some 80 cities around the world convened in Marrakech for the 5th Mayoral Forum on Human Mobility, Migration and Development. The cities signed a Mayors’ Declaration, identifying common priorities in the follow up and review process of the Global Compact. On that same occasion, a new initiative called the Mayors Migration Council was launched, to support cities’ engagement in international deliberations and policies concerning refugees and migrants. A couple of months afterwards, on February 9th, 2019, the mayors of the main Spanish and Italian cities launched an alliance to oppose the ‘closed harbours’ policy of the Italian Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini and to denounce the incapacity of the EU to address the situation appropriately.
These are just two recent examples that show how city policies and mobilisation on migration can resonate well beyond municipal and national walls. Can cities’ international mobilisation rescue states (and the EU) from their failure in dealing with migration issues? Cities’ enthusiasts like Benjamin Barber, founder of the Global Parliament of Mayors, have no doubts about the governance capacity of city networks (CN henceforth): ‘Mayors can rule the world because cities represent a level of governance sufficiently local to demand pragmatism and efficiency in problem solving but sufficiently networked to be able to fashion cooperative solutions to the interdependent challenges they face’. Pragmatism and cooperative interaction are presented as the key assets of mayors, cities and, by extension, city networks’ mode of governing global challenges. On the basis of – the still scarce – existing research on city global mobilisation on migration-related issues and of the preliminary results of the MinMUS Project, we can identify the promises and challenges of transnational city networks for the building of a new multilevel governance of international migration.
Is local policy more pragmatic?
The idea that local governments must deal with the situation ‘as it is’, therefore taking distance from abstract – and presumably ineffective – ideological recipes, has underpinned the development of research on local migration policy. However, evidence is contradictory and, especially in the US, studies seem to show that pragmatic attitudes and accommodative solutions are just as likely to occur as decisions aiming at excluding migrants or simply ignoring the issue altogether. What a ‘pragmatic solution’ is cannot be easily established a priori, but will depend on policymakers’ interests, perceptions, and definitions of the situation.
Data collected by the Cities of Refuge project on 27 transnational city networks in Europe show that the most networked cities are leaning towards the centre-left, progressive-side of the political spectrum. And even if membership usually outlasts political shifts, this might not correspond to active participation, as pointed out by research in the field of climate change mitigation. Furthermore, according to Cities of Refuge, cities that adhere to international networks have an average population of 1.5 million, meaning that they are primarily large cities. However, as noted by OECD, while nearly two-thirds of migrants settle in metropolitan and densely populated regions, asylum seekers are more spread across urban-rural areas.
Territorial dispersal of asylum seekers reflects evidence on reception policies collected by the CeasEVAL Project. To face the sense of pressure generated by increasing inflows since 2011, national governments in both federal/regional countries (Germany, Italy and Spain) and centralised ones (Finland, Luxemburg, Greece and Bulgaria), have redistributed asylum seekers all over their territory, including small municipalities in rural and mountains areas. Even though the reaction of local populations has not necessarily been negative, CeasEVAL points out a high level of heterogeneity in the type of accommodation and quality of services provided, as well as in opportunities for effective integration. Policy learning and exchange of best practices would probably be of great interest to these ‘new immigrant destinations’; however, they often do not have the financial, human and political resources required to participate in international network activities.
Hence, the international arena is a highly selective one, which risks excluding those – especially small – cities that might be more in need of accessing knowledge and other – mainly financial – resources in order to deal effectively with the challenges of migration and asylum. Modes of inclusion will also depend on the goals of city networks, which are extremely diverse.
Cities as key players in the multilevel governance of migration?
City networks gather together on a voluntary basis local authorities in order to pursue perceived collective interests or purposes. They lack authoritative power, and therefore have to rely upon horizontal coordination and mutual cooperation to carry out and implement their initiatives. As such, city networks are organisations which aim at realising quintessential multilevel governance policy processes: on the vertical dimension, they interact with institutions operating at different – local, regional, national and supra-national – territorial scales; on the horizontal dimension city networks establish new relations between cities and with non-public actors mobilised at a city level.
To assess these hypotheses, the MInMUS project (website) has carried out an in-depth analysis of four transnational networks on migration, i.e.: the Migration and Integration Working Group of Eurocities, the European Coalition of Cities Against Racism (ECCAR), the Intercultural Cities Programme (ICC) and Welcoming America. Results show that these networks: 1) pursue different agendas and 2) are engaged in different types of policymaking processes.
Regarding agendas, ECCAR and ICC are focused on the promotion of a specific type of local policy, i.e. anti-discrimination and interculture respectively; Eurocities seeks to represent main cities vis-á-vis the European Commission, being involved primarily in lobbying activities; whereas Welcoming America is concerned with soliciting grassroots participation and community partnerships. As for policymaking processes, Welcoming America prioritizes relations with actors such as NGOs, CSOs and private business, whereas Eurocities is more focused on relations with the European Commission and national governments. A more balanced pattern of multilevel political dynamics can be discerned in the other two cases. In particular ICC, starting from 2016, has adopted an explicit multilevel governance approach aimed at promoting cooperation and coordination both on the vertical, i.e. between different levels of government, and on the horizontal, i.e. with non-public actors, dimensions of policy-making.
