radiofree.asia

Category: migration

  • ‘Other people’s wars’, climate crisis – South Pacific not in good shape, warns Fiji leader

    By Kalinga Seneviratne in Suva

    In a keynote speech at the annual Pacific Update conference the region’s major university, Fiji deputy Prime Minister Professor Biman Prasad has warned delegates from the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand that Oceania is not in good shape because of problems not of their own making.

    Professor Prasad was speaking at the three-day conference at the University of the South Pacific where he was the former dean of the Business and Economic Faculty,

    He listed these problems as climate change, geopolitics, superpower conflict, a declining resource base in fisheries and forests, environmental degradation and debilitating health problems leading to significant social and economic challenges.

    He asked the delegates to consider whether the situation of the South Pacific nations is improving when they take stock of where the region is today.

    “What is clear, or should be clear to all of us, is that as a region, we are not in entirely good shape,” said Professor Prasad.

    Pacific Update, held annually at USP, is the premier forum for discussing economic, social, political, and environmental issues in the region.

    Held on June 13-15 this year, it was co-hosted by the Development Policy Centre of the Australian National University (ANU) and USP’s School of Accounting, Finance and Economics.

    Distant wars
    In his keynote, Professor Prasad pinpointed an issue adversely affecting the region’s economic wellbeing.

    “Our region has suffered disproportionally from distant wars in Ukraine,” he said. “Price rises arising from Russia’s war on Ukraine is ravaging communities in our islands by way of price hikes that are making the basics unaffordable.

    “Even though not a single grain of wheat is imported from this region, the price increase for a loaf of bread across the Pacific is probably among the highest in the world.

    “This is not unbelievable, not to mention unjust,” he noted, adding that this is due to supply chain failures in these remote corners of the world where the cost of shipping goods and services have spiralled.

    Though he did not specifically mention the collateral damage from economic sanctions imposed by the West, he did point out that shipping costs have increased several hundred percent since the conflict started.

    “In the backdrop of all these, or should I say forefront, is a runaway climate crisis whose most profound and acutest impacts are felt by small island states,” said Professor Prasad. “The impacts of climate change on our economies and societies are systematic; they are widespread, and they are growing”.

    Rather than focusing on the problems listed by Professor Prasad, this year’s Pacific Update devoted a significant part of the event to the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme, where Australia has opened its borders to thousands of workers from the Pacific island countries with new provisions provided for them to acquire permanent residency in the country.

    Development aid scheme
    Australia is presenting this as a development assistance scheme where many academics presenting research papers showed that the remittances they send back help local economies by increasing consumption(and economic growth).

    Hiroshi Maeda, a researcher from ANU, said that remittances play a crucial role in the economy of the Kingdom of Tonga in the Pacific, a country of just over 106,000 people.

    According to recent census data from Australia, New Zealand and the United States of America quoted in a UN report, 126.540 Tongans live overseas. According to a survey by Maeda, temporary migration has helped to increase household savings by 38.1 percent from remittances sent home.

    It also increases the expenditure on services such as health, education and recreation while also helping the housing sector.

    There was a whole session devoted to the PALM scheme where Australian researchers presented survey findings done among Pacific unskilled workers, mainly working in the farm sector in Australia, about their satisfaction rates with the Australian work experience.

    Dung Doan and Ryan Edwards presented data from a joint World Bank-ANU survey. They said there had been allegations of exploited Pacific workers and concerns about worker welfare and social impacts, but this is the first study addressing these issues.

    They have interviewed thousands of workers, and the researchers say “a majority of the workers are very satisfied” and “social outcomes on balance are net positive”.

    Better planning needed
    When IDN asked a panellist about PALM and other migrant labour recruitment schemes of Australia such as hiring of nurses from the Pacific and the impact it is creating — especially in Fiji where there are labour shortages as a result — his response was that it needs better planning by governments to train its workers.

    But, one Pacific academic from USP (who did not want to be named) told IDN later, “Yes, we can spend to train them, and Australia will come and steal them after six months”. She lamented that there needed to be more Pacific academics who made their voices heard.

    One such voice, however, was Denton Rarawa, Senior Advisor in Economics of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) from the Solomon Islands. He pointed out that a major issue the Pacific region needed to address to reach the sustainable development goals (SDGs) was to consider reforms and policies that strike a balance between supporting livelihoods and reducing future debt risks.

    “Labour Mobility is resulting in increasing remittances to our region,” but Rarawa warned, “It is having an unintended consequence of brain drain with over 54,000 Pacific workers in Australia and New Zealand at the end of last year.”

    All Pacific island nations beyond Papua New Guinea and Fiji have small populations — many have just about 100,000 people, and some, like Nauru, Tuvalu and Kiribati, have just a few thousand.

    Rarawa argues that even though “we may be small in land mass, our combined exclusive economic zone covers nearly 20 percent of the world’s surface as a collective, we control nearly 10 percent of the votes at the United Nations.

    “We are home to over 60 percent of the world’s tuna supply — therefore, we are a region of strategic value”.

    Rarawa believes that good Pacific leadership is needed to exploit this strategic value for the benefit of the people in the Pacific.

    “The current strategic environment we find ourselves in just reinforces and re-emphasize the notion for us to seize the opportunity to strengthen our regional solidarity and leverage our current strategic context to address our collective challenges,” argues Rarawa.

    “We need deeper regionalism (driven by) political leadership and regionalism (with) people-centred development (that) brings improved socio-economic wellbeing by ensuring access to employment, entrepreneurship, trade, finance and investment in the region.”

    Dr Kalinga Seneviratne is a Sri Lanka-born journalist, broadcaster and international communications specialist. He is currently a consultant to the journalism programme at the University of the South Pacific. He is also the former head of research at the Asian Media Information and Communication Center (AMIC) in Singapore. In-Depth News (IDN) is the flagship agency of the non-profit International Press Syndicate.

    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

  • ‘My heart is full of pain’: hotel detention is ruining lives – I’ve seen the damage up close | Lorraine Finlay

    Australians would be shocked to learn about the plight of people detained in hotels under Australia’s immigration system

    The plight of people detained in hotels under Australia’s immigration system usually goes unnoticed, though it would probably shock most Australians. Last year, when I inspected one such hotel and interviewed people who had been detained in hotels in Melbourne and Brisbane, I knew what to expect but found it confronting nonetheless.

    The first thing that struck me was the proximity. Other guests stayed in the same hotel, coming and going without ever realising they shared the place with people who were imprisoned – who looked out their windows as the world went by in the city centre but were unable to join it. The invisibility of detainees within hotels themselves emphasised their political invisibility.

    Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • What happens when you read an article about climate migration?

    After months without rain, your crops have withered away and died, and you’re thirsty. Or maybe you have the opposite problem, and relentless rains flooded your home  — not for the first time. 

    There are lots of reasons people move, and climate change increasingly numbers among them. News headlines warn of a coming “climate refugee crisis,” with rising sea levels spurring mass migration on a “biblical scale.” Provoking anxiety is sort of the default mode for talking about climate change, but is this the best way to discuss people trying to move out of harm’s way?

    A new study — among the first to test how Americans react to learning about climate migration — suggests that these kinds of articles might trigger backlash. Both Republicans and Democrats reported colder, more negative feelings toward migrants after reading a mock news article about climate migration, according to research published this spring in the journal Climatic Change.

    “There’s a real potential of stories invoking a nativist response, making people view migrants more negatively and possibly as less human,” said Ash Gillis, an author of the study and a former psychology researcher at Vanderbilt University. Depending on how they’re told, stories about climate migration might not only provoke xenophobia, but also fail to rally support for climate action, research suggests.

    Gillis had been looking for ways to try to reduce polarization around climate change and wondered if pairing the subject with migration might make people more concerned about the changing planet. Instead, Gillis, along with researchers in Indiana and Michigan, found that reading a Mother Jones–style article with the headline “In U.S., Climate Change Driving Immigration Rise” led to more of a backlash toward migrants than reading an article about the country’s foreign-born population rising without an explanation of what was driving it. “There’s something going on with this added climate change component,” Gillis said.

    With roughly 20 million people moving in response to floods, droughts, and wildfires every year since 2008, climate migration is already a reality. Most of the time, that movement happens within national borders, with only about a quarter of migrants relocating to new countries. Whether governments respond to those hopeful newcomers by arming their borders or creating pathways for refugees depends to a large degree on compassion. Estimates of how many people will decide to move in the coming decades because of environmental threats range widely, but the stakes could be as high as 1.2 billion lives. 

    “Figuring out what is the right way to get these messages across is hugely important,” said Sonia Shah, the author of The Next Great Migration. Shah has said that the so-called “migration crisis” is better described as a “welcoming crisis,” suggesting that the real problem lies with how countries respond to the inevitability of migration.

