Ukraine war refugees embody the global forced displacement crisis

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Updated 01 July 2022
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Ukraine war refugees embody the global forced displacement crisis

  • UNHCR’s Global Trends report for 2021 revealed that the number of displaced persons worldwide has reached 100 million
  • Europe readily accepts 7 million refugees from Ukraine while turning away millions more from Middle East and Africa

NEW YORK CITY: Last month, the UN observed World Refugee Day against the backdrop of a new grim milestone: The number of people who have been forced from their homes by war, persecution, violence and human rights abuses now sits at over 100 million.

This number is just one of many saddening figures from the UN refugee agency’s Global Trends report, published recently.

The report shows that five countries — Syria, Venezuela, Afghanistan, South Sudan and Myanmar — account for more than two-thirds of displaced persons globally.

People forced to move inside their own countries — known as internally displaced people (IDPs) — constitute the majority of the forcibly displaced population. Syria and Yemen, as well as Afghanistan, Ethiopia, the Republic of the Congo and Colombia, continue to host the world’s largest IDP populations.

If current conflicts remain unresolved and the eruption of new ones is not prevented, the UN report warns that the 21st century will be defined by growing numbers of people forced to flee and the increasingly limited options available to them.

Population movements around the world have become so complex in nature that aid agencies are scrambling to find new ways to deal with the continuous, massive exodus. People are fleeing not only violence, but also economic inequality as the global wealth gap continues to widen.

Changes in weather patterns and resulting droughts, floods and natural disasters have displaced more still. The food security crisis exacerbated by the war in Ukraine has now threatened a new wave.

“The nature of these flows is so complicated by now that (aid) responses have also become complicated, difficult to organize and manage, and exposed to the manipulation of unscrupulous politicians who demonize both the flows and the responses, claiming that it’s impossible (to host refugees), and therefore the real response is, as we hear in many places, ‘Shut borders and push people back’,” said Filippo Grandi, the UN high commissioner for refugees, at a recent conference attended by Arab News.

The number of displaced people worldwide has risen annually for the past 10 years, approaching 90 million by the end of 2021 — more than double the figure in 2001. Most refugees came from Syria, Venezuela and Afghanistan.

The number was also propelled by new waves of violence and conflict in countries such as Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Congo.




Riot police detain a migrant during clashes near the Moria camp for refugees and migrants, on the island of Lesbos, on March 2, 2020. (AFP)

The war in Ukraine led to the fastest and one of the largest displacements since the Second World War. In just four months, nearly 7 million Ukrainians fled their country, surpassing the Syrian crisis, which over the course of 12 years has displaced over 6 million Syrians.

Grandi has hailed the “fairly extraordinary” humanitarian response to the conflict in Ukraine. However, the Italian humanitarian, who began his current role at the peak of the Syrian refugee crisis in 2016, lamented the difference in international response between the two conflicts.

“If you get well-funded in Ukraine or in Poland or in the EU, that’s not the same for many other situations. We have Ethiopia at the end of 2020 and through 2021. We had the Afghanistan situation in the summer of last year,” Grandi said, adding that crises in Syria, South Sudan and Palestine have added to the swelling number of refugees.

“From Bangladesh to Colombia, we have a dozen operations where I am very worried about the underfunding,” he said. “It is important to hammer and hammer the message (home) that Ukraine cannot be the only humanitarian response.”

When in 2015, droves of desperate Syrian refugees fleeing battles in Aleppo showed up at Europe’s doors, Grandi said that European leaders told him: “It’s full. We can’t take anybody anymore.”

“A boat of 40 or so arrives in Sicily and (leaders) are bickering on the phone over who takes how many and for how long,” he said. “And now all of a sudden, how is it possible that in six weeks, 7 million people come in and they’re taken in? There have been problems but by and large, they have been taken in generously, effectively and with protection.”

“Now I am not naïve,” Grandi said, “I fully understand the context. I understand that it may not always be like this. But it certainly proves an important point: That responding to refugee influxes, to the arrival of desperate people at the shore or borders of rich countries, is not unmanageable. It is actually efficiently manageable, but there must be political will.”




