• About

cheztopflight

~ Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not. Dr. Seuss

cheztopflight

Tag Archives: united nations

même pas peur

17 Tuesday Nov 2015

Posted by Kate Brooks in Economics, Politics, Refugees, Religion, Travel

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

asylum, australia, crisis, discrimination, EU, europe, fear, followtherefugees, France, FYROM, greece, human rights, humanitarianism, immigration, lesbos, macedonia, middle east, openeuborders, Paris, parisattacks, prayforparis, prayforpeace, prayfortheworld, refugees, refugeeswelcome, safepassage, syria, united nations, USA, war

It seemed like no one on my bus to Belgrade spoke English, but I picked up that the word refugee is not used much by the Serbians, ‘they’ are all ‘immigrants’,*said in an angry voice*, showing the power of language in labeling someone as undeserving. And it’s clear that as in Australia, many Europeans don’t believe refugees have a right to be here.

IMG_2355I am an immigrant. I left my wealthy, stable, safe country to live and work in another because I wanted to experience something different. I had no well-founded fear of persecution, I could have found a better paid and more secure job in Australia than I found here. But no one in Europe has ever questioned my right to be here. No one has ever accused me of taking someone else’s job. And as far as I know, no one has ever worried that I might be a threat to national security.

Every single refugee I spoke to loved their home. Every single one of them spoke of the beauty of their country and said they would go back if they had a future there. We are wired to want to return to where we are from. Every Christmas I go home, because it gets to November and I’m itching to be where I’m from again. For these people, going home is not an option.

I was sitting in my hotel in Belgrade when news of the terrorist attacks in Paris came through, and like everyone who calls that city home I felt sick to my stomach, and wracked with nerves until one by one everyone there who I loved turned out to be ok. There’s really nothing more terrifying than the thought of not feeling safe where you live, and the French have had a taste of that in the last few days. The difference is that for the majority of refugees, they do not have a government who will act to protect them, who will do whatever it takes to ensure their future safety. For some of them, it is the government targeting them. They are not running from an attack on a stadium, or a nightclub, or a restaurant, or a bar. Their villages, cities, and in some cases their countries, are on fire.

IMG_2361

We all empathise with the images coming out of France that show people terrified and fleeing. We can all understand that when you hear gun shots and comprehend the threat, you grab the people you love and you run. You run away from the danger, and you keep running until you find protection and feel secure. Refugees don’t get to just run out of the restaurant; they have to run further and faster and for longer until they feel safe. Why is it that we don’t look at the images of people running from war and make that correlation? There was not one story of someone slamming their door in the face of Parisians who ran on Friday. Why can we not #PorteOuverte now?

While I’ll acknowledge that I met some who weren’t running from obvious persecution, the idea that these people are to be feared is something that I understand less now than I did two weeks ago. That the man or woman who comes from a different background is someone you are justified in being afraid of because they are different to you makes no sense. We make these people the other because it allows us to feel safe in our bigotry and more comfortable in our ignorance. Obviously I didn’t talk to every refugee, but these people don’t want to blow up your homes and change your way of life. They don’t want to convert Europe or threaten your children. They don’t want to impose some deranged form of Sharia law. What they want is the same things you do. They want to send their kids to school, finish their own education, get a job, and be able to feed their families. They want to be free and to live without fear.

IMG_2356Almost immediately following the attacks in Paris, Poland announced that it would no longer be adhering to its commitment to accept a mediocre number of Syrian refugees under a previously negotiated EU deal. Hungary is likely to follow. Calls in the US and Australia to halt any intake were loud. As if the two issues were automatically linked. Despite the fact that the vast majority of these perpetrators were European citizens, born and bred here, in our schools, our suburbs and our communities.

What I’m afraid of now is what’s to come. How we will react as a community. If Paris will permanently feel like a city under military protection. If France will feel like a country at war. I’m afraid that people will become more racist. I’m afraid that Marine Le Pen will win the next election. I’m afraid Muslims will no longer feel safe on the streets. I’m afraid that hate speech will become something we accept, stand by and allow to happen.

