Category Archives: Blogs
G8/G20
Toronto, July 2010
Zilia Castrillon
I was one of the few Latin American persons in the Alternative Media Center during the G20 summit in Toronto in June. I exchanged information and perspectives with different Canadians and a few International NGOs about their campaigns and expectations. With “special” accreditation that segregated us from the mainstream media in a governmental move that the South African CEO of Greenpeace International and co-chair of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty called “media apartheid”, our work was particularly difficult. One positive aspect is that we were able to hear NGOs’ initial reactions to the announcements and official press releases. However, one of the negative aspects is the fact that more than 4,000 journalists from all over the world weren’t able to have any access to heads of states, ministers or country delegations unlike at the G8 in L’Aquila, Italy where civil society representatives were present in press briefings with top officials. Only a few journalists had access to these officials and, I guess, they are the ones who have not been able to unravel and convey the real results of the summit in Canada and previous summits. NOW magazine of Toronto said that reporters had an incentive to provide favorable coverage if they wanted to be invited back to cover future summits.
The press has a huge responsibility to hold countries accountable and to be sure that people retain a collective memory of the actual events of the summit. For instance, a memory should be kept of what happened concerning security measures and costs for the G8/G20 summits that surpassed $1 billion dollars, almost the same contribution the Canadian government promised to deliver for maternal and child care in the Global South. Part of the money for security was directed to the deployment of 20,000 police officers whose abuses during the demonstrations caused an international outcry among civil rights groups. The costs included the construction of a six-kilometer fence to protect Summit leaders and ministers that gathered at the Metro Convention Center where only the privileged had access.
Also a collective memory should hold the richest countries accountable for their promises on the prevention of HIV and care for those infected. In 2005 during the Gleneagles Summit those countries promised universal access to medical treatment with respect to HIV/AIDS by 2010. Today more than half of the 33 million people living with HIV are without therapy. Most of these are children and women.
In Gleneagles, Scotland, the G8 countries committed to add US$50 billion in official development assistance (ODA), a promise that have fallen short by US$15 billion due to “insufficient political will, changed political leadership, and deep recession”, according to a document cited by the journal the Lancet.
“What is the point if they don’t look up the evaluation and do something to keep the promises”, said Dennis Howlett, Coordinator for the coalition “Make Poverty History” referring to the accountability mechanism included by the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the so called Muskoka Initiative to ensure the goals of the G8 countries will be fulfilled.
Oxfam has criticized the leaders for “their failure to deliver on their promises and for trying to divert attention by cobbling together a small initiative for maternal and child health”.
Despite the Harper government’s proposal on maternal health and the additional US $5 billion over the next five years added by the rest of G8 countries, the NGO community fears that the money committed to maternal health will be taken from other areas such as food security and education.
Holistic approach to rural development and food security
Debates on food security were absent in the G8/G20 summits. The three year $20 billion commitment made in the L’Aquila joint statement on Global Food Security has not materialized in reality. The inclusion of country-level planning for agriculture and smallholder farmer organizations in L’Aquila Food Security Initiative was an important shift in the policies of some G8 countries according to Action Aid. Small-scale agriculture and rural development have been neglected in world deliberations during the past years. Policies have trended to prioritize large-scale land investments, which has increased dependence on food aid and escalated hunger in the poorest countries. The lack of political will to mobilize the promised funds for malnutrition is also a threat to the achievement of the rest of the Millennium Development Goals, especially the reduction in child and maternal deaths.
Dame Sall, head of the The Réseau Africain pour le Développement Intégré (African Network for Integrated Development) (RADI), an organization from Senegal and partner of the Canadian Catholic Development and Peace, asserts that without a holistic approach to rural development never will the Global South have the ability to claim its right to choose its own food. “Without food Sovereignty you can’t have Food Security”, Dame Sall said during the People’s Summit and alternative event held by civil society organizations a week before the G8/G20 Summits.
