Africa

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Rescued migrants being tended to by IOM staff in Tripoli. Credit: IOM

By International Organization for Migration
GENEVA, Jul 1 2018 (IOM)

This weekend, some 204 migrants have died at sea off Libya, pushing the total number of migrant drownings in the entire Mediterranean so far this year to over 1,000 people.

Today (1/07), a small rubber boat packed with migrants capsized off AlKhums, east of Tripoli, with an estimated 41 people surviving after rescue. On Friday (28/06), three babies were among the 103, who died in a shipwreck similar to Sunday’s incident, also caused by smugglers taking migrants to sea in completely unsafe vessels.

So far this year, the Libyan Coast Guard has returned some 10,000 people to shore from small vessels.

“I am traveling to Tripoli once again this week and will see firsthand the conditions of migrants who have been rescued as well as those returned to shore by the Libya Coast Guard,” said William Lacy Swing, IOM Director General. “IOM is determined to ensure that the human rights of all migrants are respected as together we all make efforts to stop the people smuggling trade, which is so exploitative of migrants,” said Swing.

IOM staff were deployed to provide support and first aid to the the 41 migrants who survived the capsize of their small rubber vessel that capsized off AlKhums. This is the second major shipwreck in as many few days. On Friday, a rubber dinghy capsized north of Tripoli and the 16 survivors (young men from Gambia, Sudan, Yemen, Niger and Guinea) were rescued by the Libyan Cost Guard. However, an estimated 103 people lost their lives.

Adding to grim and tragic scene, the bodies of three babies were taken from the sea by the Libyan Coast Guard. IOM provided assistance at the disembarkation point, including provision of food and water and health assistance. IOM is also in the process of providing psychosocial aid at Tajoura detention centre where the survivors have been transferred. The need for physcosocial support is high as the survivors spent traumatizing time in the water as their engine broke only 30 minutes after departing Garaboli. The survivors have received psychosocial first aid at the detention centre and IOM continues to monitor their condition.

From Friday to Sunday, close to 1,000 migrants were returned to Libyan shore by the Libyan Coast Guard, who intercepted small crafts as they made their way towards the open sea. Upon disembarkation to shore, migrants have received emergency direct assistance, including food and water, health assistance and IOM protection staff has provided vulnerability interviews. Those rescued and returned by the Libyan Coast Guard are transferred by the Libyan authorities to the detention centres where IOM continues humanitarian assistance.

“There is an alarming increase in deaths at sea off Libya Coast,” said IOM Libya Chief of Mission Othman Belbeisi, adding: “Smugglers are exploiting the desperation of migrants to leave before there are further crackdowns on Mediterranean crossings by Europe.”

“Migrants returned by the coast guard should not automatically be transferred to detention and we are deeply concerned that the detention centres will yet again be overcrowded and that living conditions will deteriorate with the recent influx of migrants,” added Belbeisi.

Two other search and rescue operations by the Libyan Coast Guard are currently ongoing.

For more, information please contact:

Christine Petre IOM Libya, Email: CPetre@iom.int Tel + 216 577 9636
Leonard Doyle IOM Spokesperson, Email: ldoyle@iom.int, Tel: +41 792857123

You can view this statement online here.

The post Over 200 Migrants Drown in Three Days in Mediterranean — Death Toll for 2018 Passes 1,000 appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Villagers say the imam risked his life to shelter them, after they fled an attack by cattle herders.

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By Rashid Amjad
Jun 30 2018 (Dawn, Pakistan)

Do forgive the people of this country if they cannot make sense of our present economic predicament. On one hand, they are told repeatedly (and correctly) that the economy has started reaping the benefits of CPEC — the ‘game changer’ — in the form of significantly reduced load-shedding, an upturn in investment and a not unimpressive recovery in economic growth. At the same time, they are told that the economy is in dire straits!

A severe foreign exchange crisis threatens to reverse significantly the recent economic upturn. Our import bill exceeds our export earnings, including remittances, and if we add to it the repayments due on foreign loans, the gap is immense: $25 billion or over eight per cent of GDP. The country’s foreign exchange reserves are fast running out. We have already reached the critical level of just two months of imports. The alarm bells are ringing as foreign exchange reserves continue to lose almost $1bn a month. We must now wake up to the reality that, unless we can raise $8bn to $10bn in new loans and obtain a roll-over of existing debts, we could well face default on our debt payments — which is a polite way of saying ‘bankruptcy’.