    Moving is a destabilizing experience, even under good circumstances, and climate migration is often borne of a traumatic event, like when your home burns down in a fire. But migration isn’t inherently bad: For those on the move, it can be an economic opportunity, or a way of finding safety on a hotter, more unpredictable planet. 

    “The takeaway shouldn’t be, ‘Let’s avoid [talking about] migration altogether,’” said Stephanie Teatro, director of climate and migration at the National Partnership for New Americans, in response to Gillis’ study.

    A pink, boat-shaped item at a protest says "migrant justice is climate justice."
    Protesters take part in a demonstration by the climate activist group Extinction Rebellion, calling for justice for migrants, outside of Britain’s Home Office in central London, April 23, 2023. Susannah Ireland / AFP via Getty Images

    Teatro attributes the subjects’ defensive responses to the way politicians and the media have primed them to react. “The study didn’t happen in a vacuum,” she said. Republican politicians peddle myths that migrants steal American jobs or are more prone to commit crimes. But Democrats could be undermining support for immigrants, too, by positioning migration as one of the many distressing outcomes of climate change. 

    Consider how John Kerry, President Joe Biden’s climate envoy, has approached the subject. “We’re already seeing climate refugees around the world,” he said at an energy conference in Houston last year. “If you think migration has been a problem in Europe, in the Syrian War, or even from what we see now [in Ukraine], wait until you see 100 million people for whom the entire food production capacity has collapsed.” Kerry also once warned that drought in northern Africa and the Mediterranean will lead to “hordes of people … knocking on the door.” 

    It’s much more difficult to identify with masses of people than a single person, said Kate Manzo, who studies imagery and international development at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom. As an example, she pointed to an anti-migrant poster from that country’s Brexit era showing a snaking line of thousands of refugees that critics said incited “racial hatred.” Describing a group of asylum seekers as a “flood” or “invasion” causes a similar distancing effect, Manzo said.

    Even well-intentioned climate advocates like Kerry — in the hopes of bolstering support for reducing carbon emissions — can wind up inadvertently tapping into people’s fears about an increase in migration, Teatro said. “That’s been the default frame: ‘If you want to stop migration, you better get serious about climate change.’”

    Research suggests that that type of message may not be effective for motivating policy support for tackling carbon emissions. Learning about climate migration did not increase people’s support for policies such as mandating utilities to get 50 percent of electricity from renewables by 2030 or for making fossil fuel companies pay fees for the pollution they emit, according to Gillis’ study. That finding gels with previous studies showing that framing global warming as a national security issue failed to increase support for climate action, and sometimes even backfired.

    Scientists and environmentalists are beginning to recognize that there’s another way of talking about people on the move. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations’ leading body of climate experts, has acknowledged that migration can be a viable way for people to adapt to a hotter, more chaotic world — provided that the relocation happens in a “voluntary, safe and orderly” manner. A guide from the climate acitivist group 350.org and other environmental groups calls for reframing the issue (Do: Say migration is “part of the solution.” Don’t: Say “mass migration”). Common Defense, a grassroots organization of progressive veterans, advises against calling climate migration a “crisis” or a threat to national security. 

    “Migration is a resilient, adaptive response to crisis. It’s not the crisis,” Shah said. “And if we cast it as a crisis, I mean, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot.”

    Shah theorized that the wording of the mock news article in Gillis’ study could have prompted a nativist reaction among the study’s participants. It explained that climate change was linked to worsening heat waves, drought, floods, and hurricanes, fueling immigration to the United States. In developing countries, the article said, farmers were going bankrupt, rates of civil unrest were increasing, and people were considering moving abroad — and “Americans should plan for these changes well in advance.” Readers might have taken those ideas and made the trip from “something really scary is happening” to the fearful notion that “brown people are going to come take your stuff,” Shah said.

    The mock news article about climate migration from the recent study. Gillis et al.

    Shah thinks the framing that climate migration is mostly about poor people moving to rich countries is a “biased way of looking at it.” After all, Americans are moving, too, to escape hurricanes along the East Coast and wildfires in California. Gillis said that the wording of the mock news story was inspired by research that colleagues were conducting on migration and farmers in Southeast Asia.

    There are other theories that could explain the backfiring effect. For example, climate change might be viewed as a less legitimate reason for immigrating to a new country than war or famine, Gillis speculated, potentially casting climate migrants in a poorer light. Polling from Pew Research Center shows that nearly three-quarters of Americans generally support the United States accepting refugees from countries where people are trying to escape violence and war, but migration prompted by climate disasters hasn’t yet figured into the polling center’s questions.

    “Migration, of course, is a very risky thing to do,” Shah said. “The fact that we’ve done it all along despite the great cost to us in the short term” — from leaving behind our families and friends to getting lost in a new landscape — “what that tells me is that this is something that over evolutionary time, the benefits have greatly outweighed the cost.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What happens when you read an article about climate migration? on Jun 16, 2023.

  • Climate Crisis Could Push a Third of Humanity From Most Livable Environment

    Climate change is remapping where humans can exist on the planet. As optimum conditions shift away from the equator and toward the poles, more than 600 million people have already been stranded outside of a crucial environmental niche that scientists say best supports life. By late this century, according to a study published last month in the journal Nature Sustainability, 3 to 6 billion people…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Emerging Issues and Concerns in Providing Education to Migrant Children in India

    The Education-Migration Nexus

    Humans have always been on the move. The UN International Organization for Migration (IOM) conceptualises a migrant as a person who moves away from his or her place of usual residence, whether within a country or across an international border, temporarily or permanently, and for a variety of reasons. Some people migrate in search of work, economic opportunities, to join family, or to study. Others migrate to escape conflict, persecution, terrorism and/or human rights violations. Migration can also occur in response to the harmful effects of climate change, natural disasters and/or other environmental factors. Children migrate accompanied or unaccompanied, according to UNESCO’s 2013 Report on Social Inclusion of Internal Migrants, which estimated that there were 15 million seasonal migrant children in India who encounter many obstacles, including a limited access to education, amongst many others. Although education is undeniably one of the foundations of children’s well-being, child migrants often suffer from the lack of it.

    India, being a diverse nation, has witnessed successive waves of migration, resulting in an increasing number of children and adolescents. Internal migration in this country has significantly surged due to population pressure and scarcity of resources. As per the latest Census conducted in 2011, the count of domestic migrants in India stood at 450 million. Across India, 20% of internal migrants were children in 2011, i.e., 92.95 million, according to UNICEF. Hence, the exodus of child migrants was notably higher than the growth of the children population during the same period, i.e., 18.5% between 1991-2001 and 6.3% between 2001-2011. Since then, there is a lack of current information regarding migrant children. In 2021, the Supreme Court urged India’s governments to furnish details about migrant children. Nevertheless, there has been negligible advancement since then, and the issue remains unresolved. Based on the Economic and Political Weekly (2022), migration discussions often overlook children from migrant families in India with low income. The lives of children were under greater vulnerability of missing out on the most developmental aspect, i.e., education. Studies indicate that migrant children in India between the age group of 6-18-years-old are more exposed to child labour, child trafficking and ceased educational opportunities. Around 22.1% of migrant children in this age were not enrolled in any educational institution in 2011.

    Addressing Unequal Access to Education for Migrant Children in India

    In 2015, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) is aimed at addressing the global education crisis, which affects millions of children and young people around the world who do not have access to quality education. SDG 4 has several targets, including the following: (1) ensuring that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education; (2) ensuring that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education (3) increasing the number of adults who have relevant skills for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship and (4) securing equal access to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education. SDG 4 also aims to eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access for all, including people with disabilities, indigenous peoples and refugees. Achieving SDG 4 is critical for migrant children’s access to education, as it is a fundamental human right and a key driver of economic growth, social development and environmental sustainability.

    In the past five years, India has provided an array of solutions for migrant children. The enactment of the Right to Education Act of 2009 (RTE), passed by the Indian Parliament in 2009 and came into force on April 1, 2010, provides for free and compulsory education for all children between the ages of 6 and 14-years-old. The RTE Act mandates that every child in this age group has the right to education in a neighbourhood school and prohibits discrimination on the grounds of gender, caste, religion and disability. The RTE Act has been instrumental in expanding access to education in India and improving the quality of education in government schools. However, there are still several challenges in its implementation, including inadequate infrastructure, shortage of teachers and a lack of monitoring and accountability. Moreover, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) are two major government initiatives in India that promote education and child development, particularly for marginalised and vulnerable populations, including migrant children. Under Poshan 2.0, the government is currently prioritizing the provision of Anganwadi services to all, including migrant families, meaning the arrangement of a network of centers for the holistic development of children. For instance, SSA has developed special modules on migration and education, providing training to teachers and education administrators on addressing the needs of migrant children in the country. Overall, SSA and ICDS are crucial in ensuring that migrant children have access to education and development opportunities, significantly contributing to improving the education outcomes of migrant children in India.