According to Mr Sall, ensuring food security implies independence from agricultural international policies. “Food security has different meanings for the G8/G20 leaders and farmers in poor countries”, he said adding that the Global South is not isolated from global solutions. While for some food security means more resources for agro-business and growing cash crops for export and international trade in food products, for others like Dame Sall it means land reform, family farming and food sovereignty.
For many civil society organizations, world leaders were once again, more interested in fighting bank taxes than getting the job done on delivering proper aid to the Global South and curb speculation in the market of raw materials. The liberalization of agricultural markets has proven to be a criminal action for the more than 800 million people still suffering hunger.
One last chance: Hard-luck refugee mom desperate to stay in Canada
http://hiiraan.com/news4/2013/Sept/40940/one_last_chance_hard_luck_refugee_mom_desperate_to_stay_in_canada.aspx
Misfortune follows the North End single mom with six kids everywhere.
When she was nine, her family fled mayhem in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu. They took shelter in a refugee camp in Kenya that locals torched, scattering many families, including hers. At 15, she was alone and fled to South Africa, already flooded with unwelcome refugees. By the time she was 28, she was a single parent of six and driven out again by locals who beat her husband until he fled and burned down their small shop.
When Idil Timayare was reunited with her parents in Winnipeg in 2011, her troubles didn’t end. She was run down by a cab this past winter, days before a crucial refugee hearing. As luck would have it, the Immigration and Refugee Board member hearing her case had a track record of rejection — saying no to 180 refugee claimants out of 210 cases heard in 2011. With a busted foot and fuzzy on prescription painkillers, 31-year-old Timayare testified on behalf of herself and her six young kids and lost.
Now, she and her children, who’ve been attending school here, have no status in Canada and their future is uncertain. They scrape by with help from food banks and social assistance in a dark, stifling hot-box they rent for $1,000 a month in the North End.
Idil Timayare and her six children at home in the North End. She holds daughter, Samira, and is surrounded by sons (from left) Salman, Zakariya, Soyan, Harrun and Ahmed (kneeling).
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“I have hope,” said Timayare, who’s receiving physiotherapy, coping with pain and looking forward to returning to English classes in the fall. “My kids like it here. They enjoy school.”
Their rent is high and their house isn’t great, but they have good neighbours, she said.
Her five sons under 12 have been going to school here for the last two years. The oldest, Zakariya, who’s turning 12 in September, said he’s not sure what he wants to be when he grows up. His younger siblings practically bounce off the walls of their cramped home and he feels the pressure of his station in the family.
“It’s annoying,” said the Canadian-sounding adolescent.
Four-year-old Samira is nervous about starting nursery school but excited about her shiny, pink shoes.
“I can’t go back,” said her mom. She fears her daughter would have to undergo female circumcision.
‘I can’t go back… Somalia is not safe’
“I don’t want her circumcised. Somalia is not safe.”
If they’re sent back to South Africa, they have no means of support and, as outsiders, will once again face xenophobic attacks, she said.
Timayare’s parents, who were granted refugee status and assisted by the Canadian government to come here more than a decade ago, are now Canadian citizens. They live a short drive from their daughter and grandkids and planted a big vegetable garden in their backyard.
Samira spends a lot of time at her grandparents’ apartment, where her grandmother, Amina, dotes on her and gives her strawberry ice cream in a red plastic cup.
Grandfather Ahmed Timayare said they help out as much as they can.
On Feb. 4, he was waiting downtown in the car with his grandkids for his daughter, who’d gone to a program for newcomers. They waited three hours and she didn’t show up. He didn’t know a cab hit her and she’d been taken to hospital by ambulance. She was stabilized and a patient lent her a cellphone to call her dad.
Days later, she hobbled into court for her refugee hearing, on crutches with a cast on her leg and still in rough shape. She wanted to get it over with.
Her father stayed in the hall with her kids while Timayare went ahead with the proceedings. She said she can’t remember what happened, but she knows she lost.
Human rights lawyer David Matas said she shouldn’t have testified in such rough shape — especially before a board member with one of the highest refugee rejection rates. Matas asked the Federal Court to review the refugee board decision, but it refused.
