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he number of people displaced by conflict, persecution, and violence worldwide fell in 2025 for the first time in more than a decade, according to a new report released by the United Nations refugee agency on Thursday. However, the agency warned that millions of refugees remain trapped in prolonged displacement, often spending years or even decades away from their homes with little prospect of rebuilding their lives.

The report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) found that 5.4 million people were newly displaced during 2025, while a significant increase in refugee and internally displaced persons returning home contributed to a decline in overall displacement figures.

Despite the improvement, the agency estimated that there were still 41.6 million refugees and people in refugee-like situations around the world by the end of the year, including approximately 6 million Palestinian refugees.

UNHCR officials described the figures as a mixed picture, highlighting both encouraging signs of return and persistent challenges facing millions who remain displaced.

“Displacement levels remain extraordinarily high despite the positive trend in returns,” the agency said, stressing that many returnees face insecurity, economic hardship, and damaged infrastructure upon returning to their countries.

Record returns drive decline

A key factor behind the decline in global displacement was a sharp increase in the number of refugees and internally displaced persons returning home.

According to the report, around 14.7 million people returned to their places of origin in 2025, representing a 50 percent increase compared with the previous year and marking the second-highest annual return figure recorded since UNHCR began tracking such data in 1965.

The majority of those returns took place in six countries: Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ukraine, and Myanmar.

While the figures suggest growing opportunities for return in some conflict-affected countries, UNHCR cautioned that many people went back to difficult and often unstable conditions.

In several countries, returnees encountered damaged infrastructure, limited access to healthcare and education, ongoing insecurity, and weak economic prospects, raising questions about the long-term sustainability of their return.

Afghan returns surge

Afghanistan recorded one of the most dramatic shifts in refugee movements during 2025.

UNHCR reported that approximately 2.9 million Afghans returned home during the year, including 1.9 million refugees. The number was five times higher than in 2024 and significantly reduced the global Afghan refugee population from 5.8 million to 3.7 million.

The agency attributed much of the increase to stricter immigration and residency policies introduced by neighboring Iran and Pakistan, which host some of the world’s largest Afghan refugee populations.

Many Afghans reported feeling compelled to return rather than making a fully voluntary decision, according to the report.

The findings underscore the complex nature of refugee returns, where movements are not always driven by improved conditions in countries of origin but sometimes by changing policies in host states.

Syria sees major shift

The report also highlighted significant changes in Syria, long regarded as one of the world’s largest displacement crises.

Following the collapse of the government of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, approximately 1.3 million Syrians returned to their homes during 2025. The figure was nearly three times higher than the previous year and contributed to a reduction in the global Syrian refugee population from 6 million to 4.9 million.

However, UNHCR warned that the challenges facing returning Syrians remain severe.

Large parts of the country continue to suffer from widespread destruction caused by years of conflict. Many communities lack basic services, employment opportunities remain scarce, and sporadic violence continues in some regions.

The agency stressed that successful return requires not only physical safety but also access to housing, education, healthcare, and economic opportunities.

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he Cypriot government is calling on the European Union to reevaluate the safety of parts of Syria for the potential repatriation of refugees, as the Mediterranean island nation grapples with a record number of Syrian arrivals. Interior Minister Constantinos Ioannou expressed the urgency of this reassessment in an interview with Reuters, highlighting the island’s growing concerns over its capacity to handle the influx.

Cyprus, the easternmost outpost of the EU, has become increasingly strained as conflicts in the Middle East intensify, leading to a surge in refugees and asylum-seekers. “We have five times more migrants than any other frontline member state,” Ioannou stated, noting that the majority of these migrants are from Syria.

The Cypriot foreign ministry is set to formally raise this issue with Brussels. The discussions would include the status of certain regions in Syria, particularly Damascus and Tartous, which a February report by the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA) assessed as having “no real risk for a civilian to be personally affected by indiscriminate violence.”

1,043 arrivals by boat in October alone

More than 5 million people have fled Syria during over a decade of civil war, primarily to Lebanon and Turkey. Despite a current stalemate in the conflict with President Bashar al-Assad’s forces controlling most of the country, refugees continue to leave. Cyprus has seen a marked increase in Syrian refugees, with 1,043 arrivals by boat in October alone, a three-fold increase from the previous year.

The island has also been a key point for migrants from Africa, especially since 2019, with many entering the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and being smuggled into the Greek Cypriot south. Although tightened security along the 180-km “green line” has reduced overall arrivals, the authorities remain concerned about potential new routes.

Offering Lebanon technical assistance

Ioannou mentioned that Cyprus is in close contact with Lebanon, which has intercepted numerous vessels. Cyprus has offered Lebanon technical assistance and joint patrols, and is advocating for more direct EU assistance to Lebanon. Additionally, Ioannou suggested the possibility of establishing “safe zones” outside the EU for processing asylum requests, similar to a plan Italy announced for centers in Albania.

The call from Cyprus comes as the United Nations refugee chief warns of potential further displacement in the region due to the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza, as stated in a forum in Geneva.

The European Commission has not yet responded to requests for comment on this developing situation. Cyprus’s call for an EU rethink on Syria migration underscores the complex challenges faced by frontline states in managing refugee crises and balancing humanitarian responsibilities with national capacities.

Source: Reuters

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n response to a recent surge in migrants, Finnish authorities have begun erecting concrete barriers topped with barbed wire at select border crossing points with Russia, officials reported on November 22. Finland has announced the closure of three additional crossings, leaving only the Arctic Salla crossing open for migrants seeking asylum.

This month alone, around 600 migrants, largely from the Middle East and Africa and lacking proper visas and documentation, have entered Finland. This figure marks a significant increase from the few dozen recorded in the previous months. The arrivals include individuals from countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Kenya, Morocco, and Somalia.

“We are taking these necessary steps to maintain order and ensure the security of legal border traffic,” stated Tomi Tirkkonen, deputy commander of the Kainuu border guard district.

Suspicions of Russian officials’ involvement

The Finnish government’s recent decision to close four key southeastern border crossings with Russia raised suspicions of Russian officials’ involvement in the migrant influx. Prime Minister Petteri Orpo has indicated that further action may be required, leading to the additional closures of the Vartius, Kuusamo, and Salla crossings. As a result, Raja-Jooseppi will stand as the sole Finnish checkpoint accepting asylum applications from Russian arrivals.

Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen expressed concerns over Russia’s potential use of migrants as part of a hybrid warfare strategy against Finland, stating, “We have evidence that Russian border authorities are not just allowing, but actively aiding individuals without proper documentation to reach the border zone.”

Despite Russia’s denial of any foul play, the Finnish ambassador in Moscow was summoned to discuss the closure of the most actively used checkpoints.

Critical levels at the Vartius and Salla checkpoints

The migrant situation has reached critical levels at the Vartius and Salla checkpoints, with daily arrivals ranging from 30 to 70 individuals. Governor of Russia’s northern Murmansk region, Andrei Chibis, criticized Finnish authorities for not allowing migrants to cross, labeling the situation a “humanitarian crisis.”

The influx has included young men, families with children, and women, with photos and border guard data highlighting the unusual spike in numbers. The EU border and coast guard agency, Frontex, is set to provide assistance to Finland as it manages the situation.

Finland’s decision to join NATO, a direct response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine, is seen by many as the catalyst for Russia’s alleged retaliation in the form of migrant maneuvers. Analysts remain uncertain of Russia’s primary motives behind such actions, as the geopolitical implications continue to unfold.

Source: Associated Press

I

n an unprecedented move, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Monday October 30, the release of its first-ever global research agenda on health, migration, and displacement. This monumental step aims to address the mounting health needs of a staggering one billion people worldwide who are leaving their homes either by choice or due to force.

Prompted by a series of factors such as ongoing wars, deep-rooted conflicts, burgeoning income inequalities, significant economic shifts, rapid urbanization, and the looming threat of climate change, the global displacement issue has reached an alarming rate. The WHO has underlined the urgent necessity for evidence-based policies that ensure the well-being and protection of this vulnerable demographic, emphasizing that “no one is left behind.”

The new agenda comes after a year-long consultative process, during which the WHO collaborated with over 180 stakeholders from diverse regions and backgrounds. This extensive consultation led to the identification of five research themes that warrant significant investment. Among these are:

1. Scaling up access to vital services and achieving inclusive universal health coverage.
2. Enhancing the responsiveness of health emergency preparedness.
3. Gaining a deeper understanding of health determinants and strategizing effective solutions.
4. Prioritizing under-researched groups among migrants and the forcibly displaced.
5. Innovating collaborations in research to effectively translate findings into policy and practice.

A substantial gap

WHO Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, expressed his commitment, stating, “The WHO’s global research agenda on health, migration, and displacement represents a pivotal step in our ongoing efforts. By bridging the knowledge gap on the health needs of the world’s most vulnerable populations, we aim to navigate and address the challenges of a world that is constantly on the move.”

While the magnitude of the challenge is evident, the WHO has indicated that there remains a substantial gap in comprehensive knowledge about best practices to optimally support the health of those in transit. This knowledge deficit not only compromises the well-being of displaced individuals but also hinders progress towards the universal health coverage and the broader Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Jeremy Farrar, WHO’s Chief Scientist, expressed his concern about the current state of global health. “With numerous acute and prolonged crises globally, migration and displacement have become intertwined with global health endeavors. The global research agenda is both an urgent call to action and a reminder to broaden our understanding of the health needs of migrants and the displaced.”

A foundational guide for regional and national research blueprints

In addition to setting the global research direction, the WHO’s agenda will serve as a foundational guide for regional and national research blueprints. The organization has also provided an implementation guide and toolkit within the agenda, designed to support policymakers, civil society, NGOs, and other UN agencies in tailoring the agenda to their specific migration contexts and organizational requirements.

Highlighting the urgency of the issue, an interactive dataset will be incorporated to monitor and evaluate the research funding landscape in the realm of health, migration, and displacement. Preliminary findings suggest that the existing research funding on a global scale is insufficient to address the pressing research gaps identified in the global agenda.

In closing, Dr. Santino Severoni, Director of WHO’s Department of Health and Migration, expressed optimism: “The global research agenda will catalyze specialized knowledge on the health of migrants, refugees, and other displaced groups. By understanding their unique health needs, we can work towards more equitable policies and interventions, pushing forward to achieve the SDGs.”

Sources: WHO, Anadolu Agency and Relifweb

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specially after Erdoğan won the first round with 49.5% of the vote, migrants, refugees and people who have acquired Turkish citizenship through investment came under attack. The Turkish opposition, represented by its presidential candidate, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, lashed out against refugees, with Kılıçdaroğlu promising to send them back once he takes office. This position reflects a change from one of his earlier statements, where he said he would send them back “within two years the latest.”

The change in Kılıçdaroğlu’s discourse was expected as he aimed to win more nationalist votes from those who voted for Sinan Oğan, who won 5.2 per cent of the vote in the 14 May elections. In addition to reducing inflation and tackling the economic crisis, the ATA alliance that nominated Oğan promised to repatriate refugees, who, together with asylum seekers, number some 13 million.

Oğan decided to support Erdoğan in the run-off, while some of his alliance parties decided to either support Kılıçdaroğlu or remain neutral.

Real refugee numbers

People with knowledge of Turkish affairs know that the figure of 13 million is not accurate and that the real number is closer to six million refugees, but in the election season everything is possible.

Kılıçdaroğlu, feeling a bitter defeat in the first round, lost his temper in front of the camera, “I am here, and I will fight until the end.” In another video, he warned Turkish voters that the number of refugees, migrants, and asylum seekers will jump from 10 to 30 million if the ruling party in Turkey wins the elections. Last month, he said there are 3.6 million Syrian refugees in the country, but his zeal to win more nationalist votes made him spice up the number. This should not be the case for an accountant; however, polarization in the country seems to be the reason why the 74-year-old presidential candidate decided to manipulate the number in a matter of three weeks.

The question is how people who were granted Turkish citizenship would vote in the elections. It is hard to give the exact number of these new Turkish voters, but estimates suggest that some 210,000 Syrians have obtained Turkish citizenship, while tens of thousands of others from different nationalities have become Turkish nationals after years of working in the country, investments, or marriage. Of the 210,000 Syrians who are now Turkish citizens, some 150,000 can vote.

How do people, who obtained Turkish nationality, vote?

It is not unexpected that the majority of people who have acquired Turkish citizenship would vote for the ruling party and President Erdoğan because they feel more welcome by them, but this is not the only reason or case. Some of them don’t vote at all, while a small number vote for the Turkish opposition. The Turkish opposition’s anti-migrant discourse is the main reason why many new Turkish voters vote for Erdoğan, and the only way for the Turkish opposition to win more votes from people who gained Turkish citizenship is to soften its discourse against them. The Turkish opposition does not seem to be interested in this as it eyes the majority of Turkish voters who are in favor of sending the refugees back, whether willingly or unwillingly.

The Turkish government has adopted a policy that would encourage refugees to return to their home countries, and it did, in fact, deport some 124,000 illegal migrants in 2022, including 70,000 Afghans and 58,000 Syrians. The Turkish government argues that Syrians should be encouraged to go to safe zones in northern Syria and that sending them to areas controlled by Assad means sending them to an uncertain future. Since the Turkish government’s policy of encouraging Syrians to return to northern Syria, some 500,000 Syrians have chosen to return.

Safe return of refugees

Turkey is now in talks with Russia, Iran, and Syria, sponsored by Moscow, to find a political solution to the problem of Syrian refugees in Turkey. Conditions may be ripe for their safe return after the Turkish elections on May 28, 2023. The Turkish opposition does not have a clear plan on how to send the Syrians back, and it knows full well that the European Union, which it claimed in its election campaign would lift visa restrictions on Turkish citizens “within three months”, may object to such a move.

Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu said his government has been implementing a plan to ensure the safe return of Syrian refugees. This plan includes creating industrial complexes, providing them with jobs, and building housing units, schools, and clinics to facilitate their return. The plan is supported by countries such as Qatar.

Soylu emphasized that most of these refugees come from Aleppo, which the Turkish “National Pact” of 1920 includes in its borders and that many of them have Turkish roots, sending a message to national voters that the policy of the Turkish government is in line with national security.

Despite their small numbers, which do not affect the outcome of Turkish elections, the majority of new Turkish citizens would not vote for the Turkish opposition, and proposals such as banning them from voting for 10 years would only create additional fear for them.

Perhaps it is time for the Turkish opposition to adopt a friendlier discourse towards people who have acquired Turkish citizenship, as they are now citizens by law and should be treated as such. The Turkish opposition should review its mistakes instead of looking for a scapegoat to justify its continued failure to defeat Erdoğan for 21 years – a record that will most likely become 26 years on May 28, 2023.

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xtreme weather, rising sea levels, and damaged ecosystems may put billions of lives at risk. The “forgotten victims” of climate change will require a collaborative effort.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM), of the United Nations has projected that there will be as many as 1 billion environmental migrants in the next 30 years, with more recent estimates indicating 1.2 billion by 2050 and 1.4 billion by 2060. As the world warms further and the global population reaches its forecasted peak in the mid-2050s, this number is projected to increase dramatically after 2060.

Most Affected

According to the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), a research group that publishes yearly global terrorism and peace indexes, 1.2 billion people live in 31 nations that are not resilient enough to endure environmental hazards.

The IEPs first ecological threat register concluded the following:

• 19 countries experiencing the most challenges, including water and food shortages and increased vulnerability to natural disasters, are also among the world’s 40 least peaceful.
• Over a billion people reside in 31 nations whose resilience is unlikely to be sufficient to survive the effect of natural disasters by 2050, hence contributing to global population displacement.
• Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa face the most ecological risks.
• By 2040, more than half of the world’s projected population, or 5,4 billion people, would reside in the 59 nations experiencing high or extreme water stress, including India and China.
• By 2050, food insecurity might affect 3.5 billion individuals, an increase of 1.5 billion from now.