    Challenges in Delivering Education to Migrant Children in India

    Despite the attention conveyed to the issue, the education of migrant children in India remains a very difficult issue of paramount importance to India’s development. It is compromised due to several reasons, such as the frequent mobilities, socio-economic backgrounds and several exclusionary school experiences of these children. Indeed, children are subjected to hazardous travel between villages and work sites. India Today writes that the villages of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh to Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat and Delhi, which are mostly migration hubs, migrant children are not accepted in schools or the larger community, and are constantly viewed as outsiders. Consequently, according to the Global Monitoring Report, 80% of children of seasonal workers in India do not have access to education. Furthermore, because of the nature of their parents’ labour patterns, these children are difficult to trace and are, therefore, easily left out of the standard systemic interventions of the education system. Children often end up dropping out of school or struggle with learning gaps due to prolonged absence, which ultimately affects children’s psychosocial and cognitive abilities, depriving them from having a correct exposure to socialisation. Migrant children lose the protection of their social networks back home and their well-being is often sidelined as they migrate. As a matter of fact, rooted away from their homes and villages, the first thing that migrants lose is their identity as citizens and all of their basic entitlements, including access to schooling facilities, free services in public health centres. They are also prevented from participating in panchayat (village council) activities, and are sometimes unable to cast their vote or participate in the census, as these usually take place during the first half of the year and coincide with the migration period.

    Cultural differences and language barriers become a disadvantage for migrant children, hindering their educational attainment. Ernst Georg Ravenstein’s laws on migration (1885) deals with the impact of rural-urban labour migration on the education of children. As migration has wide-ranging impacts on children whether they are left behind by one or both migrating parents, move with their parents, are born abroad, or migrate alone, the educational performance of children is highly compromised when migrating. Due to this process, many children suffer from depression, abandonment, low self-esteem and several behavioural disorders due to the unavailability of education (Virupaksha et al., 2014). There is a dire need to focus on and develop a mixed-methods research agenda, referring to the use of both quantitative and qualitative methods for child migration to understand their plight in a better way and provide solutions. Hence, there is a need to make a regular assessment of the number of child migrants in India in order for them to be protected from any form of vulnerability, such as kidnapping, trafficking, etc. Eventually, we would think that research, policy and advocacy efforts undertaken on behalf of migrant children in India would help in raising awareness on the issue concerning their access to education.

    Nevertheless, these have commonly focused on those living in situations that are dangerous, abusive and/or exploitative, either inherently or because of their young age. They are often represented as passive victims of these crimes, perpetuating this idea of the innocent and at-risk child who can be easily instrumentalized. In consequence, they start to reflect dominant notions of trauma and victimhood. It would be a matter of investigating the issue with children rather than on them.

    Conclusion 

    Migrant children are deprived of education, which is a major threat to their social well-being. The conditions under which mobility takes place are often unsafe and risky,  putting migrant children, especially unaccompanied and separated children, at an exponential risk of economic or sexual exploitation, abuse, neglect and/or violence as well as being prevented from education. Policy responses to protect and support migrant children are often limited. While children on the move have become a recognised part of today’s global and mixed migration flows, they are still largely discreet in debates on migration, child protection and empowerment. It is necessary to identify mechanisms on how to enhance migrant childrens’ capabilities by providing a better quality of education and preventing them from every form of exploitation, inequalities, discrimination and/or marginalisation.

    The effects of migration on children are diverse, and there are numerous concerns that require attention. It’s crucial to support the families of migrant workers who live and work in precarious conditions. To ensure the well-being of their children, policy perspectives must be re-evaluated and a greater emphasis must be placed on policy implementation. Despite the availability of educational opportunities, many migrant children do not pursue formal education, making it necessary to consider the overall social well-being of these families, including their living conditions, in order to empower their children. Policies aimed at improving educational conditions of migrant children migrants must be tailored to their special needs. Unfortunately, migrant children are somehow ignored in the educational attainment process, for sometimes migration is inevitable and an important process to develop India.

    References

    Crépeau, F. (2013). Children on the Move. Switzerland: International Organization for Migration (IOM)

    Desk, I. T. W. (2018, December 11). How seasonal migration of Indians is destroying educational opportunities for children. India Today. Retrieved June 24, 2022, from https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/featurephilia/story/how-seasonal-migration-of-i ndians-is-destroying-educational-opportunities-for-children-1406369-2018-12-11

    Ensor, Marisa & Gozdziak, Elzbieta. (2010). Migrant Children: At the Crossroads of Vulnerability and Resiliency. Palgrave MacMillan

    Pandey, P. (2022). Always on the move: The troubling landscape of the right to education for migrant children in India. [Online] Times of India Blog. Available at: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/voices/always-on-the-move-the-troubling-lands cape-of-the-right-to-education-for-migrant-children-in-india/

    Peddie, F. and Liu, J. (2021) Education and Migration in an Asian Context. Germany: Springer Singapore

    Tumbe, C. (2018). India Moving: A History of Migration. India: Penguin Random House India Private Limited

    United Nations. (n.d.). Migration. United Nations. Retrieved June 24, 2022, from https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/migration

    Virupaksha, H. G., Kumar, A., & Nirmala, B. P. (2014, July). Migration and Mental Health: An Interface. Journal of natural science, biology, and medicine. Retrieved March 16, 2023, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4121889/

    Understanding child migration in India – unicef.org. (2020). Retrieved March 20, 2023, from https://www.unicef.org/india/media/3416/file

    What is right to education act (RTE act)? Times of India Blog. (2021, May 15). Retrieved March 18, 2023, from https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/readersblog/igoravsharma/what-is-right-to-education-a ct-rte-act-32034/

    Internal migration in India grows, but inter-state movements remain low. World Bank Blogs. (2019). Retrieved March 18, 2023, from https://blogs.worldbank.org/peoplemove/internal-migration-india-grows-inter-state-movements-remain-low#%3A~%3Atext%3DThe%20number%20of%20internal%20migrants%2C2001%20to%2037%25%20in%25 

    The laws of migration – Ravenstein – 1885 – Journal of the statistical (1885). Retrieved March 17, 2023, from https://rss.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2307/2979181

    Vikaspedia domains. Vikaspedia. (n.d.). Retrieved March 20, 2023, from https://vikaspedia.in/social-welfare/women-and-child-development/child-development-1/in tegrated-child-development-scheme

    Unesdoc.unesco.org. (2021). Retrieved March 20, 2023, from https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000379875.locale=en

    United Nations. (n.d.). Goal 4 | Department of Economic and Social Affairs. United Nations. Retrieved March 20, 2023, from https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal4

    Home : Women and child development department, govt. of Maharashtra, India. (n.d.). Retrieved March 20, 2023, from https://womenchild.maharashtra.gov.in/content/

    Roy, E. (2022, June 19). Centre focuses on access to Anganwadi services for migrants. The Indian Express.   Retrieved March  20,  2023, fromhttps://indianexpress.com/article/india/centre-focuses-on-access-to-anganwadi-services-for-migrants-7977880/

    Always on the move: The troubling landscape of the right to education for migrant children in India. Times of India Blog. (2021, April 19). Retrieved March 20, 2023, from https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/voices/always-on-the-move-the-troubling-landsc ape-of-the-right-to-education-for-migrant-children-in-india/

    A case for functional social protection portability to address vulnerabilities of migration-affected children. Economic and Political Weekly. (2022, November 10). Retrieved March 20, 2023, from https://www.epw.in/engage/article/case-functional-social-protection-portability

    Bashir, S. (2023, February 11). How education remains out of reach for India’s Invisible Migrant Children. Scroll.in. Retrieved March 20, 2023, from https://scroll.in/article/1041923/how-education-remains-out-of-reach-for-indias-invisible-mi grant-children

    Home. International Organization for Migration. (n.d.). Retrieved March 20, 2023, from https://www.iom.int/

    This post was originally published on LSE Human Rights.

  • French minister says FLNKS ‘willing to discuss’ election roll changes

    By Walter Zweifel, RNZ Pacific reporter

    New Caledonia’s pro-independence parties are prepared to negotiate changes to the provincial electoral rolls, according to French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin.

    On his second visit to Noumea in less than four months, the minister announced the apparent change in the stance of the pro-independence FLNKS movement, which until now has ruled out any willingness to open the roll.

    As yet, there has been no official statement from the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front), which is still demanding comprehensive discussions with Paris on a timetable to restore the sovereignty lost in 1853.

    It insists on a dialogue between the “coloniser and the colonised”.

    The restricted roll is a key feature of the 1998 Noumea Accord, which was devised as the roadmap to the territory’s decolonisation after New Caledonia was reinscribed on the United Nations’ list of non-self-governing territories in 1986.

    Under the terms of the accord, voters in the provincial elections must have been enrolled by 1998.

    In 2007, the French constitution was changed accordingly, accommodating a push by the Kanaks to ensure the indigenous population was not at risk of being further marginalised by waves of migrants.