The current state of economic affairs requires that some important decisions be taken.

The economic problem we now face cannot be traced solely to the previous government’s stubborn refusal to adjust the overvalued exchange rate. Our economic managers appear to have lost the plot over the last two years. For one, they were unable to keep track of CPEC-funded investment flows, whose exact form of financing has never been made transparent. The second and perhaps more important reason for our plight is that the federal and some provincial governments decided to go on a spending spree — launching projects, oblivious to their cost and foreign exchange implications. This is not new: the last two governments were equally guilty.

The current state of economic affairs cannot be allowed to continue. Some important decisions may need to be taken in the crunch, even by the interim government in the national interest. The simple reason for this is that, unless some immediate measures are taken to restore business confidence and, most importantly, to calm the foreign exchange market, the exchange rate will continue to fall. In the extreme scenario, we could enter a freefall situation. Given this uncertainty, anybody with some staying power will not be willing to part with their US dollars, betting that the rupee will fall even more. Those wanting foreign exchange will be chasing less and less available in the market.

Yet, nobody will bail us out, whether it is the IMF or anyone else, without imposing ‘conditionalities’ — primarily to ensure that they get their money back. Here, our team of negotiators (from the finance ministry and State Bank) must learn some lessons from the past. The last two governments entered into agreements with the IMF almost immediately upon coming into power. The 2008 agreement with the IMF was an unmitigated disaster in terms of its impact on growth, which fell from near 6pc to less than 1pc. The economy never quite recovered after that. The 2013 agreement, partly due to the groundwork done by the interim finance team, was able to avoid this shock through a more gradual decline in the fiscal deficit. However, agreeing almost immediately to a reforms agenda was unwise. To the extent possible, the new government should seek some time to finalise the content and sequencing of economic reforms, for which it can take full ownership and deliver.

The immediate challenge will be to agree to a stabilisation package, at an appropriate speed and sequencing of adjustment, that protects the country’s economic interests. Despite its weak bargaining position, the government should work towards a stabilisation package in which the burden of adjustment primarily falls in a sequenced way on the fiscal deficit rather than on the exchange rate. This is not to deny that we need to adjust the exchange rate, but we must keep this limited to its current overvaluation. We must remain fully aware that the cost of a very steep devaluation is especially high for our heavily indebted economy. Doing so would also raise the value of imports, especially oil products, fuelling inflation and eroding competitiveness. To that extent, it would neutralise the gains from devaluation. Most importantly, it would increase the cost of our defence preparedness, which in the current volatile situation cannot be compromised at any cost.

Of course, cutting the fiscal deficit is not without cost, even if the decline is made gradual. A 2pc drop in the fiscal deficit would reduce our current GDP growth of around 6pc to near half this amount. Most importantly, to counteract this, we must put in place measures that allow the recent growth momentum to build on the revival of manufacturing and upturn in exports and create the climate to encourage the much-awaited revival in private investment. All this will ensure that the decline in GDP growth is minimised. The emphasis here should be on reversing the anti-export trade and tariff regime and making a serious attempt at cutting down on losses from public-sector enterprises. This should entail including workers and their elected representatives in any restructuring negotiations.

Over the medium to long term, the policy focus must shift to expediting coal mining in Thar (which could finally remove our dependency on imported oil and gas), preserving and supplementing our water resources, and switching the emphasis in education from merely increasing numbers to improving the quality of education imparted and the social skills of our graduates.

If seriously and successfully monitored and implemented, this agenda will likely keep the newly elected government busy through its term in office. Come 2023, it will be judged on these achievements. Inshallah.

The writer is professor at the Lahore School of Economics and former vice chancellor of the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics.

This story was originally published by Dawn, Pakistan

The post Economic crisis management appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Imtiaz A Hussain
Jun 30 2018 (The Daily Star, Bangladesh)

Gideon Rose made an astute observation in editing the May/June 2018 Foreign Affairs cover story on the current “democratic regression”. “We have seen this movie before,” he quoted a Latin friend of his on the concurrent predicament, “just never in English.” That may be the missing element behind this “regression”: populism may be a popular explanation, since it brings to the fore many of the disturbing developments within mature democratic countries; stalled economic growth in these same countries also finds immense currency as a democracy detractor; historically-bent scholars never miss the beat to push the cliché that what goes up (for example, whatever led Francis Fukuyama to proclaim an “end of history” in the early 1990s), must eventually not only come down, but also begin climbing again. And so the story goes.