But when it comes to the refugees, I am not afraid of them. I’ve helped these people out of leaky boats. I’ve comforted them while they’ve howled violently. I’ve walked to border crossings with them in the pitch black. I’ve sat in the dirt and talked with them in their camps. I’ve travelled across a country with them. I’ve shaken their hands and heard their stories and shared their food. I’ve been alone with them in the dark.

And if I’m not afraid of them after that than you don’t get to be either.

paris-peace

48.856614 2.352222

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Print
  • More
  • Pocket
  • Share on Tumblr

Like this:

Like Loading...

This is why we survive; this is why humanity will endure whatever evil has to throw at it.

11 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by Kate Brooks in Economics, Politics, Refugees

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

asylum, australia, discrimination, EU, followtherefugees, greece, human rights, humanitarianism, immigration, middle east, openeuborders, refugees, refugeesgr, refugeeswelcome, safepassage, syria, united nations, war

Nationality is not something you think about that much when you have a ‘good one’. The whole concept of being a refugee revolves around a lack of protection from the state, something that people in the west generally don’t have to worry about. Nationality can be a source of pride and a source of shame, for me it has definitely been both. The only other Australian I met on Lesbos was a woman who emigrated there twenty years ago. And volunteers and aid workers alike were all very surprised to learn where I was from. We really do have the most atrocious international reputation concerning this issue, and I would like to see Dutton or Turnbull try and justify it to the mayor of Sykemia or Molyvos, or the mayor of Lesbos who has consistently reiterated that it makes no difference where these people come from, we are all human. These people haven’t done anything wrong, and one day, that could be us.

IMG_2134Nationality also plays a role amongst the refugees. I was ignorant of the tension between Syrians and those who come from further east. Because they are more likely to be wealthy, the Syrians can pay for private taxis and buses rather than wait for the state supplied transport, thus they reach the processing centres and eventually their final destination more quickly. The Afghans have capitalised on this and sell Syrians who arrive after them their fingerprint documentation. I was surprised to learn of such entrepreneurship. Being in less of a rush allows people from Afghanistan the time to go through the processing, and after they no longer need the paper work (to board ferries), they sell it to Syrians who want to speed up crossing the orders. This gives the Afghans money and buys the Syrians time. The Afghans then have to line up at the next border while the Syrians pass through. Every time the authorities think they have come up with a full proof way to control the situation, within days the refugees have outsmarted them and found a way around it. You just can’t control population movements on this scale.

I speak to an aid worker from Swiss organisation Medecine du Monde who tells me about his PHD in post-2011 migration from Libya. When the conflict began tens of thousands of Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan and Pakistani workers, mostly domestic and labour, were left stranded with no help from their governments. On the contrary, China hired a Greek ferry, a Malta airport and evacuated 32 000 of its citizens within a week. The difference between a government that cares and a government that doesn’t is a matter of life and death.

From the Greek Islands and Athens the refugees head north by bus to the border with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM). The camp on the Greek side where I am now is north of Thessaloniki and called Idomeni. Depending on numbers refugees can spend anywhere from 20 minutes to 6 hours waiting to cross. It is a separate border to the official crossing, and I have been told I won’t be allowed to cross over with them tomorrow but will have to travel further along to the regulated border. So determined are the authorities to distinguish between ‘us’ and ‘them’ that we can’t even cross the same frontier in the same place. Police ensure that people cross in groups of 50, and the refugees walk along the rail line into FYROM. Here the authorities are pragmatic and everything is very regulated. As far as FYROM is concerned, these people do not really exist and it is just about creating a corridor to get them out as quickly as possible. After crossing they are charged 25 EU for a train to the Serbian border. There is one train every 3 hours and the largest holds 1500 people. As long as the borders further north stay open everything is calm. But aid workers fear what will happen if Austria, Slovenia, Croatia or Serbia decide to close their borders. Earlier this year Hungary made just that decision and panic made the system unmanageable. Another factor out of everyone’s control is the weather. The last week has seen temperatures above 20C and sunny days, but when it rains and the temperature drops people get sick. They may have to walk in the cold for hours and will often present with hypothermia and other health problems that make an otherwise composed situation tense.