Pakistan, followed by Ethiopia and Iran, has the greatest number of people at risk of mass displacement. Haiti suffers the highest level of danger in Central America. In many countries, even minor ecological risks and natural calamities could result in mass population displacement, threatening regional and global security.

High-resilience regions, such as Europe and North America, will not be immune to the broader effects of ecological problems, such as the influx of a large number of migrants. In 2015, as a result of the wars in Syria and Iraq, two million refugees fled to Europe, highlighting the correlation between rapid population movements and political and social upheaval.

Climate refugees

The term ‘Climate Refugees’ has been present in public discourse since 1985, when UN Environment Program (UNEP) expert Essam El-Hinnawi defined ‘environmental refugees’ as: “ those who have been forced to leave their traditional habitat, temporarily or permanently, because of marked environmental disruption (natural and/or triggered by people) that jeopardized their existence and/or seriously affected the quality of their life”.

Since 2008, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center reports that over 318 million people have been forcefully relocated by floods, windstorms, earthquakes, or droughts, including 30,7 million in 2020 alone. This equates to one individual being relocated every second. Depending on the frequency and magnitude of major natural disasters, the total number of displaced individuals varies significantly from year to year, although the trend over the past few decades has been upward. Many are able to find safety within their own nation, while others are compelled to find safety abroad.

Several European nations, notably Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands, were devastated by catastrophic floods in July 2021, resulting in fatalities and massive destruction. According to the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the frequency and intensity of such severe weather events are projected to grow in the coming decades (IPCC). Climate refugees will likely rise in number.

Henrietta Fore, UNICEF Executive Director stated in a UNICEF press release, that “climate and environmental shocks are undermining the complete spectrum of children’s rights, from access to clean air, food and safe water; to education, housing, freedom from exploitation, and even their right to survive.

Virtually no child’s life will be unaffected.

Accommodation or the right to adequate housing, as a human right, is an integral part of the right to an adequate standard of living. However, the world has lately been dealing with an unprecedented surge in housing and rental prices that threatens this very fundamental right. Realtor companies, research centers, the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (CBRT), and the Turkish Statistical Institute (TSI) data provide enough evidence that house prices and rental costs are soaring, up to a few hundred percentage points in Turkey.

This recent sizable jump in property prices and rental rates, however, is mainly due to supply shortage and increasing costs of production. There is, overall, certainly a very high demand due to the younger population, increasing external demand, and recent migration waves towards Turkey. Meanwhile, housing supply has also been relatively weak and insufficient, which has affected the increasing house and rental prices and often leading to false allegations against immigrants.

Meanwhile, as of June 2022, official records reveal that the average housing demand from foreigners is about 5-6 percent of the total demand in Turkey. In other words, foreigners, and especially immigrants, are being scapegoated and hence, there is an urgent need to shed light on some misperceptions over property prices in Turkey and put an end to the theory that mainly immigrants or foreigners cause inflation or house price booms.

Housing and rental costs

Inflation is making life very costly for everyone living in Turkey, just as it is globally. Inflation rate has recently hit 79 percent—the highest in the past 24 years. Residential property prices and rental rates are among the leading factors in this figure. Decreasing supply in the past few years (especially during the pandemic), policies that surge demand in Turkey, increasing costs of production (a negative supply shock), and increasing demand are considered amongst the primary reasons for this surge.

Figure 1: The CBRT Residential Property Price Index in Turkey, Source: CBRT

The CBRT Residential Property Price Index (RPPI), for example, has reached 430.60 in May 2022 (Fig. 1). In 2017, this figure stood at 100. As of May 2020, the annual RPPI inflation is at 145.5 percent YOY (year-over-year). The inflation adjusted real-terms growth in residential property prices, on the other hand, is at 41.1 percent YOY. The real-terms growth in particular, is pretty much in line with the respective figures in the U.S. and Europe.

Rental rates are no different. Rental prices are up by 300-400 percent in some regions in southern Turkey, and up by 200-300 percent in some neighborhoods in Istanbul. Data by Endeksa, a private realtor, shows that, as of June 2022, rental rates in Muğla, a southwestern tourism hub, are up by 73 percent (reaching15,000 TL); in Antalya by 310 percent (10,400 TL); and in Istanbul the average rental rate is up by 168 percent (8,100 TL).

Of course, just as with the ongoing global inflation problem, soaring property prices and rental rates are also a global issue today. The U.S., the UK, many European, or even Asian economies such as China are facing new rounds of property crises and unprecedented price hikes in different forms. As Figure 2 demonstrates, many European and North American economies are facing this run-up in property prices. Turkey, with its relatively higher internal and external (exchange rate) inflation, is an outlier nowadays, and has a relatively higher price surge.

Figure 2: Nominal house prices, index is at 100 in 2015, data till Q2 of 2022. Source: OECD

In the U.S., the Case-Shiller Home Index reached 306 in May 2022. In January 2022, the index level was at 212, which means there is a 44 percent increase in the valuation of an average U.S. house over the past two and half years (Fig. 3). Average house prices are up by 10-15 percent in the past year, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). In the UK, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) data shows it would, on average, take a paid employee around 40 years to save and invest in order to buy a house.

Figure 3: Case-Shiller Home Index in the United States. Source: St. Louis Fed FRED database

Property bubble arguments, rocket high rents around the world are evident. However, recent tightening cycle and its further consequences for the global property markets are yet to be observed. The increasing costs of production, the rising cost of debt due to the recent tightening trend, and the concerns that properties are overpriced need to be kept under careful scrutiny. So, what can we expect in the future?

Commercial property investments are lately in decline in the West, including in the U.S., the UK, and Germany. China is already shaken by the property crisis or the Evergrande crisis in particular, and homebuyers are refusing to pay mortgage loans. The post-pandemic demand for rural areas and land may also take down urban real estate prices.

New trends such as remote work may also help bring down demand for office rentals. Swiss bank UBS expects a 20 percent decline in demand for office leases. Shares of real estate companies and real estate trusts may also go down, but house prices are likely to remain high—hopefully, however, without increasing further.

Liz Truss is the Member of Parliament for Southwest Norfolk, Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Affairs, and Minister of Women and Equalities. She is presently one of the leading candidates for the leadership of the Conservative Party, who will likely become the next British Prime Minister.

The alternatives for Boris Johnson’s replacement as party leader and Prime Minister have been reduced to two contenders by Conservative MPs. On September 5, following a runoff vote among Conservative party members, either Foreign Secretary Liz Truss or former Chancellor Rishi Sunak will be crowned the victor.

With three weeks remaining in the contest for the leadership of the British Conservative Party, the foreign secretary is farther ahead of her opponent Rishi Sunak. She has the support of eleven government whips as she strives to extend her advantage against Rishi Sunak among Conservative party members.

In light of the increasing cost of living and the impending recession, the new British prime minister will have to strike the ground running. Therefore, the focus has already shifted to Truss’ first steps at No. 10 should she become Prime Minister as predicted.

According to YouGov, Liz Truss now has a 38-point advantage against Rishi Sunak among Conservative members. Currently, the foreign secretary has 69% of the popular vote versus Sunak’s 31%. Both contenders have set out some of their policies already and will continue to do so in the coming weeks – Here is what we know about Liz Truss so far.

Domestic Affairs

Speaking at the Tory party leadership debate in Eastbourne, Truss said that if she were to become prime minister, her proposals for quick tax cuts may prevent a recession.

She stated: “I know there are difficult forecasts out there, but forecasts are not destiny. And what we shouldn’t be doing is talking ourselves into a recession. We should be keeping taxes low.”

This is in response to the Bank of England’s warning that a recession will hit the UK as interest rates are increased by the greatest in 27 years.

According to the Bank of England’s Governor, Andrew Bailey, “what has happened is there has been a series of big supply side shocks, most of which were outside… I would dare anyone to have been in this position two years ago and predicted a conflict in Ukraine,” he continued. He maintained that, while the bulk of inflationary pressure was caused by rising gas prices in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, boosting interest rates was required to avoid excessive inflation from being ingrained.

Immigration

Truss has nearly always voted for stricter asylum laws and has consistently supported stricter enforcement of immigration laws. She has stated that she “completely agrees” with the Rwandan government’s immigration policy and has gone further than other candidates, reportedly planning to “extend the controversial policy to other countries” if elected prime minister.

She stated, “As prime minister, I am determined to see the Rwanda policy through to full implementation as well as exploring other countries where we can work on similar partnerships.”

She was absent in 2020 from a vote on the Immigration and Social Security Coordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — New Clause — Leave to Enter: Family Unity and Asylum Claims. She has also voted to remove the ability of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, spouses, vulnerable adults, and dependent adults to join a legally present family member in the United Kingdom.

Education

Truss has virtually always voted in favor of turning primary and secondary schools into academies, and she has repeatedly voted to withdraw financial aid for certain 16- to 19-year-olds in training and higher education. In addition, she voted to increase university tuition fees to £9,000 per year.

Foreign Policy

Truss voted a mixture of for and against strengthening the Military Covenant. Truss has regularly supported the employment of British military personnel in combat operations abroad during her time as a member of parliament, including voting for military action against Daesh in Syria. But she also voted against Iraq War inquiry bills.

In November 2016, Truss voted against an investigation into the disparity between public rhetoric and private conduct before the Iraq war. In November, 2020, she voted in favor of putting limitations on the prosecution of members of the armed forces for their conduct while deployed abroad, including in cases of alleged torture, therefore reiterating her earlier vote.

However, in an interview with the BBC, she said that if she were to become prime minister, she would not deploy British soldiers into Ukraine.

She stated, “We are doing all we can to support Ukraine. We’ve led the international coalition on sending weapons, we’re putting the sanctions in place, but I do not support the direct involvement of UK troops.”

What happens next?

The two candidates must now face off in 5 Tory hustings debates throughout the nation, a procedure that started on July 28 in Leeds and will culminate on August 31 in London. The victor will be declared on Monday, September 5, and will become the next Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister.

They are all “terrorists” to Victor Orbán, Hungarian prime minister. In the words of Czech President Miloš Zeman, “They do not deserve the slightest pity for embarking their children on rubber boats knowing they could drown.” According to French politician Eric Zemmour, they are “thieves, murderers, rapists.” “What would have happened if Aylan Kurdi and the likes had lived and grown?” asks the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, infamous for its black humor, depicting Aylan Kurdi, whose little body tragically washed ashore at the age of 3, in a cartoon harassing a woman in Germany by touching her buttocks! As the French anthropologist Michel Agier, who is known for his works and books on immigrants, says, the enemies of immigrants envision two worlds: one world is clean, healthy, and visible, and the other is the dirty, murky, sickening, and invisible world of “The Leftovers.”

Muslim minorities and immigrants, who are the target of all kinds of demonization propaganda by far-right and racist parties across the world and especially in Europe, have been the target of Turkey’s main opposition party, CHP (Republican People’s Party) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and his party members since 2012. However, there are two differences from their European counterparts—the second being utterly ironic. First, CHP is a left-wing party and a member of the Socialist International. And second, even though CHP leader Kılıçdaroğlu uses similar expressions as Orbán and Marine Le Pen regarding refugees, he refers to them as “my brothers”!

For example, in response to the possibility of the migration of approximately 1 million Syrians gathered in Idlib in 2021, fleeing the attacks of the Syrian regime advancing with the support of Russia, he stated, “All of my brothers from Idlib are bloody people, they are members of the terrorist organization,” i.e., [ISIS/Daesh]. He has sworn on oath and repeated it over and over to this day: “Be assured, these Syrian brothers, I swear by God, they will be a scourge on the nation. The most important actors of the underworld will emerge from among these people.” Implying that some of them are terrorists, he claims, “We do not know who is a terrorist and who is innocent. You see, in many places, attacks have already started”—this, without bothering himself to explain who, where, when, and how.

Perhaps Kılıçdaroğlu was inspired by the famous Great Replacement conspiracy theory of Renaud Camus, the muse of the French far right, or maybe the mental reflexes of immigrants’ enemies have always worked in the same way. Even though there is nowhere in Turkey where the number of Syrians is higher than the settled population and the total number of Syrians granted citizenship does not exceed 300,000, Turkey’s left-wing main opposition party leader claims “Turkey’s DNAs are being clearly altered” and “If there is an election, our Syrian brothers will win the mayorships. There are Syrians in all 81 provinces. In some of our provinces, the Syrian population is more than the local people.”

Furthermore, Kılıçdaroğlu argues, “Syrians have all kinds of privileges” and unlike Turks, “They do not wait in line at hospitals and doctors examine them first. They enroll at universities without taking the nationwide exam. Their tradesmen and businessmen do not pay taxes and are not subject to any control whatsoever.” According to the CHP leader, every segment of society, “shopkeepers, farmers, laborers, unemployed, disabled, interns, and others” are deprived of the government’s support compared to Syrian immigrants.

“The government gives Syrians the money it should give Turkish people,” he often repeats. “Oh well, never mind, our children can stay poor, unemployed! Syrians are first class, our citizens are second.” Unsatisfied with provoking people based on class lines, he sometimes calls separate ethnic and religious groups to revolt: “You [addressing President Erdoğan] don’t take care about me as much as you take care about Syrians. They are first class citizens. I [Eastern Romans] have been here since Mehmet the Conqueror and I am still a third-class citizen. You shall revolt, you will say we do not accept it.”

If the party leader himself vilifies refugees and incites people against them, imagine, how far the members of his party can go. According to Fikri Sağlar, a former CHP minister, “Syrians carry HIV/AIDS to the country.” Refugees should never “set foot in İzmir, the bright face of our country” according to Özlem Ağırman, an MP for İzmir. “A refugee camp to be opened is a dagger lowered into the heart of İzmir,” claims Aytun Çıray, another CHP MP for İzmir. According to former CHP deputy İlhan Cihaner, “The people of Hatay should never rent out their houses to refugees” and should even “react to and stop greeting whoever greets them.”

While Hayri Türkyılmaz, CHP mayor of Bursa’s Mudanya district, imposed a “coast ban” on refugees, whom he said “live the life of Riley,” Tanju Özcan, CHP mayor of Bolu, said, “We don’t want to see Syrians in Bolu.” Özcan surpassed Zemmour’s far-right statements, giving direct instructions: “Syrians should not be given business licenses anymore.” In the first week he took office, Özcan proudly cut off the food and cash aid to refugees. In Hatay, the CHP municipality removed the signboards with Arabic inscriptions in neighborhoods with a high density of Syrian refugees on the grounds that they created “visual pollution.”

Has the Republican People’s Party not developed any positive discourse or action regarding refugees? It has. Two reports were prepared within the party, expressing the hardships faced by refugees. CHP Deputy Chairman and Istanbul Deputy Gamze Akkuş İlgezdi met face-to-face with Syrian refugees living in İstanbul in 2021 and prepared a report entitled “Syrian Asylum Seekers in İstanbul, Their Tendency to Return and Expectations.” In the report, İlgezdi wrote, “When criticizing the government, we must be careful not to instrumentalize refugees and not to make them the target of racist reactions.” There are findings in the report revealing, albeit indirectly, the view of CHP and its supporters towards refugees: “Syrians generally prefer districts where AKP members primarily live.”