Yet rarely is the Anglo-Saxon anchor put under the spotlight these days. Even a cursory glance suggests, with a tweak here or a calibration there, democracy may still remain the fairest damsel among governmental types, if, and this is a big if, it is not pitched in a sine qua non mode.

Samuel P Huntington’s “wave” explanations get us to centre-stage. His first “wave” did not happen in England and the United States by chance from the early 19th Century, nor could it have soared high enough to be noticed anywhere else, give or take fickle France. How the 16th Century enclosure movement evicted tenant farmers and peasants, privatised the commons, and converted society into a cash-economy playground paved the long and tortuous journey towards the individualism democracy demands. Even then it took the entire 19th Century, not to mention the opening quarter of the 20th Century, to build the one-person, one-vote hallmark democratic feature.

Across the Atlantic a “born-free” country (that is, devoid of vested interests, since they promote parochial over national or global interests), was led down a different pathway. Dominated by only a handful of Anglo-Saxons fleeing monarchical abuses in England during the 17th and 18th centuries, the United States was virtually guaranteed nothing but a democratic future. Yet, this did not come automatically. As in Britain, a liberal market demanded a government from outside the prevalent box. Though the US Constitution enshrined democracy by 1787, the country still had to wait until 1964 before all adults could claim the one-person, one-vote privilege.

Both cases depict an ominously protracted journey to a representative government, demanding voluntarily engagements of its proponents/practitioners in exchange for returning as much more back to that society. This blended perfectly well with private enterprise, but it is the innovative capacity of private enterprise that permits democracy to replenish itself until perpetuity. Only by halting the process, or letting impediments intervene can democracy be disrupted. That, unfortunately, must be what has happened to produce infectious populism. Donald J Trump on yonder side of the Atlantic, and the Brexit vote, not to mention Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, and Italian electoral threats on this, portray today perhaps the sickest face of “English” democracy.

British colonies were expected to spearhead democracy. Frankly and fairly, Britain did whatever it could within its capacities; and that was a lot more than those other European countries boasting empires, whether it be Belgium in the African heartland, France across North Africa and Indo-China, Germany in Africa’s south, Italy in Abyssinia, Portugal in Brazil, or Spain across the rest of Latin America. By softening its noblesse oblige imperial approach, “English” democracy had the chance to prevail wherever the British Empire existed were it not for the coincidental emergence of the United States as not only the world leader, but also Cold War participant, after World War II. “English” democracy was hijacked, but only across the friendliest Atlantic waters.

Though still not perfectly democratic by that time (women had only just got the right to vote), the United States continued, for more than a century, to cultivate key institutions (like regular elections, stable parties, and foresighted leadership), just as Britain had done. This is the one area where Rose’s Foreign Affairs reference to “English” matters: the inability or unwillingness to permit new-born countries that same time-frame to sow and reap those very fundamental institutions. Britain may not have been behind the global steering-wheel, but in retrospect it can still boast producing one of the finest democracy-in-transition experiments among former colonies: India (even as the world’s largest democracy today faces one monumental democratic threat: religious fundamentalism).

If “blaming by default” is a lesser evil than “blaming by deliberation”, then the United States must take full responsibility for truncating what it preached: authentic democracy, not one as a tacky alternative to communism, nor as the appropriate outlet for foreign aid and investment. Beginning its world leadership on the wrong foot was enough to prevent fledgling countries from building new institutions upon democratic pillars and principles: instead of promoting the principles of its own Founding Fathers, the United States imposed a sine qua non condition that they reject communism first. A tragedy of errors followed, with dictator opponents of communism (from the Shah of Iran to Ferdinand Marcos, with an Ayub Khan here and Augusto Pinochet there, and gullible tyrants everywhere), quashing their country’s maiden democratic flag-bearers (be they Muhammed Mosaddegh, Benigno Simeon “Ninoy” Aquino, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, or Salvador Allende Gossens). No more fatal a blow could have been inflicted upon democracy and its future than that. No wonder the third and fourth democratic “waves” from the 1980s and late 1990s fell short of delivering: the critical institutions were just not there to absorb the soaring expectations; and it was pathetic to expect them to grow overnight under military command, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, in the 21st Century, as they had done under starkly different circumstances in post-World War II Germany and Japan.