Now her only hope is to apply to Citizenship and Immigration Canada to stay on humanitarian and compassionate grounds, Matas said. The application fee for the family of seven is $1,400 — what they have to live on every month, said Timayare.
If her luck doesn’t change soon, the Canada Border Services Agency said she and her kids will be sent back to the place they fled.
“We’re safe here,” said Timayare.
carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
Migrants die in Italy shipwreck off Catania
Migrants die in Italy shipwreck off Catania
Monday, August 12, 2013
The bodies of six migrants apparently killed in a shipwreck have been recovered on a beach in southern Italy.
Officials in the Sicilian port of Catania say some 100 other migrants – reportedly Syrians – have been rescued.
The migrants were thrown into the sea when the boat ran aground just 15m (50ft) from shore, but some drowned because they could not swim.
Some 7,800 illegal migrants and asylum seekers landed in Italy in the first half of this year, the UN says.
Most come from sub-Saharan African countries, particularly Somalia and Eritrea. But a large number of Syrians and Egyptians are reported to be among hundreds of people who have arrived in Italy in the past few days.
Tourist buses and ambulances
In Saturday’s incident, the boat was carrying about 120 migrants; many women and 17 children were on board, reports say.
The bodies were reportedly found by employees at a beach resort nearby.
The incident coincided with the arrival of three cruise ships carrying 12,500 tourists in Catania, Sicily’s second biggest city. Tourist buses mingled with ambulances and rescue teams.
The nationalities of the migrants have not been confirmed but one port official speculated that many were Syrian.
Fine weather and calm seas in recent days have meant an increase in arrivals of undocumented migrants from the Middle East and North Africa, says the BBC’s David Willey in Rome.
Human traffickers, who make huge profits dumping migrants on Italian shores, often abandon their passengers as soon as Italian or Maltese coastguards spot them, adds our correspondent.
The UN said almost 500 people were reported dead or missing at sea during 2012 in attempts to reach Europe.
UNHCR welcomes court ruling on refugees
UNHCR welcomes court ruling on refugees
Somalia refugees wait to be screened by United Nations High Commission for Refugees officials at the Dadaab camp in this file photo. UNHCR has welcomed Kenya’s High Court ruling which stopped the government’s plans to relocate urban refugees July 30, 2013.
By LILLIAN ONYANGO laonyango@ke.nationmedia.com
Posted Tuesday, July 30 2013 at 17:52
Posted Tuesday, July 30 2013 at 17:52
The United Nations refugee agency has welcomed Kenya’s High Court ruling which stopped the government’s plans to relocate urban refugees.
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) said the government directive issued last December to move the refugees to camps in Dadaab and Kakuma resulted in their harassment by police, detention and extortion mainly in Nairobi.
“Many of them could not move about freely and fear of such treatment led hundreds of Somali refugees to return to Somalia or move to neighbouring countries,†UNHCR spokesperson Fatoumata Lejeune-Kaba said during a press briefing in Geneva.
According to the agency, when the directive was issued there were a total of 51,000 mainly Somalia urban refugees in Kenya.
“Most of the refugees living in urban areas have developed coping mechanisms, and so do rely on humanitarian assistance. There are also large numbers of refugee children attending schools in urban areas whose education would have been compromised had the relocation order been carried out,†the official said.
UNHCR appeared in the petition as a “friend of the Court” and provided advice on the applicable international refugee and human rights laws.
In its ruling, the Court stated that the government did not show that the plans to relocate the refugees would heighten the country’s national security.
Ms Lejeune-Kaba said UNHCR hoped the government will implement the “important constitutional decision†and move fast to resume legal services that were suspended pending the court process.
“These include the registration and issuance of documents to refugees and asylum seekers, which are essential for their freedom of movement, access to social and community benefits, as well as their protection against arbitrary arrest,†read her statement which was posted on the agency’s website.
Currently, Kenya hosts some 600,000 refugees.
