The war on smugglers
►http://africasacountry.com/2018/02/the-war-on-smugglers
At the end of January, a tweet by Leonard Doyle, spokesperson of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), was doing the rounds. In it, William Swing, head of the IOM, congratulates Becky Anderson, a CNN host, for the cable news network’s “courage” in “confirming the IOM’s report of migrants sold as slaves in Libya with video” and for effecting “a coalition of the AU and EU to help bring…
#Follow_the_money : What are the EU’s migration policy priorities ?
Take a closer look at the data, however, and it becomes clear how the EU prioritizes among its many goals. By following the money from the EU we can see which areas the union puts the most emphasis on when it comes to migration policy. The numbers show that stopping migrants along the way is at least equally important as changing the underlying causes of migration.
For a start, the largest amount of the #Trust_Fund money does not got to where the majority African migrants are coming from. By a large margin, Eritrea, Nigeria and Somalia are the three countries most African asylum seekers came from between 2012 and 2016.
The greatest amount of money from the EU Emergency Trust Fund, however, goes elsewhere.The biggest single recipients are Niger, Mali, Senegal, Libya, and Ethiopia. Contrast that with Somalia, which ranks 9, Nigeria 10 and Eritrea - the country with the most African asylum applicants to the EU – is 20th out of 26 EUTF recipient countries. In other words, the country most in need of EU funds to fight the root causes of migration is far down on the list of countries actually receiving those funds.
#Niger #Sénégal #Libye #Ethiopie :
Despite these long-term benefits, humanitarian groups, experts and local media criticized the Trust Fund for focusing too much on tightening border controls and preventing migration instead of addressing the root causes of flight in the countries of origin.
For a better understanding of what the EU means by “improving migration management” it’s helpful to look at the projects it funds. Libya, for example, is home to the project with the single largest EUTF budget of 90 million euros aimed at “managing mixed migration flows.” The average project for migration management receives 14 million.
Untangling mixed migration flows is EU jargon for distinguishing between streams of refugees (people each EU country is obliged to protect under the Geneva Convention) and other migrants (which each EU country is free to accept or reject). The easiest way to do so would be to set up registration centers outside the EU to determine eligibility for asylum before migrants set foot in the EU. This idea has been brought up in the past by EU-leaders like the French President Emmanuel Macron.
#catégorisation #tri #hotspots #Macron
When we follow the EU money trail, we see that the budget of the European Border and Coast Guard authority #Frontex skyrocketed over the last years. The budget position “Joint Operations” is the largest item on the expenditure list - and quadrupled since 2012 (from 32 million euros to 129 million euros). Since 2016, the budget also included a position on “#Return_Support”. It had a budget of 39 million in 2016 and was increased to 53 million in 2017 (an increase of 30 percent), making it the second biggest position on Frontex’ budget.
▻http://m.dw.com/en/follow-the-money-what-are-the-eus-migration-policy-priorities/a-42588136?maca=en-Twitter-sharing&xtref=https%253A%252F%252Ft.co%252FKPKKngT4
#migrations #développement #asile #migrations #réfugiés #UE #EU #Europe #push-factors #facteurs_push #Emergency_Trust_Fund
cc @isskein
Diverting EU aid to stop migrants
Ahead of Europe’s development ministers meeting in Estonia on 11 September, Global Health Advocates research in Senegal and Niger shows that EU development aid is misused and diverted through the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa.
Development aid is meant to fund long-term programmes aimed at the eradication of poverty in line with partner countries’ own development priorities. However, the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa – a rather new instrument launched hastily by the EU and backed with close to €3 billion in development funds – does exactly the opposite: it prioritises quick fixes driven by Europe’s short-term domestic priorities, with little involvement of local governments let alone civil society actors.
Findings from the report published today reveal untransparent processes in-country, bypassing most good governance principles. No public calls for proposals, no consultation of local actors, no eligibility guidelines, prioritisation of short term projects and the development of retroactive strategies once most funds are disbursed.
Fanny Voitzwinkler, Head of the EU Office of Global Health Advocates, says: “Everyone we met in Niamey and Dakar agreed: the EU Trust Fund is first-and-foremost a political communication tool to show citizens the EU is responding fast to the so-called ‘migration crisis‘. Using development aid money as a bargaining chip to leverage African countries’ cooperation on migration tarnishes the image of the EU as a global development actor.”
Beyond the questionable use of development funds to address what is considered a political emergency in Europe, the EU is literally outsourcing the control of migration to countries such as Libya and Niger, to ensure migrants are no longer able to leave the northern shores of the African continent. Most concerning is that some countries have de facto boosted their domestic security spending over basic social services like health and education.
The NGO also warns against possible spill over-effects of the EU-driven effort to reduce migratory pressure to Europe. Repressive measures to curb migration are depriving communities of economic opportunities in the Agadez region of Niger without providing viable alternatives in already unstable environments. The EU’s eagerness to rapidly stem migration flows has taken precedence over seeking sustainable solutions for the local population.
Global Health Advocates is urging the EU to delink its political dialogue on migration from its development agenda, acknowledging that migration is a positive driver of development. In the spirit of European’s core founding values of tolerance, solidarity and respect for human dignity, the EU should actively support and promote a more nuanced narrative on migration and mobility, anchored in facts and reality.
Ms. Voitzwinkler concludes: “If the EU Trust Fund is not realigned to reflect a genuine partnership between the EU and African countries, promoting policies that can foster a positive development impact of mobility, the EU should stop replenishing the Fund.”
Pour télécharger le #rapport:
▻http://www.ghadvocates.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Misplaced-Trust_FINAL-VERSION.pdf
Gambian migrants’ choice: bury the straggler alive or be killed
Water was running low as the convoy drove through the desert into Libya, so Khadim was given a terrible choice: bury a sickly fellow migrant alive, or be killed by their smugglers.
“They told us to bury him in the sand,” said Khadim, 29. “They started waving their guns. ‘If you refuse, you’re dead.’ We started digging and digging. As we buried him he said, ‘I’m not dead yet, why are you doing this to me?’ ”
Khadim is one of about 2,600 migrants repatriated to the Gambia from Libya on flights paid for by European countries trying to stem crossings of the Mediterranean. The vast majority of those coming home are young men, who arrive at Banjul airport with at most a few belongings in a plastic bag, sometimes after spending years in Libyan detention centres.
They are the among the first to be sent back since footage emerged in November of migrants being sold at slave markets in Libya. African and EU leaders agreed an emergency plan shortly afterwards to repatriate thousands.
Many tell stories of frequent beatings, or of fellow migrants dying from hunger or violence. Others described watching companions drown on sinking boats in the Mediterranean.
Like many others, Khadim was betrayed by smugglers and drivers before he saw the sea. He was kidnapped for ransom, arrested and put in a detention centre before he could reach Tripoli.
He is relieved to have landed back in Banjul, the Gambian capital. Not only is he alive but there are promises of money to help him make a fresh start.
The UN’s migration agency, as part of an EU-funded plan, can support people to go to college, start a business or buy livestock. Other EU help offers grants to those aged 15 to 35, returning or potential migrants, to start businesses.
It likely to be just the beginning. The International Organisation for Migration estimates that up to a million migrants remain in Libya. Since late 2015, the EU has spent more than €2 billion in African countries trying to create jobs in the hope that people will stay.
Those returning to the Gambia, where almost half of the two million population live below the poverty line, are provided with just enough cash to go home and live for a few weeks, after which they can apply for more help.
Last week, a group of former Gambian migrants, with some funding from the German government, began touring the country to warn young people of the dangers of taking the “back way”, as the journey through the desert and across the Mediterranean is called.
“Before we go we knew the risks involved, but we didn’t believe,” said Mustapha Sallah. “Most of the people that talked to us were government officials, activists who are living good. I was thinking they were just trying to discourage us.”
With fellow Gambians who were incarcerated in Libyan detention centres, he has now started Youths Against Irregular Migration. As well as sharing their harrowing experiences, they try to persuade people to stop dreaming of Europe and make a living at home, through education, setting up in business, or agriculture.
The Gambia’s nascent democracy, restored after the former dictator Yahya Jammeh was deposed last year, has prompted many to return from exile, as the fear of arbitrary arrest, detention and torture dissolved.
The economy is growing at about 5 per cent but youth unemployment is about 44 per cent. Rising food prices mean many struggle. “The opportunities are not many and they’re not easy to get right now,” said Mr Sallah.
Paul Jatta, 23, came home on a repatriation flight a few months ago and is trying to put the trauma behind him. Three times he tried and failed to cross to Italy in flimsy boats. On the last attempt he watched five people die as the vessel started to sink. “I seriously cried that day. Because I saw them drown but I couldn’t do anything to help,” he said.
He said he had not received any support and was back doing what he used to, working in a computer repair shop and cleaning swimming pools in his spare time. He works up to 12 hours a day most days but earns less than £100 a month, and most of that goes to support his extended family.
After spending his savings of more than £1,000 trying to reach Europe, he is now in a worse financial situation than he was two years ago, and has even less to lose. “I still want to go to Europe. I’m waiting for a miracle,” he said. “There are no opportunities here.”
▻https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/world/gambian-migrants-choice-bury-the-straggler-alive-or-be-killed-62qf0qjbl
#retour_volontaire #Libye #asile #migrations #réfugiés #retour_au_pays #renvois #Gambie
Possible/probable future #migrerrance:
After spending his savings of more than £1,000 trying to reach Europe, he is now in a worse financial situation than he was two years ago, and has even less to lose. “I still want to go to Europe. I’m waiting for a miracle,” he said. “There are no opportunities here.”
Freed from Libyan jails, frustrated migrants pose challenge to new Gambia
Thousands of thwarted migrants are returning to Gambia, straining its government as officials scramble to get European-funded reintegration projects up and running
▻http://news.trust.org/item/20180130000138-tbxxg
#frustration #réintégration #intégration
Gambia’s Migration Paradox: The Horror and Promise of the Back Way
Since democracy returned to The Gambia last year, many Gambians are coming home, including from Libya with E.U. aid. Some returnees are warning others against the journey, but many are frustrated that returns and deterrence took precedence over reintegration and jobs.
By November 2017, IOM received 3.9 million euro ($4.8 million) for a three-year returns and reintegration project in The Gambia, part of a region-wide project funded by the E.U. Trust Fund for Africa (#EUTF). IOM’s office in Banjul only had two staff before the EUTF project; it now has around two dozen.
In the year since February 2017, some 2,210 Gambian migrants returned from Libya and 520 others from Niger with IOM assistance. Among them, 1,375 arrived under the new EUTF project.
The deportation of Gambians from E.U. countries remained stubbornly low under the Jammeh government: 12,000 Gambians arrived in Italy in 2016 and just 15 returned, according to latest available Eurostat figures. (2017 figures reflecting the returns under the Barrow government will be published in May.)
https://newsdeeply.imgix.net/20180326080437/IRomanoMigrantsLanding0630171.jpg?w=640&fit=max&q=60&dpr=2#.jpg 
https://newsdeeply.imgix.net/20180326134435/GettyImages-841999592.jpg 
https://newsdeeply.imgix.net/20180326134547/DSC_0269.jpg
Gambie : back home
Ils s’appellent Mustapha et Karamo. Torturés, réduits en esclavage, ils ont vécu les pires sévices en essayant de se rendre en Europe.
Dans une geôle libyenne, ils se font fait une promesse : celle de rentrer chez eux et de dissuader leurs compatriotes de se rendre en Europe de façon illégale à travers le « #backway », cette route de tous les périls qui passe par la Libye. Des centaines de Gambiens y ont perdu la vie. La Gambie, ex-colonie britannique, est le plus petit pays d’Afrique de l’Ouest. C’est pourtant l’un des plus importants contributeurs au flot de migrants traversant la Méditerranée.
Une quinzaine d’ex-migrants bénévoles, parcourt en caravane les régions rurales du nord du pays. Là où sévissent la pauvreté et le chômage, là où les enfants grandissent avec la seule perspective de quitter leur pays. Dans des écoles, au cours de séances de cinéma en plein air ou encore lors de rencontres avec les chefs locaux, les rapatriés vont partager leur calvaire pour essayer de mettre un terme à cette hémorragie humaine. Ils espèrent aussi convaincre les forces vives du pays du potentiel de cette « Nouvelle Gambie » et des ressources à développer.
Mais la route risque d’être longue. Malgré la récente stabilité politique, les promesses d’essor économique du nouveau gouvernement et les aides internationales, les changements radicaux se font attendre. Le tourisme et l’agriculture, asphyxiés par l’ancienne dictature de Jammeh, ne suffisent pas à donner de perspectives à cette nouvelle génération.
▻https://info.arte.tv/fr/gambie-back-home
#retour_au_pays #retour_volontaire #OIM #IOM #Libye #réintégration #dissuasion #sensibilisation #association_AIM #remittances
Unpacking the Myths around Human Smuggling in and from East Africa
This paper finds that migrant smuggling within and from the Horn of Africa continues to occur, with new smuggling routes opening in response to irregular migration related risks and law enforcement responses to migrant smuggling on traditionally popular routes. Smuggling as part of the mixed migration flows are more and more common, particularly as travel across borders becomes more dangerous. 4Mi data shows that at least 73% of migrants are using smugglers for at least part of their journey. The key findings from the research explore the dynamics and trends of this elicit trade:
Migrant smuggling within and from the Horn of Africa remains a vibrant business, and new smuggling routes continue to open - largely in response to political and economic factors, migration risks, and law enforcement efforts to curtail certain routes.
Many smugglers are young men who enter the smuggling trade because they have limited employment opportunities in their home countries, and smuggling activities are more lucrative than other job opportunities in their home countries.
Across all three major routes leading out of the region, smuggling networks are organised. Some networks resembling loose, horizontal networks in which smugglers work collaboratively across national borders. In these networks, smugglers tend to hand over the migrants at borders to new smugglers operating the subsequent leg/s of the journey. Other networks, particularly Libya-based smuggling networks along the North-western route to Europe are increasingly hierarchical, with smuggling kingpins dominating the smuggling business from Libya, and Horn of Africa smugglers playing important, but usually subordinate, positions to the Libyan kingpins.
For most smugglers operating in the region, migrant smuggling is the primary criminal enterprise. Predominantly on the Eastern, and North-western routes, smugglers may also be involved in other criminal activities, such as trafficking in persons, 1 kidnapping, and extortion.
Government officials are reported to be involved, directly and indirectly, in migrant smuggling operations. Without this collaboration smugglers would likely encounter significant obstacles to conducting successful migrant smuggling ventures.
With a reported pre-departure average expenditure for smuggling services of USD 1,036 per migrant, 2 the smuggling business remains lucrative for those involved. With a reported average expenditure of USD 2,371 3 per migrant on bribes and extortion, it is clear that many other individuals, including border guards, militia, kidnappers, and traffickers, are also profiting from the flows of smuggled migrants within and from the Horn of Africa.
The migration flows within and from the Horn of Africa are mixed, 4 with asylum seekers and refugees being smuggled alongside economic migrants.
Various political and socio-economic factors motivate irregular migration from the Horn of Africa region. The level of migration is highly reactive to political and other pressures, as well as national migration policy. Movement from the region is both in response to short-term crises, as well as rooted in long-term factors.
Most smuggled migrants from the Horn of Africa are young, single men; however, the number of female migrants is reportedly increasing. Also reportedly increasing is the number of unaccompanied Horn of Africa minors travelling irregularly to Europe, the Gulf States and Middle East, and Southern Africa.
Some migrants initiate the first leg of travel, and navigate one or more subsequent segments of travel without the aid of smugglers. These migrants tend to pay smugglers, where they are used, for each individual part of the journey, using cash or informal money transfer systems, such as hawala systems (informal financial transfers outside of the traditional banking system). 5 Other migrants use the services of smugglers to take them from their home country all the way to the destination country - some of these migrants pay for the entire journey in advance.
The paper finds that paying for the entire smuggling journey in advance does not reduce the vulnerability of migrants to exploitation and abuse during the journey.
In terms of volume, the most popular smuggling route is the Eastern route to the Gulf States and the Middle East. Horn of Africa migrants are also still being smuggled in large numbers to Europe, and to Southern Africa, particularly South Africa.
▻http://www.regionalmms.org/index.php/research-publications/feature-articles/item/70-unpacking-the-myths-around-human-smuggling-in-and-from
#smuggling #passeurs #Corne_de_l'Afrique #migrations #asile #réfugiés #frontières #business
Lien vers le rapport :
►http://regionalmms.org/images/briefing/RMMS%20BriefingPaper6%20-%20Unpacking%20the%20Myths.pdf
–-> intéressant pour analyser le discours, probablement aussi pour les chiffres (pas lu en détail le rapport), mais attention, car financé par la coopération au développement suisse et allemande... du coup, voilà... c’est probablement un papier qui légitime encore plus la fermeture des frontières...
Voici des tableaux qui, je pense, suggèrent que j’ai raison à être un peu dubitative face à ce rapport :
Où veulent aller les personnes en fuite ? En Europe pour la majorité, évidemment...
Qui sont les facilitateurs ? Les passeurs, obviously...