Though this “Third World” or “Fourth World” malaise may not be that far from the heart of the current “democratic regression”, which is the Atlantic seaboard, it did feed western populism after the Cold War atmosphere permitted another opportunity for democratisation: their low-waged or import-substitution policy approaches that were encouraged during the Cold War to prevent communist penetration (as across Latin America), now threatened western economies, particularly driving university-educated students into abysmal unemployment.

It may be far too late to turn back the clock (and the policy approaches) to retrieve democracy; but amid the less liberal democracy sprouting, we should be looking where the sun rises to capture the new democratic contours. They will not be picture perfect until they experience their centuries of institution-building trials and errors, as with the “English”; but that might still be a better alternative to the monarchical/dictatorial impulses that gave birth to democracy in the first place several centuries ago.

Dr Imtiaz A Hussain is the head of Global Studies & Governance Program at Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB).

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

The post Democratic regression: The “English” turn appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By WAM
THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS, Jun 30 2018 (WAM)

A UAE delegation, led by Dr. Thani bin Ahmed Al-Zeyoudi, Minister of Climate Change and Environment, has concluded a three-day official visit to the Netherlands.

The delegates explored key topics of mutual interest with Dutch officials, including the use of smart technologies, such as artificial intelligence and precision agriculture to improve the quantity and quality of agricultural production and combat plant pests and diseases.

Other members of the delegation comprised Dr. Kaltham Kayaf, Head of the Animal Health Section at the Ministry of Climate Change and Environment; Abdul Nasser Al Shamsi, CEO of Rawafed; Omar Al Jundi, CEO of Badia Farms; and Mohammed Khalfan, General Manager of Al Dahra Holding.

From 26th to 28th June, the delegation met Carola Schouten, Dutch Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality; Sigrid Kaag, Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation; Cora van Nieuwenhuizen, Minister of Infrastructure and Water Management; Marcel Beukeboom, Special Envoy for Climate Change; and Reina Buijs, Deputy Director-General for International Cooperation at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The delegates explored new areas of cooperation with relevant entities in the Netherlands and exchanged experience in climate change research. Discussions focused on leveraging the latest technologies to collect climate data that can be used to shape strategies and policies.

Dr. Al Zeyoudi highlighted the National Climate Change Plan of the UAE 2017-2050, its vision and project deliverables. The plan garnered high praise from the Dutch officials as an impressive contribution to global efforts in combating the impacts of climate change.

Speaking about the visit, Dr. Al Zeyoudi said, ” The UAE enjoys deep-rooted ties with the Netherlands that bind our two nations on multiple fronts. Our visit aimed to build on our strong bilateral relations and identify new opportunities for collaboration. We also sought to share expertise in relevant areas and lay a solid foundation for future partnerships between the private and public sectors in both countries.”

As part of the agenda, the delegates toured Deltares an institute for applied research in the field of water, subsurface and infrastructure where they learned about climate change, groundwater and salinity modelling methods used in the Netherlands.

During their visit to the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research and the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands, the delegation inspected an integrated system for improving air quality through storing and recycling carbon dioxide for use in diverse sectors.

Moreover, the delegation toured the Wageningen University and Research a world-class educational institution dedicated to life sciences, agriculture and environmental science and received a briefing on the environment-related majors offered at the university.

 

WAM/Hazem Hussein/Tariq alfaham

The post UAE delegation discusses sustainability technologies, best practices in agriculture with Dutch officials appeared first on Inter Press Service.

In the community of Paropucjio, several women stand next to the solar greenhouse they have just built together on the plot of land belonging to one of them, in the district of Cusipata, more than 3,300 metres above sea level in the Cuzco highlands region in Peru. They get excited when they talk about how the greenhouses will improve their families' lives. Credit: Mariela Jara/IPS

By Mariela Jara
CUSIPATA, Peru, Jun 30 2018 (IPS)

At more than 3,300 m above sea level, in the department of Cuzco, women are beating infertile soil and frost to grow organic food and revive community work practices that date back to the days of the Inca empire in Peru such as the “ayni” and “minka”.

“We grow maize, beans and potatoes, that’s what we eat, and we forget about other vegetables, but now we’re going to be able to naturally grow tomatoes, lettuce, and peas,” María Magdalena Condori told IPS, visibly pleased with the results, while showing her solar greenhouse, built recently in several days of community work.