There are other critical determinations in the report such as “it would not be wrong to say that Turkmens, who have less difficulties of integration due to language and are more easily accepted by Turks thanks to their ethnic origins, protect their Arab and Kurdish neighbors” or “asylum-seekers of Kurdish origin, who prefer to come to Turkey instead of Rojava, see solidarity from Arabs and Turkmens, not from the Kurds of Turkey.” In addition, a group of CHP deputies prepared a report entitled “Between Borders: From the Human Drama to the Test of Humanity” in 2016. The report is generally positive, although it has been criticized for some gaps and exaggerations, or for handling the issue from a security perspective rather than a humanitarian one.

However, neither report had any effect on the party leader, the discourse of the party members, and the party’s anti-immigrant policies. In fact, while both reports talked about the need not to target refugees, they did not discuss who and by which politicians refugees were targeted and demonized! Ercüment Akdeniz, a staff writer for the left-wing newspaper Evrensel with the most ethical and principled language of journalism on the subject of “refugees” in the Turkish press from the beginning, asks in one of his columns, “Which CHP should we believe in?” pointing to the contrasts between the statements of the CHP leader and the reports.

The left-liberal Bianet newspaper, on the other hand, criticized the opposition parties in the article “Anti-refugee: Immorality of the Opposition for the Sake of Opposition.” Bianet’s criticism was based on the grounds that Turkey’s opposition parties adopt the rhetoric of far-right parties in Europe about immigrants, foreigners, Muslims, and Turks. In the same vein, it condemned the anti-refugee publications of the newspaper Sözcü, the CHP’s mouthpiece, and asked, “What is the difference between those who set the houses of Turks on fire and the opposition newspaper Sözcü, which targeted the neighborhood where Somali immigrants settled in Ankara?”

Kılıçdaroğlu, who has not criticized Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad even once, has promised to deport refugees if he wins the 2023 elections. Similar to his brilliantly original expression of “my bloody terrorist brothers from Idlib,” the CHP leader awkwardly said, “We will deport them to Syria with drums and horns.” Meral Akşener, the leader of İyi Party, the second strongest political party in the People’s Alliance, like the German far-right AfD (Alternative für Deutschland), stated, “We will talk to Assad and send them back.”

There is yet another political figure, Ümit Özdağ, who resigned from İyi Party a year ago and founded a new party, the Victory Party, focusing all his political discourse on refugees. Unlike Kılıçdaroğlu, he openly targets refugees on social media with his fictional video films accusing them of “perversion” and “harassing Turkish girls and women.”

In the 21st-century world where refugees are treated as garbage, since 2012, Turkey has been the most gracious country, hosting nearly 4 million Syrian refugees, most of whom are children (about 2 million) and women. The state tradition that has turned Anatolia into a home for asylum seekers throughout history continues under the leadership of President Erdoğan.

Despite the fact that lately the language of the opposition has become effective in Turkey, and we are witnessing rising anti-immigrant sentiments, Erdoğan still asks, “Did the Syrians come to Turkey for their own pleasure? Didn’t the fear of death there lead them to seek asylum and migrate to Turkey?” He adds, “We have never expelled them from these lands, nor will we expel them… Our door is open to refugees, [and] we will continue to host them.”

According to the social and solidarity economic plan of the 2024 Olympics, the International Olympic Committee, and partner organizations are working to ensure that young people and those struggling to find work can find employment in jobs created by Paris 2024 Summer Games. However, what is the human cost of this sporting event? Recently, some alarming facts have come to life which show the dark side of this athletic extravaganza.

A dozen unlawful migrant employees were involved in the construction of the Athletes Village in the Parisian suburb of St. Denis. The recent discovery of such undocumented workers toiling at Olympic construction sites reveals the unscrupulous subcontracting network at the heart of delivering the Paris 2024 Olympics. This may just be the tip of the iceberg.

The uncovering of mostly minority ethnic undocumented labour has led to only 100 checks being carried out by authorities despite thousands being employed constructing the many venues that will be used to host the Games. Why they are reluctant to investigate the full extent of the problem remains a mystery, though one may guess as to the reason.

These undocumented workers will likely be employed on poor terms and conditions and not receive the pay and benefits that lawful employee should expect to receive in France. The discovery of the abuses of migrant labourers comes as France brands its Olympics as the ‘Games for social inclusion of refugees and asylum seekers.’ Furthermore, the French Government supports the Olympic Refuge Foundation ahead of Paris 2024.

These high-minded aspirations appear to be little more than a blatant attempt to mask the truth about French society and sport. Ground-breaking research shows that even amateur French football, along with that of other European countries, discriminates against ethnic minority immigrants.

Sports built on French double standards

Robert Oulds, Executive Director of ImpACT International, told Politics Today that “It would be ironic, if it were not so tragic, that France’s showpiece tournament aims to raise awareness as to the plight of refugees whilst exploiting those very same migrants. The French Olympic authorities are taking the hypocrisy of virtue signalling to new extremes. President Macron’s showpiece tournament may hide the trouble that France has found itself in for a few weeks, but the dishonour of exploiting labour in service of building their stadia will stain his reputation.”

“Having experienced life in France, where workers’ rights are so neglected, it is no surprise that so many migrants and refugees are choosing to cross the English Channel in search of a better life in Britain. Their hopes may, however, be dashed.”

Ultimately Oulds finds that “The bogus claim repeatedly made by Remainers that staying in the EU was the only way to protect workers’ rights was ridiculous.”

“British standards and protections exceed those set by the European Union. Working people in Britain know that aim of Brexit is about the opportunity to get a well-paying job. Indeed, Remainers’ like Lord Rose campaigned for a low-wage economy. Far from some employment Nirvana countries like France just want to continue exploiting the vulnerable while pretending that they care about migrants,” concludes Oulds.

How are the games affecting the property market?

Making matters worse, the 86,000 acre Olympic and Paralympic village is being built in St. Denis to provide athletes with a place to live and is set to be used as a residential neighborhood that is expected to provide an estimated 5,000 homes once the games end. As part of the “Grand Paris Hub” project to renovate the St. Denis suburb, a new train station, better transport links, new housing and increased public facilities will be created.

Apart from the Olympic village, the hub plans to build a high-class complex building used as office space, two forty story hotels, shopping and restaurant facilities and a grand exhibition centre. In essence, such a grand project looks extremely attractive to foreign investors and those who can afford to enjoy such luxuries.

However, the reality does not look quite exciting for those less fortunate and will hit those families who are unable to afford to live in St. Denis after the Games due to the rise in property prices that the development will cause. It is estimated that there could be an increase of 10% to 15% in property prices in the surrounding areas with a potential for apartments to increase by up to 25% around the new transport facilities created in the St. Denis suburb. Thus, with property prices already skyrocketing in Paris’s suburb towns, residents will be left scrambling to afford basic living conditions.

The northern region of Paris already suffered from years of neglect, unregulated infrastructure, and a less well-off population than that of central Paris. Therefore, this expected spike in property prices will only make matters worse by increasing the division and gap between Paris’ wealthy and poor residents. A rise in poverty levels should be expected at the cost of lavish mega sporting events.

Neighbourhood relocation

When assessing the Paris Olympic bid evaluation, the Institute for Human Rights and Business accessed that the French were indeed committed to making use of existing infrastructure meaning that there would not be a substantial risk of displacement of populations to create new game venues. Additionally, according to the IOC, the Paris Olympics will already feature 95 per cent of the existing and temporary venues in the city.

However, what can be seen since Paris won the bidding process to hold the Olympic Games, is quite the opposite of the above-mentioned statement, instead, the creation of the Olympic Village in the Northern suburb has led to the forced eviction and relocation of thousands. The human cost of a mega sporting event of such large magnitude comes as no surprise of course, however, the lack of response from the IOC and its member committees is quite shocking to say the least.

Apart from the forced relocation of residents in the St. Denis suburb, schools and local businesses have been coerced into shutting down to make space for the building process. Unsurprisingly, the IOC has not done anything to stop the destruction of over 20 businesses, 3 schools, hotels, one student accommodation complex, and housing for migrant workers.

Although residents and workers have been offered temporary housing relocation offers, local protests have been underway since the Olympic village project was announced. Alongside this, a rise in unemployment will come because of business closures and relocations, exacerbating the divisions between the rich and the poor.

One representative for the migrant workers’ hostels complained about the temporary housing relocation claiming that the location was far from transportation links, little or no access to restaurants, grocery stores, cafes, or a disable friendly environment. Students are left to find more expensive housing closer to the capital whilst business owners are concerned over damage to profit earnings.

It should go without saying that if a host country has a minimal amount of pre-allocated land for the building of the iconic Olympic Village they simply should not be considered or allowed to enter the bidding process. This means that countries who wish to host future Olympic Games should show evidence of allotted space that is available to be used for the creation of new venues. This will provide assurance that the human cost of building such grand stadiums and racetracks will be mitigated and decreased, ensuring as little harm as possible happens to those communities.

Months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the war seems to have fallen short of its main objectives. At the moment, Russian forces are pursuing a strategy of fortifying the Russian separatist regions in eastern Ukraine and restoring the land connection between Crimea and these regions. Moscow seems to have abandoned its goal of a regime change in Ukraine by occupying Kyiv, at least for now.

Although diplomatic pressure and economic sanctions have isolated and harmed Russia, the chief reason behind Russia’s revision of its goals is the heavy military losses. The Ukrainian Armed Forces have claimed that more than 4,500 military vehicles belonging to the Russian Armed Forces were destroyed, severely damaged, or captured by the Ukrainian forces. Although there is no objective data on the causalities, according to the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ statements, Russian causalities in Ukraine are more than 25,000.

The impact of the war in Ukraine on Syria and Libya

Russian military losses not only affect the Russian prospects for Ukraine, but also Russia’s military presence in the Middle East. Some Wagner units, who are Russian mercenaries and were deployed in Libya and Syria, have reportedly started withdrawing. These units redeployed in Ukraine to back Russian forces.

Accordingly, Ankara decided to close its airspace to Russian military and civilian planes flying between Russia and Syria. Thus, the route from the Hmeimim Air Base to Russia has become longer and costlier. On the other hand, as a move against Ukraine’s open-door strategy to foreign fighters, especially citizens of European countries, Moscow stated that there are volunteers from the Middle East who want to fight on its behalf.

Following this move, allegations were made from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) and Syrians for Truth and Justice (STJ) that Russia voluntarily registered thousands of Syrians for a possible deployment to the Donbass region. These moves speak of the impact of the Ukraine war and Russia’s losses in Syria. Russia’s possible withdrawal of military forces in Syria would diminish its influence and this would work in favor of Iran, both ally and rival of Moscow over Syria.

High-level officials from Syria and Iran had met in the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and discussed the opportunities that a possible decrease of the Russian influence could create in the medium term. While the spymaster of the al-Assad regime Ali Mamlouk met with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and the Secretary General of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani in Tehran on February 28, the president of the Syrian regime Bashar al-Assad received Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Asghar Haji in Damascus on March 1.

Israel targeted certain Iranian militias such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Iranian-backed militias such as Hezbollah, as these pro-Iran forces were challenged by Russian-backed militias on the ground. However, Tehran responded to Moscow’s policy of challenging Iran through the Iran-backed foreign militia forces in the region, and the regime-affiliated National Defence Forces (NDF), the Local Defense Forces (LDF), and the 4th Armored Division units. The result was a loss for Moscow.

Russian-backed militias, including former rebels, lost ground in Daraa and the Iranian-backed elements gained ground. If Iran increases its influence in the region by taking advantage of the decrease in Russian influence, Russian influence in the vicinity of Damascus may be threatened. In addition, it is possible for Israel to increase its air attacks and even a limited cross-border intervention is possible.

Another possibility is that assassinations and armed attacks targeting regime and Iranian-backed figures in the region may increase, leading to a vacuum of power. While the Russia-brokered reconciliation agreements convinced Syrian opposition fighters in Daraa to reach a ceasefire, the deterioration of the balance of power in favor of the regime and Iran may cause the undercover opposition cells to become visible and active.

On the other hand, in Deir ez-Zor, Iran has turned the region into a hub for its militias. The IRGC, Hezbollah, Baqir Brigade, Liwa Fatemiyoun, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada units are positioned on a line from Bukemal in the south to Tebni in the north. This massive militia presence is an assurance for Iran’s Iraq-Syria militia logistics. Tehran uses these militias to counterbalance both the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and Russia, and is trying to make militias a permanent actor in Deir ez-Zor through cultural centers, NGOs, and real estate purchases.

Meanwhile, Russia is trying to establish a balance of power by increasing diplomatic efforts with the Arab tribes of Deir ez-Zor and recruiting militias from the local population. However, the financial effects of the Ukraine invasion may hit Russia’s plans in Deir ez-Zor. This situation may lead Tehran, which does not have problems in logistics and funding—in the case of Deir ez-Zor—to increase its influence there.

The Iraq-Syria border becoming a full Iranian sphere of influence will be a reason for intervention for both the U.S. and Israel. This, in turn, will translate into intense airstrikes and special operations against Iranian-backed militias. Such a scenario could lead to full-scale chaos in the region and DAESH may take advantage of this to strengthen its presence in the Syrian desert.

Russia’s losses on the Ukrainian front have encouraged Iran, which wants to become the leading actor in Syria, to advance further. The actors that will balance these moves by Iran, which is increasing its influence especially in southern and eastern Syria through militias, seem for now to be Israel and the U.S. On the other hand, Russia may turn a blind eye to the interventions of various actors, especially the U.S. and Israel, in order to balance Tehran.

With the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the safety of the Ukrainian people has been endangered. As a result, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHCR) estimates that more than 7.7 million Ukrainians have been internally displaced in their country. Moreover, as of May 23, more than 7.5 million Ukrainians have had to take refuge in neighboring countries—including Russia—for international protection in order to secure their lives.

If the war continues, the number of Ukrainian refugees and asylum seekers in Europe—including those in Russia—, which currently exceeds 7.5 million, is expected to reach 8 million by the end of June. This indicates that Europe as a whole is facing a much bigger crisis than the irregular mass migration crisis it experienced in 2015.

Europe’s Open-Door Policy for Ukrainians

Following the onset of the Ukraine war on February 24, European countries have been following an open-door policy towards Ukrainian asylum seekers fleeing the war. As a matter of fact, Ukrainian asylum seekers have been placed under international protection in Europe, and officially become refugees.

According to the UNHCR data, as of May 23, the countries receiving the largest numbers of Ukrainian refugees are Poland (3.5 million), Romania (966,000), Hungary (650,000), Moldova (470,000), and Slovakia (445,000) respectively. Additionally, approximately 930,000 Ukrainians have taken refuge in Russia so far.

It should be noted that since Poland, Romania, Hungary, and Slovakia are EU members, nearly two million Ukrainians have moved to other member states on their own will or within the scope of temporary protection programs announced by the EU. According to the official statements made by some EU member states on different occasions, Germany has received 715,000 Ukrainian refugees, the Czech Republic 330,000, Bulgaria 270,000, and Italy 120,000.

Another indicator that shows that European countries have been embracing Ukrainian refugees is the official protection programs. This includes temporary protection mechanisms that the EU has started to implement. This mechanism in progress is based on the Temporary Protection Directive adopted by the EU in 2001.

With this mechanism, which offers a temporary solution in the periods of irregular mass migration, Ukrainians are allowed to obtain a residence permit in the EU countries, to benefit from education and health services, and to work in various ways according to the national legislation of the member countries. Moreover, the EU has accepted to pay €3.5 billion as part of the Recovery Assistance for Cohesion and the Territories of Europe (REACT-EU), and €4 billion credit line as part of the Ukraine Solidarity Package in advance to member states to help them welcome and accommodate Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war.

The EU’s temporary protection application, which has been used for the first time since 2001, is actually a significant step towards a more humane protection regime and fairer responsibility-sharing among the EU member states. It is also a move away from the strict Dublin Regulation which puts an official pressure of hosting refugees on the first entrance countries.