Multilevel governance, far from being the essence of city networking initiatives, is only one possible mode of policymaking interactions and it is not even the most relevant one. City networks may well find it more convenient or appropriate to pursue other types of policy interactions, centred on a vertical dimension as in the case of Eurocities or on the horizontal dimension as in that of Welcoming America. Multilevel governance seems easier to pursue in the case of networks that are already established as multilevel organisations. This is the case of ECCAR, launched by Unesco in 2004, and of ICC, officially started in 2008 as a joint initiative of the Council of Europe and the European Commission. Patterns of relations and modes of policymaking seem to reflect to a large extent the genesis of city networks and their distinctive policy agenda.
Getting back to our initial question: Can cities’ international mobilisation rescue states (and the EU) from their failure in dealing with migration issues? While one cannot deny the key role played by cities in the managing of migration crises as well as in supporting integration and community cohesion more generally, city networks’ skewed membership that consists mainly of larger and politically progressive cities should make us cautious about their impact on improving migrants’ living conditions at a grassroots level. Furthermore, evidence suggests that the initiative of supranational institutions ‘from above’ has played a key role in favouring cities’ collaboration around specific policy issues such as interculture and anti-discrimination. Indeed, cities and their networks represent a new actor in the multilevel political dynamics around migration; yet whether and to what extent they will be effective in promoting collaborative multilevel governance relations and influencing national government and EU agendas on migration remains to be seen.
▻https://blogs.eui.eu/migrationpolicycentre/mayors-ruled-migration-promises-gaps
#municipalisme #migrations #villes #collectivités_locales #asile #migrations #réfugiés #gouvernance
Ajouté à la métaliste sur les #villes-refuge :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/759145
ping @karine4
La #Nasa va bientôt cartographier les #émissions de #CO2 en temps réel - Geo.fr
▻https://www.geo.fr/environnement/la-nasa-cartographie-desormais-les-emissions-de-co2-en-temps-reel-195529
Les instruments OCO sont composés de spectromètres qui décomposent la couleur du Soleil réfléchie par la Terre, dont l’analyse du spectre permet de déterminer la quantité de dioxyde de carbone sur une surface précise du globe.
EU plans first satellite fleet to monitor CO2 in every country
▻https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/05/27/eu-plans-satellite-fleet-monitor-co2-every-country
[Flowmap] How Europe moves
Cartographie des flux européens de mobilités domicile-travail (2018)
Mise en ligne d’une jolie carte animée représentant la mobilité professionnelle des actifs résident en Europe. Les données sont issues du Rapport annuel (2018) sur la mobilité de la main-d’œuvre intracommunautaire évoquent plus d’un million de navetteurs.
La carte réalisée par Roxanna Torre (@RoxNL) Media Designer spécialisée dans la dataviz interactive souhaite montrer « Comment les citoyens européens utilisent aujourd’hui la possibilité de se déplacer et de travailler dans d’autres pays européens » qui leur est possible depuis la libre-circulation.
Si l’Allemagne et le Royaume-Uni apparaissent comme les plus attractifs, en nombre de travailleurs, c’est plutôt le Luxembourg (45%), la Suisse (19%), de l’Irlande (12%) et Chypre (11%) qui accueillent le plus. Ces actifs ne s’installent pas pour autant dans leur pays de travail, vu les taux de retour élevés de certains pays, 69% pour la Roumaine par exemple.
La représentation proposée est animée par un effet de clignotement porté sur la figuration du déplacement. Elle est également interactive concernant l’effet de ces flux sur les lieux, des informations complémentaires sur les flux entrants et sortants apparaissent au clic sur les pays
▻https://pic.infini.fr/VBSclDJX/dF1We7vr.PNG
Les données : 2018 Annual Report on Intra-EU Labour Mobility ▻https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=738&langId=en&pubId=8174&furtherPubs=yes
En savoir plus : ▻https://www.torre.nl/EUmoves
ht @lecartographe (Alexandre Nicolas)
#flowmap #cartedeflux #Europe #navettes #domicile-travail #workers #animation #gflowiz
]]>Elmar Brok und die Europa-Formel : EU-Wahlkampf CDU
►https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmar_Brok
Voici une contribution du professeur fou E.B. qui a oeuvré pour le rechauffement climatique pendant 29 ans auprès du parlement européen.
▻https://vimeo.com/338414724
►https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmar_Brok
!!! Nobody beats Elmar !!!
Elmar Brok
]]>Victoria Nuland, US midwife to Maidan-2014, denied visa to Russia — RT World News
▻https://www.rt.com/news/460124-victoria-nuland-denied-visa-russia
Former US diplomat Victoria Nuland, best known for distributing cookies to protesters during the US-backed 2014 Maidan coup in Ukraine, has found out she was on a visa blacklist as she sought to enter Russia.
The former US ambassador to NATO and assistant secretary of state for Eurasia is best known for supporting the coup that ousted the government in Kiev, and dismissing the concerns of Washington’s European allies about meddling in Ukraine (“F*** the EU”) in the same conversation she mentioned bringing then-VP Joe Biden to “midwife this thing.”
]]>Indian Elections 2019 live results | Al Jazeera English
▻https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/2019/live-results-india-election-day-2019/index.html
Everything you need to know about the elections
Home to more than 1.3 billion people, India is the world’s largest democracy. Approximately 900 million voters - more than the combined population of the United States and the European Union - were eligible to elect 543 members to the lower house of parliament.
India elections 2019: All the latest updates
The staggered elections were held between April 11 and May 19 across 29 states and seven federally administered territories. The leader of the winning party or coalition will be invited by the country’s president to form the government before June 3 - the day the current Lok Sabha’s five-year term expires.
]]> The #EUborderguard deployment in Albania will support border checks and frontier surveillance to prevent unauthorized border crossings into the European Union and fight criminality. EBCG teams will be stationed on the border with Greece.