She lives in the Andes highlands village of Paropucjio, located at more than 3,300 m above sea level, in Cusipata, a small district of less than 5,000 inhabitants."We want to help improve the quality of life of rural women by strengthening their capacities in agriculture. They work the land, they sow and harvest, they take care of their families, they are the mainstay of food security in their homes and their rights are not recognized." -- Elena Villanueva

The local population subsists on small-scale farming and animal husbandry, which is mainly done by women, while most of the men find paid work in districts in the area or even in the faraway city of Cuzco, to complete the family income.

The geographical location of Paropucjio is a factor in the low fertility of the soils, in addition to the cold, with temperatures that drop below freezing. “Here, frost can destroy all our crops overnight and we end up with no food to eat,” says Celia Mamani, one of Condori’s neighbors.

A similar or even worse situation can be found in the other 11 villages that make up Cusipata, most of which are at a higher altitude and are more isolated than Paropucjio, which is near the main population centre in Cusipata and has the largest number of families, about 120.

Climate change has exacerbated the harsh conditions facing women and their families in these rural areas, especially those who are furthest away from the towns, because they have fewer skills training opportunities to face the new challenges and have traditionally been neglected by public policy-makers.

“In Paropucjio there are 14 of us women who are going to have our own greenhouse and drip irrigation module; so far we have built five. This makes us very happy, we are proud of our work because we will be able to make better use of our land,” said Rosa Ysabel Mamani the day that IPS spent visiting the community.

The solar greenhouses will enable each of the beneficiaries to grow organic vegetables for their families and to sell the surplus production in the markets of Cusipata and nearby districts.

Women farmers from Paropucjio, in the district of Cusipata, more than 3,300 metres above sea level, smile as they talk about the wooden structure for a solar greenhouse, which they jokingly refer to as a “skeleton”. The roof will be made of a special microfilm resistant to bad weather, intense ultraviolet radiation and extreme temperatures, and the greenhouses are built collectively, in the Andean region of Cuzco, Peru. Credit: Mariela Jara/IPS

With a broad smile, Mamani points to a 50-sq-m wooden structure that within the next few days will be covered with mesh on the sides and microfilm – a plastic resistant to extreme temperatures and hail – on the roof.

“We will all come with our husbands and children and we will finish building the greenhouse in ‘ayni’ (a Quechua word that means cooperation and solidarity), as our ancestors used to work,” she explains.

The ayni is one of the social forms of work of the Incas still preserved in Peru’s Andes highlands, where the community comes together to build homes, plant, harvest or perform other tasks. At the end of the task, in return, a hearty meal is shared.

The minga, another legacy of the Inca period, is similar but between communities, whose inhabitants go to help those of another community. In this case women from different villages and hamlets get together to build the greenhouses, especially the roofs, the hardest part of the job.

Training in production and rights

A total of 80 women from six rural highlands districts in Cuzco will benefit from the solar greenhouses and drip irrigation modules for their family organic gardens, as part of a project run by the non-governmental Peruvian Flora Tristán Women’s Centre with the support of the Spanish Basque Agency for Development Cooperation.

Women farmers from the community of Huasao, in the Andean highlands region of Cuzco, Peru, stand in front of one of the 50-sq-m solar tents, which has a 750-litre water tank for the drip irrigation module for their vegetables. Credit: Mariela Jara/IPS

“We want to help improve the quality of life of rural women by strengthening their capacities in agriculture. They work the land, they sow and harvest, they take care of their families, they are the mainstay of food security in their homes and their rights are not recognised,” Elena Villanueva, a sociologist with the centre’s rural development programme, told IPS.

She said the aim was comprehensive training for women farmers, so that they can use agro-ecological techniques for the sustainable use of soil, water and seeds. They will also learn to defend their rights as women, farmers and citizens, in their homes, community spaces and before local authorities.

The expert said the solar greenhouses open up new opportunities for women because they protect crops from adverse weather and from the high levels of ultraviolet radiation in the area, allowing the women to grow crops that could not survive out in the open.

“Now they will have year-round food that is not currently part of their diet, such as cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes and lettuce, that will enrich the nutrition and diets in their families – crops they will be able to plant and harvest with greater security,” she said.

The women have also been trained in the preparation of natural fertilisers and pesticides. “Our soils don’t yield much, they squeeze the roots of the plants, so we have to prepare them very well so that they can receive the seeds and then provide good harvests,” Condori explains.

In the 50 square metres covered by her new greenhouse, the local residents have worked steadily digging the soil to remove the stones, turn the soil and form the seed beds for planting.

Women and men from the community of Paropucjio, in Peru’s Andes highlands region of Cuzco, share lunch after completing the community work of building one of 80 small greenhouses, where women farmers will be able to grow organic vegetables despite the extreme temperatures in the area. Credit: Mariela Jara/IPS

“To do that we have had to fertilise a lot using bocashi (fermented organic fertiliser) that we prepare in groups with the other women, working together in ayni. We brought guinea pig and chicken droppings and cattle manure, leaves, and ground eggshells,” she explains.

This active role in making decisions about the use of their productive resources has helped change the way their husbands see them and has brought a new appreciation for everything they do to support the household and their families.

Honorato Ninantay, from the community of Huasao, located more than 3,100 metres above sea level in the neighbouring district of Oropesa, confesses his surprise and admiration for the way his wife juggles all her responsibilities.

“It seems unbelievable that before, in all this time, I hadn’t noticed. Only when she has gone to the workshops and has been away from home for two days have I understood,” he says.

“I as a man have only one job, I work in construction. But my wife has aahh! (long exclamation). When she left I had to fetch the water, cook the meals, feed the animals, go to the farm and take care of my mother who is sick and lives with us. I couldn’t handle it all,” he adds.

His wife, Josefina Corihuamán, listens to her husband with a smile on her face, and confirms that he is now involved in household chores because he has understood that washing, cleaning and cooking are not just a “woman’s job.”

She also has a solar greenhouse and irrigation module and is confident that she will produce enough to feed her family and sell the surplus in the local market.

“What we will harvest will be healthy, organic, chemical-free food, and that is good for our families, for our children. I feel that I will finally make good use of my land,” she says.

Related Articles

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• Solar Tents Improve Nutrition in Highlands Villages in Bolivia
• For the Rural Poor of Peru, the Social Agenda is Far Away
• Rights of Rural Women Have Seen Uneven Progress in Latin America

The post Community Work Among Women Improves Lives in Peru’s Andes Highlands appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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By International Organization for Migration
GENEVA, Jun 29 2018 (IOM)

On Friday 29 June 2018, the member states of the IOM, the United Nations Migration Agency, elected Portugal’s António Manuel de Carvalho Ferreira Vitorino as the International Organization for Migration’s next Director General.

António Manuel de Carvalho Ferreira Vitorino

Mr. Vitorino, 61 (DOB 12 January 1957), succeeds the United States’ William Lacy Swing, who is leaving IOM after serving two five-year terms as Director General. Mr. Vitorino’s directorship begins on 1 October 2018.

The latest IOM director general is a former European Commissioner for Justice and Home Affairs (1999-2004) and former Minister of the Presidency and National Defence (1995-1997). He has also enjoyed a distinguished career in Portugal as a lawyer as well as in electoral politics.

Mr. Vitorino was elected to Portugal’s Parliament in 1980. In 1983 he became Secretary of State for Parliamentary Affairs. He later served as Deputy Secretary for the Governor of Macau until 1989, when he returned to Lisbon to become a judge of the Constitutional Court, a term that ended in 1994. He subsequently served as Minister for National Defence and Deputy Prime Minister within the government of António Guterres, now the United Nations’ Secretary General.

From 1999 to 2004 António Vitorino served as the European Commissioner for Justice and Home Affairs. During his tenure, Mr. Vitorino participated in conversations that led to the drawing of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and the Convention on the Future of Europe.

Since exiting politics in 2005, Mr. Vitorino has returned to law, serving as a partner with the firm of Cuatrecasas, Gonçalves Pereira & Associados. Vitorino has been President of the think tank Notre Europe since June 2011 and for many years enjoyed an ongoing role as commentator for the leading Portuguese television channel RTP 1.

António Vitorino earned a degree from the University of Lisbon’s School of Law in 1981, as well as a Master’s Degree in Legal and Political Science. Mr. Vitorino has authored works on Constitutional Law, Political Science, European Community Law, and was also a member of the Drafting Committee of the Portuguese White Book on Corporate Governance.

Established in 1951, International Organization for Migration has over 10,000 staff and over 400 offices in more than 150 countries. IOM is the UN Migration Agency and is the leading inter-governmental organisation in the field of migration. It is committed to the principle that humane and orderly migration benefits migrants and society.

IOM works with its partners in the international community to assist in meeting operational challenges of migration, advance understanding of migration issues and to encourage social and economic development through migration while upholding the well-being and human rights of all migrants.

IOM provides services and advice to governments and migrants to help ensure the orderly and humane management of migration, to promote international cooperation on migration issues, to assist in the search for practical solutions to migration problems and to provide humanitarian assistance to migrants in need, including refugees and internally displaced people.

IOM was granted permanent observer status to the UN General Assembly in 1992. A cooperation agreement between IOM and the UN was signed in 1996. IOM joined the UN system as a related organization in September 2016, when the agreement outlined in GA res.70/296 (2016) was signed during the UN Summit for Refugees and Migrants.

For further information please contact Leonard Doyle at IOM HQ, Tel: +41 792857123, Email: ldoyle@iom.int

You can view this statement online here.

The post António Manuel de Carvalho Ferreira Vitorino elected as new Director General of UN Migration Agency appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Credit: iStockphoto.com/ peepo

By Pablo Alabarces
BUENOS AIRES, Jun 29 2018 (IPS)

Football tells us a great deal about identity. Even a budding sports journalist knows that. And it has come to be a meeting point and even an advertising theme. But what we never discuss is the varying forms of this identity that are possible, let alone the consequences, which are sometimes ill-fated.

Saying that football is tied to identity is comforting because it places higher status on it than just a triviality: it allows us to emphatically claim that “soccer is the most important of the least important things” (another triviality).

Of course, this importance is derived precisely from the fact that it comprises a series of memories and stories in which very diverse identities are invented and adopted and from the fact that its effectiveness is based on its emotional warmth (the apparent “passion”), the potential beauty of the game (although rare, to be honest), and the unpredictability of the outcome.

But the comfort of identity overlooks—or conceals—that we have not explained anything with this; that we need to add another dimension that is indispensable (and generally covert): the dimension of power.

The dimensions of identity involved are not just the two most visible ones: identity at the micro or tribal level (the club, the team, the colors) and national identity (national team, country, homeland), although these also require our attention before we start celebrating.

The stories of identity that football involves—or has involved in Latin America in the past—have been centered on a wide variety of themes. At least in broad terms, these have included ethnicity, race, class, territory, and country—all of which were triggered by stories that—in some cases—labeled themselves as “playing styles”.

Ethnicity stems from the actual roots and conflicts among Europeans (not only the English), criollos and mestizos; class, from the sport’s popularization and the disputes over professionalization; race, from the appearance of those of African descent; territory, from the close relationship between teams and cities or towns (or neighborhoods in major cities).

And finally country, which found the ideal channel to popularize narratives of identity in soccer in 1916 and the appearance of international competitions. At the same time, however, there is something major missing – and not just in Latin America: the dimension of gender was silenced (as well as banned) in this discovery and in these stories.

Let us pause here and use this missing component to better illustrate the dimension of power. The commonality of identity sometimes overlooks the fact that these are essentially male identities and stories, that they were imposed as universal at the expense of censorship and the exclusion of football and female fandom.

To top it off, the culture of sports does not allow women to be a channel for identity narratives, since this is impossible based on a broader principle that is not just Latin American. According to this principle, the narrative of one’s homeland cannot be told from a female perspective and women cannot be the heroes in a nationalist story.

On the contrary, the excess of narratives—the effective excess of narratives—in male football ruled out the possibility of having a female story altogether, and even excluded it, as we have already noted.

Thus the aim here is not to celebrate identities, but to assess who creates them, who adopts them, and how they are narrated. And fundamentally, who they are narrated against. Because, as we know, every story of identity is also a story of otherness: what someone is and what someone isn’t.

In football, the prevailing story is that the one telling it is masculine: but the “other” is gay—not a woman—which doubles the exclusion of women in one fell swoop. It is a matter entirely for men, which in turn creates space for a homoerotic story and—paradoxically—a homophobic one.

This is an initial common ground for discrimination that was recently used in an unsuccessful ad by television broadcaster Torneos y Competencias [Latin American sports and entertainment service]: disguised as alleged criticism of Russia’s repression of homosexuality, the ad revealed the persistent anti-feminine discrimination established by football culture.