The mechanism will remain in force for one year at the first stage, but may be extended for a total of one additional year. In addition, since there is a visa exemption between the EU and Ukraine since 2017, Ukrainian citizens have the opportunity to stay in EU countries up to 90 days upon arrival.

Europe’s Double Standards on Refugee Policies

Despite the positive perception of Ukrainian refugees by European countries, there is the paradox that those very same countries followed a closed-door policy during the 2015 refuge crisis. It bears repeating that a strict securitization policy was followed against the irregular mass migration of 1.3 million from the Middle East and North African to Europe due to civil wars, conflicts, or poor economic conditions. As a result, most European countries dealt with the issue of irregular migration from a pure security perspective and tried to keep asylum seekers outside their borders.

Today, it is not possible to say that there is a similar reception towards Ukrainian refugees. On the contrary, acting quickly and decisively, European countries have opened their borders in unprecedented solidarity towards Ukrainians. While the EU did not previously implement the Temporary Protection Directive, it decided to implement it immediately upon the start of irregular migration from Ukraine.

Regarding Europe’s double standards on refugees, Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov’s following statement is quite noteworthy: “These [Ukrainian refugees] are not the refugees we are used to. As the Austrian chancellor said, these are our relatives, family. These are Europeans, intelligent, educated people, some of them are programmers. We, like everyone else, are ready to welcome them. This is not the usual refugee wave of people with an unclear past. None of the European countries is worried about them.”

Likewise, Greek Minister of Immigration, Notis Mitarachi, who drew the reaction of international organizations for his harsh and cruel practices against refugees, used the word “real refugees” to describe Ukrainians in his speech in the Greek Parliament. Such statements, whose number is way greater, reveal that European countries act on cultural and religious motives while determining their policies on refugees.

What is more, it is widely believed that Ukraine’s historical and political ties with European countries play an important role in this process. In other words, since European countries have stronger ties with Ukraine, a more tolerant attitude has been displayed towards Ukrainians.

However, none of these reasons change the fact that European countries avoided the humanitarian responsibility they should have undertaken in the crisis in 2015 and today are acting in an ambivalent manner. The warm welcome by Europeans to Ukrainians needs to be extended unequivocally to all asylum seekers.

Recently, the debates in Turkish politics around migrants and refugees have heated. A short film titled Silent Invasion (Sessiz İstila in Turkish) funded by far-right nationalist Victory Party leader Ümit Özdağ, brought the topic to the fore. The film contains polarizing, racist, and exaggerated depictions of Istanbul in 2043 overtaken by Syrians where the Turkish population has become a minority and is oppressed. The film utilizes populist rhetoric urging people to consider migration issues as black-and-white.

The volume of posts circulating on social media that claim to show disorderly behavior by foreigners (mainly Syrian and Afghani refugees) has also increased. These posts amplified in number at a time when the Turkish population has become economically vulnerable due to the economic hardships, primarily the high inflation. Nowadays, the government’s policies for regulating legal and illegal migration are being questioned more frequently.

Frustrations surrounding migration

The arguments surrounding migration escalated in 2021 over refugees from Afghanistan who left their country following the U.S. withdrawal and the Taliban’s immediate takeover. Concerns surrounding Afghani refugees triggered those already existing over Syrians, aggravating calls from the public for stronger border security.

Since the beginning of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, Turkey has hosted a large influx of refugees, a development for which the country was not well prepared. Turkey adopted an open-door policy for people fleeing the conflict, granting them temporary protection status.

The temporary protection regime grants legal residence and access to health care services, education, social assistance, and interpretation. It also provides a safeguard from being sent to Syria against the will of the recipient. Today, the number of refugees in Turkey has reached 4 million, 3.6 million of them Syrian.

The refugee crisis has cost Turkey around 40 billion dollars as it endures high inflation and economic problems. For many migrants, Turkey is a transit point to Europe or other countries in the West. Although the EU pledged 6 billion euros in aid for refugees, it has only provided half of the amount.

As a policy to combat economic problems partially, Turkey facilitated visas, residencies, and acquisition of Turkish citizenship by investment. This piled on to the recent economic frustrations.

New regulations to control migration and population integrity

In February, Turkey restricted additional settlement of refugees in 16 provinces. Furthermore, the Ministry of Interior announced that residency applications are closed to foreigners within local communities where the population of foreign nationals surpasses 25% of the total population. Upon implementation, 781 neighborhoods in Turkey were closed to registry.

Foreigners in areas with high concentration of foreign nationals will be relocated to different districts and provinces on a voluntary basis. According to Çataklı, they were given around two months to change their address with the help of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to facilitate the process. Those under temporary protection risk losing their status if their new address is not notified after two months.

The deputy minister also mentioned that unregistered newcomers from Syria will not automatically be given protection statuses. They will be taken to camps where it will be investigated whether they need temporary protection or not, as people from regime-controlled areas are entering Turkey for economic reasons rather than fleeing war or persecution.

New measures have been introduced to prevent regular migrants from turning into irregular ones upon visa expiry. Fingerprints will be taken upon visa application so that the migrants who enter the country with visas but do not leave when their visa expires and destroy their passports can be duly identified.

Furthermore, in April, it was announced that the amount required for Turkish citizenship through buying real estate increased from $250,000 to $400,000.

The Turkish government seems to be dealing with migration more extensively compared to previous years as signs of social discontent are strongly surfacing. However, it remains to be seen whether existing measures are sufficient or satisfying to public opinion. As elections in 2023 near, it seems migration will continue to remain a hot topic in Turkish politics.

The Palestinian mass displacement in 1948 known as the Catastrophe, or Nakba, which proceeded the creation of the state of Israel after Zionist forces depopulated 532 Palestinian villages and carried out dozens of massacres, continues to be denied by Israel today.

For the founders of Israel, these massacres and forcing between 750,000 to one million Palestinian refugees out was merely a process that happened when “the war broke out” between the Palestinians and forces from seven Arab countries, on one side, and Jewish militias, on the other. In this article, I present and debunk a number of myths about the Israeli narrative of the Nakba events and the creation of Israel.

Israel claims that seven Arab armies took part in the fighting against Jewish militias in Mandatory Palestine, which includes the entire land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, after Britain decided to end its mandate on May 15, 1948.

Looking at the numbers, one can easily point out that the Arab forces, and Palestinian volunteers by extension, were poorly trained and equipped, and that their numbers were much lower than the Jewish militias taking part in the systemic depopulation of Palestinian towns and villages in 1948. Some 67,000 well-trained and equipped Jewish forces—many of them having served in World War II under British command—took part in the fighting against some 14,962 Arab forces from seven countries. Hundreds of other Palestinian fighters took part in the fighting, most of them were poorly equipped.

The Israeli narrative claims that Palestinians chose to leave their towns and villages. Israel negates what actually happened, and the mass depopulation of villages and cities in Palestine, including committing dozens of massacres against the Palestinians to push them out. One such example is the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin, where some 250 Palestinian civilians were massacred, including pregnant women and children.

The news and smell of death of Deir Yassin sent waves of shock and panic across Palestine pushing many Palestinians to run for their lives, lest they face a similar fate to Deir Yassin and dozens of other villages. Israeli leaders praise the role of the massacre of Deir Yassin in establishing Israel. Menachem Begin, in his 1952 memoir, says that “without Deir Yassin there wouldn’t have been an Israel.”

Some 150,000 Palestinians remained in villages and towns in what became Israel. Although they hold Israeli citizenship today, Israel still refuses to allow many of those who were internally displaced in 1948 to return to their hometowns and villages. Some of these locations are just a couple of miles away from where Palestinians live today.

Israel wants Palestinians to forget their ancestral homes completely, and Palestinians resist this masterplan by the annual return marches to villages and towns that were depopulated in 1948. The annual March of Return to the village of Miyar is an example. However, it is given no mention in English-speaking media and was faced by brutal Israeli police force this year.

Israel claims that the Nakba is an isolated incident that Palestinians can’t get over, and that they refuse to “engage in peace.” On the contrary, the Nakba is ongoing to this day with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip literally caged by Israeli walls and navy ships suffocating them, and Israeli forces counting the number of calories Palestinians can consume. The Nakba is ongoing with Israeli house demolitions on a daily basis in the West Bank. The most recent example is the decision of an Israeli court to displace and depopulate eight Palestinians communities in Masafer Yatta in the Southern Hebron Hills on May 5, 2022.

The Nakba is ongoing with Israeli forces continuing to execute Palestinians in cold blood at checkpoints, the most recent example being Mahmoud Abuiram, 27, a Palestinian daily laborer in Israel who was shot dead near the Palestinian city of Tulkarim on May 9, 2022. The Nakba is ongoing with Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Israel as second-class citizens. The Israeli settlers’ attacks against Palestinians in Jisr al-Zarqa, supposedly holding Israeli citizenships, is the just the tip of the iceberg.

The Nakba continues today with Palestinian families still scattered across the globe, with most Palestinian families not having met in a single place since 1948. It continues with the separation imposed on Palestinians by Israel, which has in practice turned the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Palestinians in Israel into isolated communities.

Israel’s denial of the Nakba is the root cause of the bloodshed we continue to witness today, its overwhelming majority on the Palestinian side. In 2020, Palestinians outnumbered Israeli Jews between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and with this reality galvanized in the Israeli Nakba denial, Israel will increasingly find itself chained by this apartheid reality that will render it a prisoner of its own policies.

The way to heal is to listen and consider the narratives of Palestinian Nakba survivors, many of whom are still alive, and their decedents, and to make this narrative part of the solution. By listening to their experiences and taking these stories into account, the victims of war in Palestine can heal and justice can be realized through the return of Palestinian refugees.

Denial of the Nakba will only create a settler society that is not aware of its country’s recent history, a history that is deep and rooted. The history of a land cannot simply be overwritten by living behind walls and denying it ever happened, as most Israelis choose to do today.

People who are seeking refuge in the UK are now to be transported to Rwanda under a contentious new system slammed by international human rights organizations as “shockingly ill-conceived idea” and in violation of international responsibilities.

In a speech on Thursday on April 21, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson described the initiative as an “innovative approach, driven by our shared humanitarian impulse and made possible by Brexit freedoms” adding that with the UK’s assistance, Rwanda will be able to relocate “tens of thousands of people in the years ahead.”

Priti Patel, UK Home Secretary, said during a joint press conference in Rwanda’s capital Kigali on April 15, that persons transferred to Rwanda “will be given the support including up to five years of training, integration, accommodation, health care, so that they can resettle and thrive.”

Under the new Asylum Partnership Arrangement, people arriving in the UK from January 1, 2022 may be transferred to Rwanda on a one-way ticket to have their asylum application investigated and, if found to be refugees, to be granted refugee status there.

According to the Home Office report published on April 15, it states that “the UK is investing  £120 million into the economic development and growth of Rwanda,” which will cover funding that will assist the delivery of asylum operations, housing, and integration, which will be equivalent to the expenditures paid in the UK for these services.

Despite previously holding negotiations with a number of African nations including Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Tunisia, the Nordic country has yet to reach an agreement with any of them.

The Scandinavian country, which has shifted to the right, has taken increasingly punitive measures against asylum seekers. It enacted a bill in 2021 allowing migrants in Denmark to be transferred to asylum centers in a partner nation. The concept of delegating responsibility for processing asylum applications to asylum seekers is both arguably negligent and inhumane by intentional law.

Similar models, such as the Australian model or the so-called “hotspots” in the Greek islands, have resulted in major episodes of imprisonment, physical abuse, and a lack of health care.

Reaction from human rights organizations

The Asylum Partnership Agreement proposed by the Home Office in the UK is in violation of asylum law and the Geneva Convention, to which the UK is a signatory. Those who cross the border illegally to seek refuge, according to the Geneva convention should not receive punishment, stated by Article 31.

Human Rights Watch has criticized the disparity between refugees fleeing Ukraine and those fleeing other conflicts outside of Europe. According to the organization, “at a time when the people of the UK have opened their hearts and homes to Ukrainians, the government is choosing to act with cruelty and rip up their obligations to others fleeing war and persecution.”

In a statement, the Danish Refugee Council said that sending asylum seekers overseas for processing is “both irresponsible and lacking in solidarity.” The NGO also questioned the practicality of the plan, saying, “it is also still very unclear how a possible reception center in a third country would be administered.”

Amnesty International UK said in a statement, “Sending people to another country – let alone one with such a dismal human rights record – for asylum ‘processing’ is the very height of irresponsibility and shows how far removed from humanity and reality the Government now is on asylum issues.”

The death toll has increased to 25 as Tunisian officials found five new bodies of migrants who lost their lives off the Tunisian coasts on their way to Europe. The bodies were found on March 18 and 19, 2022.

The total number of migrant deaths involved in the incident is unknown as there is no information on the number of people who were in the capsized boat, while the search for survivors continues by the Tunisian authorities.

The bodies of dead migrants washed up on Nabeul Beach, to the northeast of the country.

“Migration remains relatively muted in Tunisia, despite its increased popularity as a transit country and the growing number of people drowning off its coasts,” Michela Pugliese, a migration and asylum researcher at Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, told Politics Today.

Many refugees choose Libya and Tunisia as points of departure for Europe. According to the International Organization of Migration (IOM), at least 348 migrants and asylum seekers have died or gone missing in 2021, joining over 23,000 others who have lost their lives since 2014.

The busiest and deadliest migration route to Europe

Many migrants use the Central Mediterranean route to reach Italy. In 2020, according to the UNHCR, 34,154 people arrived in Italy. Reports show that over 88,000 migrants arrived in Europe via the Mediterranean in 2021.

According to the IOM, 348 people have died or gone missing by the end of February 2022.

Thousands of North African and Middle Eastern refugees and asylum seekers try crossing the Mediterranean every year as a result of poverty and conflict in their home countries.

According to the European Council’s data published in February 2022, Bangladeshis and Egyptians use the Central Mediterranean route from North Africa via Tunisia to reach Italy (Europe).

The asylum researcher told Politics Today that “half of the EU member states consider Tunisia a ‘safe country of origin,’ meaning that when Tunisian nationals reach Europe, they tend to be quickly repatriated and their asylum claims impatiently rejected. What Europe mainly does for migrants leaving Tunisia is provide support to the authorities to increase their capacity to prevent migrants’ departures.”

“In reality, through forced returns, border externalizations, and bilateral agreements, Europe is committed to containing migration and systematically denying the right to seek asylum for people coming from Africa, while safeguarding the rights of Ukrainian refugees,” Pugliese concluded.

The scenes of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees fleeing war to Europe have received unprecedented western media coverage and solidarity. To be clear, there is nothing wrong in expressing solidarity with any people fleeing war and no group of people should be denied this solidarity. No one should ever become a refugee in the first place and only people who were once refugees can really feel the pain and relate to the experience of other refugees.

However, the treatment of Ukrainian refugees and victims of war has triggered comparisons with other conflicts and war-torn countries, and only reveals the limits of western liberalism and its selective solidarity towards refugees and victims of war.  In this regard, Palestine and other war-torn countries in the Middle East can speak volumes to this selective solidarity, which reveals the limits of western liberalism and its perception of who makes an authentic victim and refugee.

Soon after mostly Ukrainian refugees started flooding into Europe from war-torn Ukraine, statements of solidarity by members of the public, journalists, and politicians started pouring in. These particular statements only reflected an orientalist view of war-torn countries in the Middle East, whose people were not white or blonde enough (some of them ironically are!) to win the solidarity of right-wing political parties and politicians in Europe.