Pourquoi fuient-ils ? Pour des raisons économiques avant tout, évidemment...
Un tableau intéressant sur le nombre des #décès :
Et sur les #viols / #violences_sexuelles :
cc @reka
Libya crisis as opportunity: Who are the Madkhalis?
▻https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2018/0117/Libya-crisis-as-opportunity-Who-are-the-Madkhalis
The fundamentalist Madkhalis, who supported Qaddafi until the end, have fought hard to prevent ISIS from establishing a base in Libya. But experts warn of their influence on society and aim of establishing a theocracy.
Je pensais avoir archivé sur seenthis un article (au moins) qui montrait qu’une partie des personnes rapatriées (#retours_volontaires), par l’#OIM (#IOM) notamment, du #Niger et de #Libye vers leurs pays d’origine reprenaient la route du Nord aussitôt...
Mais je ne retrouve plus cet article... est-ce que quelque seenthisien se rappelle de cela ? ça serait super !
#renvois #expulsions #migrations #réfugiés #retour_volontaire
J’étais presque sûre d’avoir utilisé le tag #migrerrance, mais apparemment pas...
Ici un billet avec une suite des articles sur ce sujet :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/649717
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/649717#message653433
cf. aussi ici :
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/652350#message656947
#merci @02myseenthis01, en effet il s’agit d’articles qui traitent du retour volontaire, mais non pas de ce que je cherche (à moins que je n’ai pas loupé quelque chose), soit de personnes qui, une fois rapatriées via le programme de retour volontaires, décident de reprendre la route de la migration (comme c’est le cas des Afghans, beaucoup plus documenté, notamment par Liza Schuster : ▻https://www.city.ac.uk/people/academics/liza-schuster)
De rien, @cdb_77, merci surtout pour le lien de Liza Schuster - elle a l’air de toucher pas mal des points sensibles dans la discussion scientifique et de la pratique.
Encore un essai de ma part - selon l’information donnée peut-être dans le billet ici, commencé au Déc 2016 jusqu’à Juin/Julliet on l’y peut trouver.
@02myseenthis01 : j’ai pas mal utilisé les travaux de Liza Schuster pour soutenir mon propos dans cet article que j’ai publié sur le site de @lacite (si jamais cela t’intéresse) :
Libya return demand triggers reintegration headaches
“This means that the strain on the assistance to integration of the country of origin has been particularly high because of the success, paradoxically of the return operation,” said Eugenio Ambrosi, IOM’s Europe director, on Monday (12 February).
“We had to try, and we are still trying, to scale up the reintegration assistance,” he said.
Since November, It has stepped up operations, along with the African Union, and helped 8,581 up until earlier this month. Altogether some 13,500 were helped given that some were also assisted by African Union states. Most ended up in Nigeria, followed by Mali and Guinea.
People are returned to their home countries in four ways. Three are voluntary and one is forced. The mixed bag is causing headaches for people who end up in the same community but with entirely different integration approaches.
“The level of assistance and the type of reintegration assistance that these different programmes offer is not the same,” noted Ambrosi.
►https://euobserver.com/migration/140967
#réintégration
Et une partie de cet article est consacrée à l’#aide_au_retour par les pays européens :
Some EU states will offer in-kind support, used to set up a business, training or other similar activities. Others tailor their schemes for different countries of origin.
Some others offer cash handouts, but even those differ vastly.
Sweden, according to a 2015 European Commission report, is the most generous when it comes to cash offered to people under its voluntary return programme.
It noted that in 2014, the maximum amount of the in-cash allowance at the point of departure/after arrival varied from €40 in the Czech Republic and €50 in Portugal to €3,750 in Norway for a minor and €3,300 in Sweden for an adult.
Anti-migrant Hungary gave more (€500) than Italy (€400), the Netherlands (€300) and Belgium (€250).
However, such comparisons on cash assistance does not reveal the full scope of help given that some of the countries also provide in-kind reintegration support.
For Refugees Detained in Libya, Waiting is Not an Option
Niger generously agreed to host these refugees temporarily while European countries process their asylum cases far from the violence and chaos of Libya and proceed to their resettlement. In theory it should mean a few weeks in Niger until they are safely transferred to countries such as France, Germany or Sweden, which would open additional spaces for other refugees trapped in Libya.
But the resettlement process has been much slower than anticipated, leaving Helen and hundreds of others in limbo and hundreds or even thousands more still in detention in Libya. Several European governments have pledged to resettle 2,483 refugees from Niger, but since the program started last November, only 25 refugees have actually been resettled – all to France.
As a result, UNHCR announced last week that Niger authorities have requested that the agency halt evacuations until more refugees depart from the capital, Niamey. For refugees in Libya, this means their lifeline to safety has been suspended.
Many of the refugees I met in Niger found themselves in detention after attempting the sea journey to Europe. Once intercepted by the Libyan coast guard, they were returned to Libya and placed in detention centers run by Libya’s U.N.-backed Government of National Accord (GNA). The E.U. has prioritized capacity building for the Libyan coast guard in order to increase the rate of interceptions. But it is an established fact that, after being intercepted, the next stop for these refugees as well as migrants is detention without any legal process and in centers where human rights abuses are rife.
▻https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/community/2018/03/12/for-refugees-detained-in-libya-waiting-is-not-an-option
#réinstallation (qui évidemment ne semble pas vraiment marcher, comme pour les #relocalisations en Europe depuis les #hotspots...) :
Several European governments have pledged to resettle 2,483 refugees from Niger, but since the program started last November, only 25 refugees have actually been resettled – all to France.
“Death Would Have Been Better” : Europe Continues to Fail Refugees and Migrants in Libya
Today, European policies designed to keep asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants from crossing the Mediterranean Sea to Italy are trapping thousands of men, women and children in appalling conditions in Libya. This Refugees International report describes the harrowing experiences of people detained in Libya’s notoriously abusive immigration detention system where they are exposed to appalling conditions and grave human rights violations, including arbitrary detention and physical and sexual abuse.
►https://www.refugeesinternational.org/reports/libyaevacuations2018
Lien vers le rapport :
The report is based on February 2018 interviews conducted with asylum seekers and refugees who had been evacuated by UNHCR from detention centers in Libya to Niamey, Niger, where these men, women, and children await resettlement to a third country. The report shows that as the EU mobilizes considerable resources and efforts to stop the migration route through Libya, asylum seekers, refugees and migrants continue to face horrendous abuses in Libya – and for those who attempt it, an even deadlier sea crossing to Italy. RI is particularly concerned that the EU continues to support the Libyan coast guard to intercept boats carrying asylum seekers, refugees and migrants and bring them back to Libyan soil, even though they are then transferred to detention centers.
►https://static1.squarespace.com/static/506c8ea1e4b01d9450dd53f5/t/5ad3ceae03ce641bc8ac6eb5/1523830448784/2018+Libya+Report+PDF.pdf
#évacuation #retour_volontaire #renvois #Niger #Niamey
#Return_migration – a regional perspective
The current views on migration recognize that it not necessarily a linear activity with a migrant moving for a singular reason from one location to a new and permanent destination. Within the study of mixed migration, it is understood that patterns of movements are constantly shifting in response to a host of factors which reflect changes in individual and shared experiences of migrants. This can include the individual circumstance of the migrant, the environment of host country or community, better opportunities in another location, reunification, etc.[1] Migrants returning to their home country or where they started their migration journey – known as return migration—is an integral component of migration.
Return migration is defined by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) as the act or process of going back to the point of departure[2]. It varies from spontaneous, voluntary, voluntary assisted and deportation/forced return. This can also include cyclical/seasonal return, return from short or long term migration, and repatriation. Such can be voluntary where the migrant spontaneously returns or assisted where they benefit from administrative, logistical, financial and reintegration support. Voluntary return includes workers returning home at the end of their labour arrangements, students upon completion of their studies, refugees and asylum seekers undertaking voluntary repatriation either spontaneously or with humanitarian assistance and migrants returning to their areas of origin after residency abroad. [3] Return migration can also be forced where migrants are compelled by an administrative or judicial act to return to their country of origin. Forced returns include the deportation of failed asylum seekers and people who have violated migration laws in the host country.
Where supported by appropriate policies and implementation and a rights-based approach, return migration can beneficial to the migrant, the country of origin and the host country. Migrants who successfully return to their country of origin stand to benefit from reunification with family, state protection and the possibility of better career opportunities owing to advanced skills acquired abroad. For the country of origin, the transfer of skills acquired by migrants abroad, reverse ‘brain drain’, and transactional linkages (i.e. business partnerships) can bring about positive change. The host country benefits from such returns by enhancing strengthened ties and partnerships with through return migrants. However, it is critical to note that return migration should not be viewed as a ‘solution’ to migration or a pretext to arbitrarily send migrants back to their home country. Return migration should be studied as a way to provide positive and safe options for people on the move.
Return migration in East Africa
The number of people engaging in return migration globally and in the Horn of Africa and Yemen sub-region has steadily increased in recent years. In 2016, IOM facilitated voluntary return of 98,403 persons worldwide through its assisted voluntary return and re-integration programs versus 69,540 assisted in 2015. Between December 2014 and December 2017, 76,589 refugees and asylum seekers were assisted by humanitarian organisations to return to Somalia from Kenya.
In contexts such as Somalia, where conflict, insecurity and climate change are common drivers for movement (in addition to other push and pull factors), successful return and integration of refugees and asylum seekers from neighbouring countries is likely to be frustrated by the failure to adequately address such drivers before undertaking returns. In a report titled ‘Not Time To Go Home: Unsustainable returns of refugees to Somalia’,Amnesty International highlights ongoing conflict and insecurity in Somalia even as the governments of Kenya and Somali and humanitarian agencies continue to support return programs. The United Nations has cautioned that South and Central parts of Somalia are not ready for large scale returns in the current situation with over 2 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the country and at least half of the population in need of humanitarian assistance; painting a picture of returns to a country where safety, security and dignity of returnees cannot be guaranteed.
In March 2017, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia ordered all undocumented migrants to regularize their status in the Kingdom giving them a 90-day amnesty after which they would face sanctions including deportations. IOM estimates that 150,000 Ethiopians returned to Ethiopia from Saudi Arabia between March 2017 and April 2018. Since the end of the amnesty period in November 2017, the number of returns to Ethiopia increased drastically with approximately 2,800 migrants being deported to Ethiopia each week. Saudi Arabia also returned 9,563 Yemeni migrants who included migrants who were no longer able to meet residency requirements. Saudi Arabia also forcibly returned 21,405 Somali migrants between June and December 2017.
Migrant deportations from Saudi Arabia are often conducted in conditions that violate human rights with migrants from Yemen, Somalia and Ethiopia reporting violations. An RMMS report titled ‘The Letter of the Law: Regular and irregular migration in Saudi Arabia in a context of rapid change’ details violations which include unlawful detention prior to deportation, physical assault and torture, denial of food and confiscation of personal property. There were reports of arrest and detention upon arrival of Ethiopian migrants who had been deported from Saudi Arabia in 2013 during which the migrants were reportedly tortured by Ethiopian security forces.
Further to this, the sustainability of such returns has also been questioned with reports of returnees settling in IDP camps instead of going back to their areas of origin. Such returnees are vulnerable to (further) irregular migration given the inability to integrate. Somali refugee returnees from Kenya face issues upon return to a volatile situation in Somalia, often settling in IDP camps in Somalia. In an RMMS research paper ‘Blinded by Hope: Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices of Ethiopian Migrants’, community members in parts of Ethiopia expressed concerns that a large number of returnees from Saudi Arabia would migrate soon after their return.
In November 2017, following media reports of African migrants in Libya being subjected to human rights abuses including slavery, governments, humanitarian agencies and regional economic communities embarked on repatriating vulnerable migrants from Libya. African Union committed to facilitating the repatriation of 20,000 nationals of its member states within a period of six weeks. African Union, its member states and humanitarian agencies facilitated the return of 17,000 migrants in 2017 and a further 14,000 between January and March 2018.[4]
What next?
Return migration can play an important role for migrants, their communities, and their countries, yet there is a lack of research and data on this phenomenon. For successful return migration, the drivers to migration should first be examined, including in the case of forced displacement or irregular migration. Additionally, legal pathways for safe, orderly and regular migration should be expanded for all countries to reduce further unsafe migration. Objective 21 of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (Draft Rev 1) calls upon member states to ‘cooperate in facilitating dignified and sustainable return, readmission and reintegration’.
In addition, a legal and policy framework facilitating safe and sustainable returns should be implemented by host countries and countries of origin. This could build on bilateral or regional agreements on readmissions, creation of reception and integration agencies for large scale returns, the recognition and assurance of migrant legal status, provision of identification documents where needed, amending national laws to allow for dual citizenship, reviewing taxes imposed on the diaspora, recognition of academic and vocational skills acquired abroad, support to vulnerable returnees, financial assistance where needed, incentives to returnee entrepreneurs, programs on attracting highly skilled returnees. Any frameworks should recognize that people have the right to move, and should have their human rights and dignity upheld at all stages of the migration journey.
▻http://www.mixedmigration.org/articles/return-migration-a-regional-perspective
Reçu via la mailing-list Migreurop, le 20.09.2018
Niamey, le 20 septembre 2018
D’après des témoignages recueillis près du #centre_de_transit des #mineurs_non_accompagnés du quartier #Bobiel à Niamey (Niger), des rixes ont eu lieu devant le centre, ce mardi 18 septembre.
A ce jour, le centre compterait 23 mineurs et une dizaine de femmes avec des enfants en bas âge, exceptionnellement hébergés dans ce centre en raison du surpeuplement des structures réservées habituellement aux femmes.
Les jeunes du centre font régulièrement état de leurs besoins et du non-respect de leurs droits au directeur du centre. Certains y résident en effet depuis plusieurs mois et ils sont informés des services auxquels ils devraient avoir accès grâce à une #charte des centre de l’OIM affichée sur les murs (accès aux soins de santé, repas, vêtements - en particulier pour ceux qui sont expulsés de l’Algérie sans leurs affaires-, activité récréative hebdomadaire, assistance légale, psychologique...). Aussi, en raison de la lourdeur des procédures de « #retours_volontaires », la plupart des jeunes ne connaissent pas la date de leur retour au pays et témoignent d’un #sentiment_d'abandon.
Ces derniers jours certains jeunes ont refusé de se nourrir pour protester contre les repas qui leur sont servis (qui seraient identiques pour tous les centres et chaque jour).
Ce mardi, après un vif échange avec le directeur du centre, une délégation de sept jeunes s’est organisée et présentée au siège de l’OIM. Certains d’entre eux ont été reçus par un officier de protection qui, aux vues des requêtes ordinaires des migrants, s’est engagé à répondre rapidement à leurs besoins.
Le groupe a ensuite rejoint le centre où les agents de sécurité du centre auraient refusé de les laisser entrer. Des échanges de pierres auraient suivi, et les gardiens de la société #Gadnet-Sécurité auraient utilisé leurs matraques et blessé légèrement plusieurs jeunes. Ces derniers ont été conduits à l’hôpital, après toutefois avoir été menottés et amenés au siège de la société de gardiennage.
L’information a été diffusée hier soir sur une chaine de télévision locale mais je n’ai pas encore connaissance d’articles à ce sujet.
Alizée
Agadez, des migrants manifestent pour rentrer dans leurs pays
Des migrants ont manifesté lundi matin au centre de transit de l’Organisation Internationale pour les Migrations (OIM). Ce centre est situé au quartier #Sabon_Gari à Agadez au Niger. Il accueille à ce jour 800 migrants.
Parmi eux, une centaine de Maliens. Ces migrants dénoncent la durée de leurs séjours, leurs conditions de vie et le manque de communication des responsables de l’OIM.
Jackson Lears · What We Don’t Talk about When We Talk about Russian Hacking : #Russiagate · LRB 4 January 2018
►https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n01/jackson-lears/what-we-dont-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-russian-hacking
La pensée unique aux États Unis de plus en plus sectaire et pesante
Jackson Lears
American politics have rarely presented a more disheartening spectacle. The repellent and dangerous antics of Donald Trump are troubling enough, but so is the Democratic Party leadership’s failure to take in the significance of the 2016 election campaign. Bernie Sanders’s challenge to Hillary Clinton, combined with Trump’s triumph, revealed the breadth of popular anger at politics as usual – the blend of neoliberal domestic policy and interventionist foreign policy that constitutes consensus in Washington. Neoliberals celebrate market utility as the sole criterion of worth; interventionists exalt military adventure abroad as a means of fighting evil in order to secure global progress. Both agendas have proved calamitous for most Americans. Many registered their disaffection in 2016. Sanders is a social democrat and Trump a demagogic mountebank, but their campaigns underscored a widespread repudiation of the Washington consensus. For about a week after the election, pundits discussed the possibility of a more capacious Democratic strategy. It appeared that the party might learn something from Clinton’s defeat. Then everything changed.
A story that had circulated during the campaign without much effect resurfaced: it involved the charge that Russian operatives had hacked into the servers of the Democratic National Committee, revealing embarrassing emails that damaged Clinton’s chances. With stunning speed, a new centrist-liberal orthodoxy came into being, enveloping the major media and the bipartisan Washington establishment. This secular religion has attracted hordes of converts in the first year of the Trump presidency. In its capacity to exclude dissent, it is like no other formation of mass opinion in my adult life, though it recalls a few dim childhood memories of anti-communist hysteria during the early 1950s.
The centrepiece of the faith, based on the hacking charge, is the belief that Vladimir Putin orchestrated an attack on American democracy by ordering his minions to interfere in the election on behalf of Trump. The story became gospel with breathtaking suddenness and completeness. Doubters are perceived as heretics and as apologists for Trump and Putin, the evil twins and co-conspirators behind this attack on American democracy. Responsibility for the absence of debate lies in large part with the major media outlets. Their uncritical embrace and endless repetition of the Russian hack story have made it seem a fait accompli in the public mind. It is hard to estimate popular belief in this new orthodoxy, but it does not seem to be merely a creed of Washington insiders. If you question the received narrative in casual conversations, you run the risk of provoking blank stares or overt hostility – even from old friends. This has all been baffling and troubling to me; there have been moments when pop-culture fantasies (body snatchers, Kool-Aid) have come to mind.
Like any orthodoxy worth its salt, the religion of the Russian hack depends not on evidence but on ex cathedra pronouncements on the part of authoritative institutions and their overlords. Its scriptural foundation is a confused and largely fact-free ‘assessment’ produced last January by a small number of ‘hand-picked’ analysts – as James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, described them – from the CIA, the FBI and the NSA. The claims of the last were made with only ‘moderate’ confidence. The label Intelligence Community Assessment creates a misleading impression of unanimity, given that only three of the 16 US intelligence agencies contributed to the report. And indeed the assessment itself contained this crucial admission: ‘Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation and precedents.’ Yet the assessment has passed into the media imagination as if it were unassailable fact, allowing journalists to assume what has yet to be proved. In doing so they serve as mouthpieces for the intelligence agencies, or at least for those ‘hand-picked’ analysts.
It is not the first time the intelligence agencies have played this role. When I hear the Intelligence Community Assessment cited as a reliable source, I always recall the part played by the New York Times in legitimating CIA reports of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s putative weapons of mass destruction, not to mention the long history of disinformation (a.k.a. ‘fake news’) as a tactic for advancing one administration or another’s political agenda. Once again, the established press is legitimating pronouncements made by the Church Fathers of the national security state. Clapper is among the most vigorous of these. He perjured himself before Congress in 2013, when he denied that the NSA had ‘wittingly’ spied on Americans – a lie for which he has never been held to account. In May 2017, he told NBC’s Chuck Todd that the Russians were highly likely to have colluded with Trump’s campaign because they are ‘almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favour, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique’. The current orthodoxy exempts the Church Fathers from standards imposed on ordinary people, and condemns Russians – above all Putin – as uniquely, ‘almost genetically’ diabolical.
It’s hard for me to understand how the Democratic Party, which once felt scepticism towards the intelligence agencies, can now embrace the CIA and the FBI as sources of incontrovertible truth. One possible explanation is that Trump’s election has created a permanent emergency in the liberal imagination, based on the belief that the threat he poses is unique and unprecedented. It’s true that Trump’s menace is viscerally real. But the menace posed by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney was equally real. The damage done by Bush and Cheney – who ravaged the Middle East, legitimated torture and expanded unconstitutional executive power – was truly unprecedented, and probably permanent. Trump does pose an unprecedented threat to undocumented immigrants and Muslim travellers, whose protection is urgent and necessary. But on most issues he is a standard issue Republican. He is perfectly at home with Paul Ryan’s austerity agenda, which involves enormous transfers of wealth to the most privileged Americans. He is as committed as any other Republican to repealing Obama’s Affordable Care Act. During the campaign he posed as an apostate on free trade and an opponent of overseas military intervention, but now that he is in office his free trade views are shifting unpredictably and his foreign policy team is composed of generals with impeccable interventionist credentials.
Trump is committed to continuing his predecessors’ lavish funding of the already bloated Defence Department, and his Fortress America is a blustering, undisciplined version of Madeleine Albright’s ‘indispensable nation’. Both Trump and Albright assume that the United States should be able to do as it pleases in the international arena: Trump because it’s the greatest country in the world, Albright because it’s an exceptional force for global good. Nor is there anything unprecedented about Trump’s desire for détente with Russia, which until at least 2012 was the official position of the Democratic Party. What is unprecedented about Trump is his offensive style: contemptuous, bullying, inarticulate, and yet perfectly pitched to appeal to the anger and anxiety of his target audience. His excess has licensed overt racism and proud misogyny among some of his supporters. This is cause for denunciation, but I am less persuaded that it justifies the anti-Russian mania.
Besides Trump’s supposed uniqueness, there are two other assumptions behind the furore in Washington: the first is that the Russian hack unquestionably occurred, and the second is that the Russians are our implacable enemies. The second provides the emotional charge for the first. Both seem to me problematic. With respect to the first, the hacking charges are unproved and may well remain so. Edward Snowden and others familiar with the NSA say that if long-distance hacking had taken place the agency would have monitored it and could detail its existence without compromising their secret sources and methods. In September, Snowden told Der Spiegel that the NSA ‘probably knows quite well who the invaders were’. And yet ‘it has not presented any evidence, although I suspect it exists. The question is: why not? … I suspect it discovered other attackers in the systems, maybe there were six or seven groups at work.’ He also said in July 2016 that ‘even if the attackers try to obfuscate origin, #XKEYSCORE makes following exfiltrated data easy. I did this personally against Chinese ops.’ The NSA’s capacity to follow hacking to its source is a matter of public record. When the agency investigated pervasive and successful Chinese hacking into US military and defence industry installations, it was able to trace the hacks to the building where they originated, a People’s Liberation Army facility in Shanghai. That information was published in the New York Times, but, this time, the NSA’s failure to provide evidence has gone curiously unremarked. When The Intercept published a story about the NSA’s alleged discovery that Russian military intelligence had attempted to hack into US state and local election systems, the agency’s undocumented assertions about the Russian origins of the hack were allowed to stand as unchallenged fact and quickly became treated as such in the mainstream media.
Meanwhile, there has been a blizzard of ancillary accusations, including much broader and vaguer charges of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. It remains possible that Robert Mueller, a former FBI director who has been appointed to investigate these allegations, may turn up some compelling evidence of contacts between Trump’s people and various Russians. It would be surprising if an experienced prosecutor empowered to cast a dragnet came up empty-handed, and the arrests have already begun. But what is striking about them is that the charges have nothing to do with Russian interference in the election. There has been much talk about the possibility that the accused may provide damaging evidence against Trump in exchange for lighter sentences, but this is merely speculation. Paul Manafort, at one point Trump’s campaign manager, has pleaded not guilty to charges of failing to register his public relations firm as a foreign agent for the Ukrainian government and concealing his millions of dollars in fees. But all this occurred before the 2016 campaign. George Papadopolous, a foreign policy adviser, has pleaded guilty to the charge of lying to the FBI about his bungling efforts to arrange a meeting between Trump’s people and the Russian government – an opportunity the Trump campaign declined. Mueller’s most recent arrestee, Michael Flynn, the unhinged Islamophobe who was briefly Trump’s national security adviser, has pleaded guilty to charges of lying to the FBI about meeting the Russian ambassador in December – weeks after the election. This is the sort of backchannel diplomacy that routinely occurs during the interim between one administration and the next. It is not a sign of collusion.
So far, after months of ‘bombshells’ that turn out to be duds, there is still no actual evidence for the claim that the Kremlin ordered interference in the American election. Meanwhile serious doubts have surfaced about the technical basis for the hacking claims. Independent observers have argued it is more likely that the emails were leaked from inside, not hacked from outside. On this front, the most persuasive case was made by a group called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, former employees of the US intelligence agencies who distinguished themselves in 2003 by debunking Colin Powell’s claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, hours after Powell had presented his pseudo-evidence at the UN. (There are members of VIPS who dissent from the VIPS report’s conclusions, but their arguments are in turn contested by the authors of the report.) The VIPS findings received no attention in major media outlets, except Fox News – which from the centre-left perspective is worse than no attention at all. Mainstream media have dismissed the VIPS report as a conspiracy theory (apparently the Russian hacking story does not count as one). The crucial issue here and elsewhere is the exclusion from public discussion of any critical perspectives on the orthodox narrative, even the perspectives of people with professional credentials and a solid track record.
Both the DNC hacking story and the one involving the emails of John Podesta, a Clinton campaign operative, involve a shadowy bunch of putatively Russian hackers called Fancy Bear – also known among the technically inclined as APT28. The name Fancy Bear was introduced by Dimitri Alperovitch, the chief technology officer of Crowdstrike, a cybersecurity firm hired by the DNC to investigate the theft of their emails. Alperovitch is also a fellow at the Atlantic Council, an anti-Russian Washington think tank. In its report Crowdstrike puts forward close to zero evidence for its claim that those responsible were Russian, let alone for its assertion that they were affiliated with Russian military intelligence. And yet, from this point on, the assumption that this was a Russian cyber operation was unquestioned. When the FBI arrived on the scene, the Bureau either did not request or was refused access to the DNC servers; instead it depended entirely on the Crowdstrike analysis. Crowdstrike, meanwhile, was being forced to retract another claim, that the Russians had successfully hacked the guidance systems of the Ukrainian artillery. The Ukrainian military and the British International Institute for Strategic Studies both contradicted this claim, and Crowdstrike backed down. But its DNC analysis was allowed to stand and even become the basis for the January Intelligence Community Assessment.
The chatter surrounding the hack would never have acquired such urgency were it not for the accompanying assumption: Russia is a uniquely dangerous adversary, with which we should avoid all contact. Without that belief, Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s meetings with Russians in September 2016 would become routine discussions between a senator and foreign officials. Flynn’s post-election conversations with the Russian ambassador would appear unremarkable. Trump’s cronies’ attempts to do business in Russia would become merely sleazy. Donald Trump Jr’s meeting at Trump Tower with the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya would be transformed from a melodrama of shady intrigue to a comedy of errors – with the candidate’s son expecting to receive information to use against Clinton but discovering Veselnitskaya only wanted to talk about repealing sanctions and restarting the flow of Russian orphans to the United States. And Putin himself would become just another autocrat, with whom democracies could engage without endorsing.
Sceptical voices, such as those of the VIPS, have been drowned out by a din of disinformation. Flagrantly false stories, like the Washington Post report that the Russians had hacked into the Vermont electrical grid, are published, then retracted 24 hours later. Sometimes – like the stories about Russian interference in the French and German elections – they are not retracted even after they have been discredited. These stories have been thoroughly debunked by French and German intelligence services but continue to hover, poisoning the atmosphere, confusing debate. The claim that the Russians hacked local and state voting systems in the US was refuted by California and Wisconsin election officials, but their comments generated a mere whisper compared with the uproar created by the original story. The rush to publish without sufficient attention to accuracy has become the new normal in journalism. Retraction or correction is almost beside the point: the false accusation has done its work.
The consequence is a spreading confusion that envelops everything. Epistemological nihilism looms, but some people and institutions have more power than others to define what constitutes an agreed-on reality. To say this is to risk dismissal as the ultimate wing-nut in the lexicon of contemporary Washington: the conspiracy theorist. Still, the fact remains: sometimes powerful people arrange to promote ideas that benefit their common interests. Whether we call this hegemony, conspiracy or merely special privilege hardly matters. What does matter is the power to create what Gramsci called the ‘common sense’ of an entire society. Even if much of that society is indifferent to or suspicious of the official common sense, it still becomes embedded among the tacit assumptions that set the boundaries of ‘responsible opinion’. So the Democratic establishment (along with a few Republicans) and the major media outlets have made ‘Russian meddling’ the common sense of the current moment. What kind of cultural work does this common sense do? What are the consequences of the spectacle the media call (with characteristic originality) ‘Russiagate’?
The most immediate consequence is that, by finding foreign demons who can be blamed for Trump’s ascendancy, the Democratic leadership have shifted the blame for their defeat away from their own policies without questioning any of their core assumptions. Amid the general recoil from Trump, they can even style themselves dissenters – ‘#the resistance’ was the label Clintonites appropriated within a few days of the election. Mainstream Democrats have begun to use the word ‘progressive’ to apply to a platform that amounts to little more than preserving Obamacare, gesturing towards greater income equality and protecting minorities. This agenda is timid. It has nothing to say about challenging the influence of concentrated capital on policy, reducing the inflated defence budget or withdrawing from overextended foreign commitments; yet without those initiatives, even the mildest egalitarian policies face insuperable obstacles. More genuine insurgencies are in the making, which confront corporate power and connect domestic with foreign policy, but they face an uphill battle against the entrenched money and power of the Democratic leadership – the likes of Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, the Clintons and the DNC. Russiagate offers Democratic elites a way to promote party unity against Trump-Putin, while the DNC purges Sanders’s supporters.
For the DNC, the great value of the Russian hack story is that it focuses attention away from what was actually in their emails. The documents revealed a deeply corrupt organisation, whose pose of impartiality was a sham. Even the reliably pro-Clinton Washington Post has admitted that ‘many of the most damaging emails suggest the committee was actively trying to undermine Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign.’ Further evidence of collusion between the Clinton machine and the DNC surfaced recently in a memoir by Donna Brazile, who became interim chair of the DNC after Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned in the wake of the email revelations. Brazile describes discovering an agreement dated 26 August 2015, which specified (she writes)
that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics and mailings.
Before the primaries had even begun, the supposedly neutral DNC – which had been close to insolvency – had been bought by the Clinton campaign.
Another recent revelation of DNC tactics concerns the origins of the inquiry into Trump’s supposed links to Putin. The story began in April 2016, when the DNC hired a Washington research firm called Fusion GPS to unearth any connections between Trump and Russia. The assignment involved the payment of ‘cash for trash’, as the Clinton campaign liked to say. Fusion GPS eventually produced the trash, a lurid account written by the former British MI6 intelligence agent Christopher Steele, based on hearsay purchased from anonymous Russian sources. Amid prostitutes and golden showers, a story emerged: the Russian government had been blackmailing and bribing Donald Trump for years, on the assumption that he would become president some day and serve the Kremlin’s interests. In this fantastic tale, Putin becomes a preternaturally prescient schemer. Like other accusations of collusion, this one has become vaguer over time, adding to the murky atmosphere without ever providing any evidence. The Clinton campaign tried to persuade established media outlets to publicise the Steele dossier, but with uncharacteristic circumspection, they declined to promote what was plainly political trash rather than reliable reporting. Yet the FBI apparently took the Steele dossier seriously enough to include a summary of it in a secret appendix to the Intelligence Community Assessment. Two weeks before the inauguration, James Comey, the director of the FBI, described the dossier to Trump. After Comey’s briefing was leaked to the press, the website Buzzfeed published the dossier in full, producing hilarity and hysteria in the Washington establishment.
The Steele dossier inhabits a shadowy realm where ideology and intelligence, disinformation and revelation overlap. It is the antechamber to the wider system of epistemological nihilism created by various rival factions in the intelligence community: the ‘tree of smoke’ that, for the novelist Denis Johnson, symbolised CIA operations in Vietnam. I inhaled that smoke myself in 1969-70, when I was a cryptographer with a Top Secret clearance on a US navy ship that carried missiles armed with nuclear warheads – the existence of which the navy denied. I was stripped of my clearance and later honourably discharged when I refused to join the Sealed Authenticator System, which would have authorised the launch of those allegedly non-existent nuclear weapons. The tree of smoke has only grown more complex and elusive since then. Yet the Democratic Party has now embarked on a full-scale rehabilitation of the intelligence community – or at least the part of it that supports the notion of Russian hacking. (We can be sure there is disagreement behind the scenes.) And it is not only the Democratic establishment that is embracing the deep state. Some of the party’s base, believing Trump and Putin to be joined at the hip, has taken to ranting about ‘treason’ like a reconstituted John Birch Society.
I thought of these ironies when I visited the Tate Modern exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, which featured the work of black American artists from the 1960s and 1970s, when intelligence agencies (and agents provocateurs) were spearheading a government crackdown on black militants, draft resisters, deserters and antiwar activists. Amid the paintings, collages and assemblages there was a single Confederate flag, accompanied by grim reminders of the Jim Crow past – a Klansman in full regalia, a black body dangling from a tree. There were also at least half a dozen US flags, juxtaposed in whole or in part with images of contemporary racial oppression that could have occurred anywhere in America: dead black men carted off on stretchers by skeletons in police uniform; a black prisoner tied to a chair, awaiting torture. The point was to contrast the pretensions of ‘the land of the free’ with the practices of the national security state and local police forces. The black artists of that era knew their enemy: black people were not being killed and imprisoned by some nebulous foreign adversary, but by the FBI, the CIA and the police.
The Democratic Party has now developed a new outlook on the world, a more ambitious partnership between liberal humanitarian interventionists and neoconservative militarists than existed under the cautious Obama. This may be the most disastrous consequence for the Democratic Party of the new anti-Russian orthodoxy: the loss of the opportunity to formulate a more humane and coherent foreign policy. The obsession with Putin has erased any possibility of complexity from the Democratic world picture, creating a void quickly filled by the monochrome fantasies of Hillary Clinton and her exceptionalist allies. For people like Max Boot and Robert Kagan, war is a desirable state of affairs, especially when viewed from the comfort of their keyboards, and the rest of the world – apart from a few bad guys – is filled with populations who want to build societies just like ours: pluralistic, democratic and open for business. This view is difficult to challenge when it cloaks itself in humanitarian sentiment. There is horrific suffering in the world; the US has abundant resources to help relieve it; the moral imperative is clear. There are endless forms of international engagement that do not involve military intervention. But it is the path taken by US policy often enough that one may suspect humanitarian rhetoric is nothing more than window-dressing for a more mundane geopolitics – one that defines the national interest as global and virtually limitless.
Having come of age during the Vietnam War, a calamitous consequence of that inflated definition of national interest, I have always been attracted to the realist critique of globalism. Realism is a label forever besmirched by association with Henry Kissinger, who used it as a rationale for intervening covertly and overtly in other nations’ affairs. Yet there is a more humane realist tradition, the tradition of George Kennan and William Fulbright, which emphasises the limits of military might, counselling that great power requires great restraint. This tradition challenges the doctrine of regime change under the guise of democracy promotion, which – despite its abysmal failures in Iraq and Libya – retains a baffling legitimacy in official Washington. Russiagate has extended its shelf life.
We can gauge the corrosive impact of the Democrats’ fixation on Russia by asking what they aren’t talking about when they talk about Russian hacking. For a start, they aren’t talking about interference of other sorts in the election, such as the Republican Party’s many means of disenfranchising minority voters. Nor are they talking about the trillion dollar defence budget that pre-empts the possibility of single-payer healthcare and other urgently needed social programmes; nor about the modernisation of the American nuclear arsenal which Obama began and Trump plans to accelerate, and which raises the risk of the ultimate environmental calamity, nuclear war – a threat made more serious than it has been in decades by America’s combative stance towards Russia. The prospect of impeaching Trump and removing him from office by convicting him of collusion with Russia has created an atmosphere of almost giddy anticipation among leading Democrats, allowing them to forget that the rest of the Republican Party is composed of many politicians far more skilful in Washington’s ways than their president will ever be.
It is not the Democratic Party that is leading the search for alternatives to the wreckage created by Republican policies: a tax plan that will soak the poor and middle class to benefit the rich; a heedless pursuit of fossil fuels that is already resulting in the contamination of the water supply of the Dakota people; and continued support for police policies of militarisation and mass incarceration. It is local populations that are threatened by oil spills and police beatings, and that is where humane populism survives. A multitude of insurgent groups have begun to use the outrage against Trump as a lever to move the party in egalitarian directions: Justice Democrats, Black Lives Matter, Democratic Socialists of America, as well as a host of local and regional organisations. They recognise that there are far more urgent – and genuine – reasons to oppose Trump than vague allegations of collusion with Russia. They are posing an overdue challenge to the long con of neoliberalism, and the technocratic arrogance that led to Clinton’s defeat in Rust Belt states. Recognising that the current leadership will not bring about significant change, they are seeking funding from outside the DNC. This is the real resistance, as opposed to ‘#theresistance’.
On certain important issues – such as broadening support for single-payer healthcare, promoting a higher minimum wage or protecting undocumented immigrants from the most flagrant forms of exploitation – these insurgents are winning wide support. Candidates like Paula Jean Swearengin, a coal miner’s daughter from West Virginia who is running in the Democratic primary for nomination to the US Senate, are challenging establishment Democrats who stand cheek by jowl with Republicans in their service to concentrated capital. Swearengin’s opponent is Joe Manchin, whom the Los Angeles Times has compared to Doug Jones, another ‘very conservative’ Democrat who recently won election to the US Senate in Alabama, narrowly defeating a Republican disgraced by accusations of sexual misconduct with 14-year-old girls. I can feel relieved at that result without joining in the collective Democratic ecstasy, which reveals the party’s persistent commitment to politics as usual. Democrat leaders have persuaded themselves (and much of their base) that all the republic needs is a restoration of the status quo ante Trump. They remain oblivious to popular impatience with familiar formulas. Jess King – a Mennonite woman, Bard College MBA and founder of a local non-profit who is running for Congress as a Justice Democrat in Lancaster, Pennsylvania – put it this way: ‘We see a changing political landscape right now that isn’t measured by traditional left to right politics anymore, but bottom to top. In Pennsylvania and many other places around the country we see a grassroots economic populism on the rise, pushing against the political establishment and status quo that have failed so many in our country.’
Democratic insurgents are also developing a populist critique of the imperial hubris that has sponsored multiple failed crusades, extorted disproportionate sacrifice from the working class and provoked support for Trump, who presented himself (however misleadingly) as an opponent of open-ended interventionism. On foreign policy, the insurgents face an even more entrenched opposition than on domestic policy: a bipartisan consensus aflame with outrage at the threat to democracy supposedly posed by Russian hacking. Still, they may have found a tactical way forward, by focusing on the unequal burden borne by the poor and working class in the promotion and maintenance of American empire.
This approach animates Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis, a 33-page document whose authors include Norman Solomon, founder of the web-based insurgent lobby RootsAction.org. ‘The Democratic Party’s claims of fighting for “working families” have been undermined by its refusal to directly challenge corporate power, enabling Trump to masquerade as a champion of the people,’ Autopsy announces. But what sets this apart from most progressive critiques is the cogent connection it makes between domestic class politics and foreign policy. For those in the Rust Belt, military service has often seemed the only escape from the shambles created by neoliberal policies; yet the price of escape has been high. As Autopsy notes, ‘the wisdom of continual war’ – what Clinton calls ‘global leadership’ –
was far clearer to the party’s standard bearer [in 2016] than it was to people in the US communities bearing the brunt of combat deaths, injuries and psychological traumas. After a decade and a half of non-stop warfare, research data from voting patterns suggest that the Clinton campaign’s hawkish stance was a political detriment in working-class communities hard-hit by American casualties from deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Francis Shen of the University of Minnesota and Douglas Kriner of Boston University analysed election results in three key states – Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan – and found that ‘even controlling in a statistical model for many other alternative explanations, we find that there is a significant and meaningful relationship between a community’s rate of military sacrifice and its support for Trump.’ Clinton’s record of uncritical commitment to military intervention allowed Trump to have it both ways, playing to jingoist resentment while posing as an opponent of protracted and pointless war. Kriner and Shen conclude that Democrats may want to ‘re-examine their foreign policy posture if they hope to erase Trump’s electoral gains among constituencies exhausted and alienated by 15 years of war’. If the insurgent movements within the Democratic Party begin to formulate an intelligent foreign policy critique, a re-examination may finally occur. And the world may come into sharper focus as a place where American power, like American virtue, is limited. For this Democrat, that is an outcome devoutly to be wished. It’s a long shot, but there is something happening out there.
UNHCR: Prima evacuazione di 162 rifugiati vulnerabili dalla Libia all’Italia
L’UNHCR, l’Agenzia ONU per i Rifugiati, ha annunciato oggi l’evacuazione di 162 rifugiati altamente vulnerabili dalla Libia all’Italia, tra cui minori non accompagnati e donne tenute prigioniere per lunghi periodi di tempo.
“Per la prima volta, abbiamo potuto evacuare rifugiati estremamente vulnerabili dalla Libia direttamente in Italia. Un evento eccezionale e uno sviluppo accolto con grande favore che non sarebbe stato possibile senza il grande impegno delle autorità italiane e il supporto del governo libico. Speriamo davvero che altri paesi possano seguire lo stesso percorso,” dichiara Vincent Cochetel, Inviato Speciale dell’UNHCR per il Mediterraneo centrale.
▻https://www.unhcr.it/news/comunicati-stampa/unhcr-evacuazione-rifugiati-vulnerabili-dalla-libia-allitalia.html
#Italie #corridors_humanitaires #asile #migrations #réfugiés #Libye #évacuation #vulnérabilité #MNA #mineurs_non_accompagnés #corridor_humanitaire #femmes
U.N. evacuates refugees to Italy from Libya for first time
It is the first time the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Libya has evacuated refugees directly to Europe. An Italian C-130 military plane landed at an airport south the capital carrying 110 women and children, and a second flight is expected to bring more than 50 people later in the day.
Migrants in Libya: UN evacuates refugees to Italy for first time
As many as 700,000 migrants are trapped in Libya, where they face abuse and inhumane conditions
▻http://www.middleeasteye.net/fr/news/migrants-libya-un-evacuates-refugees-italy-first-time-1753208330
Humanitarian Corridors for vulnerable refugees to Italy opening
On 14 February, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) implemented the second evacuation to Italy, bringing the total number of highly vulnerable refugees directly evacuated to Italy to 312. Additionally, more than 1000 refugees have arrived in Italy since February 2016 using a humanitarian corridor based on a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) initiated by an ecumenical church initiative.
▻https://www.ecre.org/humanitarian-corridors-for-vulnerable-refugees-to-italy-opening
Slavoj Žižek · The Non-Existence of Norway · LRB 9 September 2015
▻https://www.lrb.co.uk/2015/09/09/slavoj-zizek/the-non-existence-of-norway
The Non-Existence of Norway
Slavoj Žižek on the refugee crisis
The flow of refugees from Africa and the Middle East into Western Europe has provoked a set of reactions strikingly similar to those we display on learning we have a terminal illness, according to the schema described by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her classic study On Death and Dying. First there is denial: ‘It’s not so serious, let’s just ignore it’ (we don’t hear much of this any longer). Then there is anger – how can this happen to me? – which explodes when denial is no longer plausible: ‘Refugees are a threat to our way of life; Muslim fundamentalists are hiding among them; they have to be stopped!’ There is bargaining: ‘OK, let’s decide on quotas; let them have refugee camps in their own countries.’ There is depression: ‘We are lost, Europe is turning into Europastan!’ What we haven’t yet seen is Kübler-Ross’s fifth stage, acceptance, which in this case would involve the drawing up of an all-European plan to deal with the refugees.
What should be done? Public opinion is sharply divided. Left liberals express their outrage that Europe is allowing thousands to drown in the Mediterranean: Europe, they say, should show solidarity and throw open its doors. Anti-immigrant populists say we need to protect our way of life: foreigners should solve their own problems. Both solutions sound bad, but which is worse? To paraphrase Stalin, they are both worse. The greatest hypocrites are those who call for open borders. They know very well this will never happen: it would instantly trigger a populist revolt in Europe. They play the beautiful soul, superior to the corrupted world while continuing to get along in it. The anti-immigrant populist also knows very well that, left to themselves, people in Africa and the Middle East will not succeed in solving their own problems and changing their societies. Why not? Because we in Western Europe are preventing them from doing so. It was Western intervention in Libya that threw the country into chaos. It was the US attack on Iraq that created the conditions for the rise of Islamic State. The ongoing civil war in the Central African Republic between the Christian south and the Muslim north is not just an explosion of ethnic hatred, it was triggered by the discovery of oil in the north: France and China are fighting for the control of resources through their proxies. It was a global hunger for minerals, including coltan, cobalt, diamonds and copper, that abetted the ‘warlordism’ in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the 1990s and early 2000s.
If we really want to stem the flow of refugees, then, it is crucial to recognise that most of them come from ‘failed states’, where public authority is more or less inoperative: Syria, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, DRC and so on. This disintegration of state power is not a local phenomenon but a result of international politics and the global economic system, in some cases – like Libya and Iraq – a direct outcome of Western intervention. (One should also note that the ‘failed states’ of the Middle East were condemned to failure by the boundaries drawn up during the First World War by Britain and France.)
It has not escaped notice that the wealthiest countries in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Emirates, Qatar) have been much less open to refugees than the not so rich (Turkey, Egypt, Iran etc). Saudi Arabia has even returned ‘Muslim’ refugees to Somalia. Is this because Saudi Arabia is a fundamentalist theocracy which cannot tolerate foreign intruders? Yes, but Saudi Arabia’s dependence on oil revenues makes it a fully integrated economic partner of the West. There should be serious international pressure on Saudi Arabia (and Kuwait and Qatar and the Emirates) to accept a large contingent of the refugees, especially since, by supporting the anti-Assad rebels, the Saudis bear a measure of responsibility for the current situation in Syria.
New forms of slavery are the hallmark of these wealthy countries: millions of immigrant workers on the Arabian peninsula are deprived of elementary civil rights and freedoms; in Asia, millions of workers live in sweatshops organised like concentration camps. But there are examples closer to home. On 1 December 2013 a Chinese-owned clothing factory in Prato, near Florence, burned down, killing seven workers trapped in an improvised cardboard dormitory. ‘No one can say they are surprised at this,’ Roberto Pistonina, a local trade unionist, remarked, ‘because everyone has known for years that, in the area between Florence and Prato, hundreds if not thousands of people are living and working in conditions of near slavery.’ There are more than four thousand Chinese-owned businesses in Prato, and thousands of Chinese immigrants are believed to be living in the city illegally, working as many as 16 hours a day for a network of workshops and wholesalers.
The new slavery is not confined to the suburbs of Shanghai, or Dubai, or Qatar. It is in our midst; we just don’t see it, or pretend not to see it. Sweated labour is a structural necessity of today’s global capitalism. Many of the refugees entering Europe will become part of its growing precarious workforce, in many cases at the expense of local workers, who react to the threat by joining the latest wave of anti-immigrant populism.
In escaping their war-torn homelands, the refugees are possessed by a dream. Refugees arriving in southern Italy do not want to stay there: many of them are trying to get to Scandinavia. The thousands of migrants in Calais are not satisfied with France: they are ready to risk their lives to enter the UK. Tens of thousands of refugees in Balkan countries are desperate to get to Germany. They assert their dreams as their unconditional right, and demand from the European authorities not only proper food and medical care but also transportation to the destination of their choice. There is something enigmatically utopian in this demand: as if it were the duty of Europe to realise their dreams – dreams which, incidentally, are out of reach of most Europeans (surely a good number of Southern and Eastern Europeans would prefer to live in Norway too?). It is precisely when people find themselves in poverty, distress and danger – when we’d expect them to settle for a minimum of safety and wellbeing – that their utopianism becomes most intransigent. But the hard truth to be faced by the refugees is that ‘there is no Norway,’ even in Norway.
We must abandon the notion that it is inherently racist or proto-fascist for host populations to talk of protecting their ‘way of life’. If we don’t, the way will be clear for the forward march of anti-immigration sentiment in Europe whose latest manifestation is in Sweden, where according to the latest polling the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats have overtaken the Social Democrats as the country’s most popular party. The standard left-liberal line on this is an arrogant moralism: the moment we give any credence to the idea of ‘protecting our way of life’, we compromise our position, since we’re merely proposing a more modest version of what anti-immigrant populists openly advocate. And this is indeed the cautious approach that centrist parties have adopted in recent years. They reject the open racism of anti-immigrant populists, but at the same time profess that they ‘understand the concerns’ of ordinary people, and so enact a more ‘rational’ anti-immigration policy.
We should nevertheless reject the left-liberal attitude. The complaints that moralise the situation – ‘Europe is indifferent to the suffering of others’ etc – are merely the obverse of anti-immigrant brutality. They share the presupposition, which is in no way self-evident, that the defence of one’s own way of life is incompatible with ethical universalism. We should avoid getting trapped in the liberal self-interrogation, ‘How much tolerance can we afford?’ Should we tolerate migrants who prevent their children going to state schools; who force their women to dress and behave in a certain way; who arrange their children’s marriages; who discriminate against homosexuals? We can never be tolerant enough, or we are always already too tolerant. The only way to break this deadlock is to move beyond mere tolerance: we should offer others not just our respect, but the prospect of joining them in a common struggle, since our problems today are problems we share.
Refugees are the price we pay for a globalised economy in which commodities – but not people – are permitted to circulate freely. The idea of porous borders, of being inundated by foreigners, is immanent to global capitalism. The migrations in Europe are not unique. In South Africa, more than a million refugees from neighbouring states came under attack in April from the local poor for stealing their jobs. There will be more of these stories, caused not only by armed conflict but also by economic crises, natural disasters, climate change and so on. There was a moment, in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, when the Japanese authorities were preparing to evacuate the entire Tokyo area – more than twenty million people. If that had happened, where would they have gone? Should they have been given a piece of land to develop in Japan, or been dispersed around the world? What if climate change makes northern Siberia more habitable and appropriate for agriculture, while large parts of sub-Saharan Africa become too dry to support a large population? How will the redistribution of people be organised? When events of this kind happened in the past, the social transformations were wild and spontaneous, accompanied by violence and destruction.
Humankind should get ready to live in a more ‘plastic’ and nomadic way. One thing is clear: national sovereignty will have to be radically redefined and new methods of global co-operation and decision-making devised. First, in the present moment, Europe must reassert its commitment to provide for the dignified treatment of the refugees. There should be no compromise here: large migrations are our future, and the only alternative to such a commitment is renewed barbarism (what some call a ‘clash of civilisations’).