Racism and xenophobia

The same holds true for the concepts of ethnicity and race. Latin American soccer was built on top of an ethnic dispute (at times disguised as anti-imperialism) during the process of making a European-invented game more criollo. Once this initial stage was over, however, it gave rise to two conflicting junctures:

1. The national narratives of differentiation—Buenos Aires against provincial Argentina, Santiago against Valparaíso, Rio de Janeiro against São Paulo, coastal areas against the mountainside in Colombia, Ecuador, and to a lesser extent in Peru, and
2. The racialization of African-descendant ethnicity, a key concept that was crucial to the invention of “popular” soccer in Brazil, Uruguay, and Peru.

These concepts started to come into play at the international level in 1916: the Chilean league demanded that the points achieved by the Uruguayan team in the first South American Championship not be counted because they had “African players” on their roster.

At the 1921 South American Championship in Buenos Aires, Brazilian President Epitácio Pessoa stated his desire to have the Brazilian team made up of only white players since the year before, the Argentine press had called the Brazilians “little monkeys” when they passed through Buenos Aires on their way to the South American Championship in Chile.

This was not the first presence of racism in “white” Latin American societies; we are simply pointing out that football allowed this racism to establish itself from then on and gave it a competitive advantage.

Since the 1930s, all these concepts were primarily narrated by the mass media, with the resulting prevalence of stereotyping. The media uses stereotypes to create and tell narratives, simply because this is the method it has to readily put a chaotic world in order.

The problem comes when a stereotype also dictates our understanding of the world since no other story lines can be found. Here we see the problem of power once again: the narrators were—and mostly still are—white and middle class, so all their narratives were created from these perspectives.

The prevailing voice and practically the only perspective throughout the Americas is still white, urban, and middle class. The best example of this in football is in Brazil, where it was revealed that an apparent racial democracy was achieved starting in 1958, with its first World Cup title in Sweden, led by its star players Vavá, Didí, Pelé, and Garrincha. Three black men and a mulatto. But this revelation was made and publicized by educated white men: Gilberto Freyre and Mário Filho.

A discriminatory celebration

The aim here is not to attribute the homophobic, xenophobic, and racist excesses of Latin American fans to mass culture, however. Mass culture simply sets the stage for the prevailing stories such that broadly homophobic, xenophobic, and racist societies cannot avoid having these characteristics in their mass culture, and thus in their soccer.

Due to its massiveness, soccer provides greater visibility of these narratives and sets the stage for the masses. These are not every day racist acts. Instead, it is a crowd berating the blackness of a particular soccer player in mostly white societies. The xenophobic narrative, in turn, is disguised as a joke.

Sports journalists think very highly of their own humor and believe mutual bashing between Chileans and Peruvians, Argentines and Brazilians, or Colombians and Venezuelans can be adopted based on the argument of tradition (“that the way it’s always been”) and humor (“not seriously”).

The outlook is thus dreadful. FIFA regulations appear to have achieved few results in the world of UEFA, let alone in the world of CONMEBOL. It is possible that this relative lack of success is due to an issue of power.

The ones who make these rules—for the sake of political correctness—are members of the same groups that can and do discriminate on multiple bases (white, urban, and rich, if possible). In the case of Argentina, no one seriously believes that it is that bad to call a rival “black,” “Bolivian,” or “fag”—it’s a “guy thing,” said in the heat of the moment during the game. It is certainly not possible to find fault with tens of thousands of fans who are simply adopting the ethics of their dominant classes, either.

It will take far more than a few well-written disciplinary rules to potentially undo this process. Last August, Frank Fabra—a Colombian player of African descent, who plays for Argentina’s Boca Juniors—was insulted by rival fans of “Estudiantes de la Plata” [Argentine professional sports club based in La Plata] with predictable shouts of “black,” “fag,” and “Colombian.” The referee decided not to interrupt the game, claiming that the shouting did not come from the entire stadium.

So, as we said: it was just a joke.

The link to the original article: https://www.fes-connect.org/trending/football-xenophobia-racism-discrimination-and-a-few-more-things/

The post Football, Xenophobia, Racism, Discrimination– & a Few More Things appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Pablo Alabarces holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Brighton, England. He is Professor of Popular Culture at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires and has published several books on football and popular culture.

The post Football, Xenophobia, Racism, Discrimination– & a Few More Things appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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