    ‘Enormous progress’
    However, anti-independence parties have in recent years campaigned for an opening of the roll to the more than 40,000 people who have settled since 1998.

    Darmanin hailed the FLNKS’ willingness to negotiate on the issue as “enormous progress”, saying the issue surrounding the rolls had been blocked for a long time.

    He said after his meetings with local leaders the FLNKS considered 10 years’ residence as sufficient to get enrolled.

    The minister said he had proposed seven years, while anti-independence politicians talked about three to five years.

    In March, Darmanin said the next elections, which are due in 2024, would not go ahead with the old rolls.

    However, a senior member of the pro-independence Caledonian Union, Roch Wamytan, who is President of the Territorial Assembly, said “they had started discussions but that they had not given a definite approval”.

    For Wamytan, an agreement on the rolls was still far off.

    Impact of the Noumea Accord
    Darmanin tabled a report on the outcomes achieved by the Noumea Accord, whose objectives included forming a community with a common destiny following the unrest of the 1980s.

    It found that “the objective of political rebalancing, through the accession of Kanaks to responsibilities, can be considered as achieved”.

    However, the report concluded that the accord “paradoxically contributed to maintain the political divide that the common destiny was supposed to transcend”.

    It noted that the three referendums on independence from France between 2018 and 2021 “confirmed the antagonisms and revealed the difficulty of bringing together a majority of qualified voters” around a common cause.

    Darmanin also presented a report about the decolonisation process under the auspices of the United Nations.

    It noted that “with the adoption of the first plan of actions aimed at the elimination of colonialism in 1991, the [French] state endeavoured to collaborate closely with the UN and the C24 in order to accompany in the greatest transparency the process of decolonisation of New Caledonia”.

    It said that France hosted and accompanied two UN visits to New Caledonia before the referendums, facilitated the visit of UN electoral experts when electoral lists were prepared as well as at each of the three referendums between 2018 and 2021.

    Kanaks reject legitimacy
    From a technical point of view, the three votes provided under the Noumea Accord were valid.

    However, the FLNKS refuses to recognise the result of the third referendum as the legitimate outcome of the decolonisation process after the indigenous Kanaks boycotted the vote and only a small fraction cast their ballots.

    As French courts recognise the vote as constitutional despite the low turnout, the FLNKS has sought input from the International Court of Justice in a bid to have the outcome annulled.

    The FLNKS still insists on having more bilateral talks with the French government on a timetable to restore the territory’s sovereignty.

    Since the controversial 2021 referendum, the FLNKS has refused to engage in tripartite talks on a future statute, and Darmanin has again failed to get an assurance from the FLNKS that it would join anti-independence politicians for such talks.

    Last month, Darmanin evoked at the UN the possibility of self-determination for New Caledonia being attained in about 50 years — a proposition being scoffed at by the pro-independence camp.

    In Noumea, he said he was against a further vote with the option of “yes” or “no”, and rather wanted to work towards a vote on a new status.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Fifteen Pasifika people on NZ King’s Birthday Honours List

    RNZ Pacific

    Paediatrician Dr Teuila Percival heads the list of Pacific recipients in the New Zealand King’s Birthday Honours List for 2023.

    Dr Percival is one of at least 15 Pasifika people in New Zealand who are on the list. She is to be a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to health and the Pacific community.

    For the past three decades she has been a strong advocate for Pacific children’s health in New Zealand and the Pacific.

    Dr Teuila Percival.
    Dr Teuila Percival . . . “It’s important for Pacific people to be recognised in the work they do.” Image: Pasifika Medical Association/RNZ

    Dr Percival said she felt honoured to get the award after getting over the initial surprise.

    “I think it’s important for Pacific people to be recognised in the work they do, so it’s really nice in that respect,” she said.

    “It’s just a great job, I love working with kids. I think children are the most important thing.”

    Dr Percival was a founding member of South Seas Healthcare, a community health service for Pacific people in Auckland since 1999.

    She has also been deployed to Pacific nations after natural disasters like to Samoa in 2009 after the tsunami and to Vanuatu in 2015 following cyclone Pam.

    Education
    Sacred Heart school counsellor Nua Silipa is to be an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to Pacific education.

    Silipa said her experience struggling in the education system after immigrating from Samoa in 1962 had motivated her to help Pacific people in the classroom.

    “When I look back now I think my journey was so hard as a minority in Christchurch,” Silipa said.

    “It was a struggle because we weren’t in the classroom, the resources at that time were Janet and John . . .  so as a learner I really struggled.”

    She said the “whole experience of underachievement” motivated her to help “people who are different in the system”.

    “It’s not a one size fits all in education.”

    Nua Silipa said she felt humbled to be a recipient on the King’s Birthday Honours List.

    She said the award also honoured the people who had been involved in improving education for Pasifika.

    “I know there’s so, so many other people who are doing work quietly every day, helping our communities and I’m really in awe of them.

    “There are many unsung heroes out in our community doing work for our people.”

    Technology
    Mary Aue is to be a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to education, technology and Pacific and Māori communities.

    Mary Aue is to be a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to education, technology and Pacific and Māori communities
    Coconut Wireless creator Mary Aue . . . “There was no communication back then, so I created an e-newsletter.” Image: RNZ Pacific

    Mary Aue is to be a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to education, technology and Pacific and Māori communities Photo: Supplied

    In 1999, she launched Coconut Wireless as an e-newsletter for Pasifika reaching 10,000 subscribers. It relaunched in 2014 as a social media platform and now has over 300,000 Facebook followers.

    “There was a disconnect between community and government agencies and there was a disconnect between our communities,” she said.

    “There was no communication back then, so I created an e-newsletter.”

    The name Coconut Wireless was based on the island concept as a fast way of communicating through word of mouth.

    Aue has also been an advocate for more Pacific and Māori learners in science, engineering, technology and mathematics (STEM).

    Aue said she was originally going to decline the award as there were a lot of people in the community who do not get recognised behind the scenes.

    “I have to thank my family, my friends and the amazing community that we’re all part of.”

    Sport
    Teremoana Maua-Hodges said she “just about choked” on her cup of tea when she found out she had received the Queen’s Service Medal.

    Maua-Hodges has been given the award for her contribution to sport and culture.

    She said the award was the work of many people — including her parents — who travelled to New Zealand from the Cook Islands when she was a child.

    “I’m very humbled by the award, but it’s not just me,” Maua-Hodges said.

    “I stand on the shoulders of different heroes and heroines of our people in the community.

    “It’s not my award, it’s our award.”

    Maua-Hodges said the most important thing she had done was connect Cook Islanders.

    “Uniting Cook Islanders who have come over from different islands in the Cook Islands and then to come here and be united here within their diversity makes me very proud.

    “They’ve taken on the whole culture of Aotearoa but still as Cook Islanders . . .  to show their voice, to show their flag, in the land of milk and honey.”

    The Queen’s Service Medal will be renamed the King’s Service Medal once the necessary processes are done, and the updated Royal Warrant is approved by King Charles.

    Pasifika recognised in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for 2022:

    Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit: Dr Teuila Mary Percival — for services to health and the Pacific community.

    Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit: Nua Semuā Silipa — for services to Pacific education.

    Honorary Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit: Meleane Pau’uvale — for services to the Tongan community and education.

    Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit:

    Mary Puatuki Aue — for services to education, technology and Pacific and Māori communities.

    Dr Ofanaite Ana Dewes — for services to health and the Pacific community.

    Fa’atili Iosua Esera — for services to Pacific education.

    Dr Siale Alokihakau Foliaki — for services to mental health and the Pacific community.

    Keni Upokotea Moeroa — for services to the Cook Islands community.

    Talalelei Senetenari Taufale — for services to Pacific health.

    Dr Semisi Pouvalu Taumoepeau — for services to education and tourism.

    Honorary Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit: Fa’amoana Ioane Luafutu — for services to arts and the Pacific community.

    Queen’s Service Medal:

    Joseph Davis — for services to the Fijian community.

    Reverend Alofa Ta’ase Lale — for services to the community.

    Teremoana Maua-Hodges — for services to sport and culture.

    Putiani Upoko — for services to the Pacific community.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Human rights and wrongs: the Australian calling out oppression at home and around the world

    Undeterred by the scale of challenges in her in-tray, the new head of Human Rights Watch, Tirana Hassan, says ‘We need to be standing with those people’

    Tirana Hassan may be responsible for calling out abuses around the world, but the new global head of Human Rights Watch remains shocked by her home country of Australia’s “dehumanising” treatment of asylum seekers and refugees.

    Hassan visited the notorious Woomera immigration detention facility in central Australia when she was in the final year of a law degree and found “hundreds and hundreds of Iraqis, Iranians and Afghans who had just been wallowing without access to legal representation”.

    Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Refugees subject to widespread physical ill-treatment, Council of Europe finds

    Human rights body says European states are increasingly resorting to illegal pushbacks of asylum seekers

    European countries are increasingly resorting to illegal pushbacks of refugees and asylum seekers “with minimal accountability”, a report from the continent’s leading human rights body, the Council of Europe, has found.

    The Council of Europe’s anti-torture committee (CPT) said it had identified “clear patterns of physical ill-treatment” against people trying to cross borders all over Europe.

    Continue reading…

  • Europe’s human rights watchdog warns UK over illegal migration bill

    Council of Europe’s experts say bill is ‘step backwards’ in fight against modern slavery

    Europe’s human rights watchdog has warned the UK government that its plans to curb the rights of trafficking victims in its illegal migration bill is a “significant step backwards” in the fight against human trafficking and modern slavery and demonstrates a lack of compliance with international law.

    In a highly unusual move, the Council of Europe’s group of experts on action against trafficking in human beings (Greta) on Wednesday expressed deep concern about the bill and its lack of compliance with core elements of the Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking in human beings.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • MPs urged to uphold UK’s global obligations in migration bill debate

    Council of Europe commissioner raises concerns that legislation may not meet human rights standards

    A European human rights commissioner has warned UK parliamentarians, before a debate on the government’s illegal migration bill, to uphold international obligations when scrutinising the proposed legislation.

    In a letter to the House of Commons and House of Lords published on Monday, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, Dunja Mijatović, said: “It is essential that parliamentarians prevent legislation that is incompatible with the United Kingdom’s international obligations being passed.”

    Continue reading…

  • Rwanda scheme would ‘completely erode’ UK’s standing on world stage

    New Human Rights Watch head Tirana Hassan says UK’s plan to deport asylum seekers is ‘cheap politics’

    The UK’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda would “completely erode” Britain’s standing on the world stage, the new head of Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said.

    Tirana Hassan, who takes over as HRW’s executive director on Monday, also said other conservative governments in Europe were considering following Britain’s lead and looking at African states as an offshore dumping ground for asylum seekers, potentially dealing further blows to established refugee protections.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • ‘You walked in and your heart sank’: the shocking inside story of Manston detention centre

    Last year, the short-term facility in Kent ballooned into a vast, unsafe camp holding thousands of people, including children. How did our asylum system get so broken – and what does it reveal about Rishi Sunak’s promise to stop the small boats?

    In late September last year, a Home Office employee walked into a newly opened section of the Manston short-term holding facility in Kent and realised that conditions there were spiralling out of control: “It had got way beyond what was ethical and humane.”

    The site, a collection of marquees in the grounds of a former army barracks near a disused airport, was overcrowded, and staff were improvising increasingly unsuitable makeshift expansions. “There were people who’d been sleeping on a mat on the floor of a marquee for 20 days. We’d run out of space, so we were opening old bits of the site. They’d put some mats on the floor of the gym – a really old building. It looked like it was about to fall down. None of it had been set up with decent hygiene facilities, bedding or anything. You walked in and your heart just sank. I had a feeling of: ‘Oh my God, what have we got into here?’” says the official, who asked not to be identified.

    Continue reading…

  • Suella Braverman’s ‘stop the boats’ plan would bar 45,000 children from UK

    Refugee Council’s claims on impact of her bill come as the home secretary, on a visit to Rwanda, faces pressure from her own party

    Suella Braverman’s plan to stop the Channel crossings would see as many as 45,000 children effectively barred from refugee status in the UK, the Observer has been told.

    The claims are made in a forthcoming Refugee Council report analysing the overall impact of the illegal migration bill, which reveals the possible extent of children who could have their asylum claims deemed inadmissible under the new laws. The news comes as the home secretary is facing a mounting rebellion from both wings of the Tory party over her controversial plans to tackle the Channel crossings, amid growing concerns over their impact on children and trafficking victims.

    Continue reading…

  • ‘I couldn’t love her’: the last UK child migrants to Australia on the long, lonely search for their mothers

    Seven thousand British children were sent to Australia last century, told they were orphans or unwanted. It wasn’t true. Now facing old age, 1,400 are still searching for their families

    It wasn’t until he was 71 that Michael Lachmann found out what a different life he might have had. He had always believed he was an orphan. But, already an old man, he discovered he was never an orphan. He had been loved and wanted. During the second world war his mother had left letters at a residential nursery saying she was only placing him in care while she was working and until “daddy gets home from Japan and we will be making a home for little Michael”. There was no childcare then, unless you were rich.

    Instead of being collected by his mother at the war’s end, at the age of five he was shipped to Australia and placed in the Castledare Boys Home, run by the Christian Brothers, where numerous boys were starved, beaten and subjected to sexual abuse. He was told his mother was dead.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • The Guardian view on refugee rights: a warning from history | Editorial

    Rishi Sunak’s pretence of serious statecraft is belied by his embrace of shabby populism when it comes to immigration law

    Britain did not sign up to the 1951 United Nations refugee convention by accident, nor was the country bamboozled into the European convention on human rights and cooperation with the Strasbourg court that enforces the convention. It was an architect of those institutions.

    The ambition was to lay solid foundations of European cooperation for the establishment of a peaceful democratic order after the second world war. Winston Churchill was a leading advocate of that project.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Suella Braverman: small boats plan will push boundaries of international law

    Rishi Sunak says bill will ‘take back control of our borders’ but critics argue the proposals are unworkable

    Suella Braverman has admitted the government is attempting to push “the boundaries of international law” with legislation aimed at reducing small boat crossings in the Channel.

    The law, to be disclosed to MPs at lunchtime on Tuesday, is expected to place a legal duty on the home secretary to detain and remove nearly all asylum seekers who arrive “irregularly” such as via small boats in the Channel.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Tunisia’s authoritarian descent takes new turn with migrant crackdown

    Immigrants living in terror after president’s racist speech – but many in country welcome strongman’s power grab

    A group of men and women from Sierra Leone gathered by makeshift tarpaulin tents outside the offices of the International Organisation for Migration in Tunis. The outline of small children could be seen wriggling beneath the cheap nylon blankets wrapped around their parents, as they tried to escape the cold and rain-flecked wind that blew in off the nearby lake.

    A young man, withholding his name, spoke for all. “They came for us with knives and machetes,” he said. “They robbed us. They kicked down the door and dragged us from our apartment.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • The Observer view on cruel schemes to relocate refugees | Observer editorial

    The government should speed up asylum seekers’ claims instead of focusing on costly and unworkable deterrents

    Last weekend, at least 67 people drowned when a wooden boat carrying about 150 people ran into trouble on rocks off the coast of Calabria, Italy. There were 20 children, including a newborn baby, among the dead. It is an appalling reminder of the risks some people are willing to take to flee desperate circumstances – often including conflict and torture – in their home countries.

    This movement of people across borders is age old and governments have never been able to fully control it despite developments in border enforcement and technology. It is driven primarily by patterns of conflict and economic deprivation and will increasingly be shaped by the climate crisis. It is a relatively small issue for the west: because the majority of refugees prefer to stay close to their home country to maximise their chances of returning, three-quarters of the world’s refugees live in low- and middle-income countries and seven in 10 in countries that neighbour their country of origin.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Maintenance failures sparked Heathrow detention centre disturbances, FoI reveals

    Freedom of information responses reveal damning findings of internal investigations into power cuts at Harmondsworth in 2022

    A catalogue of maintenance failures over more than a decade caused power cuts that triggered disturbances at Europe’s largest immigration detention centre last year, the Guardian has learned.

    The disturbances at Harmondsworth, the 676-bed centre near Heathrow, led to elite prison squads and the Metropolitan police being called to the scene to quell the protest. As a result of the power failure the centre had to be closed for several weeks and detainees relocated to other detention centres and prisons around the UK.

    No evidence of maintenance of air circuit breakers since installation and one had been tripping multiple times since June 2022

    Some equipment still at risk of failure because it is obsolete and no longer manufactured

    Switching strategy on some equipment not operational since 2008/9

    Excessive heat buildup in the electrical switch room

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • As Louisiana’s coast disappears, its historic communities are disappearing too

    This story is excerpted from The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration, published by Simon & Schuster.

    It was March 2021, and Sheri Neil was throwing together po’boys for the lunch crowd at her namesake Sheri’s Snack Shack, the only restaurant in the small bayou village of Pointe-aux-Chenes, Louisiana. The counter-service sandwich joint stands elevated about 12 feet off the ground, with a big red deck where people can sit as they enjoy one of Sheri’s renowned milkshakes.

    At the height of the lunch hour, a woman drove into the parking lot and came running up the stairs. She was a teacher at Pointe-aux-Chenes Elementary School, which served about 80 children from the village of Pointe-aux-Chenes and nearby Ile de Jean Charles, both  Indigenous communities that had been eroding for decades. Earlier that morning a representative from the parish school board had shown up unannounced and informed the staff that the parish was closing the school, effective that summer. People had been leaving Pointe-aux-Chenes for decades, driven out by frequent floods and the decline of the local shrimping industry, and enrollment at Pointe-aux-Chenes Elementary had fallen well below the district’s target. The village no longer merited its own school, officials said.

    a fallen tree and water sit near a white school building
    A fallen pole lies near Point-Au-Chenes Elementary School. Jake Bittle

    There were about a dozen people at the restaurant when the teacher drove up, and each of them ran at once to tell their families and friends. By nightfall everyone in town had heard the news, and by the next morning the residents of Pointe-aux-Chenes leapt into action as only the residents of a small town could. They started a Facebook group on behalf of the school and alerted the new cub reporter for the daily newspaper in the nearby city of Houma. The leader of the local tribal organization called the tribe’s attorney and asked her to help them file a lawsuit against the parish. The town staged a small picket outside the school, with students and parents holding up handwritten signs.

    This was far from the first school closure in coastal Terrebonne Parish, which had seen broad population loss over the previous two decades. The story was more or less the same in every town: the shrimp business crashed, the flooding got worse, and people moved up to dry land, leaving empty desks in every classroom. No one who lived in Pointe-aux-Chenes could deny that the bayou population was shrinking. The parish had shut down the library branch a few years earlier, warehousing the books in the school building, and the bayou had lost two grocery stores in the past decade. The only remaining general store was operating on thinner and thinner margins. You couldn’t go more than a mile without seeing a FOR SALE sign.

    clouds in the sky over a lake lined with houses
    Storm clouds gather off the coast of Louisiana, as seen from Pointe-Aux-Chenes, on August 30, 2021. Mark Felix / AFP via Getty images

    Still, closing the school at this time felt like an unnecessary escalation, one that would push the town further toward depopulation and decay. Fifty years earlier, when Indigenous children had first attended classes there after the integration of the state school system, the school had been a hostile place, but in the decades since it had become a kind of cultural melting pot for the whole bayou community, a bridge between the white Cajun and Indigenous sides of Pointe-aux-Chenes. The school had one of the largest Indigenous populations of any school in the state, and teachers made a point of educating students about the rich history of the bayou, bringing in tribal leaders to demonstrate ceremonial dances and drum rituals. The bayou had no museum, no archive, no dedicated historian, so it was through the school that each generation of residents passed down their unique traditions to the next. If that went away, what would the town have left?

    Even more painful was the fact that the decision had come just a few years after the Army Corps of Engineers had finished a new levee system that would protect the bayou, part of a massive project the agency had been working on since the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The erosion exodus that had begun two generations earlier seemed like it was finally about to slow down: The main reason so many people had left over the years was to escape the flood problem, but now the town would be protected from all but the most devastating storms. The marshland outside the levees might disappear, but the town itself would be safe for decades to come.

    an aerial of a long thin wall structure curving near a coast line surrounded by water
    A water control structure in Pointe-Aux-Chenes, Louisiana on August 31, 2021. Mark Felix / AFP via Getty Images

    Residents had seen what could happen without that investment in flood protection. Like Pointe-aux-Chenes, Ile de Jean Charles, just a few miles to the west, had been losing population for decades amid storm and erosion — indeed, around 98 percent of the island’s landmass had disappeared over half a century. The federal government had excluded the island community from its protective levee network, and rather than protect the island with flood walls the state government had opted to relocate its remaining 40-odd residents to a new tract of land farther inland. The relocation was funded by the federal government through an Obama-era grant program, and it amounted to the first whole-community climate migration in the history of the continental United States. The original idea for the relocation had come from a senior leader of the island tribe, but many had grown dissatisfied with the state’s handling of the program: The new site lacked direct access to the water that had sustained the island tribe for generations, and many residents had vowed never to leave the island, but as of 2021 most remaining residents were preparing to make their final move inland. 

    The residents of Pointe-aux-Chenes had hoped they would avoid this fate after the completion of the Army Corps’s levee system. The most optimistic residents were saying the bayou was poised for a minor renaissance now that the state had addressed the main driver of migration. The closure of the elementary school dashed these hopes: Pointe-aux-Chenes might be better protected than Isle de Jean Charles from flooding, but in the long run it was destined to suffer the same cycle of disinvestment and depopulation. Decades of erosion had already altered life on the bayou for good. The new levees had arrived too late. 

    two women walk down steps connected to damaged home
    Two members of the United Houma Nation Indian tribe walk around a hurricane-damaged home along Bayou Pointe-au-Chien in May 2022. Gerald Herbert / AP Photo

    The Terrebonne Parish School Board convened the next month to take a final vote on the closure. The meeting began with a public comment period during which parents and community members could address the board. The nine members sat Supreme Court–style at a long wooden desk, all arranged to face a single public podium. The residents of the bayou stood up one by one, white and Indigenous, and pleaded with the board to reconsider its decision. A few board members seemed moved by the show of support, but it wasn’t enough: The board voted six to three to shut the school down. The 80-odd students at Pointe-aux-Chenes Elementary would attend Montegut Elementary five miles away the following autumn. The tribe’s lawsuit against the parish was still pending, but it didn’t seem likely to succeed, since the board had the authority to manage its school system the way it saw fit.

    Among the audience members at the meeting was Mary Verdin, whose husband was Alton Verdin, a tugboat captain and lifelong resident of Pointe-aux-Chenes. Alton’s uncle had been a legendary tribal leader, known for getting in frequent fistfights with white police officers, and in keeping with the labyrinthine family trees of the bayou, Mary was Alton’s fifth cousin on both his mother’s and his father’s side.

    Working on a tugboat didn’t bother Alton the way it bothered many other Pointe-aux-Chenes residents who had been forced to give up shrimping and fishing. The tugboat pay had been enough for Alton to support Mary and their seven children, not to mention Mary’s mother, who lived with them and helped them take care of the kids. The family had a one-story brick house on the upper end of the bayou town, the part that had once been off-limits to Indigenous people like them. The wide marshland on the edge of their property sometimes flooded during heavy rains, but the house itself was modern and sturdy, and the family had hunkered down there during several hurricanes. Some of Alton’s older relatives still lived farther down the bayou, in the open-water areas that previous generations of the tribe had called home, but much of Alton and Mary’s extended family had moved up to join them on the solid territory of the mainland.

    The school closure hit Mary hard, driving her first to depression and then to anger. Five of her seven children had graduated from the school already, but Gabrielle, the second youngest, still had one more year to go before she graduated to middle school, and Raelynn, the youngest, was just two years old. Mary had always been involved at the school, collecting box tops and Community Coffee proofs of purchase, and they lived close enough that she and Alton could go and have lunch with their daughters when Alton was home from the tugboat. One year Alton had driven his daughter Abigail to a father-daughter dance in a stretch limousine — the drive took, in total, about 30 seconds — and had shown off his traditional Cajun dance moves in the school cafeteria during the talent show. Now all of that would vanish. Gabrielle would finish elementary school in the ancient Montegut Elementary building one town over, with its steep stairs and single set of bathrooms, and Raelynn would never set foot in the school that had witnessed so much history.

    To Alton, who had lived in Pointe-aux-Chenes his whole life, it seemed like the levee had arrived too late. With the school closed, the out-migration from the town would become all but irreversible. Who would move down the bayou to start a family, to raise their children, knowing that with every passing year a new rip would appear in the town’s social fabric?

    a woman and a man at sunset
    Mary and Alton Verdin Courtesy of Mary and Alton Verdin

    The closure of the school had started to make Alton and Mary doubt their future in Pointe-aux-Chenes. They needed to rip the floors out to fix long-term water damage, which would take thousands of dollars, and Alton wondered whether they should sell the house and find something inland in the nearby cities of Montegut or Houma. Their eldest daughter had just become a real estate agent and was looking for her first commission, so she was helping them scout out houses that might serve as suitable replacements. Both wanted to move, but they didn’t want to leave Pointe-aux-Chenes. Even as the school year began, they were stuck in a holding pattern, waiting for a sign about what they should do.

    Gabrielle attended Montegut Elementary for less than two weeks before Hurricane Ida cut her school year short. The storm intensified to the threshold of Category 5 over the course of just three days as it pushed up the Gulf of Mexico, and made landfall a few miles south of Pointe-aux-Chenes with winds of around 150 miles per hour. The parish issued a mandatory evacuation order ahead of the storm, but many hardened bayou residents stayed behind and watched as the wind ripped telephone poles out of the ground and sheared the walls off double-wide trailers. The erosion of the bayou had eliminated the natural protection system that weakened storms as they made landfall, allowing Ida to retain its full strength for far longer than it would have decades earlier.