Middle Eastern refugees don’t fit the criteria

For shocked Europe, Middle Eastern refugees and people fleeing war in that region of the world were not civilized enough. Speaking of Kyiv and people fleeing the city, Charlie D’Agata of CBS news said, “This is a relatively civilized, relatively European—I have to choose those words carefully, too—city,” He later had to apologize for this statement. This was said despite the fact that cities such as Baghdad, Damascus, or Aden are hundreds and sometimes thousands of years older than Kyiv and other European cities.

David Sakvarelidze, Ukraine’s deputy chief prosecutor, joined the orientalist chorus, speaking to the BBC News, and noting that “European people with blue eyes and blonde hair are being killed every day.” For Sakvarelidze, the exception is to have Europeans with colored eyes and blonde hair killed, indirectly suggesting that it is the norm, or maybe more acceptable, that people with brown eyes and dark skin suffer the same fate daily. The only difference here is that the death of “people of color” goes unnoticed or at least don’t seem to shock Sakvarelidze and Europeans.

In Palestine, too, which has the longest unsettled refugee crisis in recent history, there are many ironies and parallels that could be drawn with the refugee crisis in Ukraine. When Israel bombed Gaza repeatedly over the years 2008/9, 2012, 2014, and most recently in May 2021, western media outlets were very careful with their “both sides” language so as not to hurt the feelings of the Israeli army that was killing civilians in Gaza and levelling entire residential buildings to the ground.

Of the 256 Palestinians who lost their lives at the hands of the Israeli army in May 2021, 60 were children and 40 were women. We could hardly read a news piece in western media mentioning their names, ages, or talking about their dreams cut short, and when the New York Times did so once, the Israeli lobby lost its mind. These Palestinian victims were once again invisible, because they didn’t fit the definition of western liberalism and its selective solidarity with the victims of war and refugees.

European: definition by appearance?

Some victims of war in Palestine were actually Europeans or looked like what Europeans are supposed to look like. But they still didn’t fit the definition of a people who deserve the same level of solidarity. Palestinian-German Ibrahim el-Kilani, his wife Taghreed and their five children were massacred after an Israeli airstrike hit a building in central Gaza to which they evacuated after warnings for evacuation from the Israeli army. They rarely got any mention by the German media, which rather keeps an eye on silencing Palestinian journalists who dare to speak of Israel’s human rights violations.

On the contrary, Palestinian Ahed Al-Tamimi got unusual coverage in the western media after she slapped an Israeli soldier in 2017 who entered the courtyard of her family’s house in the West Bank. Moments earlier, her cousin was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper and a considerable portion of his skull had to be removed.

An Israeli court eventually sentenced her to eight months in prison. Her mother said the family thinks her blonde hair was her ticket to western media coverage. The same Ahd Al-Tamimi’s photo spread like fire on social media claiming that she was a Ukrainian girl facing Russian forces.

The same way it made use of all other crises in the past to bring in Jewish settlers, Israel announced plans to settle 25,000 Ukrainian Jews, along with 5,000 non-Jewish Ukrainians.

Meanwhile, Palestinian refugees who live in refugee camps in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, a few miles from where Israelis protested the invasion of Ukraine, observe in shock, and wait. They are waiting for the day western media will give them the same treatment that Ukrainian refugees in Europe are receiving—a treatment Palestinians also deserve.

They are waiting for the day when they can return to their homes and when Israel stops accepting refugees based on their religion. All refugees and victims of war deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, and on the basis of justice and equality because no refugee’s life is less valuable than another’s—be they Ukrainian, Palestinian, or Jewish.

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees are fleeing from their home country due to the Russian invasion. Many are still trying to leave Ukraine, filling the routes out with cars stretching for miles. But those who could cross the borders require help.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24 and is ongoing, forcing more people to leave to the neighboring countries. The war has so far has cost tens of thousands of lives and can leave a war-torn Ukraine behind.

Valeria’s journey to becoming a refugee

Valeria, 21, a student who crossed the borders of Poland from Ukraine, is mourning the fact that she won’t return to her normal life in Ukraine. She never thought about leaving her country, even her village, when the war started. She told Politics Today, “We thought that it would be safer in villages; but it wasn’t.” Her father drove her to Kyiv, the capital, where she got on an evacuation train to Lviv on her way to Poland.

She added that “it was horrible. Too many people were on the train, there was no place. We stayed on the train for 12 hours, and sometimes we got a chance to sit on suitcases or the floor.” After she arrived in Lviv, she stayed there for a few days. Her friend drove her to the border, which she crossed on foot. Later, a volunteer took her and drove her to Warsaw. She notes that “it was quite amazing how people in other countries volunteered and helped us get to places, have food or somewhere to stay.”

EU Open-Door Policy

EU countries opened their doors to Ukrainian refugees from the first day. However, many host states are ill-prepared for this scale of mass displacement. In many countries, locals have opened their houses while many NGOs and governmental agencies are trying to protect and assist the refugees by providing for their basic needs.

Filippo Grandi, the United Nations high commissioner of refugees, recently identified the refugee crisis in Ukraine as “the fastest-growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War Two.” The UN reported that there are over two million refugees according to data published on March 8, 2022. Many of the refugees landed in Poland, which shares a border of 428 km with Ukraine. According to a UN report, the government of Poland has accepted over 1.2 million refugees, and the Poles have shown a warm reception to their neighbors.

Over the past few weeks, many other countries have also accepted a significant number of refugees. Moldova, a country with a population of four million, has taken 82,000 refugees. The country bears a great importance in terms of its long border with Ukraine, which stretches for 939 km, the longest after Ukraine’s border with Russia.

Ukraine’s neighbor in the Black Sea, Turkey, is one of the countries that is watching the conflict with alarm. According to Turkey’s Minister of Interior Süleyman Soylu over 20,000 Ukrainians arrived in Turkey by March 6.

At the same time, many people had to leave their homes to flee to safer cities within Ukraine. The UNHCR has reported that over one million people have been internally displaced in Ukraine. Lviv, a city located in the northwest of Ukraine, is a destination people are trying to reach. The city had a population of 720,000 people before the war. Tens of thousands of people flooded the city, especially those who escaped the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. The city is a passage point for those who want to cross to Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary.

Apart from the Ukrainian refugees who have managed to flee, many are still trying to cross the borders to European countries. Most of them are women and children since men aged between 16 and 60 have been banned from leaving the country by the Ukrainian authorities.

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine enters its fourth day, there has been an outpouring of compassion for Ukrainians, which has garnered widespread coverage in international news outlets. With cities around the country under siege, civilians fleeing the conflict, and hundreds of Ukrainians fleeing to neighboring Poland and Belarus, reporters from across the world have not missed the beat in covering the war.

However, as the conflict progressed, several Western news reporters could not hide away from their racist thoughts, as pointed out by various social media handlers.

“This isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan that has seen conflict raging for decades”, Charles D’Agata CBS news senior reporter noted on Friday, for which he subsequently apologized.

His comments received with harsh criticisms and outrage via social media, with many readers pointing out how his views led to the increasing dehumanization of non-white Christian and non-Europeans suffering from a conflict in mainstream media.

On Saturday, former Ukraine Deputy General Prosecutor David Sakvarelidze spoke to the BBC and further echoed the same virtue signaling and appealing to the average British citizen through relatability, saying, ”It’s very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blonde hair being killed”.

Biased Media Coverage of Refugees

In the meantime, an ITV News correspondent in Poland had similar comments, stating “This is not a developing third world nation. This is Europe.”

Media commentators, journalists, and political personalities have been accused of hypocrisy for using their platforms to applaud Ukraine’s armed resistance to Russian forces while simultaneously expressing their horror at the prospect of such a battle occurring in a “civilized” society.

The human rights violations committed against millions of people in the Middle East, pushed by authoritarian leaders, masquerading as concerned liberal reformists in the West, further highlights the racial and anti-Muslim subtext of the lives of non- European nations as unimportant because they are judged inferior and therefore “uncivilized.”

The lack of awareness of earlier European wars, from the Russian takeover of Crimea to the Serb-committed Bosnian Genocide, demonstrates the willful misrepresentation of recent European history by purposely portraying the Middle East and Muslim nations as synonymous with war.

Old wounds, new scars: African students fleeing Ukraine

The growing refugee crisis in Ukraine has reopened old scars for international students fleeing the country’s strife. Local hatred and hierarchies, and differing perspectives on what it means to be European are all being solidified.

Tens of thousands of African students are studying medicine, engineering, and military affairs in cities under siege throughout Ukraine. According to the education ministry, Morocco, Nigeria, and Egypt are among the top ten nations having foreign students in Ukraine, accounting for over 16,000 students. Thousands of Indian students are also attempting to exit the country.

The growing refugee crisis in Ukraine has reopened old scars for international students fleeing the country’s strife.

A popular trending hashtag on Twitter has been sharing the worries of Africans leaving Ukraine under the hashtag #AfricansInUkraine, where a young woman told NCA News, “We have to get ourselves to Poland, which is the other way across Ukraine…we’re not given any forms of transportation. All the forms of transportation available are prioritizing Ukrainian citizens”.

“It is sickening to know that this was even necessary. In the midst of war, devastation, and people fleeing Ukraine, some working the border have time (and the moral deficit while facing people in despair) for racism” remarked Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter, civil rights campaigner Bernice King.

Racism is still alive and kicking in Europe

Indeed, xenophobic views against foreigners have remained continuously high across Central Europe over the last decade. The potential for political mobilization of these sentiments is significant and obvious to all political factions, whether they are pro-government forces, secular liberals or extreme nationalists.

According to a 2015 study issued for the UN High Commission for Refugees on ‘Press Coverage of the Refugee and Migrant Crisis in the EU: A Content Analysis of Five European Countries,’ “It is impossible to ignore the role of the mass media in influencing public and elite political attitudes towards asylum and migration. The mass media can set agendas and frame debates. They provide the information which citizens use to make sense of the world and their place within it…”

“Research in many countries has found that refugees and migrants have tended to be framed negatively as a problem, rather than a benefit to host societies…there were very few articles which focused on the need to address the push factors driving population flows”.

The apparent double standards in coverage of the Ukraine war does not lessen the anguish and pain of Ukrainians fleeing to safety and protecting their sovereign territory. It only spotlights those who have been subjected to war and turmoil for a far longer length of time and do not fit the “blue-eyed” mainstream accessibility standard.

Until media analysts, commentators, and journalists report on conflict in Europe in the same way they do in the Middle East, without compromising the facts of each individual conflict but appeal to the viewer’s humanitarian nature, as they did with the Ukraine crisis, will increase confidence in mainstream channels.

Finally, it’s been put to rest. The passionate and polemical debate between those of true faith and the heretics; equality and exclusivity; those who believe in freedom and those who oppress. If anything could sound the moral death knell of Europe’s purported universalism and nonsenses their ethical absolutism, it is their treatment of refugee children. The awful abuse by those with unrivalled power upon the powerless – that too, children, is the surest indicator of venality.

Whether it’s the sexual abuse of unaccompanied children throughout Europe or the recent forcible seizure of children in Sweden, something truly unholy is happening. What kind of sick, depraved system relishes in inflicting further suffering on the grief-stricken? Pity the weak in the lands claiming liberty. More specifically, the manner in which Sweden is precariously confiscating refugee children from their biological parents is outright shocking. Not just in the grotesque manner that children have been treacherously taken away from their parents, but in the cruel, sanctimonious justifications by Swedish Social Services.

High-sounding, grand glutinous words that boldly advocate for child welfare are parroted to claim the moral high ground and then weaponized to pulverize their tender lives. Imagine the utter hypocrisy of justifying mental anguish upon already troubled, scarred families and their children, all of whom fled war. This is a criminal absurdity. Without due care, thought or consideration, the Swedish state violently disrupts the lives of some of the most alienated segments of their own society, and justifies inflicting violence with reckless allegations of parental impropriety. Could anything be more perverse and misshapen? Villainy wears many masks, none more dangerous than virtue.

Critically, to further explore this crime of stealing innocence from war-scarred refugee children, it is important to judiciously deconstruct the claims that Sweden makes. How does it justify such unscrupulous behavior? In other words, what is the rationale for taking children away from their loved ones? To begin, Sweden justifies these extreme steps based on promoting their own self-image of being ‘champions of children’s rights and by claiming “Sweden has very strong legislation in order to protect the welfare of children.” Of course, nothing more to talk about then. Let’s just take their word for it.

The Swedish state – through its child welfare services  – the ‘Social,’took possession of a newborn baby immediately after delivery.

With such logic, it is inconceivable that the Swedish social system is not altruistic, trustworthy and reliable. However, when probing the reasoning behind child seizures, the opposite is true. Stealing children is often on unfounded, flimsy allegations by third-parties, unverified checks of domestic abuse, or dubious contentions of extremism. The Swedish state – through its child welfare services  – the ‘Social,’ rapidly intervenes without a process of mediation.

In one alarming case, they took possession of a newborn baby immediately after delivery. What is especially unbelievable is that any basic level of understanding of the principles of social work and child welfare undisputedly cautions against taking children away from their families and allows so only under the strictest situations and as a ‘last resort.’

A few further problematic issues further stand out: (a) What is the record of Swedish social services when seizing children; (b) How effective are they in providing a loving, caring home to the seized children; (c) Are the religious, moral rights of the parents being respected in raising the stolen children as Muslims? First, the situation for unaccompanied refugee children in Europe, and state-seized refugee children in Sweden specifically, is abysmal.

A report, based on research conducted by Human Rights Watch in Sweden from January 25 to February 8, 2016 identifies key shortcomings in the Swedish child welfare system. As a result of these shortcomings, some children “are not receiving the care and attention they need and to which they are entitled.” In other words, the evidence by independent investigators is the Swedish child welfare program suffers from serious drawbacks. Second, there are horrific stories of child abuse occurring in the homes of the children by their adoptive guardians.

The situation for unaccompanied refugee children in Europe, and state-seized refugee children in Sweden specifically, is abysmal.

In fact, on October 16, 2021, Swedish TV Channel aired a segment on the sexual abuse of Syrian refugee children, including instances of rape of children by their Swedish legal guardian. Also, there are at least, two cases of Syrian children, Yasmine and Dina, who were forcibly taken away from their families and later committed suicide.

The suicide of those two children should raise alarm about the repercussions of the Swedish Social horrific process. So much for the unquestionable standards of Swedish child welfare. Third, the seized children rarely are placed in the care of families that recognize, or even respect, the rights of their families to have their children raised according to their own faith and ethical values. Is this not basic in a democracy which recognizes and allegedly champions pluralism? Again, no concern for the Muslim faith and heritage of these children.

Altogether, the Sweden government’s reasoning is not convincing. In fact, it is eerily familiar to the residential school system in Canada that led to unspeakable crimes against Native Canadian children who were seized by the state. Similarly, the horrible situation of child welfare services in Sweden curiously ignores the following: clear directives to only institutionalize children as a last resort; ensure the safety of refugee children; account for the horrific suicide of refugee children and prevent the alarming cases of rape and drug abuse by refugee children taken away from their families.

All of this, unequivocally, indicates that that Sweden’s policy on seizing refugee children is illegal, immoral, and untenable. And what we are witnessing in the new emerging global political, socio-economic, and cultural transformations is not just the making of a counter-world order. Rather, it is the unmasking of the utter hypocrisy, of countries like Sweden, who advocate for rights of children in order to erase them.

With hundreds of thousands of refugees trying to enter Europe since 2015, a common European Union policy on refugees has become an undeniable necessity. However, the EU has failed in dealing with the refugee crisis particularly in terms of carrying the burden equally among all member states. The crisis continues to this day and is dividing Europe above all other issues.

As no solution has been found by the EU countries, the crisis leaves thousands of refugees trapped at borders. The most recent example is the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe at the border between Belarus and Poland, where thousands of refugees are waiting to cross into Europe.

In recent years, it has become more and more difficult to enter Europe through Italy and Greece, and refugees have been searching for alternative routes into Europe. Poland, a member of the European Union, has become the new doorway to the EU, a route to build a better future.

Refugees are using this comparatively new migration route by way of Belarus. Refugees sell all their property in their home countries in order to afford the journey expenses to the Belarus border, while others are allegedly encouraged by the government of Belarus and given tourist visas and plane tickets to Minsk. As a result, in the last few months, nearly 2,000 refugees, mostly from Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, have been trapped between Belarus and Poland.

Desperate refugees have tried to breach the Polish border with Belarus, and Polish troops have used water cannons and tear gas to stop them. Meanwhile, Poland has significantly increased its border security. Even though some managed to make it into Europe, most refugees tried to survive in these dire conditions until November 17, 2021, when they were moved into a refugee camp provided by the Belarusian government at the Kuznica-Bruzgi border crossing, only a kilometer from Poland.

The conditions in the shelters are very harsh with limited access to water, food, and medicine. The weather is freezing: below -10 degrees Celsius. There is no social distancing in light of the COVID19 pandemic and people claim to get one meal a day. Toilets and showers are housed separately from the shelters, and around 1,200 refugees live and sleep on blankets. Some have even lost their lives in these freezing conditions. At the same time, since Poland has strengthened its border fence, it seems nearly impossible to enter Europe.

Yet another political game is being played between Russia and the EU via Belarus. While Russia supports Belarus in the migrant crisis, it denies the involvement of Belarus in the migration cirsis and blames European countries for imposing sanctions on Belarus.

Even though by inviting migrants to enter the EU, Belarus is using them as a political tool, these desperate people flee their countries not because of Lukashenko’s invitation but because they have no other option. If they did not flee to Belarus, they would flee somewhere else. Rather than focusing on the humanitarian crises and on possible solutions, countries are blaming one another for political gains while the EU continues not to accept migrants.

At this very moment, there is a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding at the EU border and a critical question remains unanswered: what is going to happen to the migrants on the Belarus and Poland border? What will happen to them if they refuse to return to their home countries?

Tareq Alaows is one of the initiators of the Seebrücke (1) Initiative and a member of Flüchtlingsrat (2) Berlin. In February 2021, he launched his candidacy for the Green Party to represent Oberhausen in North Rhine-Westphalia. Although there was a public interest in his candidacy, he decided to withdraw due to threat calls that he received against him, and people close to him. Politics Today interviewed Tareq Alaows about his experience as a Syrian refugee in Germany and the political participation and representation of refugees in Germany.

Q. Could you please briefly introduce yourself and tell us about your journey as a Syrian refugee to Germany?

I left Syria in July 2015. After traveling to Lesbos, Greece through Turkey, I took the Balkan route. I took most of the way to Germany from Athens on foot, and I finally arrived in the German city of Dortmund in September 2015. I had studied law back in Syria, and for more than five years now, I work as a jurist, who is engaged in providing legal aid for refugees during their asylum and residency processes in Germany. I am a political activist too and one of the initiators of the political movement called the Seebrücke. I am still a part of the coordination circle and serve as the press secretary.

Q. When and how have you become politically active in Germany?

Well, I haven’t become politically active ever since I arrived in Germany. I furthered my work in the humanitarian field, which I had started much earlier in Syria and continued here in Germany. But the central issue of my work was no longer human rights in Syria, but human rights in Germany. I took the cause for people, who came here as refugees.

I had no other choice than to become politically active. When I arrived here, I saw that our legal rights as refugees were not being properly applied in practice. I was detected in a military center in the middle of nowhere. When I wanted to buy something, I was supposed to walk five kilometers to the nearest supermarket. There were no buses or trains or any other means of transportation. After two months, I was transferred to Bochum. There, I was supposed to live in a basketball hall at a school with sixty other people. Families, men, women, children, all of us, were in one room, and we were not allowed to do anything that we wanted.

I lived in this situation, where we could not even enjoy our basic human rights for six months and I could not stand it anymore. I had to react to this situation and started an action. I organized the people in our accommodation and set a protest camp in front of the City Hall.

Q. Quite naturally, you demanded to live in dignity. How did German authorities react to this? What was your experience with the first protest?

We managed to make our demands heard thanks to our protest in front of the City Hall. Thereafter, we were organized under Refugee Strike Bochum and continued to be active in the negotiations. We observed the implementation process of our demands in regard to the asylum policy in Bochum in the following years. We started to have regular meetings with the City Hall. There, we did only talk about our problems, but also provided solutions. The administration in the city hall was responsible and saw that we, as refugees, were a part of the solution. In the end, we learned a lot from each other.

Q. To protect your basic rights and demands, you have democratically organized and taken a political role at the local level. But what has motivated you to take an active part at the federal level?

During my political activism at the local level, I recognized that everything I said reached the German politicians in my city better than what the German activists or the political parties in the opposition were saying. Because I was talking about my life and the very conditions that I was living in. I think they could not argue against it.

And I see that I am not an exception. I know thousands of refugees from different countries, as well as people from Germany, who are doing a great job here in uplifting the refugee voices and working to maintain the human rights for refugees.

I just have been lucky to have the media attention, which helped shed light on and bring solutions to the issues we -as refugees- encountered. But the question eventually transformed into how could we represent these persons, who have arrived in this society?

I was eventually transformed from being a normal person running for candidacy to a target of racism and hate speech. People who target me are not targeting me as Tareq Alaows but target a person of color with a refugee background, a person who showed the courage to claim his rights to be represented in the German parliament.

I just run for the elections, and this is a democratic right. At the end of the day, it will be German voters’ decision to elect or not to elect me. But the right-wing party viewed it differently. They were afraid of me being elected in a democratic way and they did everything to stop me.

Q. What did exactly happen, and you decided to withdraw your candidacy?

I was receiving hundreds of comments and messages on the internet, that said that they knew where I am living, where I am walking, and where I am eating, and I had to be careful. And I saw that most of the messages were written in the “we” form, and not in the “I” form. It was like groups in the background and not like single persons. There were two people in my team, who were deleting those racist comments and messages on social media and documenting things that are relevant for my safety for the police.

I just run for the elections, and this is a democratic right. It’s the German voters’ decision to elect or not to elect me. But the right-wing party viewed it differently.

Most of the messages were anonymous and we could not tell by whom they were sent, or which persons or groups were doing it, so, there was nothing we could do. For me, it was a very dangerous situation, and nobody could calculate consequences. I had to protect my family and people working with me. I had no guarantee for my safety. So, I had to withdraw my candidacy in the elections. But as a jurist and political activist, I still defend the basic human rights of refugees.

Q. What was the reaction of the Green Party, or of other political parties, to this incident?

Both the Green Party and other democratic parties learned something from this experience. The Green Party, of which I was a candidate, accepted my withdrawal from candidacy and drafted a document in order to avoid a possible future incident as such and to establish a mechanism to counsel and support victims of such racisms. I think every political party in Germany must start debates about racism in politics and work for developing awareness.

Q. Your experience, then, highlights that there are serious obstacles concerning the participation and representation of minorities in political life in Germany. How do you think it could be overcome?

This could be overcome only by empowering those people in politics, who are victims of racism and encouraging them to get involved in democratic processes. Because the only way to fight against racism in politics is to have more people with a refugee or a minority background in politics. We can talk about democracy if every group in our society, including the minorities and the newcomers, are represented. Otherwise, it is nothing but a mock debate. We need to have more democratic environments and dialogue between members of the host society and the newcomers.

We also need to work to create awareness among the youth via programs for young persons, immigrants, or non-immigrants and let them be involved in these political debates. Above all, we need to put it in a context; when we talk about refugees we talk about humans.

Importantly, all these debates and dialogues need to be translated to a legal basis. We need more clear and strict laws against racism and extremism both on online platforms and in real life. Racism is not an opinion, it is a criminal act, and we have to name it and fight against it.

Although I decided to cancel my candidacy for the German federal elections of 2021 and continue my work in the humanitarian field, I am optimistic that political parties in Germany have learned something from that experience.

Lord Alf Dubs was a former child refugee who escaped Nazi-occupied Prague on the Kindertransport in 1939 and was one of 669 Czech children saved by English stock dealer Nicholas Whinton. He went on to become an MP and a member of the House of Lords in the United Kingdom, as well as a passionate activist for refugee rights and a patron of a number of refugee-related organizations. Ayan Mohamed Ali spoke with him about his personal connection to the refugee plight and how his experiences with the Kindertransport initiative can assist influence UK government policy on refugees crossing the English Channel.

Q. Could you give a quick overview of your background in connection to the present refugee crisis for our readers who may be hearing about you for the first time?

I came to Britain as a child, an unaccompanied child refugee in 1939 on a Kindertransport. I’ve been active in politics for a long time. I was the director of the Refugee Council for some years, and I was in the House of Commons. I was active with refugees then, and in the House of Lords, I became more active with refugees. More recently, I got an amendment, so in 2016, which the government eventually had to accept, for getting unaccompanied child refugees to Britain.

That was passed, and several 100 got through under that amendment. I got to another amendment that family unions continue, where possible, under the European Union treaty, even after we left the EU, and that passed both houses 920 – 17, but the government deleted it in 2019. So, there are very few safe routes for child refugees, and certainly none from Europe at the present time.

Q. Do you believe that seeing the names and faces of the refugees who drowned trying to reach Britain will help to improve the existing unfavorable perception of refugees and the reluctance of some British people and the government to welcome more?

I certainly think that the shocking van in the tragedy of those people a couple of weeks ago was absolutely horrific. Whether that will make much difference to the government’s attitude, I don’t know. The government seemed to blame it on the traffickers but show little sympathy for the refugees who have no other way of coming here except to traffickers because the government have closed all the doors. What I believe is important is that people in this country should be made fully aware of the circumstances under which refugees have fled their country, fleeing from war, persecution, oppression, discrimination.

I think if there’s a better understanding of the awful lives, and the awful fear that they left behind, then there’d be more sympathy for those that come here, because these are not people who are just trying to improve their condition. Not that there’s anything wrong with time to improve your condition. But these are people who fled and have the full protection of the United Nations Geneva Convention.

Q. What’s your response to those who say accepting unaccompanied child refugees will create a pull factor, whereby migrants are incentivized to undertake dangerous journeys across the Mediterranean to places like Greece in the hope of being resettled elsewhere in Europe.

This is always the argument that people use the pull factors. I’m not convinced by that argument at all. I think that our push factors in terms of the terrible situation that refugees are left behind, I don’t think the pull factors really carry much weight in the argument.

Obviously, we want to make our country as welcoming as possible for refugees, although I don’t think we’re doing that

Obviously, we want to make our country as welcoming as possible for refugees, although I don’t think we’re doing that. Some of the terrible situations that child refugees have left, there was one same boy who told me that he’d seen his father blown up in front of him by a bomb in Aleppo, Damascus. It is the fear of that situation that drives people to leave much more than any pull factor.

Q. Many British residents have been turned off from engaging in the political process because of the lack of compassion in political arguments over immigration in parliament. What steps do you believe the government should take to address this?

Our problem is that the government has contributed to the hostility because they’ve announced they want to keep the numbers down. The signaling all the time that refugees are not welcome here. The new legislation that just passed the House of Commons and is going through the House of Lords will make the environment even more difficult for refugees.

I think what we need is a government that shows leadership, and that says where people are fleeing for safety. But under the International Geneva Convention, we as a country should be welcoming, rather than hostile. And the difficulty is that if senior politicians make hostile remarks against local communities, it’s not surprising. If there’s some hostility I think that is depressing and awful. I think what all would like is for political leaders to help public opinion to understand why people are fleeing. To say that as a country, we should be humanitarian, and welcome and we can’t take all refugees but those who we take, we should be welcoming.

Mpanzu Bamenga was eight years old when in 1994, he fled from the Congo to the Netherlands with his mother and older brother. Today, he is a municipal councilor in the Dutch city of Eindhoven and a passionate advocate for human rights. In 2016, he was elected the “Political Talent of the Year” as a councilor in the city of Eindhoven. In 2018, Bamenga arrived at the airport of his Dutch hometown after having lectured on human rights in Italy. He was selected by the border police for a passport check as according to the officials his appearance matched the risk profile of a “Nigerian money smuggler.” Latife Özdemir of Politics Today interviewed Bamenga – you can read the full interview here.

Q. What is racial profiling, and should people worry about it?

Racial profiling is a forbidden form of discrimination by the government. Yes, it is something people should worry about because racial profiling comes from the idea that someone can be judged based on their skin color, ethnicity, or nationality instead of this person’s character. It is also against the fundamental right of being treated equally. It is against human rights. It threatens what we stand for and who we are as human beings.

Q. Not long ago, we were discussing racial profiling in the Unites States, but nowadays it seems that the issue also started to appear in the Netherlands as for example in the cases of Mitch Henriquez and the 17-year-old Rishi Chandrikasing, who was fatally shot by the police in 2012. Is racial profiling of Black people and citizens with an immigrant background becoming widespread in the Netherlands?

I think that racial profiling has always been there. To fight against something, you should first make it visible. It has always been hidden. It’s been brought to light – this is a step to fight against racial profiling. The first anti-discrimination bureaus in the Netherlands were opened 30 years ago. They basically started after situations of racism. It is widespread, not only in practice but also in policy. It is institutionalized in our society and to fight against it, we should address it. It is also part of implicit biases, and we act upon it, which is wrong because it can be contrary to one’s beliefs and values. But it is even worse if you act upon it and you are an official of the government.

Q. Do you think that the situation regarding racial profiling increased after events such as 9/11 for example?

I think that these kinds of events are used as a justification. For instance, now we have people coming from several countries, Syria, Afghanistan, etc. And now we are using it as a justification to say “We have to stop illegal migration, so how can we stop it if we are not able to control passports?” Well, ethnic profiling doesn’t mean that the border police can’t control passports – they can. But the question is “How do they do this?” Do they look at someone’s skin color and assume that this person must be from Syria, Afghanistan, or Africa? Or thinking that someone must be a money smuggler, a criminal, or a terrorist based on someone’s color? This is forbidden and against human rights.

Q. You experienced a racial profiling situation three years ago, how did you feel at the time?

It is very humiliating, and it also stigmatizes because it fits within the idea that the person who is stopped is a non-white person, so there must be, or there could be, something wrong. – It fits into stigmatization, which has consequences in society. For instance, when a young person wants to apply for an internship and the employee just looks at the name (Mohammed) and that person doesn’t even get the opportunity to present themselves or to get an internship at an organization.

This is a very big issue in the Netherlands. We have a lot of labor market and housing discrimination.

This is a very big issue in the Netherlands. We have a lot of labor market and housing discrimination. There are a lot of things going on here when it comes to the idea that when someone comes from a different country, this must be “wrong.” People are not judged by their character but by certain characteristics which you can’t change. It also shouldn’t matter what your religion or your skin color is. What they do is dehumanizing and humiliating if you are the victim.

Q. What are the legal mechanisms to face racial profiling?

When certain individuals have racially profiled a person, this person can file a complaint. This is a simple thing to do, one can go to court. After the complaint, one can go to the Ombudsman. The Ombudsman must look into the situation. One can go to the police or the anti-discrimination bureau as well.

Q. What are your thoughts regarding the decision of the court in your case?

The decision was not what we expected. Even though we know racial profiling is instituted, it is still a shock to hear the judge basically mentioning that it is all fine for the border police to stop someone also based on his or her skin color. It is pretty shocking that the law justifies this.  Still, our legal system gives us the possibility to go to a higher court. Especially in this case, when we talk about a fundamental issue, it is crucial and necessary to go to a higher court.

We started a petition which says “My color doesn’t say anything about my Dutch citizenship.”

Q. The decision at the higher court will be in nine months. What are you going to do until then? Are you planning to raise more awareness or to carry out any other activities?

Yes, we started a petition which says “My color doesn’t say anything about my Dutch citizenship.” We hope that we will get support and as many people as possible will sign it. I am sure that we already achieved more awareness, and that more and more people will understand what it is about and why racial profiling should be forbidden in the Netherlands. I hope the court will decide that ethnicity can never be a part of profiling,when there is no concrete suspect.

Q. As the municipal councilor in Eindhoven, what do you think about the house of representatives’ stance when it comes to racial profiling? Some argue that it’s passive. Do you agree?

At this moment, the judgement is still in the courts’ hands so the parliament must be careful about how to intervene. Therefore, I understand that some members of the parliament are hesitant to act at this point. But at the same time, a legal procedure can take up to six years, while the government is the executive body and parliament the legislative body, they can change this discriminatory situation tomorrow if they want. They don’t need a court decision for that.

Q. Do you think that the profiling and surveillance of people will become a bigger issue in Western democracies?

As long as we don’t fight racial profiling, it could be. It is simply a stupid idea to stop someone according to their looks or ethnicity. I believe that more awareness seems to be important, and especially having a mixed environment in education. We should do more in the field of education.

Q. You said during a speech three years ago that you still believe in a world which is just, inclusive, and where everyone is treated equally. Is the gap between the current situation and the ideal widening? If yes, is there still hope to achieve the world you talk about?

Of course, I believe in it with all my heart. I’m very positive and I believe that we are making important steps, and that we are in a final moment to change the world for the better. I think it is important to mention the words of Martin Luther King, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” This means that even though you are in a good situation you should think and care about other events happening in the world.

Recently various footage started to circulate showing U.S. Border Patrol agents on horseback using lariats, ropes used by horse riders, to chase down and push back Haitian migrants – women, men, and even children – stumbling through the Rio Grande in the hope of crossing over the Mexican border into Texas.

Images display the agents whipping the migrants, rounding them up, yanking their t-shirts, and insulting them. The brutality of the scenes caused widespread outrage both from civil society and institutions, including a condemnation from White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who described them as “horrific.”

The Texas Border Patrol’s mistreatment was so blatant and widely shared that everyone’s reaction couldn’t be anything other than criticism and shock. Yet each pushback entails the same violence, the same corporeity, the same fear for each and every person cornered and chased out, with or without such flagrant abuse at the hands of state forces – and yet so often included.

All around Europe pushbacks take place daily and generally do not meet the slightest outrage from national and European institutions.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has already signed off the tactics; however, such a controversial measure is unworkable without French cooperation, and Paris does not seem willing to cooperate any longer.

Despite a previous bilateral agreement to double the number of French police patrolling the coastline and increase border security at ports with digital barriers like radars and optronic binoculars, French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin rejected the latest policy on the grounds that “safeguarding human lives at sea takes priority over considerations of nationality, status and migratory policy.”

Paris warned that the Channel could become a “theatre of human tragedies.” At the same time, the U.K. Home Office’s own impact assessment in the Nationality and Borders Bill doesn’t say otherwise, as it states there is a serious risk that these measures could encourage people to attempt new and even riskier routes.

More and more people attempt the perilous sea route every year, a solid indication of how difficult or near impossible it is to gain entry to the UK by other means. While half of all migrants came by sea in 2020, in 2019, it was only 11%. In the last years, the Eurotunnel started to be subjected to much tighter control and the opportunity to board lorries through the fortifications around terminals or conceal oneself in vehicles was eventually cut off.

If people are desperate, they will do desperate things – and the U.K. is intentionally pushing asylum seekers trying to reach its territory to become ever more desperate.

Opposition is also coming from the trade union that represents the Border Force. Lucy Moreton of the Immigration Service Union (ISU), which represents frontline border staff, stated that this measure, announced without any warning, could put both migrants and Border Force officers at risk, prompting people to jump from boats.

According to the former director general of the U.K. Border Force, Tony Smith, the Australian tactic is an entirely different model, as “these are dangerous waterways [the English Channel] and very vulnerable vessels,” not designed to bring people ashore or to process people. “I think it is highly dangerous. … I fear for the worst. We have already had drownings. They are not as well reported as they should be, but we have had them. We do not know how many, of course, because bodies have not always been retrieved,” Smith said at the parliament’s debate on the new Nationality and Borders Bill.

Apart from the much higher life-threatening risks, such a pushback policy would provoke wider negative outcomes. On the one hand, it will likely encourage smugglers to develop and try new strategies to get around controls, like moving departure points further up the French coast to find longer and riskier routes. On the other hand, it would ultimately be up to individual on-scene Border Force agents to decide whether a boat is at risk of capsizing if forced back or it can be “safely” pushed back.

The arbitrariness of such decisions, the little oversight and accountability, and the violence every pushback entails by its very nature, as U.S. Border Patrol agents have recently shown, will make room for further abuses.

Harsha Walia’s Border and Rule, published by Haymarket Books in 2021, bulldozes through political partisanship to present a critical perspective of both sides, reminding us that the Left and the Right may seem different on the surface, but that paying close attention to the vernacular used by adherents would reveal how they are one and the same, and how embroiled both factions are in looking upon the world and its resources as worthy of exploitation.

Thus the immigrant/asylum seeker in the United States (US) through a right-wing lens is seen as ‘stealing jobs’ while through a left-wing perspective, he/she is ‘building the economy’. (19) In both cases, the immigrant/asylum seeker has been commoditized. (14)

Walia directs us to the concerted efforts of not just the US but the rest of the world in their move towards perfecting immigration policy in the optic of ‘displacing, immobilizing, criminalizing, exploiting, and expelling migrants and refugees’. (2) She goes on to point out that the US attracts only 1 percent of the global population of migrants—a fact that may surprise many, given the extensive publicity of how it promotes itself as migrant and refugee-friendly. (160) She believes that border politics should be rephrased in terms of ‘border imperialism’, and encourages moves towards ‘restitution, reparations, and responsibility’, rather than ‘charity and humanitarianism’. (3)

She views ‘anti-migrant xenophobia, immigration enforcement, detention centers, migration controls, and border securitization’ as symptoms of a more fundamental policy at play: ‘the rule of racist, nationalist borders.’ Along these lines, it makes sense that she finally advocates a ‘leftist politics of no borders’ (213) which implies an abolition of the concept of citizenship in order to allow a free movement of people across countries.

Walia’s book focuses on the plight of refugees and asylum seekers as they are forced to abandon conflict-ridden countries and homes affected by natural disasters and climate change.

Walia’s book focuses on the plight of refugees and asylum seekers as they are forced to abandon conflict-ridden countries and homes affected by natural disasters and climate change. She retraces the hardships endured in the course of these travels, commenting especially on the process-burdened entry they face, and eventual acceptance into host countries. But entering the host country is only the beginning of the ordeal of migration, she avers. Delay in issuing work permits or in processing applications for permanent residency or citizenship subjects them in the interim to harsh working and living conditions, as they are turned into an unregulated pool of exploitable manpower.

But there is some respite too, as Walia discusses the success of grassroot level strategies that now allow migrants to be welcomed into countries together with their families, or have even led to the abolition of the live-in requirement for caregivers in countries like Canada. Previously the live-in policy subjected workers to a variety of abuses so that the Filipino Women’s Organisation in Quebec reported how caregivers ‘could not use fans or the internet, lock their rooms, entertain visitors, or leave the home when not working.’ (165-66)

In India, the rise of Hindutva ideology, embraced by Modi and his government, has stoked resentment against Muslim migrants so that among other policies of exclusion, compulsory registration in Assam in the National Register of Citizens (NCR) has turned Muslim Indians of Bengali origin into noncitizens, although they were born and lived there for generations. (159-160)

Walia also explores the effects of the COVID19 pandemic explaining how it provided excuses to tighten border control and impose further injustices on refugees and asylum seekers. Thus the government of Malta abandoned passengers on a boat in its seas so that some of them perished from dehydration and drowning, and later arranged for the remainder to return forcibly to Libya. (11)

Walia also explores the effects of the COVID19 pandemic explaining how it provided excuses to tighten border control and impose further injustices on refugees and asylum seekers.

Moreover in Australia, detained refugees in onshore and offshore centers were among the most vulnerable as they were forced to live in close proximity and many already suffered from health issues. (99) The pandemic also allowed authorities in Lebanon and China to impose stricter regulations on refugees from Syria and Africa respectively, and indulge in discriminatory practices where local citizens were made to adhere to a different set of precautionary rules. (11) In such times, refugees, asylum seekers and/or new migrants were also easily shunned and marked out as ‘vectors of diseases’. (196)

While Walia proposes a solution to remedy the global migration crisis—that is, ‘a leftist politics of no borders’—her war appears to be more ambitious than that. Arguably it may be looked upon as utopian, as she advocates a complete revamp of the capitalist system in place.

‘Empires crumble,’ she says, ‘capitalism is not inevitable, gender is not biology, whiteness is not immutable, prisons are not escapable, and borders are not natural law.’ (215) Her insistence and resilience are both contagious, and it is easy to be drawn by the bigger parentheses of this book that appeal to us to look upon a refugee not as a stranger, an outsider, or chattel, but a human being.

In an annual UN-sponsored report, Denmark is named the “Happiest Country in the World” for a fourth year in a row. Since the country does not have any mountains, it is known around the world for its bike culture. Moreover, this beautiful country has 444 islands and since only 76 of them are inhabited, the Danes have lots of opportunities to go on island-hopping.

Another fun fact about Denmark is the so-called Janteloven, also known as the “Law of Jante,” which the Danish-Norwegian writer Aksel Sandemose described as the Scandinavian mentality whereby “no one is better than the other, everyone is accepted and equal.”

Yet, nothing could be further from the truth. As it turns out this unofficial Danish law is forgotten or no longer implemented in 2021 given that Denmark is not welcoming or accepting any refugees or asylum seekers. While no other European country has made a similar decision, the Danish authorities have withdrawn the asylum status of dozens of refugees from Syria.

In the same annual UN report, authors claimed that the unhappiest country in the world is Afghanistan, followed by Rwanda. Ironically, Rwanda is the country to which Denmark is aiming to send its Syrian refugees.

Recently, two Danish ministers, Minister for Development, Cooperation  and Minister for Nordic Cooperation. Flemming Møller Mortensen and Minister for Immigration and Integration Mattias Tesfaye visited Rwanda without informing the Danish media, and both refused to comment on the purpose and details of the visit or the agreement signed with the Rwandan authorities. The agreement was signed during the 4-day visit by the Danish delegation.

Although, at first, the ministers’ visit was not publicized in Danish media, the Foreign Ministry of Rwanda published the developments concerning the meeting between the two countries. According to DR (Denmark’s Radio – Danish Broadcasting Corporation), the Danish foreign minister confirmed the parties agreed on working more closely on asylum and migration.

In addition, DR’s Africa correspondent Søren Bendixen, stated, “The two Danish ministers refuse to speak to the Danish press. We can, therefore, not get confirmation that the two sides have discussed – or agreed – that Rwanda will in the future accept some of Denmark’s asylum seekers.”

Since the ministers refused to speak, it was first uncertain what the countries agreed upon. However, more than a week later, on May 5, 2021, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark launched the two agreements, which took the form of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).

Although this MoU is a non-binding agreement, and thus gives no rise to legal obligation on the part of any party, it aims to create a mechanism of bilateral cooperation on asylum and migration issues between the two states and under current international standards. According to the articles of the agreements, Denmark’s intentions remain unclear; however, if Rwanda accepts Denmark’s asylum seekers in the future, this is worrisome.

Rwanda is already hosting more than 170,000 refugees according to a UNHCR report and a number of refugees and asylum seekers have already been evacuated from Libya to Rawanda. Only two years ago, the Rwandan police killed 11 refugees because of protests against the reduction in food aid in refugee camps. This renders the country unsafe for refugees.

This is not the first time that Denmark makes such decisions regarding its refugee policy. As the first European nation to do so, the country earlier came under criticism for telling refugees to return to Syria. The Danish government even offered money to the refugees to return to their war-torn homeland.

In an article, Michala Clante Bendixen, chair of the Danish organization Refugees Welcome and country coordinator for the European Commission’s European Web Site on Integration, wrote, “Denmark which was once renowned as a liberal, tolerant, open-minded society with respect for human rights and a strong and humane welfare state, now became the first country in Europe to revoke residence permits for Syrian refugees.”

According to statistics by Amnesty International, approximately 900 people from Damascus were granted a temporary status in Denmark while the Danish authorities revoked the permits of 380 Syrians.

However, fortunately, there is still a silver lining: according to Bendixen, it is not possible to send the refugees to Syria anytime soon since Denmark won’t negotiate with Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad as the countries broke their diplomatic ties. This suggests that the refugees will remain in Danish refugee camps or other European countries while awaiting their deportation.

According to death toll rates, the Syrian civil war has caused the death of almost 400,000 people while 5.5 million people have been displaced – a very small number of them end up in Western Europe, and eventually an even smaller number in Denmark.

According to statistics by Amnesty International, approximately 900 people from Damascus were granted a temporary status in Denmark while the Danish authorities revoked the permits of 380 Syrians. Those sent back to refugee camps or so-called return centers are not able to work, study, or apply for any benefits accessible to Danes. Since the departure of refugees is only possible on a voluntary basis, Denmark is aiming to pressurize the refugees to self-deport.

Denmark today is a country where there is a burqa ban for Muslim women in public; whose politicians commit to a “zero asylum seeker goal”; where Muslims are believed to be disrupting social cohesion; and where an anti-ghetto policy, set under the motto “No Ghettos in 2030,” aims to combat and gentrify Muslim neighborhoods. Moreover, Denmark’s controversial plan to get rid of immigrant neighborhoods affects many citizens with non-Western backgrounds who live or own a house in these neighborhoods.

Some of the residents of these neighborhoods were only allowed two-year contracts since the government is planning to abolish nearly 40 percent of the “ghetto” area. The never-ending political and social debates surrounding Muslims makes many of these citizens feel that they don’t belong to Danish society.

Another remarkable event in the realm of Danish politics is the incident of the former Danish immigration minister Inger Støjberg who misled the parliament and is now facing impeachment for illegally ordering the separation of underage couples seeking asylum. The ex-minister said at the time that the measure was necessary to save child brides, but the rigid way she decided this left dozens of young couples who applied for asylum together separated from each other without being able to do anything to prevent it.

Even if they were expecting a child, had children, or screamed from the rooftops that their love and intentions were real and genuine, no underage asylum seeker could be placed in the same asylum seekers center as their spouse or partner. Not only were new asylum seekers separated, but also people who had already been in an asylum seeker center for a long time were treated in the same way.

It is hard to guess from its current course of action, but Denmark at the moment is governed by a left-wing coalition. The Social Democrats are adopting a far-right immigration agenda and raising questions that seem hard to understand. This makes one worry about the future of refugees and Muslims in Denmark, or more precisely, if they even will have a future at all in the country since all of Denmark’s official policies target minimizing the presence of Muslims, immigrants, and refugees in the country.

Activism, solidarity and care are what nourish a healthy and awoke society. Europe has known numerous civic mobilization inspired by human solidarity, changing its policies, its governments, even its times, but currently a wide pattern of intimidation and repression has emerged to hinder, criminalize and stigmatize humanitarian assistance to migrants.