IMG_2135The overall atmosphere is always one of onward movement. Stopping is not an option- these people do not want to stop, and nobody wants them to stop ‘here’. Its fine if they decide to stop in Serbia or Germany or Sweden, or if they had stopped in Turkey. But no one wants them to be their problem. My Medecine du Monde guide is another open border advocate; I’ve been surprised by how many I’ve met. He makes a lot of sense. Whenever there is an announcement about one of the countries along the route closing the borders, panic is rampant and there is a spike in numbers. It is this sense of urgency induced by governments flexing their muscles that potentially renders the situation out of control. He maintains that this is not a humanitarian crisis, it’s a political crisis. A statement validated by EU paralysis in coming to an agreement on how to deal with the situation. The humanitarian disaster could be solved by very quick decisions; more permanent infrastructure, better facilities, correct information on processing and procedures. But governments don’t want that. Governments want to maintain the allure and facade of border protection and a temporary problem, which is rubbish given the fact that many of these people are running from protracted situations. Above all people here advocate for a ‘ferry first’ approach. A large boat crosses from Turkey to Lesbos every day, but the refugees cannot get on it despite the fact that it is almost empty. There is no understanding such a prohibition when people then chose to get on rickety boats and risk their lives anyway. Until the government and the EU do something about that it is hard to imagine anyone taking their attempts at compassionate rhetoric seriously.

This idea of thinking beyond the nation state challenges usual perceptions of refugees vs economic migrants, though the line between these two is often so blurred it is hard to make judgments that one is more deserving than the other. Economic migrants by definition have something to offer our societies. Although they may be seen as less worthy, in practice they are less of a drain on countries’ economies, particularly countries within the EU, Australia, Japan, Korea, which all have aging populations and will depend upon migration for their future survival. The 1951 Convention that determines status and who is entitled to refugee protection was drafted in response to a very particular context after WW2, that resembles nothing like the current global situation. The drafters had in mind Jewish elite academics forced to flee the holocaust, not Syrian families running from war. But valid fears exist that any attempts at redrafting the Convention will result in more rather than less restrictions on who is offered protection. Categorising people who need to flee just seems so pointless. The world is shaking just as much as it was in 1945, it’s just that it’s not shaking in our backyard anymore.

IMG_2117While nationality may divide us still, it is heart-warming to see the number of refugees who have formed groups in their travels, showing the natural human desire to always be part of a collective. No man is an island, and none of us want to journey alone. And the biggest collective of all is humanity. Jamal, the man who quit his job to live a life of volunteering told me how he was walking up to a camp one day when he was called into the bushes by three cheeky young unaccompanied Afghan boys who were eating food distributed by emergency staff around a fire they had lit to keep warm. They motioned for him to join them and shared their sandwiches, without knowing when their next meal would be. They also then tried to give him their lighter as a present. The gift of food and the gift of warmth, from three boys who had consistently not had access to either. I’m going to use Jamal’s words because I can’t put it any better. “This is why we survive; this is why humanity will endure whatever evil has to throw at it. It’s because of our capacity to share in the most extreme of circumstances.” Regardless of what symbol we have on the front of our passports.

41.122493 22.510477

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Print
  • More
  • Pocket
  • Share on Tumblr

Like this:

Like Loading...

The Politics of Non Intervention

14 Tuesday Aug 2012

Posted by Kate Brooks in All, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

humanitarianism, intervention, middle east, syria, united nations, war

In what could be described as the understatement of the year, one observer at the recent Geneva meeting of the ‘powers that be’ noted that ”too much blood has been shed,” concerning the worsening crisis in Syria. Since the conflict began early last year, more than 100 000 refugees have poured over the borders of Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey. More than 75 per cent of these are women and children. The longer the atrocities continue, the greater the risk it will spread throughout the Middle East. Already, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Iran are funding their proxies on the ground. But even if these countries only fight through their Syrian allies, the recent shooting down of a Turkish aircraft and mortar attacks spreading 20 kilometres across the Lebanese border demonstrate the danger of mistakes igniting a regional conflict.