The UN has maintained that such a move should be done voluntarily and only when the security situation in the previously war-torn country has sufficiently improved.
The petition filed by legal aid organisation Kituo Cha Sheria contested the legality of the relocation plan in January, and the court ordered the plan suspended pending its decision.
Last month, Kenya and Somalia formed a joint task force to supervise the voluntary repatriation of Somalia refugees.
The Director of the Office of the Great Lakes Region Ken Vitisia said Kenya would lobby for the return of Somali refugees during the regional leaders’ meeting in Nairobi this week.
He said the hosting of Somalia refugees has become an unbearable “burden†and that the government would lobby for the region to take a “common stand†on the issue.
“It is in Kenya’s interest that we don’t have regional conflicts because we are a trading nation. If we have peace and stability in the region, it means we can trade more,†Mr Vitisia told reporters.
South Sudan incomplete without people of Abyei
Children of Catastrophe: Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America
Threads of Identity: Preserving Palestinian Costume and Heritage
Mimesis
– a poem by Fady Joudah
My daughter
wouldn’t hurt a spider
That had nested
Between her bicycle handles
For two weeks
She waited
Until it left of its own accord
If you tear down the web I said
It will simply know
This isn’t a place to call home
And you’d get to go biking
She said that’s how others
Become refugees isn’t it?
–from “Alight†by Fady Joudah (2013)
(find it on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/1556594224)
About the poet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fady_Joudah
Refugee influx spurs action on mutilation
http://hiiraan.com/news4/2013/Jun/30042/refugee_influx_spurs_action_on_mutilation.aspx
Demand for female genital mutilation prevention and support services has ”significantly increased” in Victoria due to a rise in migration and refugee settlement, the Health Minister, David Davis, has warned.
Mr Davis has written to federal Health Minister Tanya Plibersek, urging her to match state government funding of $900,000 in 2013-14 for the Family and Reproductive Rights Education Program, to meet growing demand for female circumcision support and prevention services.
”The changing demographic pattern of this settlement requires increased efforts in responding to FGM [female genital mutilation] and providing support to disperse settled communities,” Mr Davis said. He said a cost-share agreement with the Commonwealth would let the program ”significantly increase its reach and effectiveness.”
”I think this issue is a very serious one,” he told The Age.
”There’s obviously a number of cultural sensitivities and we need people who can reach across these cultural divides.”
The extra money would be used to implement a professional training course for health professionals, another dedicated FGM clinic in a public hospital in outer-metropolitan Melbourne, a leadership course for young women and improved data collection.
Jacinta Waters, the acting director of women’s health services at the Royal Women’s Hospital, runs Australia’s first nurse-led deinfibulation clinic, which has repaired the effects of the circumcision of 33 women and seen 90 women for consultations since it opened in 2010. She said there had been an increase in women visiting the clinic in the past six months.
The clinic opens every second Friday and nearly all the clients are from African countries, including Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan.
About 30 per cent of clients are pregnant and need to be deinfibulated – or opened up – to allow for a natural birth. ”They can have mental health issues, sexual difficulties, urinary concerns, they may require sexual counselling. The procedure is the easy bit, the eliciting of that sensitive information in a cultural sensitive environment is the difficult part.”
Ms Waters said she was not aware of female genital mutilation occurring in Victoria. But she said counselling was provided for parents in the post-natal section of the hospital about the legal restrictions and health impacts of the practice on baby girls.
”We tell them it is illegal in Australia, and it is illegal for your family member to take the baby girl overseas to get it done.”
A spokesman for Ms Plibersek said the Department of Health and Ageing would discuss with the Victorian government ways to collaborate on the delivery of services. He said the federal government had doubled its grants for non-government organisations to tackle FGM to $1 million and the minister would ensure the issue was on the agenda at the next ministerial Standing Council on Health.
”The Commonwealth would welcome additional investment by all states and territories on FGM as a national priority. The usual process to determine Commonwealth and state and Territory cost share arrangements is through joint ministerial discussions.”