Second, as a necessary consequence of this commitment, Europe should impose clear rules and regulations. Control of the stream of refugees should be enforced through an administrative network encompassing all of the members of the European Union (to prevent local barbarisms like those of the authorities in Hungary or Slovakia). Refugees should be assured of their safety, but it should also be made clear to them that they must accept the destination allocated to them by European authorities, and that they will have to respect the laws and social norms of European states: no tolerance of religious, sexist or ethnic violence; no right to impose on others one’s own religion or way of life; respect for every individual’s freedom to abandon his or her communal customs, etc. If a woman chooses to cover her face, her choice must be respected; if she chooses not to cover her face, her freedom not to do so must be guaranteed. Such rules privilege the Western European way of life, but that is the price to be paid for European hospitality. These rules should be clearly stated and enforced, by repressive measures – against foreign fundamentalists as well as against our own racists – where necessary.
Third, a new kind of international military and economic intervention will have to be invented – a kind of intervention that avoids the neocolonial traps of the recent past. The cases of Iraq, Syria and Libya demonstrate how the wrong sort of intervention (in Iraq and Libya) as well as non-intervention (in Syria, where, beneath the appearance of non-intervention, external powers such as Russia and Saudi Arabia are deeply involved) end up in the same deadlock.
Fourth, most important and most difficult of all, there is a need for radical economic change which would abolish the conditions that create refugees. Without a transformation in the workings of global capitalism, non-European refugees will soon be joined by migrants from Greece and other countries within the Union. When I was young, such an organised attempt at regulation was called communism. Maybe we should reinvent it. Maybe this is, in the long term, the only solution.
Libya’s most successful people smuggler : ’I provide a service’ | World news | The Guardian
►https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/01/libya-people-smuggle-provide-service
Article de 2014 signalé par Charles Heller à l’époque, qui reste d’une cruelle actualité. Excellente analyse.
With a joint of hashish in one hand and a can of Red Bull in the other, one of Libya’s most successful people smugglers reclines in his apartment, the rooms strewn with bowls of chocolates, and explains the rationale behind his business. “I am not a criminal,” he says. “I provide a service.”
In his 30s, the smuggler, wearing a gold medallion over a white T-shirt, declines to be named, but is happy to sketch out details of what he describes as a successful, legitimate business: the smuggling of those who can afford it into Europe.
“The traffic of human beings is a service widely requested on the market, I am just a provider,” he says.
This “market” is made up of millions of people fleeing war, persecution or poverty living across great swaths of Africa and the Middle East.
#migrations #asile #libye #passeurs
Refugees Deeply | La réponse hypocrite de l’Europe face à l’esclavagisme en Libye
▻https://asile.ch/2017/12/21/refugees-deeply-reponse-hypocrite-europeens-face-a-lesclavagisme-libye
Le site d’information indépendant Refugees Deeply apporte un éclairage essentiel aux récentes révélations sur les cas de traitements dégradants infligés à des réfugiés en Libye. Son auteure Giulia Lagana démontre à quel point les responsabilités sont multiples. Dans sa ligne de mire, les politiques européennes de confinement des migrants aux frontières extérieures, au détriment de […]
La réponse hypocrite de l’#union_européenne face à l’esclavagisme en Libye.
Un terme géographique ne réponds jamais.
The war on smugglers
The “discovery” of the video has ignited the press and a consuming public in need of symbolism and scapegoats, a long-standing orientalist trope of Arab slave auctions, which European and African policy makers are now making work for their own objectives. The EU’s primary means to end the “migration crisis” remains an imperial, pink, ham-fisted attempt to militarily disrupt smuggling networks or what they call, Reagan-style, the “war on smugglers.” Watch the not-so-subtle encouragement in this direction apparent in this more recent CNN piece, reporting on France’s “urgent” demand to the UN to consider “sanctions,” and failing that, a more forceful intervention to stop migrants “being sold between human trafficking gangs.”
To intervene (again), the European branch of NATO needs to plug into a narrative that can find legitimacy in the western press and a sub-section of first world and global middle classes. The revived “slave auctions” being stomped out through a new western moral and military show of force is a tried and tested avenue for this — a cathartic one popularized amongst others by the irrelevant tweeting of aging rapper LL Cool J (“Remove the slave holders by force”).
Smugglers are the only ticket out of the country for the estimated half a million Nigerian migrants “stranded” in Libya and its detention centers. Except the IOM itself, a UN organization funded largely by the EU, whose renewed mission is to deflect the route to Europe by offering up anything from 400 to 7000 euros to any illegal “economic” migrants willing to be repatriated or return. This counter-payment ecosystem has even led to the rise of scammers posing as the IOM, promising “visa facilitation and transportation assistance, resettlement opportunities as well as job openings and recruitment abroad,” which in the eyes of most migrants is a better try than going back home broke with nothing to show. It also explains why more people have opted for the service of smugglers — and probably fallen for these scams — than have taken up the IOM’s offer of repatriation.
A prominent figure of “Nigerian twitter” tweeted a Facebook post (a much more popular and less elite-laden platform in Nigeria than Twitter) written by one Ephraim Okonkwo, who reminds everyone: “If you want to help Libya slaves/immigrants, don’t bring them back home. Help them reach their destination in Europe. There’s a very good reason they left home in the first place.” The tweet is followed by a provocation of the avatar Nigerian Troll: “Please run away. Don’t let this Libya propaganda discourage you.” This is a common sentiment I encountered on the streets of Lagos and elsewhere in West Africa: “Of course I want to go to Europe,” “You must suffer for greener pastures,” “Libya is bad but not that bad,” “One merely must pass through quickly.”
As almost no long-term, independent investigations have been possible in Libya in recent years, it is not clear if conditions have worsened. I believe my impressions from 2015 (also here) are still valid, and so is the new academic research of Paolo Campana. His research is based on the wiretapped mobile phone of heterogeneous smugglers who used the Libya route in 2013-2014. He suggests that that there is solid empirical evidence that there is a “clear separation between actors involved in the provision of smuggling services” from those involved “in kidnapping for ransom and in the ‘management’ of detention centres.” This “goes against narratives that conflate these separate sets of activities.”
►http://africasacountry.com/2018/02/the-war-on-smugglers
#retour_volontaire
The short life and times of Mamadou Saliou
▻http://africasacountry.com/2017/12/the-short-life-and-times-of-mamadou-saliou
I am a teacher of English at a high school in the Sedhiou Region of Southern Senegal. In June 2016, a colleague informed me that Mamadou Saliou, one of our students had died in Libya on the way to Europe. Mamadou Saliou was only 23 years old. I remembered Mamadou. In 2014, I had taught…
The Return of Muammar Gaddafi
▻http://africasacountry.com/2017/12/the-return-of-muammar-gaddafi
One of the unintended consequences of the angry reactions to the slave auctions in Libya, is a renewed romanticization of the supposed pan-African legacy of the late Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi. At its heart, it reflects a depressing understanding of African politics which rules that a fair dictator is better than a chaotic political void. Gaddafi ruled Libya…
Migrants in Libya : Pushed away, pulled back
As EU policies drive migrants away, Libyan authorities push them into dire detention centres. For some who reach Europe, it is worth the risk
▻http://www.middleeasteye.net/fr/news/migrants-libya-pushed-back-pulled-back-409483752
#pull-back #push-back #Libye #externalisation
#renvois #expulsions #retour_au_pays #prostitution #asile #migrations #réfugiés #Nigeria #trafic_d'êtres_humains :
Eight years ago, Joy was a teenager when she was offered a job as a nanny in London. In the event, she was flown by plane to Milan, and ordered to work off a nearly $60,000 debt as a sex worker.
When Joy fled to what she thought was the safety of her home in southern Nigeria’s Edo State however, it turned out to be “hell”.
“Returning was one of the worst things I could have done,” she said.
Her local recruiters repeatedly threatened the lives of her family for cash. Joy’s uncle beat her, and sold her off to be married twice.
Et qu’est-ce qu’elle fait Joy quelques années après ?
Years later, she resolved to return to Italy for a better life, by land through Libya, with her eyes open. “Everyone knows the story about Libya,” she said. “We all know it is dangerous.”
Libia, ritorno all’inferno
A fronte dei 173 mila migranti sbarcati nei primi undici mesi del 2016 nel nostro paese, quest’anno ne sono arrivati 117 mila. 55 mila in meno. «La luce in fondo al tunnel», dice Minniti. Ma dove sono e cosa sono costretti a subire quei 55 mila migranti che non sono arrivati in Italia?
▻https://rep.repubblica.it/pwa/anteprima/2017/12/22/news/libia_ritorno_all_inferno-184903632
#pull-back
L’ONU estime que le trafic d’êtres humains est en hausse en Libye
Le trafic d’êtres humains est en augmentation en Libye, selon un rapport d’experts de l’ONU, qui estime que les forces libyennes aident des groupes rebelles dans leur contrôle des routes migratoires.
▻https://www.voaafrique.com/a/traffic-d-etres-humains-en-hausse-en-libye-selon-l-onu/4240784.html
Dopo la Libia, l’inferno è in Italia: le donne nigeriane di #Castel_Volturno
A Castel Volturno le donne nigeriane arrivano dopo essere passate dalla Libia. Qui le aspetta la paura del «juju», la prostituzione nelle case chiuse, lo sfruttamento. Finché non finiscono di pagare il debito che hanno contratto per arrivare in Italia. Sara Manisera e Federica Mameli sono state a parlare con loro nelle «connection house» di Castel Volturno.
▻http://openmigration.org/analisi/dopo-la-libia-linferno-e-in-italia-le-donne-nigeriane-di-castel-voltu
UNHCR expresses concern over lack of rescue capability in Mediterranean, but condones Libyan coast guard pull back operations
While UNHCR rightly calls for a change in EU practices, it fails to acknowledge or address the serious problems with the Libyan coast guard’s pull back practices in Libyan territorial waters – practices enabled and funded by the EU. UNHCR’s latest statement on this subject condones EU-funded Libyan coast guard pull back practices.
From Jeff Crisp (@JFCrisp): “A simple question for UNHCR and IOM: Should asylum seekers who leave Libya by boat have an opportunity to submit an application for refugee status elsewhere, rather than being summarily intercepted and forcibly returned to and detained in the country of departure? Because UNHCR’s global policy says: ‘persons rescued or intercepted at sea cannot be summarily turned back or otherwise returned to the country of departure, including in particular where to do so would deny them a fair opportunity to seek asylum.’”
UNHCR’s statement: “UNHCR continues to be very concerned about the legal and logistical restrictions that have been placed on a number of NGOs wishing to conduct search and rescue (SAR) operations, including the Aquarius. These have had the cumulative effect of the Central Mediterranean currently having no NGO vessels conducting SAR. Should NGO rescue operations on the Mediterranean cease entirely we risk returning to the same dangerous context we saw after Italy’s Mare Nostrum naval operation ended in 2015 and hundreds of people died in an incident on the central Mediterranean Sea. UNHCR welcomes the rescue efforts of the Libyan Coast Guard (LCG), as without them more lives would have been lost. Nonetheless, with the LCG now having assumed primary responsibility for search and rescue coordination in an area that extends to around 100 miles, the LCG needs further support. Any vessel with the capability to assist search and rescue operations should be allowed to come to the aid of those in need. UNHCR reiterates that people rescued in international waters (i.e. beyond the 12 nautical miles of the territorial waters of Libya) should not be brought back to Libya where conditions are not safe. The largest proportion of deaths have been reported in crossings to Italy, which account for more than half of all deaths reported this year so far, despite Spain having become the primary destination of those newly arrived. More than 48, 000 people have arrived there by sea, compared to around 22,000 in Italy and 27,000 in Greece. There is an urgent need to break away from the current impasses and ad-hoc boat-by-boat approaches on where to dock rescued passengers. UNHCR reiterates that in recent months, together with IOM, we have offered a regional solution that would provide clarity and predictability on search and rescue operations.”
▻https://migrantsatsea.org/2018/11/12/week-in-review-11-november-2018
William Carter · Diary: The Case of the Missing Barrels · LRB 14 December 2017
▻https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n24/william-carter/diary
At some point during the fighting in Libya a few years ago, Nato planes attacked pro-Gaddafi forces near an oilfield in the north-east. A number of smart bombs hit a storage facility belonging to the oil company for which I worked. The facility contained thousands of barrels of chemicals, worth millions of dollars, which are used in the process of drilling for oil. Most of the barrels were destroyed outright but a good number remained intact.
[...]
We’ve been approached by the authorities in the east of the country,’ [the oilfield operations manager] said. ‘They would like to buy the chemicals to use for drilling for water.’ He explained that there was a desperate need to repair infrastructure and restore running water to areas that had been ruined by the fighting. ‘The company won’t allow us to use the chemicals that survive the attack to drill for oil. They no longer meet our quality standards. But the Libyan authorities would be happy to buy them from us. They’re not proud.’ And here was the bit that made it all worthwhile. ‘They will pay us millions of dollars for stock that we will otherwise throw away.’
[...]
Eventually I caught up with the regional head of security about the sale of the chemicals. ‘They didn’t want the chemicals you fucking idiot,’ he said. ‘They wanted the barrels.’ He was sure the whole deal was a scam, that one of a number of groups – tribal, terrorist or government – was tapping available sources for the basic ingredients to make their weapon of choice, the barrel bomb. There was no proof of this. I had done all I could to verify that the deal was genuine but in my heart of hearts I knew that it smelled. The regional head of security just found it bleakly funny that one of the most advanced weapons in the world – a laser-guided bomb – had spawned hundreds of the crudest airborne weapons possible, responsible for so much indiscriminate killing. But there was a silver lining. ‘Look, we made a few million bucks. With Brent Crude at sub-$40 a barrel for the foreseeable future and Libya eating itself alive, that’s an awesome result,’ he said. ‘As long as the company logo doesn’t appear on a report by CNN, no one is going to give a shit about where those barrels end up.’ And, as it turned out, he was right.
Liquid Traces - The Left-to-Die Boat Case on Vimeo
Pour ne pas oublier, les protagonistes surtout, et le remarquable travail d’enquête des auteurs au sein du groupe « Forensic Architecture » du Goldsmiths Institute à Londres
Directed by Charles Heller and Lorenzo Pezzani, 17 min, 2014
Liquid Traces offers a synthetic reconstruction of the events concerning what is known as the “left-to-die boat” case, in which 72 passengers who left the Libyan coast heading in the direction of the island of Lampedusa on board a small rubber boat were left to drift for 14 days in NATO’s maritime surveillance area, despite several distress signals relaying their location, as well as repeated interactions, including at least one military helicopter visit and an encounter with a military ship. As a result, only 9 people survived.
In producing this reconstruction, our research has used against the grain the “sensorium of the sea” – the multiple remote sensing devises used to record and read the sea’s depth and surface. Contrary to the vision of the sea as a non-signifying space in which any event immediately dissolves into moving currents, with our investigation we demonstrated that traces are indeed left in water, and that by reading them carefully the sea itself can be turned into a witness for interrogation.
Avec un très long texte paru dans Open Democraty, qui vient éclairer utilement la vidéo :
Time to end the EU’s left-to-die policy | openDemocracy
▻http://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/charles-heller-lorenzo-pezzani/time-to-end-eu%E2%80%99s-lefttodie-policy
Time to end the EU’s left-to-die policy
Charles Heller and Lorenzo Pezzani 25 June 2014
Researchers participating in the reconstruction of the 2011 “Left-to-die boat” case in which 63 migrants lost their life under NATO’s eyes, summarize three years of inconclusive demands for disclosure and justice. As the European Council addresses the EU’s long-term migration policy, they say deaths of migrants at sea will continue short of ending the EU’s policy of closure towards non-European migrants.
Two years ago, we published a report on what came to be known as the “left-to-die” boat case.
Two years ago, we published a report on what came to be known as the “left-to-die” boat case. Co-authored with the architectural office SITU Studio, the report used imaging, mapping, and modelling technologies in order to produce a visual and spatial picture of how, in March 2011, sixty-three migrants lost their lives in the Central Mediterranean while attempting to reach the small Italian island of Lampedusa from the coast of Libya.
L’#Union_Africaine s’active pour un plan de rapatriement des migrants en #Libye
L’ONU, l’Union Européenne et l’Union Africaine se sont données rendez-vous ce 04 novembre à Addis Abeba au siège de l’organisation panafricaine pour la mise en œuvre d’un plan de #rapatriement de migrants bloqués en Libye en partenariat avec l’Organisation Internationale pour les Migrations (l’#OIM).
Il s’agira d’abord pour les organisations régionales et internationales de mettre en place « une #cellule_opérationnelle » qui coordonnera le rapatriement de 15.000. Ensuite, mobiliser le fonds pour la réussite de cette opération.
A cet effet, le #Maroc a fait une promesse, celle de contribuer au transport des migrants et le #Rwanda d’accueillir 3000 qui ne veulent pas retourner dans leur pays d’origine.
▻http://rjdh.org/ethiopie-lunion-africaine-sactive-pour-un-plan-de-rapatriement-des-migrants-en
#UE #EU #ONU #OIM #IOM (tous complices !) #sommet #rencontre #plan #expulsions #Libye #asile #migrations #renvois #réfugiés #Sommet_UA-UE
Et l’article parle de l’étonnement face à la vidéo de la CNN qui a montré les tortures perpétrées aux migrants en Libye :
Le reportage de CNN sur la traite des migrants subsahariens et leur soumission à l’esclavage avaient indigné l’opinion africaine internationale. Après une mission de l’UA dans « l’enfer libyen » et le Sommet UA-UE, les responsables de l’organisation onusienne, européenne et africaine se réunissent pour mobiliser les moyens et réfléchir sur un plan de rapatriement des migrants en Libye.
#hypocrisie, on le sait depuis des années !
Et voilà le type de marchandage auquel il faudra s’attendre... Ici, un article publié dans le Jerusalem Post... et parle évidemment de renvois depuis #Israël vers le Rwanda... à prendre avec les pincettes... mais débat intéressant
Rwanda says no to migrant deportation
Rwanda recently declared that it is willing to host as many as 30,000 African migrants currently trapped in Libya and being sold openly in modern-day slave markets. A tiny, densely populated African country recovering from the trauma of genocide, Rwanda was the first country to offer asylum to these unfortunate victims of human traffickers.
Contrary to reports in Israel that Israel had already signed a formal agreement with Rwanda, Rwandan Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwaboo in an interview this week with Rwanda’s New Times noted that Rwanda and Israel are still negotiating the conditions for accepting Israel’s African asylum seekers.
Mushikiwaboo made it clear that Rwanda would not accept forced migration from Israel. “We have had discussions with Israel on receiving some of the immigrants and asylum seekers from this part of Africa who are willing to come to Rwanda,” he noted. “If they are comfortable to come here, we would be willing to accommodate them.” Rwanda offered to host 10,000 African asylum seekers from Israel.
▻http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Rwanda-says-no-to-migrant-deportation-515819
Amnesty: EU-AU plan to help refugees in Libya ’unrealistic’
The plan to evacuate refugees stuck in Libya’s camps will not work in practice, says Franziska Vilmar of the German branch of Amnesty International. It has only been designed to help the EU shirk its responsibilities.
▻http://www.dw.com/en/amnesty-eu-au-plan-to-help-refugees-in-libya-unrealistic/a-41626514?maca=en-Twitter-sharing
Nigerian returnees from Libya narrate tales of abuse, violence
« Je ne voulais pas mourir » : ces migrants qui ont choisi de rentrer chez eux
Ils sont trois. Trois parmi tant d’autres, plus de 300 au total. Issa, Mamadou et Abdou* viennent de Conakry, en Guinée, ont tenté leur chance pour passer en Europe via le Mali puis l’Algérie ou la Libye, avant de finalement renoncer et de rentrer chez eux, pour « ne pas mourir ». Depuis quelques jours, ils sont de retour à Agadez, le corps et l’esprit meurtri. Reportage.
▻http://www.jeuneafrique.com/503012/societe/je-ne-voulais-pas-mourir-ces-migrants-qui-ont-choisi-de-rentrer-chez-e
One year of EU partnership with IOM: migrants protection and reintegration in Africa
The objective was clear: to respond to the urgent protection needs and unacceptable loss of life of migrants along the Central Mediterranean migration route while addressing the challenges faced by returning migrants and their communities in countries of origin.
Fourteen countries have been involved: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire and Libya. And so far, nearly 20 000 vulnerable migrants have been assisted through this initiative.
“Libya… not easy to come and not easy to leave”, a group of fellow stranded Nigerians warned Debbie, probably too late.
Debbie is one of the 15000 migrants that have been voluntarily returned to their countries thanks to the joint European Union and UN Migration agency’s effort launched a year ago to save lives and improve conditions for migrants along the migration routes and for those stranded in Libya.
She dreamt of becoming a fashion designer and a lady from her church told her she could earn more money as a tailor in Libya than in Nigeria. So Debbie paid a smuggler to cross the desert. Many of her companions died along the route. When she finally got to Libya she was arrested at the hospital because she did not have travel documents. She was there to give birth to her twin babies and only one survived.
Through the joint initiative, Debbie was offered a flight home to Nigeria, sewing machines and material to launch her fashion designer dream.
▻https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage/37353/one-year-eu-partnership-iom-migrants-protection-and-reintegration-africa
#retour_volontaire
L’évacuation des migrants en Libye fait consensus, pas la facture
Les pays africains et européens ont adopté une déclaration conjointe spéciale sur la Libye et affirmé vouloir rapatrier les migrants bloqués dans leurs pays d’origine. Mais la question de l’addition a soigneusement été évitée.
Juste pour montrer jusqu’à quel point c’est hypocrite, voici une vidéo qui date de 2015 (et plus précisément, elle a été publiée le 15 septembre 2015) :
Detained by Militias : Libya’s Migrant Trade (Part 1)
In a desperate bid to seek a better life in Europe, thousands of refugees and migrants leave the shores of Libya and cross the perilous Mediterranean Sea every month. Over 2,000 people have died making the journey in 2015 alone. The routes to and journey through Libya are also dangerous, however, and since the fall of Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, the country has struggled to achieve and maintain stability. Porous desert borders, rival fighters, and weak governance have left much of Libya in complete chaos. With militias controlling large swathes of land, their attentions have turned to the people that cross their territories. The fighters assert they are bringing order to the country as they detain the refugees, yet these people’s lives have become valuable commodities to the militias as they try to solidify their positions in the country. VICE News secured exclusive access to a camp outside Tripoli, run by a militia that has seized hundreds of migrants. Food is scarce, dehydration and disease is rife, and control comes in the form of whips and warning shots. The militia claims to have the migrants’ interests at heart, but what emerges is a very different story. In part one of a two-part series, VICE News examines how Libya is struggling with the Mediterranean migrant crisis, where state-run detention centers are overcrowded and violent, and how government immigration controls are outsourced to militias, where they detain migrants en masse.
Die Externalisierung der humanitären Grenze. Das Beispiel der ‚Unterstützung freiwilliger Rückkehr‘ durch die IOM in Marokko
En prenant l’exemple du programme de l’aide au retour volontaire, cet article analyse les pratiques ambivalentes et les significations contradictoires de la gestion de la migration au-delà des frontières extérieures de l’Europe. La reconstitution de la mise en œuvre controversée de ce programme par l’Organisation Internationale pour la Migration (OIM) au Maroc permet de montrer le développement de frontières humanitaires anticipées. Le régime d’aide qui en résulte ne répond pas tant aux besoins des migrant.es vulnérables qu’à ceux de l’OIM elle-même, qui cherche à se positionner comme un acteur crédible méritant d’être subventionné dans le domaine concurrentiel en expansion de la politique migratoire. Dans le même temps, cette gestion de la migration au nom de l’humanitarisme contribue à (re)stabiliser le régime frontalier européen en crise et favorise sa consolidation le long des routes migratoires. Bien que ce programme soit présenté comme une action humanitaire apolitique pour le bien de migrant.es vulnérables, sa mise en œuvre au Maroc est non seulement le résultat, mais aussi l’objet de conflits politiques actuels autour des frontières extérieures de l’Europe.
Thousands of migrants return home safely from Libya as part of UN-supported programme
Since last November, 10,171 migrants have safely returned from Libya, the United Nations migration agency announced Tuesday, crediting the achievement to a scale up of its #Voluntary_Humanitarian_Return (#VHR) programme.
Nigeria–Libyen retour: Ein Flüchtling kehrt zurück
Für den Traum von Europa hat der Anstreicher Isaac Nigeria verlassen. Nach höllischen Monaten in Libyen gibt er auf und kehrt, von Versprechungen der EU gelockt, in seine Heimat zurück. Wie erlebt er dort seine Ankunft?
En 2019 le Rwanda semble dire oui à la proposition...
Rwanda to receive over 500 migrants from Libya
►https://seenthis.net/messages/796723
Archive 2017, pour compléter le fil de la discussion.
Reçu avec ce commentaire de @pascaline :
Le Rwanda dit non aux expulsions, pas non au fait d’accueillir des demandeurs d’asile, c’est pas pareil
Et c’est en effet une différence importante. Merci @pascaline.
Rwanda Offers to Host African Migrants Stranded in Libya
In an unusual gesture that could partly reverse a more familiar northward odyssey toward Europe, Rwanda offered on Thursday to house or help repatriate some of the thousands of African migrants being held in Libya and reportedly auctioned there as slaves.
A statement from the country’s Foreign Ministry said Rwanda was “horrified” that “African men women and children who were on the road to exile have been held and turned into slaves.”
“Given Rwanda’s political philosophy and our own history, we cannot remain silent when human beings are being mistreated and auctioned off like cattle,” the statement said. The evocation of Rwanda’s history apparently referred to bloodletting in 1994 when more than 800,000 people perished in an ethnically driven genocide.
“We may not be able to welcome everyone but our door is wide open,” the Foreign Ministry said.
The statement did not say how many people might be taken in by Rwanda, a small, landlocked country of 12 million in east-central Africa that ranks as one of the continent’s most densely populated.
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But Moussa Faki Mahamat, the newly appointed head of the African Union, the continent’s biggest representative body, said on Twitter that Rwanda had offered to resettle as many as 30,000 migrants.
Mr. Mahamat said he was “deeply appreciative” of the offer.
Libya has in recent years become a leading entrepôt for migrants from Africa seeking passage to Italy in vessels operated by smugglers. The migrants have long been known to live in squalid conditions as they wait to board ramshackle and unseaworthy vessels. Thousands have drowned when the boats sank or capsized. Many others have reached Italy or been rescued on the way.
Since CNN broadcast footage of bidding and the sale of African migrants in Libya, an international outcry has gathered in volume.
On Monday, António Guterres, the secretary general of the United Nations, said he was horrified by the images.
“Slavery has no place in our world, and these actions are among the most egregious abuses of human rights and may amount to crimes against humanity,” Mr. Guterres said in a statement.
Mr. Guterres said the reported auction of slaves “also reminds us of the need to address migration flows in a comprehensive and humane manner,” including “enhanced international cooperation in cracking down on smugglers and traffickers and protecting the rights of victims.”
Last weekend, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Libyan Embassy in Paris chanting, “Put an end to the slavery and concentration camps in Libya.”
Many of the African migrants in Libya began their journeys in West Africa or the Horn of Africa to escape poverty and upheaval. According to the International Organization for Migration, almost 9,000 migrants have been helped to return to their home countries this year.
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/23/world/africa/rwanda-libya-migrants.html
–-------------
Rwanda offers refuge to enslaved Libya migrants
Rwanda has offered to give refuge to around 30,000 African migrants stuck in Libya often in enslaved conditions.
It comes in the wake of a video, released by CNN last week, showing men being auctioned off as farm workers.
“Given our own history... we cannot remain silent when human beings are being mistreated and auctioned off like cattle,” the foreign ministry said.
Hundreds of thousands of Africans travel through Libya every year as they try to make their way to Europe.
They are often held by smugglers and forced to work for little or no money.
During Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, some 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutu were massacred in 100 days while most countries did little to help.
“Rwanda, like the rest of the world, was horrified by the images of the tragedy currently unfolding in Libya, where African men, women and children who were on the road to exile, have been held and turned into slaves,” the foreign ministry statement said.
Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo said Rwanda was a small country but it would find space.
She told the pro-government New Times newspaper that Rwanda was in talks with African Union (AU) Commission to determine how to intervene and resettle them.
“What I expect and know is that Rwandans will welcome these people. As Rwandans we are sensitive to people who are helpless and have no way of protecting themselves. It is something that is deep in ourselves, we take pride in human beings,” the paper quotes her as saying.
The minister also said negotiations were also continuing with Israel about accommodating African migrants seeking asylum there.
Last week, the AU expressed outrage after the footage emerged appearing to show slave markets in Libya.
Youths from Niger and other sub-Saharan countries were seen being sold to buyers for about $400 (£300) at undisclosed locations in Libya.
In April, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said it had gathered evidence of slavery in Libya.
Smugglers hold migrants for ransom and if their families could not pay, they were sold off at different prices depending on their qualifications, an IOM official in Libya said.
How a fingerprint can change an asylum seeker’s life
When Anas Obeid was deported from Germany and landed at Milan’s Malpensa airport, the wound in his leg was still bleeding.
▻http://www.irinnews.org/special-report/2017/11/21/how-fingerprint-can-change-asylum-seeker-s-life
#empreintes_digitales #asile #migrations #réfugiés #Dublin #renvois_dublin #migrerrance
EU Policies Put Refugees At Risk
A lack of leadership, vision, and solidarity based on human rights principles are at the core of the European Union’s dismal response to refugee and migration challenges. The mismanagement and politicization of a surge in boat migration in 2015, when over one million migrants and asylum seekers traveled to the EU by sea, has led to a humanitarian and political crisis largely of the EU’s own making that needs to be addressed with the utmost urgency.
If chaos characterized the response of the EU and its member states in 2015, wrong-headed and rights-abusing policies have defined 2016. Instead of providing for safe and orderly channels into the EU for asylum seekers and refugees and sharing responsibility for them equitably, the EU and its member states have endorsed policies designed to limit arrivals and to outsource responsibility to regions and countries outside of the EU. The deeply flawed deal with Turkey and problematic cooperation with the Libyan authorities reflect this approach.
Individual member states have rolled back asylum rights at a national level and the European Commission has proposed an overhaul of the common European asylum system that is more informed by a logic of deterrence than a commitment to basic human rights. Far from ensuring the right to family reunification, over the past year numerous EU countries have restricted the right to bring family members to safety, and there is a discernible trend towards granting subsidiary—temporary—protection over refugee status. Proposed changes to the EU directives governing procedures, qualification for asylum, and reception conditions include some positive measures but also measures to punish asylum seekers for moving from one EU country to another, obligatory use of “safe country” and “internal flight alternative” concepts to deny protection, and compulsory reviews to enable revoking refugee status and subsidiary protection.
The European Commission has also advocated changes to EU aid and foreign policy that would direct them towards migration control objectives rather than improving respect for human rights. The Partnership Framework for relations with third countries represents a clear articulation of the EU’s goal, significantly re-energized over the past 18 months, to intensify migration cooperation with countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia with the objectives of preventing irregular migratory flows to Europe and facilitating the removal of rejected asylum seekers and other irregular migrants from EU territory.
In the same period EU member states have largely failed to implement the September 2015 emergency relocation mechanism scheme, which in spite of its limited scope stands as the only effort to date to more equitably share responsibility for the recent arrivals to Greece and Italy. As of mid-November, only 7,224 asylum seekers had been relocated.
To date in 2016, over 343,000 have managed to reach European shores by sea, while at least 4,646 have died or gone missing at sea. A substantial proportion of those arriving come from refugee producing countries such as Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. Such people are fleeing generalized violence, war, and serious human rights abuses. Many others are seeking to escape economic deprivation and may not qualify for asylum.
The numbers of arrivals are down from 2015, when over one million migrants and asylum seekers survived the dangerous journey to the EU. But 2016 is proving even deadlier than 2015, when at least 3,671 died or went missing in the attempt. Border closures and a deeply flawed deal with Turkey contributed to reducing the numbers of those crossing from Turkey to Greece, while crossings from North Africa, particularly Libya, have kept pace with previous years.
In November 2015, Human Rights Watch urged the EU and its member states to take concrete actions to reduce the need for dangerous journeys, address the crisis at Europe’s borders, fix the EU’s broken asylum system, and ensure that EU cooperation with other countries improves refugee protection and respect for human rights. This document, one year later, shows that the EU has gone in the opposite direction.
Throughout this document, we use the terms migrant, asylum seeker, and refugee within the meaning of existing international law. The term migrant describes the wide range of people on the move; it is intended as an inclusive rather than an exclusive term. A migrant may also be an asylum seeker or refugee. An asylum seeker is someone who has or intends to apply for international protection in a country other than her own. A refugee is a person who has a well-founded fear of persecution in her country of origin. A migrant who has crossed international borders without a need for international protection may, following a fair procedure in which their individual circumstances have been assessed and their rights have been guaranteed, be returned involuntarily to their country of origin if this return can be done in a safe and dignified manner. All persons, regardless of status, have inalienable human rights.
▻https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/11/23/eu-policies-put-refugees-risk
–-> Dans ce rapport, pas mal d’info sur Dublin...
Europe’s Plan to Close Its Sea Borders Relies on Libya’s Coast Guard Doing Its Dirty Work, Abusing Migrants
►https://theintercept.com/2017/11/25/libya-coast-guard-europe-refugees
In the last six months, with new support from European governments, the Libyan coast guard has substantially ramped up operations to intercept #migrant boats in the international waters off their coast, where most shipwrecks take place. Confrontations with the European NGOs that work there have increased as well, with multiple organizations reporting warning shots and direct threats of violence from Libyan boats. The violence has led some organizations to stop their Mediterranean rescue operations.
The Libyan coast guard is a decentralized force often accused of working with local militias and smugglers and violating the rights of migrants. At the same time, it is a key player in Europe’s response to the refugee crisis.