It is not difficult to appreciate why NATO has thus far failed to notably intervene in Syria. With the US war weary from Iraq and Afghanistan and Europe holding onto economic stability by a thread, Syria presents a headache that no one wants to deal with. To add to this, Russian support has ensured Syria’s defence capabilities are significantly more sophisticated than Libya and Iraq. Given that the army has remained largely loyal to the President, any Western intervention will incur losses to the military, as well as a high civilian death toll. Not to mention the dramatic affect intervention will have on already tense international relations between the West and China and Russia. Fearful of losing any influence in the region, the two Security Council members have repeatedly stated that they will not support military engagement.

Despite the immense challenges involved in humanitarian intervention, the international community legally can and morally should intervene in Syria. The relatively recent examples of Rwanda and Darfur show that we are yet to learn from our failure to act to prevent wide scale killings. The United Nations Charter authorises the Security Council to use military force in confronting threats to global security where peaceful means have failed. In 2005, world leaders concluded that these threats include crimes against humanity, war crimes and ethnic cleansing under the ”responsibility to protect” doctrine. At close scrutiny, it is clear that Syria meets these requirements.

The rationale behind intervention must be to prevent crimes against humanity, not pursue ulterior motives such as resource grabbing. Considering the well documented atrocities being committed in Syria, the world’s humanitarian concerns are justified. Following this, military force must be a final and proportionate resort after peaceful options are exhausted. By his own admission, Kofi Annan’s peace plan is dead and political negotiations have failed. As such, only the minimum force necessary to stop the violence may be used. Intervention is not a licence for regime change; though, as in Libya, it becomes unavoidable if regimes continue to brutalise their own people. The difficulty and unpredictability lies in the fact that an intervention must have reasonable prospects of success. Any intervention must be ruthlessly examined by the international community to guarantee it does not exceed its mandate. As previously mentioned, Syria is sufficiently armed for a long conflict. The international community needs to determine what price is worth paying- and what we are prepared to live with as a result of both action and inaction. Most problematically, an intervention must be approved by the Security Council; this is not going to happen as China and Russia are certain to veto.

It now seems probable that the Assad regime will have to collapse before productive conversations on rebuilding a broken Syria can even begin. In Geneva, World powers failed to reach a consensus on calling for the removal of Assad, instead agreeing on a plan for a political transition which has little to no chance of effective implementation. It is further toothless time wasting such as this that allows Assad to continue with his stream of human rights abuses while the West looks on and promises stricter ‘observation’. In one of the most defiant acts against international law norms, the Red Cross confirmed that its attempts to aid civilians and evacuate the wounded from the besieged city of Homs had again failed when a rescue team was prevented from entering the worst hit areas. Towns with rebel strongholds have had electricity and water cut, and summary executions are now commonplace. How much more carnage must occur before someone decides that the “Never again” line so often thrown around but rarely acted upon must apply? If the Council does not intervene, governments of moral courage may go it alone. We have been willing to do this when oil revenues are at stake, to fail to do so over principles of humanity shows gross moral negligence. Sometimes, we have to pick a side, and the past has shown us that history is not kind when we sit by and do nothing. Humanitarianism cannot remain politically neutral in conflicts where dictators continuously target innocent civilians. Without United Nations backing, unilateral humanitarian intervention is illegal, but sometimes it’s right.

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Print
  • More
  • Pocket
  • Share on Tumblr

Like this:

Like Loading...

What’s this?

Forever intrepid gypsy at heart. Lover of pasta, the ocean, yoga and red wine. Believer in human rights, international law and justice. Can't sing, spell or cook. Terrified of snakes and diets. Views are my own.
Follow cheztopflight on WordPress.com

@MsKBrooks

My Tweets

Recent Posts

  • Stateless
  • I love a sunburnt country, Her beauty and her terror
  • This is why you’re not supposed to get into cars with strangers
  • ‘You explain me, here is not the worst’
  • I did not want to go back to the Jungle
June 2022
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
27282930  
« Jul    

Categories

  • All
  • Economics
  • Politics
  • Refugees
  • Religion
  • Travel

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • cheztopflight
    • Join 27 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • cheztopflight
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: