/2017

Inside Israel’s Secret Program to Get Rid of African Refugees – Foreign Policy
►http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/27/inside-israels-secret-program-to-get-rid-of-african_refugees_uganda_r

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By the time Benjamin Netanyahu secured a third term as prime minister in 2013, the tensions had hardened into outright hostility. That year, Israel sealed off its border with Egypt and implemented a raft of policies aimed at making life more difficult for asylum-seekers already in Israel. Then it began secretly pressuring Eritreans and Sudanese to leave for unnamed third countries, a shadowy relocation effort in which Semene and thousands like him are now ensnared.

Israeli officials have kept nearly everything else about this effort secret, even deflecting requests for more information from UNHCR, the U.N. refugee agency. But a year-long investigation by Foreign Policy that included interviews with multiple Eritrean and Sudanese asylum-seekers as well as people involved at various stages of the relocation process — including one person who admitted to helping coordinate illegal border crossings — reveals an opaque system of shuffling asylum-seekers from #Israel, via #Rwanda or Uganda, into third countries, where they are no longer anyone’s responsibility.

It begins with furtive promises by Israeli authorities of asylum and work opportunities in Rwanda and Uganda. Once the Sudanese and Eritrean asylum-seekers reach Kigali or Entebbe, where Uganda’s international airport is located, they describe a remarkably similar ordeal: They meet someone who presents himself as a government agent at the airport, bypass immigration, move to a house or hotel that quickly feels like a prison, and are eventually pressured to leave the country. For the Eritreans, it is from Rwanda to Uganda. For Sudanese, it is from Uganda to South Sudan or Sudan. The process appears designed not just to discard unwanted refugees, but to shield the Israeli, Rwandan, and Ugandan governments from any political or legal accountability.

The Only Darfuri Refugee in Israel

In an extract from her book ‘The Unchosen,’ Mya Guarnieri Jaradat tells the story of one man’s years-long quest to seek asylum in Israel as thousands of others gave up on ever gaining refugee status and took ‘voluntary repatriation’ deals to third countries.

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#Israël #asile #migrations #réfugiés #migrerrance #livre

France’s Presidency Is Too Powerful to Work | Foreign Policy
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/05/02/francs-presidency-is-too-powerful-to-work-emmanuel-macron-elections

It is difficult to say what has changed between the Mitterrand presidency and today: It may be simply that the rot was there all along and that it is France’s underlying problems that have grown worse, putting more demands on its politics. Regardless, most agree that France today seems stuck in a state of stagnation, even decline. Most people are clearly discontented. A functioning political system — and none, of course, is perfect — needs ideally to create a consensus in the country or at least present it with coherent and realistic choices. France’s system is patently failing to do that: The four leading presidential candidates, all self-proclaimed rebels, proposed a range of nonconsensual, divisive, and even extreme programs, all of which could only potentially be carried out because of their personal powers as president. The first-round result, in turn, was decided by a small margin within a confused and disillusioned electorate. Under such circumstances, future protests in the street are almost guaranteed.
[…]
In the more realistic scenario of a President Macron, he will be a moderate committed to playing by the rules, but he, too, is likely to struggle. Though there will be a pro-Macron surge, it would be miraculous if he won a parliamentary majority in June. So he may be forced from the beginning of his term to accept either “cohabitation” with a conservative prime minister, which would hamper his chances of uniting the country, or a coalition with the Socialists and other left-wing parties, which reject his core program of economic liberalization. Moreover, Macron is strongly pro-European Union in a country where criticism of the EU is rapidly growing: Of the 11 first-round candidates, only two (Macron and François Fillon) were unambiguously pro-EU. Whatever happens, much depends on the untested Macron showing remarkable capacities for leadership and guile. Macron promised as the first-round results came in that he would turn a “new page in our political life.” That he has such intentions is clear. But the record of recent “republican monarchs” shows that their power to shape events is often an illusion.

Trump’s Environmental Policies Are a Disaster for U.S. Foreign Policy | Foreign Policy
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/05/02/trumps-environmental-policies-are-a-disaster-for-u-s-foreign-policy

The Trump administration’s approach to science generally and to climate change in particular has the makings of a foreign-policy disaster. Environmental policy is one of the areas where domestic and foreign policy converge — not just because the policies we institute at home have direct impact on citizens of other countries, in addition to our own present and future economy and health. And not just because the Pentagon — including Secretary of Defense James Mattis — regards climate change as a security threat. It’s also because climate change is an example, par excellence, of an international collective-action problem that can only be effectively addressed through multinational and, likely, multilateral cooperation. And when U.S. credibility to lead the world in solving problems that demand cooperation — and cannot be solved by the kind of episodic transactions (or deal-making) that Trump fancies himself good at — is damaged, America loses.
[…]
As an approach to mitigating the threat that climate change poses to our homeland, if “America First” means pulling out of Paris, then is actually “America Last.” If America First is nothing but facile unilateralism, then it put us in a prisoners’ dilemma: we can’t reduce the risk to climate change unless we coordinate with others. We are the richest country in the world in total wealth; thus we have more to lose if the economic consequences of climate change are not mitigated. We play a unique role in the world, and we have more to lose in terms of blood and treasure if we see an uptick of new wars for old reasons, as the humanitarian consequences of climate change foment instability and conflict.

WikiLeaks Has Joined the Trump Administration | Foreign Policy
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/08/wikileaks-has-joined-the-trump-administration

The anti-American group has become the preferred intelligence service for a conspiracy-addled White House.
[…]
Is it just a coincidence that WikiLeaks dumped a massive database pertaining to CIA hacking and wiretapping just three days after Trump made wiretapping a major political issue? Perhaps so. But there is cause for suspicion.
[…]
Again, maybe this is entirely coincidental, but WikiLeaks’ history of being used by Russian intelligence to support Trump should lead to much greater scrutiny not only of who leaked this information — is there a mole in the CIA? — but why it was released now. Even if there is no active collusion between the White House and the Kremlin, the extent to which their agendas coincide is striking. Both Putin and Trump want to discredit the U.S. intelligence community because they see it as an obstacle to their power.

bref, WikiLeaks = Poutine = Trump, mais c’est peut-être une coïncidence…