Before and during the Second World War, when it was almost impossible to flee a country, Europe still witnessed massive movements of people thanks to countless, and often nameless, ordinary citizens who assumed incalculable responsibilities to save thousands of lives. Similarly, during the Cold War, when a mass migration took place from the Eastern Europe toward the West, smuggling of citizens, particularly to cross the Berlin Wall, was a common practice.

Time, politics, and socio-economic circumstances change the way human rights defenders are seen and depicted, as heroes or as criminals.

Largest Civic Mobilization

At the present, Europe is witnessing the largest civic mobilization in its recent history. Since the emergence of the so-called “refugee crisis,” both spontaneous and organized groups all over Europe have arisen to help people on the move, through humanitarian assistance, search-and-rescue operations, medical care, advocacy or legal aid. As European politicians failed to uphold their legal and humanitarian obligations, their citizens responded to fill the gaps and condemn the dehumanization of people on the move in the name of migration controls.

Yet in recent years, these human rights defenders haven’t met particular support, gratitude or financial assistance from the authorities. On the contrary, they have been subjected to unfounded judicial prosecutions, arbitrary arrests, investigations, undue restrictions of their activities, intimidation, harassment and smear campaigns all around Europe.

A toxic narrative stigmatizing people on the move and the activists who help them is taking place even now, with the COVID19 pandemic still in full swing.

A toxic narrative stigmatizing people on the move and the activists who help them is taking place even now, with the COVID19 pandemic still in full swing. Now that the value of human life and the necessity of helping each other are particularly important to protect the most vulnerable and marginalized people from the worst impacts of the current crisis.

Since the beginning of June 2020, a smear and intimidation campaign and numerous death threats were addressed against Ms. Bihorac. Several times she was even followed and stopped by the police, accusing her of aiding illegal immigration and insinuating that she would be arrested soon.

These are a few recent cases among the hundreds of human rights defenders who have been arrested, harassed or investigated over the last few years throughout Europe. No evidence is found for convictions in most of the cases, suggesting that this is primarily a political tool to deter solidarity, create a hostile environment for migrants and provoke a general feeling of suspicion, fear and intimidation within civil society.

Criminalization of Solidarity

These misguided investigations and the general “criminalization of solidarity” nourish the false image of asylum seekers as criminals and of activists as ambiguous individuals trying to profit out of migration flows and colluding with smugglers. Politicians and media in their speeches frequently fail to distinguish between people smuggling and simple acts of solidarity, but such ambiguity stems from the European legal framework itself.

While for the UN Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants a for-profit element is required to qualify for smuggling and to establish a criminal offense, in Europe, according to the 2002 Facilitators Package, the facilitation of entry is criminal even without the intent to gain profit in 24 out of 28 EU Member States.

Yet, in 2018 the European Parliament commissioned a study on the various forms and cases of criminalization of solidarity in EU and passed a resolution “on guidelines for Member States to prevent humanitarian assistance from being criminalized.” It underlined that acts of humanitarian assistance should not be criminalized and called upon Member States to ensure that prosecution is not pursued against individuals and civil society organizations assisting migrants for humanitarian reasons.

The most recent major and public act of racism Syrian refugees faced in Lebanon, dates to December 27, 2020, when hundreds of them—75 families according to local news—had to flee for their lives from a makeshift camp in the Miniyeh region near the northern coastal city of Tripoli after their tents were set alight. The incident came against the backdrop of a fight between camp residents and members of a local Lebanese family.

In November 2020, a Syrian refugee allegedly killed a Lebanese resident in Bcharre, a town in the North Governorate of Lebanon. Soon after, a group of Lebanese residents went on a witch-hunt, demanded the eviction of Syrians from the area—even the ones who lived and worked there prior to the Syrian refugee influx—and set fire to their homes in the town.

While the list goes on, two examples in two consecutive months and from two Lebanese regions with different sectarian undertones, are evidence to extrapolate about the multi-layered acts of racism Syrian refugees face in Lebanon.

Nevertheless, slapping the word racism and Lebanon on any search engine shows us that racism in the country is not a new phenomenon simply synonymous with the influx of Syrian refugees following the violent crackdown by the Syrian regime on the 2011 revolution. Racism in Lebanon is one form of discrimination that is rampant and mainstream, while other forms extend to classist discrimination, sectarian, geographic, and so on. However, racism specifically against Syrians could be traced back to the country’s “founding moment.”

While Lebanese racism is not strictly directed towards Syrian refugees, the article aims to tackle discrimination against Syrian refugees in particular. Nevertheless, Syrian and Palestinian refugees paid the brunt for the “founding narrative” and fragility of the Lebanese state that was envisioned during the process of its insurrection following the first World War.

Modern-day Lebanon was initially formed between 1918 and 1926 from the debris of “Ottoman Syria” at a time when the victors of the World War, Britain and France, were “redrawing” the map of the modern Middle East and divvying the spoils among them.

Primarily, it was the French who put the territory of Lebanon together and organized it as a state, laying the foundation for the autonomous “Mutasarrifiyya” of Mount Lebanon within the framework of “Ottoman Syria” in 1861.

In November 2020, a Syrian refugee allegedly killed a Lebanese resident in Bcharre, a town in the North Governorate of Lebanon. Soon after, a group of Lebanese residents went on a witch-hunt.

While the French wanted the country to remain a compact territory with a Christian-dominated majority in an ocean of Arab Muslims, Lebanese Christians and more specifically the Maronite-majority amongst them, saw an opportunity to set up the “national homeland” they had dreamed of with expanded territory, autonomy and independence, and pressed the French while making the best use of favorable circumstances at the time until they achieved their goal.

While the second claims that “[B]etween 1918 and 1920 the Christian demand for an independent state in Lebanon appeared to the Muslims of Syria as a more immediate and serious threat than the corresponding Zionist demand in Palestine.”

Prominent Lebanese historian, the late Kamal Salibi, wisely attributed that to the fact that, “the Muslims of Syria in 1920 identified Zionism as an external danger, but they diagnosed the call for Christian Lebanese separatism, in collusion with Western power, as treason and subversion from within. Their diagnosis of the Christian position may have been uncharitable, but so was the dominant Christian Lebanese attitude towards the aspirations of the Muslims of Syria at the time.”

As such, while Maronites had a choice between a smaller Lebanon or a confederation of autonomous Syrian cantons—sectarian ones, they opted for a “Greater Lebanon,” hoping to create and mold a larger country on the Mediterranean, in their own image.

The question of “who is Lebanese” emerged and the answer to it was: the “non-Syrian,” and the answer to “who is Syrian” question became: the “non-Lebanese.”

With that, the question of “who is Lebanese” emerged and the answer to it was: the “non-Syrian,” and the answer to “who is Syrian” question became: the “non-Lebanese,” Lebanese writer Wissam Saade concludes, sowing the seeds for Lebanese racism towards Syrians, in specific, and towards any component that challenged the Christian-dominated “concept of Lebanon,” in general.

The “othering” process, which preexisted even before Lebanon’s insurrection, was institutionalized at that moment. It drags on till today despite the different context.

Following the moment of creation, the Maronite practice in ruling the country further exacerbated tension between Muslims and Christians and eventually led to the “sectarianizing” of the social setting it on a track of collision. According to Salibi, “[W]hat the Muslims had opposed from 1920 until 1975 was not necessarily the concept of Greater Lebanon.

Rather, it was the Christian interpretation of this Greater Lebanon, as a country where the Christians were the Lebanese in a special way… By persisting in giving Lebanon a Christian interpretation, heedless of the changes that were taking place among their Muslim compatriots… contributed to reawakening the demon of tribal contradiction among the other Lebanese communities.”

Seven decades passed, between 1920 and 1975, without Lebanese Christians paying much attention to the changes that were taking place, first among their Lebanese Muslim compatriots, and then the larger region. Following the disastrous Arab-Israeli war of 1967, dubbed an-Naksah, the setback, and the incidents of Black September of 1970 in Jordan, the Muslim-dominated Palestinian refugee influx to Lebanon became a source of paranoia to the Christian leadership.

For them, the Palestinian refugeehood was perceived to be a factor of demographic change, hence, an outright contestation of the fragile “concept of Lebanon” referred to above. The paranoia and fear were ultimately and directly translated into racism leading down the slippery slope of confrontation which resulted in a 15-year civil war.

The Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990) created a new set of grievances and animosities, among the different Lebanese constituencies and between Lebanese and Syrians as well. The Syrian army’s direct military intervention in the Lebanese war, which in the long run resulted in tilting the balance towards the Muslims against the Christians, dealt again a huge blow to the “concept of Lebanon” as per the Maronites. The war was concluded in 1990 with the signing of the Ta’if Agreement, which reshuffled the system, diffused power from the hands of the Maronites, made it more inclusionary, and gave Syria a “guardianship” status over Lebanon.

The Syrian regime’s guardianship lasted for 15 years (until 2005) with authoritarian practices that only sought to humiliate Lebanese in general and specifically Maronites, who saw their two main leaders either imprisoned or exiled. Lebanese racism mutated in that case and became coupled with feelings of oppression, an exercise the Syrian regime’s troops and lieutenants exercised every day to remind the Lebanese who ruled their country.

On the flip side, all this was internalized by Lebanese and projected later on even towards regular Syrian citizens that constituted an essential labor force in the country. Such blanket approach racism dismissed nuances, as in separating between the oppressor—the Syrian authoritarian regime—and the oppressed (both Syrians and Lebanese citizens).

The breakout of the Syrian revolution in 2011 and the regime’s conscious decision to violently suppress it, resulted again in a Muslim Sunni-dominated Syrian refugee influx to Lebanon. The country received around 1.5 million Syrian refugees as per the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, meaning around 36% of its population. Despite the different current-day political dynamics, the most dominant Christian-Maronite political party, at the time, the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) found it befitting to capitalize on previously mentioned historical grievances and paranoia, to solidify its grip on the Christian constituency in the country and advance its own political goals.

A French activist screamed to police officers that violently cleared out a temporary camp in central Paris, “They are human beings; you cannot treat them as animals!” The protest broke out to demonstrate against the lack of housing that left hundreds of migrants and asylum seekers in extreme destitution on the streets.

On Monday evening, November 23, 2020, about 450 tiny blue tents were erected at Place de la République to protest the lack of shelter for 1,000 migrants, after authorities dismantled a migrant camp hosting 3,000 people in Saint-Denis, a suburb north of Paris, a week before. The peaceful protest that saw the participation of hundreds of migrants and activists was violently ended and dispersed by the police. Officers forced migrants out of their tents, chased them in the streets, fired tear gas and dispersal grenades at them, shoved people with shields, kicked them, and hit them with batons.

In recent years, police have regularly dismantled camps, exercise fields, and shanty towns all over France, harassing, chasing, and clearing out hundreds of migrants and razing their tents and shacks. At the end of September 2020, French authorities cleared out a migrant camp hosting about 800 people in Calais, in the biggest operation since the so-called Jungle shanty town was demolished in 2016. The evacuation began before dawn, with police bringing in 30 buses to transport “more than 600 people” to different reception centers. Migrants were forced to board the buses and many were not even able to pick up their personal belongings or their documents.

In 2018, France’s human rights ombudsman Jacques Toubon accused authorities of “trying to make migrants invisible” by regularly clearing out their camps without providing them with viable alternatives. At the end of 2019, the Ministry of Interior stated that 52% of eligible applicants were effectively accommodated, meaning that more than half of the registered asylum seekers in France are left without accommodation every year. Evictions, carried out in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, are only worsening France’s long-lasting problems with inadequate housing, as activist groups have repeatedly warned that such mass evacuations do not tend to deter migrants from coming back to the area a few days later. In the past 12 months, authorities have carried out at least 1,079 evictions of shelters across France, mainly in the northern coast and almost on a daily basis. However, as long as there is no accommodation available for migrants, they are forced to live on the streets.

In July, the European Court of Human Rights ordered France to pay compensation to three asylum-seekers who were “forced to sleep rough in inhuman and degrading conditions for several months (…) having no means of subsistence, and constantly in fear of being attacked or robbed.” The court found that French officials had “failed in their duties” and were in breach of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Tearing down migrants’ temporary homes, dealing with them with brutality, and depriving them of their limited stability and belongings is not a solution. What migrants need is a safe shelter, and to live in dignity and without fear.

France still does not meet its obligations under Article 3 of the convention, as it forces asylum seekers and even recognized refugees who are wholly dependent on state support to live without shelter in a state of extreme destitution. Under European law, France violates Articles 17.2 and 18.1 of the Directive 2013/33/EU, requiring member states to provide asylum seekers with reception conditions that ensure an adequate standard of living, guaranteeing their subsistence, and protecting their physical and mental health. Under international law, France breaches specifically Article 11.1 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recognizing the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living, including adequate housing.

Tearing down migrants’ temporary homes, dealing with them with brutality, and depriving them of their limited stability and belongings is not a solution. What migrants need is a safe shelter, and to live in dignity and without fear. The repeated dismantling of migrant camps is a violent and disproportionate operation that worsens the accommodation problem which France claims it aims to solve, and forces already displaced people to be constantly on the move.

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor issued a statement on Wednesday, November 4, 2020, stating that Greek refugee camps lack the minimum standards for human life, and that refugees and asylum seekers are forced to endure unbearable conditions which in turn “poses serious risks to their physical and mental safety and well-being.”

The Geneva-based organization noted that Greek refugee camps are “dangerously unsustainable” and that refugees and asylum seekers face an imminent threat to their lives.

A fire broke out recently at Vathy refugee camp on the Greek island of Samos. The camp is home to 4,500 refugees and migrants who are overcrowded in a building that only fits 650 people. Greece’s Ministry of Migration and Asylum claimed that the fire that caused the burning of 15 tents at the camp caused no injuries, adding that at least 150 people were rendered homeless. The cause of the fire is still to be determined.

Euro-Med Monitor noted in the statement that in September alone, two other fires broke out in the same camp, as the island was hit by a 6.7-magnitude earthquake causing a mini-tsunami, which also hit the Turkish city of Izmir.

Not only this, Doctors Without Borders have noted that more than 100 residents of the camp have tested positive for COVID-19. Despite this, refugees still lack proper access to healthcare and live in a continuing lockdown without access to the outside world.

“The fire has once again revealed how desperate and unsafe the situation in Greek refugee camps is,” said Michela Pugliese, legal researcher at the Euro-Med Monitor. “The restriction of movement, the overcrowding, the lack of proper infrastructure, the rise in COVID-19 cases, and the unhygienic and inhumane conditions of Vathy camp make such an outcome predictable.”

Pugliese added that the dire conditions at Vathy camp, which only got worse with the outbreak of the fire, violate international human rights law, including the right to adequate housing and health, which is also stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts, “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of (…) lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”

Euro-Med Monitor concluded by calling on Greece “to immediately close Vathy camp and other similar overcrowded, unsafe and unsanitary camps in the Aegean islands and transfer the asylum seekers to adequate accommodation centres in Greece or in other EU states.”

Euro-Med Monitor called on the European Union “to respect, protect and fulfill international and regional law concerning asylum seekers and migrants’ rights.” The Geneva-based organization concluded by reminding the EU that Article 17.2 of the Directive 2013/33/EU lays down standards for the reception of refugees who lack protection and calls on EU member states to “ensure that material reception conditions provide an adequate standard of living for applicants, which guarantees their subsistence and protects their physical and mental health.”

In late September, an UNDP representative hailed Turkey’s decision to grant Syrian refugees access to healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic. Claudio Tomasi, representative of the United Nations Development Programme told Anadolu News Agency, “As we highlight in our joint report, Turkey stands out compared to other countries, as early on it adopted a comprehensive policy framework to grant Syrians under temporary protection not only access to services but also to the labor market.”