    The devastation on the bayou was total. It took close to a week for the water to drain back out of the town, and when aid workers at last made it all the way down the length of the bayou road, they found that almost no structure had escaped the storm. It would take weeks for the parish to restore electricity and running water, and even longer to drag away the mountains of gnarled debris that lined the side of every road. The sole remaining grocery store sustained so much damage that its owner, Mary’s uncle, decided to shut it down for good. The final insult was that the storm had seemed to confirm the parish board’s decision to shut down Pointe-aux-Chenes Elementary. The school in Montegut had survived the storm, but the old white building on the bayou had not. The storm had twisted the structure’s metal roof like a nautilus shell and rolled it out into the street. There were shards of white wood all down the block.

    a house is in pieces with the roof all torn apart
    An aerial view of storm damage in the city of Pointe-Aux-Chenes, near montegut, Louisiana on August 30, 2021 after Hurricane Ida made landfall. Mark Felix / AFP via Getty Images

    Alton and Mary’s house was in better condition than many of the trailers and elevated houses around them, but it was far from livable. The roof was in tatters and water had dripped into the bedrooms and the living room. Resource-strapped FEMA wouldn’t arrive with temporary trailers for three months, and Alton’s contractor told him it would take about seven months before his house was fixed. In the meantime, Alton and his family would have to find somewhere else to stay, as would thousands of other people from Pointe-aux-Chenes and elsewhere in Terrebonne Parish.

    It might sound counterintuitive, but the storm strengthened Alton and Mary’s resolve to stay on the bayou. They figured if their house had survived Ida, it could survive just about anything, and they didn’t want to abandon their ailing hometown as it began the tortuous recovery process. Unfortunately, it wasn’t up to them: There was almost no livable housing anywhere on the bayou, and certainly none that they could rent on a short-term basis. The storm had walloped the nearby city of Houma, destroying dozens of hotels and apartment complexes, which meant the closest rental they could find was all the way in Mississippi. The owner asked for $900 a month at first, but by the time Mary went to go look at the place he had jacked it up to $1,500, plus a steep deposit. She said she’d rather buy a generator and take her chances back in Pointe-aux-Chenes. 

    The following summer, as the residents of Pointe-aux-Chenes struggled to make it back to the bayou, the Louisiana state legislature voted unanimously to reopen Pointe-aux-Chenes Elementary as a French-language magnet school. The tragedy of the hurricane had inspired lawmakers to override the parish board’s decision and offer the bayou community a new lease on life. Alton, Mary, and the kids returned to their battered house once the power and water came back on, and Gabrielle resumed school at Montegut Elementary, taking some of her classes in trailers.

    a photo of a man in a gray button up shirt on th left and a book cover called the great displacement on the right
    This story is excerpted from Jake Bittle’s book The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration, published by Simon & Schuster. Grist / Jasmine Clarke / Simon & Schuster

    Despite the saving grace of the school’s reopening, the recovery has been even longer and more painful than Alton feared. Instead of seven months, it has taken 15 months for the repairs on his house to begin. He and his family are now living in a camper as contractors work on fixing up the property, and even now Alton is still fighting with a supplemental adjuster over the details of the insurance payout. Hundreds of other families on the bayou and elsewhere in Louisiana are in a similar limbo: They can’t yet come back to the homes they lost, but they have nowhere else to go. Many residents are still living with family or in temporary apartments, and haven’t yet made it back to the bayou.

    To make matters worse, FEMA will stop distributing temporary housing payments to the victims of Hurricane Ida next week. The agency only dispenses post-disaster aid for 18 months after a storm or fire, and after that it shifts its resources elsewhere, but the recovery in Pointe-aux-Chenes has taken much longer than 18 months, and FEMA’s withdrawal will only stretch it out further. The long process of displacement that began decades ago and has continued through an endless succession of floods is still going on, and there is no reason to think that Alton and Mary have seen the end of it. Even once the school reopens, it will take a long time before Pointe-aux-Chenes gets back to the way it was, if it ever does.

    Nevertheless, the Verdins are hunkering down, trying to hold on a little longer.

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As Louisiana’s coast disappears, its historic communities are disappearing too on Feb 22, 2023.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • Liz Truss says it is ‘unfair’ to blame her mini-budget for interest rate hike and rules out being PM again – as it happened

    UK’s shortest-serving prime minister says she ‘learned a lot’ from time in government but does not want top job again. This live blog is now closed

    Sharon Graham, the Unite general secretary, has also criticised ministers again for refusing to engage in meaningful talks on pay. She told PA Media this morning:

    This government has not at any time in this dispute come to the table about the substantive issue on pay, and that is the real issue. There isn’t going to be any other way to end this dispute until they come to the table and talk about pay.

    They said on many occasions that they’re in constructive talks; first of all, I don’t know what those constructive talks are – they are certainly not on pay.

    Nobody wants to see these strikes, nobody wants to be on strike – the last thing nurses want to do is to be on strike.

    What they do want is a government that can show leadership, get around the negotiating table and settle this dispute.

    Continue reading…

  • Sunak ‘plans to stop deportation appeals’ for people who reach UK in small boats

    Home Office reportedly proposed two options to try to prevent those crossing Channel from claiming asylum

    Rishi Sunak is proposing to stop asylum seekers who cross the Channel in small boats from appealing against their deportation, according to reports.

    The Home Office, led by Suella Braverman, had put forward two options for the prime minister’s consideration as he attempts to automatically prevent those arriving in Britain from claiming asylum, the Times reported.

    Continue reading…

  • Immigration detainee not given new food because maggots ‘just on the vegetables’, report finds

    Advocates say ombudsman’s findings lay bare ‘inhumane’ treatment in Australia’s detention centres

    An immigration detainee served a contaminated meal was not offered an alternative because the maggots were “just on the vegetables”, a report by the federal watchdog has found.

    The claims by the commonwealth ombudsman – which are denied by the Australian Border Force – come in a report into conditions inside federal detention centres as part of Australia’s obligations under a UN anti-torture treaty – the optional protocol to the convention against torture (Opcat).

    Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Braverman says she wants to deliver Rwanda deportations at scale as soon as possible – as it happened

    This live blog is now closed. You can read our full report here:

    And here is the key quote from the summary of the judgment.

    The court has concluded that, it is lawful for the government to make arrangements for relocating asylum seekers to Rwanda and for their asylum claims to be determined in Rwanda rather than in the United Kingdom. On the evidence before this court, the government has made arrangements with the government of Rwanda which are intended to ensure that the asylum claims of people relocated to Rwanda are properly determined in Rwanda. In those circumstances, the relocation of asylum seekers to Rwanda is consistent with the refugee convention and with the statutory and other legal obligations on the government including the obligations imposed by the Human Rights Act 1998.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • After Hurricane Maria, many Puerto Ricans fled to Florida. Then Ian happened.

    When Hurricane Ian hit Central Florida last fall, Milly Santiago already knew what it was like to lose everything to a hurricane, to leave your home, to start over. 

    For her, that was the outcome of Hurricane Maria, which struck her native Puerto Rico in September 2017, killing thousands of residents and leaving the main island without power for nearly a year. 

    So in September 2022, nearly five years to the day when Maria tossed her life apart, Santiago was in suburban Orlando, visiting a friend. As torrents of heavy rain battered the roof of her friend’s home, and muddy waters flooded the streets, she realized they were trapped.

    And that her life was going to change, again.

    “It created such a brutal anxiety in me that I don’t even know how to explain,” she said in Spanish. 

    In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, Santiago was one of more than 100,000 Puerto Ricans who left Puerto Rico and relocated to places like Florida, seeking safety, economic opportunities, and a place to rebuild their lives. Only now, with displacement caused by Hurricane Ian, as well as one of the worst housing crises in the country, the stability for Puerto Ricans in hurricane-battered Florida has never felt more at risk. With those like Santiago twice displaced, many are finding their resilience and sense of home tested like never before.  

    A series of homes with blue rooftop tarps in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.
    Homes damaged by Hurricane Maria stand in an area without electricity on October 15, 2017 in San Isidro, Puerto Rico. Mario Tama via Getty Images

    Santiago’s life right before Maria was based in Canóvanas, a town on the outskirts of Puerto Rico’s capital of San Juan. There, she lived with her teenage daughter and son. Hurricane Irma visited first, grazing the United States territory in early September and causing widespread blackouts. When Hurricane Maria hit on September 20, it ultimately took the lives of more than 4,000 Puerto Ricans, making it the most devastating tropical storm to ever hit the region. It would take 11 months for power to be fully restored to Puerto Rico’s main island, home to the majority of the territory’s population of just over 3 million.

    Santiago lost her business as a childcare provider in the wake of the devastation to Puerto Rico’s economy and infrastructure. She decided she had no other option but to leave. By mid-October of that year, Santiago, with her children — and their father —relocated to metro Orlando.

    It took her years to adjust to her new life. And then Ian happened.

    “It was already a nightmare for me,” said Santiago, “because it was like reliving that moment when Maria was in Puerto Rico.” In the aftermath of Ian, Santiago was displaced from a rental home where she had lived for only a week.

    Santiago’s déjà vu is not unique among Puerto Rican survivors of Maria living in Central Florida. Many are still reeling from the trauma of economic hardship, poor relief efforts, and displacement that was only now starting to be addressed in Puerto Rico itself.

    “There are people who feel like, ‘Man, I just came here from Puerto Rico and here I am in this situation again,’” said Jose Nieves, a pastor at the First United Methodist Church in Kissimmee, a suburb of Orlando. Nieves’ work in recent years has extended to supporting immigrant families affected by natural disaster displacement in Central Florida. 

    Central Florida is home to large Latin American and Caribbean communities. Many members work in low-wage and low-skilled jobs in the area’s robust tourism industry, which is nonetheless vulnerable to the economic fallout from natural disasters like Ian. Puerto Ricans and other Latin Americans are also among the millions of Florida residents who live in homes without flood insurance.

    Earlier waves of Puerto Ricans had relocated to the mainland primarily for economic reasons. Along with those who came to Florida directly from the main island, thousands more had moved in recent years from other long-established Puerto Rican communities in New York and other parts of the Northeast. 

    By the time Santiago and her family arrived in Orlando in 2017, the metro area was already one of the fastest growing regions in the country. Over one million people of Puerto Rican origin now live in Florida, surpassing the number in New York. In Central Florida, Puerto Ricans make up the largest community of Latinos. Among them are sizable Colombian, Venezuelan, and other Latin American nationalities.  

    A view of a Super 8 motel sign from its parking lot on a sunny day in Kissimmee, Florida.
    The Super 9 motel in Kissimmee, Florida, which became home to a number of Puerto Rican families displaced by Hurricane Maria in 2017. Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda via Getty Images

    Like many other Puerto Ricans who had come before her, Santiago thought that a new life in Florida would provide what Puerto Rico couldn’t: wages that they could live well on, stable housing and infrastructure, and a local government that was responsive to their needs and that would uphold their rights as U.S. citizens. There was also the benefit of a large network of Spanish speakers who could provide support and share resources on how to navigate social and civic life on the mainland. And perhaps above all, there was also a sense that in Florida their vulnerability to the devastation of tropical storms like Maria would be lessened.

    At first, Santiago and her family settled at her sister’s house in Kissimmee. World famous theme parks like Walt Disney World and Universal Studios were minutes away, as was Orlando’s international airport. In December 2017, after finding out that the local government was providing hotel accommodation for those displaced by Maria, Santiago and her family moved into a local Super 8, one of several motels along Highway 192, Kissimmee’s main drag. Its concentration of hotels and motels has earned Kissimmee the moniker of “the hotel capital of Central Florida.” 

    In August of 2018, after more than eight months living at the Super 8, Santiago and her family started looking for more permanent places to stay. “By then the rents had skyrocketed and they were asking for $50 to $75 [a night] per head of family,” Santiago said of the motels. Landlords were also asking for two to three months rent for a deposit, a standard practice in Florida but one that took Santiago by surprise. “We said if we plan to stay we are going to [need] that money,” she said, “because we left Puerto Rico only with what little we had.” The family eventually settled in an apartment in Orlando.  

    Ian hit at a time when the cost of living in Central Florida had soared, housing had become more unaffordable, and wages had stagnated. “We’ve just seen this massive spike in the cost of rent and in the cost of everything else,” said Sam Delgado, the programs manager at Central Florida Jobs with Justice, or CFJWJ, an Orlando-based workers’ rights organization.

    “They say we have California’s expenses and Alabama’s wages.”

    Sam Delgado, program manager at Central Florida Jobs with Justice

    Delgado explained that the timing of Hurricane Ian at the end of the month left many local families struggling with whether to prioritize emergency expenses or rent. In the wake of the storm’s devastation, many households were forced to use rent money to buy non-perishable food items and gasoline, or temporarily relocate their families to hotels. “People just don’t have enough money for an emergency,” he said.

    Florida’s affordable housing crisis, as in the rest of the U.S., is the result of several factors: limited housing stock, zoning laws restricting construction of new rental housing, and stagnant wages that have not kept up with the cost of living. “They say we have California’s expenses and Alabama’s wages,” said Delgado. 

    Central Florida’s low-income Latino communities are among the hardest hit by the state’s housing crisis. They have some of Florida’s fewest financial and social resources to both prepare for disasters before they happen and to respond adequately after they do. Many live in properties such as mobile homes that are more affordable but less resilient to wind or flood damage.

    For families that have previously been evicted or have a poor credit history, it’s even more difficult to secure housing in the traditional rental market. Throughout Orange County (of which Orlando is a part), Osceola County immediately south (home to Kissimmee), and even the Tampa Bay area along the Gulf Coast, the last option for these families is to move into hotels or motels. A number of such makeshift apartment complexes also became micro-communities for Puerto Ricans displaced by Hurricane Maria. The award-winning 2017 film, “The Florida Project,” dramatized the life of a family living in a motel in Kissimmee. But few see this trend as sustainable. “It’s expensive to be poor here because it costs way more to rent a hotel [room],” said Delgado.

    And it’s only getting more expensive, as more extreme weather and displacement is putting pressure on the rental market. Prices for apartments are rising higher and higher to meet this demand. After recently looking for an apartment for she and her daughter, Santiago returned to her friend’s home, having had no luck at finding anything affordable. One place she looked at was asking $2,500 per month. “I don’t know what they were thinking,” she said.   

    In many ways, the housing crisis has faced no greater urgency. Coupled with the lack of affordable housing, many in the Puerto Rican and larger Latino communities feel that the local and state government is not doing enough to support those who have been displaced.

    “If you were out of your house for 15, 20 days because of the flood, because you didn’t have electricity or services, it shows that [the state] was negligent,” said Martha Perez, who is a resident of Sherwood Forest, a RV resort community in Kissimmee. Perez was forced to leave her home, where she lived alone, after Ian’s floodwaters made her community uninhabitable for weeks. Both Milly Santiago and Perez, a Mexican citizen, have received material support from Hablamos Español Florida, a social services organization geared to Latino immigrant families in the state. 

    “When our community gets hit by a hurricane, the recovery doesn’t take days or weeks. I mean, the reality is that many of those families are going to be struggling with the effects of the hurricanes for the next two years,” said Nieves of First United Methodist Church in Kissimmee. He says that the damage from Hurricane Ian has taken hundreds of homes off of the housing market, further exacerbating the affordability crisis.

    For many locals and advocates, the needs that have arisen around housing, wages, and climate resilience are effectively the result of an unwillingness from those in power to address the needs of the state’s most vulnerable communities. And social support organizations and volunteers can only do so much. “Every time it’s a nonprofit organization responding to these immediate needs in communities, it looks more like a policy failure than it does a community coming together to help people,” said Delgado.

    “What do I want from the government?” said Santiago. “I want them to be more fair with us, because there is a lot of injustice.” 

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline After Hurricane Maria, many Puerto Ricans fled to Florida. Then Ian happened. on Dec 16, 2022.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • Melilla border crush: Amnesty criticises ‘unlawful force’ and lack of first aid

    Group says Moroccan and Spanish police failed to provide even basic first aid for hours after deadly crush at enclave

    The “widespread use of unlawful force” by Moroccan and Spanish authorities contributed to the deaths of at least 37 people who perished during a mass storming of the border fence between Morocco and Spain’s north African enclave of Melilla in June, according to a report.

    The Amnesty International report also accuses Moroccan and Spanish police of failing to provide even basic first aid to those injured in the crush as they were left “in the full glare of the sun for up to eight hours”. It says Moroccan authorities prioritised moving corpses and treating security officials above the needs of injured migrants and refugees.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • UN refugee body criticises ‘errors’ in asylum report backed by Braverman

    Organisation questions use of ‘illegal’ to describe asylum seekers in report calling for radical crackdown

    A report partially endorsed by the UK home secretary, Suella Braverman, calling for a radical crackdown on those seeking asylum has been criticised by a UN body for “factual and legal errors”.

    Braverman wrote the foreword to the report by the right-leaning Centre for Policy Studies that says “if necessary” Britain should change human rights laws and withdraw from the European convention on human rights in order to tackle Channel crossings by small boat.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Map reveals Australian hotels used for immigration detention, but secrecy means it’s incomplete

    Exclusive: With almost no publicly available information about ‘Apods’, researchers say the lack of transparency is concerning for human rights

    Researchers have mapped dozens of hotels used for immigration detention by the Australian government, the first nationwide visualisation of a practice that has operated largely in the shadows.

    But the data remains incomplete.

    Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

    Continue reading…

  • Govt urged to restore tech visa priority after ‘surprise’ edict

    The federal government is being urged to restore the priority status given to a handful of tech jobs after it abruptly revoked the priority skilled migration list in a move that has surprised industry amid the ongoing skills crunch. Minister for Home Affairs Clare O’Neil introduced a ministerial direction last month that revokes the list…

    The post Govt urged to restore tech visa priority after ‘surprise’ edict appeared first on InnovationAus.com.