By International Press Syndicate | IDN-InDepthNews Report*
TORONTO (IDN) – As migrants and refugees from Africa and the Middle East continue to arrive in Europe in unprecedented numbers, a new World Bank/IMF report says that large-scale migration from poor countries to richer regions of the world will be a permanent feature of the global economy for decades to come as a result of major population shifts in countries.
By Kalinga Seneviratne* | IDN-InDepthNews Analysis
SINGAPORE (IDN) – Making a statement during its latest session in Geneva, UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein lamented that many of their member states do not tolerate criticism and scrutiny and there is an increasing trend of governments moving to restrict and persecute voices of civil society.
“I, together with many of my colleagues at the office, feel exhausted and angry,” Zeid said. “Exhausted, because the system is barely able to cope, given the resources available to it, while human misery accelerates . . . And angry, because it seems that little that we say will change this. Unless we change dramatically in how we think and behave as international actors.”
By Mirjam van Reisen* | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
BRUSSELS (IDN) – Even though the military regime has closed the border and practices a shoot-to-kill policy to stop people fleeing, nearly every tenth Eritrean has fled the country for political reasons or belongs to the Eritrean diaspora. With over 200,000 having sought refuge abroad or chosen to live overseas recently, more than ten per cent of the population seems to prefer to live abroad.
In fact, according to Dutch Minister Fred Teeven, there has been a rapid increase of refugees during the last months. In 2013 the Netherlands received one thousand Eritrean refugees in total. Meanwhile, the number of asylum seekers arriving in the Netherlands from Syria and Eritrea has gone up from 1,000 a month in February and March to around 1,000 a week.
By Julio Godoy* | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
BERLIN (IDN) – Hundreds of thousands around the world demonstrate for better working conditions and fair wages on the International Labour Day. However, when May 1 is over, many of these demonstrators go back to their daily reckless consumption patterns, which consider practically all consumer goods as disposable, and therefore support international corporations, which exploit workers and poison the environment.
The garment industry is a most illustrative example of the follies of modern-times consumerism: Take Bella, a German girl living near the city of Bremen: Several times each year, Bella makes a shopping spree to a local fashion store and comes back loaded with clothes.
The store Bella regularly visits belongs to Primark, the Ireland-based clothing retailer, which due to its aggressive price policies has become a European leader in the sector. As Primark announces itself, it is “Adored by fashion fans and value seekers alike (and) is widely established as the destination store for keeping up with the latest looks without breaking the bank.”
By Mirjam van Reisen* | IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint
BRUSSELS (IDN) – The Italian government has published the names of the occupants of the boat that drowned near Lampedusa on October 3. All those on the list appear to be Eritreans. At the weekend hundreds of bodies were recovered, washed ashore on the Italian island of Lampedusa. The European Union is soul-searching and identifying the problems of its increasingly repressive refugee and asylum policy.
A meeting of Ministers of Home Affairs has been called in Luxemburg to consider a package of measures, in a first response to the Lampedusa tragedy. Observers are pointing out that the effect of the European policy to effectively control the ‘safe routes’, forces the most desperate refugees to take ever bigger risks in their attempt to reach safety.
By R. Nastranis | IDN-InDepth NewsReport
ROME (IDN) – The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a specialized agency of the United Nations, has opened a new chapter in its longstanding engagement with indigenous peoples, majority of whom live in rural areas and face the dual challenges of poverty and marginalization. They were offered an important platform of dialogue at the first meeting of the Indigenous Peoples’ Forum at IFAD.
By J C Suresh | IDN-InDepth NewsReport
TORONTO (IDN) – There are miles and miles to go before capital punishment is at last accepted as a remnant of the gory past and abolished. But indications are that it is slowly on its way out. Amnesty International has welcomed an upsurge in global support for abolition of the death penalty, after the UN General Assembly (UNGA) voted overwhelmingly in favour of a moratorium on the use of the death penalty.
In the vote on December 20, the fourth such vote by the plenary session of the UNGA since 2007, 111 states voted for the resolution – an increase of two from the last vote in 2010. There were 41 votes against, with 34 abstentions.
By Murray Hunter* | Geopoliticalmonitor.com IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint
KANGAR, Malaysia (IDN) – Late last month, 171 Chinese national bus drivers who were employed by the Singapore Government-controlled bus and underground railway company (SMRT) took industrial action by staging a two day walkout. The bus drivers were protesting their relatively lower wages vis-à-vis other foreign workers doing the same job, as well as the poor sanitary state of their accommodations.
This was reportedly the first strike in Singapore since 1986.
By Jaya Ramachadran
IDN-InDepth NewsReport
STRASBOURG (IDN) -The 47-nation Council of Europe has faulted Italy for “the presence of racist and xenophobic political discourse” targeting Roma and Sinti, and the protection of the human rights of migrants, including asylum seekers.
The Council’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Thomas Hammarberg, says a racist and xenophobic “type of discourse is a powerful vector of anti-Gypsyism in Italian society and as a result, it also offsets the benefits of social inclusion work for Roma and Sinti carried out around the country.”
By Karina Boeckmann
IDN-InDepth NewsReport
BERLIN (IDN) – Whether it goes down in the history of the United Nations as a milestone or not, the world body’s “refugee agency” UNHCR has taken a significant step by acknowledging that when natural disasters and violent conflicts uproot entire communities and hope is slipping away, faith is the last straw at which the displaced and the forlorn clutch. [GERMAN] [JAPANESE]
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