EU defence chiefs’ approved plan for military intervention against “refugee boats” in Libya and the Mediterranean
▻https://wikileaks.org/eu-military-refugees/EUMC/page-1.html
#armée #UE #frontières #Frontex #Libye #Méditerranée #asile #migrations #réfugiés #EUMC #intervention_militaire
Quelques citations:
In order to enable a rapid response to the migratory crisis in the Southern Central Mediterranean, the EUMC recognises that there is insufficient time to develop and obtain Council approval of Military Strategic Options.
Such an operation can contribute to EU efforts to disrupt the business model of migrant smuggling networks.
The EUMC emphasizes that preservation of human life at sea is a legal obligation in accordance with Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) and UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
Rescue operations led during this operation should not be publicised in order to avoid providing an incentive to migrants.
The EUMC considers an indicative military End State to be: the flow of migrants and smugglers activities have been significantly reduced. The End State for Phase One should be a sufficient understanding of the migrants’ smuggling and trafficking business models, financing, routes, places of embarkation, capabilities and identities
The EUMC highlights that the operation will be conducted in compliance with international human rights, humanitarian and refugee law and other relevant legislation.
the EUMC identifies a risk to EU reputation linked to any perceived transgressions by the EU force through any public misinterpretation of its tasks and objectives, or the potential negative impact should loss of life be attributed, correctly or incorrectly, to action or inaction by the EU force.
The EUMC notes that the information strategy should avoid suggesting that the focus is to rescue migrants at sea but emphasise that the aim of the operation is to disrupt the migrants smuggling business model. By doing so the operation will indirectly contribute to reduce loss of life at sea.
Syria, ’#Experts,’ and George Monbiot - Antiwar.com Original
▻http://original.antiwar.com/cook/2017/11/21/syria-experts-george-monbiot
Par #Jonathan_Cook
That is not to say Assad, or at least sections of the Syrian government, could not have carried out the attack on Khan Sheikhoun. But it is to argue that in a matter like this one, where so much is at stake, the evidence must be subjected to rigorous scrutiny, and that critics, especially experts who offer counter-evidence, must be given a fair hearing by the left. It is to argue that, when the case against Assad fits so neatly a long-standing and self-serving western #narrative, a default position of skepticism is fully justified. It is to argue that facts, strong as they may seem, can be manipulated even by expert bodies, and therefore due weight needs also to be given to context – including an assessment of motives.
This is not “denialism”, as Monbiot claims. It is a rational strategy adopted by those who object to being railroaded once again – as they were in Iraq and Libya – into catastrophic regime change operations.
Il video integrale della tragedia del 6 novembre costata la vita ad oltre 50 persone
Nel video si evince la negligenza della Guardia Costiera libica ed il totale dispregio del valore della vita. Una lunga sequenza di oltre 30 minuti con audio e comunicazione radio registrate nel corso del naufragio
▻http://www.mediterraneocronaca.it/2017/11/13/il-video-integrale-della-tragedia-del-6-novembre-costata-la-vita
#mourir_en_mer #vidéo #asile #migrations #réfugiés #décès #Méditerranée #gardes-côtes_libyens #gardes-côtes #contrôles_frontaliers #Sea_Watch
Lien vers la vidéo:
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_phI-f_yFXQ
Breaking: Dramatic first rescue operation for Sea-Watch 3
The violent and reckless behavior of Libyan Coast Guards has caused at least five deaths on the Central Mediterranean Sea this morning, as the crew of the Sea-Watch 3 was called to their first rescue mission by the Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Center. A helicopter of the Italian Navy had to intervene to prevent more fatalities. 58 people are now safe aboard the Sea-Watch 3, despite all efforts, our medical team was not able to revive an infant in our clinic. The Libyan Coast Guards forced a few of the passengers on their vessel and took them back in direction Libya. By interfering in the rescue operation, the Libyans clearly violated international law: The incident took place at 30 nm off the coast, in international waters far outside of Libyan territorial waters.
▻https://sea-watch.org/en/dramatic-rescue-operation-sea-watch-3
Clarification on the incident of November 6th
Yesterday, the 6th of November, a tragedy occurred in international waters approximately 30 nm north of Tripoli. A rubber boat sent a distress call, to which different units reacted in coordination with the responsible Maritime Rescue Coordination Center in Rome. The situation was grave: people were already in the water when the Sea-Watch 3 arrived on scene. An Italian navy helicopter, a French warship and the Sea-Watch 3 were coordinating effectively via marine radio channel 16. According to the protocol for such situations, the ship best equipped for the rescue operation takes over the ‘On-Scene Command’, so the French warship and the helicopter acknowledged Sea-Watch 3 as such and tried to take the necessary steps to coordinate and carry out the rescue together calmly.
However, a patrol vessel of the Libyan Coast Guard was not willing to respond to radio calls, both from Sea-Watch 3 and the military units present to help coordinate the rescue. Instead, the Libyan patrol boat closed in at high speed – even though it is not an appropriate vessel to take people out of the water compared with the other assets on the scene, due to its shape and equipment. The Libyan coast guards did indeed take out people from the water, but mainly, people climbed onto the Libyan Coast Guard vessel themselves in fear of their lives without assistance by the coast guards. The Libyans’ aggressive and uncoordinated behaviour caused more stress and chaos than relief. When the Libyan Coast Guards started to beat and threaten people on their vessel, some tried to jump back into the water. Instead of calming the situation down, Libyan Coast Guards even threw potatoes and lifebuoys at the Sea-Watch rescue boats that were deployed to take people out of the water. In such a serious situation it is paramount to avoid further stress and panic, yet the Libyan Coast Guards did the opposite, their only aim to take as many people back to the Libyan shore as possible.
The Libyan Coast Guards have not even deployed their rescue boat which is meant to be an asset in case of man overboard. They left it stored on their aftdeck during the whole operation. Instead of throwing potatoes at our crew, the self-declared coast guards could have made themselves useful for once. Obviously, their priority was not the rescue, but to drag people back to Libya.
With this intention in mind, the Libyan Coast Guard vessel departed the scene at full speed, even though one person was still hanging on to the starboard side and was dragged through the water. This life-threatening situation was reported by Sea-Watch through CH 16 repeatedly with no response. In the end, the Italian helicopter had to intervene to avoid another fatality. We acknowledge the role of the Libyan Coast Guard saving lives during rescue operations, but their reckless behaviour while trying to ‘pull back’ as many migrants as possible to Libya have repeatedly caused more harm than help. Furthermore, their actions – for which they are funded by the European Union – violate international law. We urge the Libyan Coast Guards to respect international law and to avoid increasing the level of chaos in a rescue operation.
▻https://sea-watch.org/en/clarification-on-the-incident-of-november-6th
Flüchtlinge ertrinken vor laufenden Kameras
Red. / 26. Nov 2017 - Vor der libyschen Küste sind mehrere Flüchtlinge ertrunken, weil ein Schiff der libyschen Küstenwache ihre Rettung behindert hat.
▻https://www.infosperber.ch/Artikel/Gesellschaft/Fluchtlinge-ertrinken-vor-laufenden-Kamera
Migranti. Dramma naufragi e motovedette libiche. Intervista a Nico Stalla della nave Aquarius.
Soccorsi ma anche storie di naufragi e dispersi a causa delle aggressive motovedette libiche in acque internazionali.
Intervista di Sergio Scandura al coordinatore dei soccorsi Nico Stalla a bordo della nave Aquarius della Ong SOS Mediterranee con a bordo lo staff medico di Medici Senza Frontiere.
«Migranti. Dramma naufragi e motovedette libiche. Intervista a Nico Stalla della nave Aquarius.» realizzata da Sergio Scandura con Nicola Stalla (coordinatore SAR di SOS Méditerranée Italia).
L’intervista è stata registrata martedì 6 marzo 2018 alle 16:30.
Nel corso dell’intervista sono stati trattati i seguenti temi: Emigrati, Guardia Costiera, Libia, Marina, Mediterraneo, Militare, Ong.
▻https://www.radioradicale.it/scheda/535192/migranti-dramma-naufragi-e-motovedette-libiche-intervista-a-nico-stall
Commentaire sur twitter de MSF Italie:
Zio non lasciarmi". Le ultime parole che un uomo ha sentito dire dalla nipote di 7 anni prima di separarsi da lei. Lui è stato soccorso da #Aquarius, lei è stata vista tra le persone intercettate dalla Guardia Costiera libica e riportate indietro.
A political earthquake is rocking Saudi Arabia’s pillars of princ
▻https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/Comment/2017/11/7/A-Saudi-political-earthquake-decapitates-the-system-of-princes
Saudi Arabia’s political earthquake has shaken the foundations of the country’s power structure.
A system based on the division of power between the lineages of the sons of Abd al Aziz Ibn Saud has been replaced - at least temporarily - by one based on the lineage of King Salman and within it, of his young son Muhammad.
Other Gulf monarchies, including in Qatar and Oman, have witnessed intra-family power struggles that resulted in the replacement of the sovereign by his son. But none has ever witnessed what amounts to a coup d’etat against not only the king, but against the entire monarchical system within which he exercised his powers.
So Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman’s purge of his uncles and cousins is more akin to republican coups mounted in Egypt in 1952, Iraq in 1958, or Libya in 1969.
The two key questions to be asked are (i) can the crown prince consolidate his power, and (ii) what will be the long-term consequences of the political earthquake?
The effectiveness demonstrated thus far by King Salman and his son in grabbing all the country’s reins of power suggests real political skill. They undercut Prince Muhammad bin Nayef’s base in the Ministry of Interior, one he had inherited from his father, and then utilised that base to neutralise other princes.
$2bn EU-Africa ’anti-migration’ fund too opaque, say critics
Trust fund intended to prevent migration by tackling insecurity and poverty suffers from lack of clarity, say observers
▻https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/oct/31/2bn-eu-africa-anti-migration-fund-too-opaque-say-critics?CMP=Share_Andr
#trust_fund #Afrique #externalisation #contrôles_frontaliers
Le nom en français de ce #fonds :
« #fonds_fiduciaire_d’urgence de l’Union européenne pour l’Afrique » (►http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-15-6056_fr.htm) #fond_fiduciaire_d'urgence
Juncker : « les États membres contribuent trop peu au fonds pour l’Afrique »
Après un premier tour de négociations lors du premier jour du Conseil, le président de la Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, a prévenu devant la presse que l’action extérieure de l’UE atteignait ses limites à cause d’un manque de financement.
▻https://www.euractiv.fr/section/migrations/news/juncker-member-states-committed-too-little-for-africa-fund
#fonds_pour_l'afrique
“EU-Africa migration funds were used on Libya’s coast guard patrol vessels »
Genoa - EU international cooperation funding destined for development projects in Africa was used to refurbish patrol boats for Libya’s coast guard, and handed over to Libyan militia units who practice torture and extrajudicial killings, in violation of Libyan and international standards.
▻http://www.themeditelegraph.com/en/markets/finance-and-politics/2017/11/16/africa-migration-funds-were-used-libya-coast-guard-patrol-vessels-ZxeIfzI2rMZYW6ixGchHKP/index.html
#Libye #gardes-côtes_libyens #externalisation #développement #aide_au_développement
–-> je ne sais pas si le fonds dans lequel il est question ici c’est aussi celui qui est mentionné dans le premier article de la liste... @isskein : tu en sais plus ?
Europe’s Plan to Close Its Sea Borders Relies on Libya’s Coast Guard Doing Its Dirty Work, Abusing Migrants
When a Libyan coast guard officer raised his hands and pointed, as if holding a rifle, Thomas Schaible wasn’t too worried. It wasn’t his first violent encounter with the Libyan coast guard, but this time, with a helicopter from the Italian navy overhead and Italian and French warships nearby, Schaible knew it was an empty threat.
►https://theintercept.com/2017/11/25/libya-coast-guard-europe-refugees
Libya human bondage risks overshadowing Africa-EU summit
#Mogherini was questioned about the EU’s strategy of outsourcing the migration crisis to foreign countries such as Libya and Turkey, which received billions to prevent Syrian refugees from crossing to Greece.
She said the situation was different on two counts: first, the migrants stranded in Libya were not legitimate asylum seekers like those fleeing the war in Syria. And second, different international bodies were in charge.
“When it comes to Turkey, it is mainly refugees from Syria; when it comes to Libya, it is mainly migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa and the relevant international laws apply in different manners and the relevant UN agencies are different – the UNHCR on one side, especially in Turkey, and the IOM especially in Libya.”
►https://www.euractiv.com/section/development-policy/news/libya-human-bondage-risks-overshadowing-africa-eu-summit
#IOM #OIM #HCR #Libye #Turquie #migrants_économiques #réfugiés #tri #catégorisation
En lien avec cela, lire:
▻http://seen.li/dn2v
#mixed_migrations
Commission européenne - Fond fiduciaire d’urgence pour l’Afrique - Nouveaux programmes
Trois nouveaux programmes d’un montant de 29,6 millions d’euros ont été adoptés dans le cadre du Fonds fiduciaire d’urgence de l’UE pour l’Afrique. Ces programmes complètent l’action de l’UE visant à relever les défis de la migration en Méditerranée. Ces nouveaux programmes intensifieront le travail en cours de l’UE pour renforcer la protection des migrants, soutenir leur réintégration durable et permettre une augmentation du nombre de retours volontairement assistés depuis la Libye. Ils contribueront également à la lutte contre les réseaux criminels dans la région.
Three new programmes worth €29.6 million have been adopted in the framework of the EU Trust Fund for Africa as part of EU work in addressing migration challenges in the Mediterranean. A set of priorities for 2018 have also been agreed.
These new programmes will step up the EU’s ongoing work to strengthening protection of migrants, support sustainable reintegration and provide assisted voluntary returns. The programmes will also contribute to fight criminal networks across the region.
High Representative/Vice-President Federica Mogherini said: “Last week we established a joint EU/AU/UN Task Force to accelerate our work to protect migrants and refugees and fight the criminal networks. With these new programmes, we will step up our commitments, save lives, guarantee the respect of human rights and of international standards, provide alternatives to those wishing to return to their homes and support to host communities. We already assisted over 14,000 people stranded in Libya to return and will support an additional 15,000 returns by February 2018. And we will support our partners to counter traffickers and smugglers, assisting them in bringing peace and security to the region.”
Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations Johannes Hahn said: “The current challenges in the Mediterranean Sea remain a top priority for the European Union. The EU Trust Fund for Africa continues to take action to tackle the root causes of irregular migration and to defend the rights of people who risk falling into the hands of traffickers and smugglers. With our new programmes, we will help dismantle criminal networks in North of Africa, support migrants who wish to return to their home countries and facilitate access for migrants to legal advice. We will also promote socio-economic integration in Morocco and will foster socio-economic development of the Libyan Municipalities”.
Regional programme - Facility for Migrant Protection and Reintegration in North Africa, €10 million
This programme will be implemented by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), and will further contribute to the ongoing efforts under the assistance voluntary return scheme. It will strengthen protection of migrants, support sustainable reintegration systems in North Africa and provide assisted voluntary return to migrants wishing to return to their home from Northern Africa. This Facility is conceived as a regional flexible mechanism able to adapt to the specific needs of the countries. This is yet another action towards enhancing support to stranded migrants as well as reinforcing national return and reintegration systems across the North of Africa region.
Regional programme - Dismantling the criminal networks operating in North Africa and involved in migrant smuggling and human trafficking, €15 million
This project will focus on regional dimension of fight against smugglers and traffickers. It will target the public sector of the countries in the region (in particular the Ministries of Interior, Justice, Finance, and Health). Under this programme, implemented by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), capacity-building as well as light equipment, such as IT and forensic tools, will be provided to actors dealing with law enforcement and criminal justice. The final beneficiaries will be the general public, victims of trafficking, smuggled migrants, and families of the latter two categories.
Morocco - Legal Empowerment for migrants, €4.58 million
This programme implemented by the Belgian Technical Cooperation will reinforce the protection and resilience of migrants and refugees, displaced persons and host communities in Morocco. Whilst strengthening awareness on their rights and access to legal counselling, the project will also contribute to promote the socio-economic integration of migrants and facilitate migrants’ integration in the Moroccan society. This is a new very specific action complementing the EU support to the implementation of the Moroccan National Strategy on Migration (SNIA). The programme will support actors who help migrants and refugees access to their rights, such as lawyers, students, civil society associations and justice staff. It will develop and create legal clinics in Rabat, Casablanca, Tanger and Oujda.
Objectives for 2018
The Commission also outlined the priorities of the EUTF/North of Africa window for 2018. The situation in Libya will remain a top priority, with on the one hand increased efforts for the protection of migrants and refugees, including through the support for additional assisted voluntary returns and support for evacuation of the most vulnerable ones (in line with the recent decision of the EU-African Union summit); and on the other hand support to host communities. More specifically, funding will be provided to the UNHCR’s evacuation mechanism through the EUTF and discussions with the IOM on additional measures under the assisted voluntary return scheme are being finalised. The Commission is also working together with Italy on a new initiative to be presented to the Operational Committee early in 2018, which is aimed at fostering the socio-economic development of the Libyan Municipalities, on the basis of needs of local authorities and in close coordination with the PC/Government of National Accord (GNA).
▻http://www.europeanmigrationlaw.eu/fr/articles/actualites/commission-europeenne-fond-fiduciaire-d-urgence-pour-l-afrique-
Come viene usato il Fondo Fiduciario per l’Africa?
“Vertice UE-Africa: l’Europa non paga”. Così titolava il settimanale tedesco Der Spiegel alla vigilia del Summit di Abidjan di fine novembre, evidenziando un problema crescente nell’approccio europeo al contenimento dei flussi migratori: come reperire le risorse con cui finanziare il Fondo fiduciario per l’Africa. Perché se da un lato aumentano obiettivi e programmi da finanziare, dall’altro non cresce il coinvolgimento economico dei governi europei.
▻http://openmigration.org/analisi/come-viene-usato-il-fondo-fiduciario-per-lafrica
2.12.2017 – Commission européenne - Fond fiduciaire d’urgence pour l’Afrique - Nouvelles actions pour renforcer la stabilité dans la corne de l’Afrique
Le Comité opérationnel du Fond fiduciaire d’urgence pour l’Afrique a adopté une nouvelle série de 13 programmes d’un montant de 174,4 millions d’euros pour la région de la #Corne_de_l'Afrique
▻http://www.europeanmigrationlaw.eu/fr/articles/actualites/commission-europeenne-fond-fiduciaire-d-urgence-pour-l-afrique-
Fondo Africa, quelle risorse destinate a progetti lontani dall’aiuto allo sviluppo
Il dossier realizzato sugli atti di delibera e ottenuto grazie alla richiesta dell’Associazione per gli Studi giuridici sull’Immigrazione (ASGI) e sulla risposta del sottosegretario agli Esteri Della Vedova all’interrogazione del PD sull’utilizzo delle risorse stanziate. Risorse spese in Tunisia, Niger e Libia che pongono, secondo ActionAid, problemi di costituzionalità e trasparenza
▻http://www.repubblica.it/solidarieta/cooperazione/2017/12/18/news/fondo_africa-184514509
Libyan coast guard attacks rescuers after training by EU military operation
▻http://www.statewatch.org/news/2017/dec/eu-libyan-coast-guard-eu-training-abuses-hunko-pr-18-12-17.pdf
A ‘blind spot’ in the migration debate? International responsibility of the EU and its Member States for cooperating with the Libyan coastguard and militias
The discussion on the restrictive migration management policies of the European Union (EU) and its Member States (MS) has so far focused on the potential violation of the primary rules of international law that determine the conduct of subjects of international law. The question of applicability of the secondary rules of international responsibility that provide for the consequences of the commitment of a wrongful act has attracted less attention. The main question in the current context is whether the cooperation of the EU and its MS with the Libyan coastguard and militias with the view of stemming irregular migration flows to Europe generates international responsibility for the above actors. More specifically, it is asked whether there is an autonomous basis in the law of international responsibility for holding the EU and its the MS responsible for the violations of human rights occurring in Libya, even if they do not exercise directly jurisdiction over migrants. Three aspects of this theme will be developed here: first, the nature and scope of the cooperation of the EU and its MS, in particular Italy, with the Libyan authorities, coastguard and militias in view of restricting the access of migrants to the EU; second, the extent of human rights violations of migrants in Libya; and third, the alleged complicity and responsibility of the EU and MS for the violations of these rights.
▻http://eumigrationlawblog.eu/a-blind-spot-in-the-migration-debate-international-responsibility
L’Europe affirme que la formation des gardes-côtes libyens avance
La formation des gardes-côtes libyens, notamment pour le sauvetage de migrants, avance, a déclaré jeudi à Tunis le commandant de l’opération navale européenne Sophia, chargée de lutter contre les passeurs.
« La formation se passe bien », a affirmé Enrico Credendino, commandant de la force navale européenne en Méditerranée (Sophia).
« Les gardes-côtes libyens ont été très actifs, en particulier au cours du second semestre 2017. Ils ont secouru beaucoup de migrants, presque 18.000 alors qu’en 2015 par exemple, ils en avaient secouru seulement 800 », a-t-il précisé.
Lancée en 2015 par l’UE, l’opération navale Sophia est chargée de lutter contre les passeurs et de former les gardes-côtes libyens.
Sa mission a été reconduite en juillet par le Conseil européen jusqu’en décembre 2018.
Déchirée par les rivalités entre groupes armés et les autorités qui se disputent le pouvoir, la Libye a sombré dans le chaos depuis la chute du régime de Mouammar Kadhafi en 2011.
Des centaines de milliers de migrants, certains fuyant des conflits, d’autres la pauvreté tentent de traverser la Méditerranée depuis la Libye pour rejoindre l’Europe. Depuis le début de l’année, au moins 337 d’entre eux sont morts ou disparus au large de la Libye, selon l’Organisation internationale des migrations.
▻https://www.voaafrique.com/a/migrations-formations-de-garde-cotes-libyens-avance/4300524.html
#Opération_sophia
A mettre en lien avec cet article :
La guardia costiera libica minaccia l’ong Proactiva Open Arms
►https://www.internazionale.it/bloc-notes/annalisa-camilli/2018/03/16/guardia-costiera-libica-open-arms
Un film de #Andrea_Segre, à voir absolument. Il montre les manoeuvres italiennes en Libye :
L’ordine delle cose (L’ordre des choses) :
Rinaldi, policier italien de grande expérience, est envoyé par son gouvernement en Libye afin de négocier le maintien des migrants sur le sol africain. Sur place, il se heurte à la complexité des rapports tribaux libyens et à la puissance des trafiquants exploitant la détresse des réfugiés.
Au cours de son enquête, il rencontre dans un centre de rétention, Swada, une jeune somalienne qui le supplie de l’aider. Habituellement froid et méthodique, Rinaldi va devoir faire un choix douloureux entre sa conscience et la raison d’Etat : est-il possible de renverser l’ordre des choses ?
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b8mp4N4Blw
Il est actuellement en salle à Grenoble...
#film
Migranti, gli occhi della Libia sui radar europei nel Mediterraneo
A dicembre 2016 un ufficiale di collegamento della guardia costiera libica è entrato nel cuore del #Sea_Horse_Mediterranean_Network, il sistema di monitoraggio dell’Unione per il controllo delle frontiere Sud del Mediterraneo e che vede in prima linea l’Italia. Ma il governo libico era ritenuto inaffidabile dalla Commissione Ue nel 2015 ed escluso dal progetto. Ora perché è coinvolto? E a quale titolo?
Occhi elettronici. Radar potenti e sofisticati. Satelliti militari in grado di scansionare ogni centimetro quadrato del Mediterraneo centrale, quel pezzo di mare tra la Libia e l’Italia divenuto tomba per migliaia di migranti, morti mentre cercavano di fuggire alle guerre dei loro paesi e alle torture dei carcerieri libici. Mezzi straordinariamente potenti, soprattutto se messi in rete, formando un flusso di dati in grado di salvare vite – avvistando ogni piccolo gommone che tenta la traversata – e di bloccare i traffici. Non solo di esseri umani, ma anche di petrolio, droga, armi. Si chiama Sea Horse Mediterranean Network ed è l’asset più prezioso della rete di controllo della frontiera sud dell’Europa.
Un progetto costato milioni di euro, promosso direttamente dall’Unione europea e che vede un ruolo da protagonista dell’Italia. Una rete che – stando a documenti consultati da Famiglia Cristiana – potrebbe però cadere in pessime mani. Quelle delle milizie libiche, ovvero le forze di Tripoli che compongono quella stessa Guardia costiera pronta ad usare le armi contro le Ong, accusata un anno fa dalle Nazioni Unite di essere stata complice in alcuni casi degli stessi trafficanti. Il progetto in origine riguardava l’area dell’Atlantico. La responsabilità, in quel caso, era stata affidata alla Guardia Civil spagnola e l’area interessata era sostanzialmente il tratto di mare a sud delle Canarie, una delle rotte delle migrazioni via mare attive fino a una decina di anni fa. Il sistema permette di «scambiare informazioni via satellite per combattere l’immigrazione irregolare via mare», si legge in un documento delle autorità spagnole che abbiamo consultato, creando dei punti di contatto in ogni paese coinvolto «per accedere a questa rete sicura».
Le informazioni raccolte sono estremamente sensibili e costituiscono una base di conoscenza e di intelligence sicuramente strategica. Dopo l’avvio di una prima fase sulla zona atlantica, il progetto Sea Horse punta, dal 2015, al Mediterraneo. Tre i paesi del nord Africa coinvolti: l’Egitto, la Tunisia e la Libia. Nel novembre del 2015 il commissario europeo Dimitris Avramopoulos aveva risposto ad una interrogazione delle deputate europee Sabine Lösing e Cornelia Ernst (GUE/NGL), spiegando che il progetto era in una fase di stallo. Il problema principale riguardava proprio la Libia: «A causa della situazione d’insicurezza e alla mancanza di stabilità del governo nazionale libico – si legge nella risposta all’interrogazione pubblicata sul sito del Parlamento europeo – tutte le attività per installare il #National_Contact_Point in Libia sono sospese. Di conseguenza le autorità libiche interessate non sono collegate al #Mebocc, che sarà ospitato dal centro di coordinamento italiano per la sorveglianza delle frontiere».
La sigla Mebocc sta per #Mediterranean_Border_Cooperation_Center, ed è il cuore della rete di controllo del mare tra Italia e Libia. La collocazione di questo centro, come ha spiegato il commissario europeo, è prevista nel nostro paese, con un backup a Malta. Tutto, però, sembrava fermo fino al novembre del 2015.
Un ufficiale di collegamento libico era presente nel cuore della rete europea di sorveglianza delle frontiere marittime
Alla fine del 2016, dopo il cambio ai vertici del ministero dell’Interno e l’arrivo di Marco Minniti, il progetto ha subito un’accelerazione. Nella “Relazione sulla performance per il 2016” del Viminale c’è un paragrafo dove si annuncia l’operatività del progetto: «L’infrastruttura satellitare», si legge nel documento, «è stata installata nel #Centro_Interforze_di_Gestione_e_Controllo (#CIGC) #SICRAL di Vigna di Valle, teleporto principale del Ministero della Difesa, mentre presso il Centro Nazionale di Coordinamento per l’immigrazione “Roberto Iavarone” – #EUROSUR, sede del MEBOCC, sono stati installati gli altri apparati funzionali alla rete di comunicazione. Al 31 dicembre 2016, quello dell’Italia risultava essere l’unico nodo realmente attivo e pronto per le comunicazioni».
Tutto pronto, dunque, per operare. Pronto e operativo, a quanto sembra, era anche il governo libico, che solo un anno prima veniva definito instabile dalla Commissione europea. Si legge nel rapporto del Ministero dell’Interno, documento che Famiglia Cristiana ha consultato: «Si segnala inoltre che nel 2016, nell’ambito del progetto Sea Horse Mediterranean Network, quattro ufficiali della Guardia Costiera – Marina Militare Libica sono stati ospitati in Italia, in qualità di osservatori, uno presso l’#ICC - #International_Coordination_Center, altri due imbarcati sull’assetto spagnolo “#Rio_Segura” durante il mese di settembre e uno presso il Centro nazionale di coordinamento – EUROSUR della Direzione Centrale per l’Immigrazione dal 5 al 9 dicembre, con funzioni di collegamento con le autorità libiche e per migliorare/stimolare la cooperazione nella gestione degli eventi di immigrazione irregolare provenienti dalla Libia».
Dunque un ufficiale di collegamento libico era presente nel cuore della rete europea di sorveglianza delle frontiere marittime del Mediterraneo poco più di un anno fa. Fatto che potrebbe avere come conseguenza la possibilità di accesso al sistema Sea Horse da parte del governo di Tripoli, impegnato, come abbiamo visto, nel respingimento in mare dei migranti che fuggono dal Nord Africa verso l’Europa. La sensibilità delle informazioni che il network raccoglie e gestisce è evidente. Un mese fa è stata presentata una seconda interrogazione al Parlamento europeo per capire se i libici già sono in grado di accedere ai dati dei satelliti che monitorano il Mediterraneo: «Dove, in Libia o in Italia, sono stati realizzati i Centri Operativi (ad esempio il Mebocc) e quali autorità o milizie sono coinvolte?», hanno chiesto i deputati Sabine Lösing e Cornelia Ernst. Al momento non hanno ottenuto nessuna risposta. La Libia è sempre più vicina.
▻http://www.famigliacristiana.it/articolo/migranti-gli-occhi-della-libia-sui-radar-europei-nel-mediterraneo.
#Egypte #Tunisie #Libye #images_satellitaires
Migranti, affidarne i soccorsi alla Libia significa respingerli
Un verbale della riunione dell’ Organizzazione mondiale del mare del 30 ottobre scorso svela la contrarietà di creare un coordinamento libico dei salvataggi nel Mediterraneo. Ma giovedì scorso la nave della Ong spagnola Open Arms è stata affidata proprio alle motovedette di Tripoli come ha spiegato anche la Guardia Costiera italiana. Ora cominciano i respingimenti collettivi per conto terzi?
▻http://m.famigliacristiana.it/articolo/migranti-affidarne-i-soccorsi-in-mare-alla-libia-significa-respi
EU Trust Fund for Africa: five new programmes adopted for the Sahel and Lake Chad region
The European Commission has adopted five new programmes worth over €141 million under the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa.
Commissioner for International Cooperation and Development Neven Mimica said: "Our new EU programmes, worth €141 million, are particularly focusing on important opportunities for young people. They will furthermore support our #G5-Sahel partners to strengthen development and stability in border areas, as well as help us to save more lives and fight human traffickers, who take advantage of vulnerable people’s despair. We also continue our actions to support partner countries to better manage migration and to develop civil registries. Those needs do not decrease, and the resources from the EU Trust Fund are quickly depleting”
At the regional level, two programmes totalling €75 million will seek to shore up stability and youth participation in the G5 #Sahel countries (#Burkina_Faso, Chad, #Mali, Mauritania and #Niger). A new €70 million Emergency programme will increase people’s access to social services in border areas. The programme was designed under the Sahel Alliance and responds directly to the needs voiced by the G5 Sahel countries under the #Priority_Investment_Programme. Another €5 million will ensure the implementation of the second phase of “#The_Voices_of_young_people_in_the_Sahel” programme, which was launched in 2017 and contributes to integrating youth organisations into the processes of designing and implementing development and social policies.
A new €7.6 million programme in Niger will further boost migrant protection on migratory routes and support host communities. Also in Niger, the ongoing AJUSEN budget support programme in the justice, security and border management sectors will receive an additional €10 million to continue this work.
In Senegal, a €9 million initiative will help tackle criminal networks that are linked to irregular migration, migrant smuggling and human trafficking, and enhance regional cooperation in this area.
In #Côte_d'Ivoire, a new programme worth €30 million will support the country’s ongoing efforts to create a coherent and robust civil registry system that will help improve the management of public policies, enable people to exercise their fundamental rights and improve their access to public services, including the facilitation of voluntary return and the sustainable reintegration of migrants.
Last but not least, the #Technical_Cooperation_Facility covering all Trust Fund regions and the Research and Evidence Facility covering the Sahel and Lake Chad and the North of Africa regions have been reinforced with an additional amount of €12 million. In line with the evidence-based approach under the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa to ensure strategic and efficient interventions, this additional funding will facilitate more studies and research, as well as technical support when necessary.
The five programmes adopted today bring the total number of programmes adopted since December 2015 for the Sahel and Lake Chad region to 91, with a total value of €1.7 billion.
Background
The EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa was established in 2015 to address the root causes of instability, irregular migration and forced displacement. Resources currently allocated to this Trust Fund are €4.1 billion from EU institutions, European Member States and other donors.
Today’s assistance adds to the 165 programmes already approved across the three regions (North of Africa, Sahel and Lake Chad region and Horn of Africa), worth a total of €3,157 million. These funds were divided up as follows: Sahel/Lake Chad €1,549 million (86 programmes); Horn of Africa €1,141.3 million (58 programmes); North of Africa €467.1 million (17 programmes). This amount includes 4 cross-region programmes (€145.1 million).
▻http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-18-6447_en.htm?locale=EN
#Tchad #Mauritanie #jeunesse #Sénégal #réintégration #retours_volontaires #retour_volontaire
The Gambia is now free and democratic so Europe is pushing its migrants to go home
Gambians were among the top nationalities leaving West Africa for Italy in 2016. In total 11,929 Gambians arrived last year. But because they have a new democratically-elected government, European countries are now looking to increase the returns of Gambian migrants. A Working Party on Integration, Migration and Expulsion has already met at the European Council to discuss a draft agreement on returns between the EU and the Gambia.
The potentially explosive levels of frustration already hold true for returnees from Libya. Since March 2017, the International Organisation for Migration has sought to voluntarily return Gambians home from Libya. In August, it identified 1,979 Gambians living in Libya.
#Gambie #migrations #asile #réfugiés #renvois #expulsions #accord #pays_sûr #réfugiés_gambiens #OIM #IOM #retour_volontaire
cc @isskein