A boat carrying migrants is stranded in the Strait of Gibraltar before being rescued by the Spanish Guardia Civil and the Salvamento Maritimo sea search and rescue agency that saw 157 migrants rescued. (AFP)

Such political will toward 1.3 million Syrian asylum seekers who made it to Europe in 2015 was largely non-existent, and these refugees were often met with vitriol and hatred even from top government officials.

Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister, described asylum seekers as “poison” and “Muslim invaders.”

“There is no chance — we are going to send you back. This continent will not be your homeland, you have your own homeland. This is our homeland, we built it,” Orban said in 2015.

Also in 2015, Marine Le Pen, the far-right French politician, compared the influx of refugees to the barbarian invasion of Rome, British Pre Minister David Cameron referred to the fleeing refugees as a “swarm,” and then-Polish Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński accused migrants of carrying diseases.

This attitude toward refugees and migrants was not abandoned in 2015. In 2020, Matteo Salvini, former Italian deputy prime minister, claimed that African migrants were bringing diseases such as tuberculosis and scabies to Italy. However, during a Facebook livestream in March this year, Salvini pledged to transport Ukrainian refugees to Italy.

Grandi said: “Of course if you hammer into public opinion that people coming in will steal your jobs, threaten your security and destroy your values, public opinion will not turn positively toward the (incoming migrants).”

The fact that European leaders have not used such rhetoric against Ukrainians has positively predisposed public opinion toward those who came in looking for refuge, said Grandi.




Ukrainian nationals fleeing the conflict in their country gather at welcome centre set up for them after their arrival at the Paris-Beauvais Airport in Tille, north of Paris, on March 2, 2022. (AFP)

“That’s the attitude: Be constructive. Convey the message that politicians have conveyed about Ukrainians: That these are people in need.

“People flee because they are afraid. It’s not just Ukrainians. The Syrians have fled bombs. People in Tigray have fled bombs, people in the Sahel flee either bombs or vicious attacks. Fleeing from insecurity is the same whether you are a Ukrainian or a Nicaraguan. And I think it is important to continue to convey that message.”

The UNHCR report has dispelled common perceptions that the refugee crises only affect rich nations, or what is commonly known as the global north. In fact, more than 80 percent of refugees worldwide have fled to poor and middle-income countries.

“Nobody has heard of the 150,000 Nicaraguans hosted by Costa Rica,” said Grandi. “And yet, it’s a big problem for Costa Rica.”

Many Western nations see refugee crises as a problem they are not obligated to solve, even as many of the solutions are now contingent upon agreement between the West and Russia, whose diplomatic engagement, as a result of the war in Ukraine, has all but come to a grinding halt.

“The scars on international cooperation of those fractures between the West and Russia, between the major powers in the Security Council, is such that it will take a long time to heal. And yet if that is not healed, I don’t know how we will deal with these global crises,” said Grandi.




Borisov supporters show a banner which reads "Refugees Go Home" during the UEFA Champions League group E first leg football match between Bayer Leverkusen and FC Bate Borisov. (AFP/File Photo)

The preamble of the UN’s 1951 Refugee Convention defines a refugee as someone who “no longer enjoys the protection and assistance” of their own country, and are therefore the responsibility of the international community as a whole.

“The interesting thing,” said Grandi, “is that donors understand very well that there cannot be inequity in the response.”

Perhaps no other recent example illustrates this abdication of responsibility on the part of the West as much as Britain’s “Rwanda Plan,” a scheme that seeks to fly everyone who crosses the English Channel without authorization to Rwanda for processing.

According to the plan, the UK will pay into a Rwandan government “economic transformation and integration fund” and will fund each immigrant for their relocation and temporary accommodation.

“We are not supporting this deal,” said Grandi. “This is all wrong (and) in such contrast with the generosity displayed to the Ukrainians.

“It is the foundation of the right to asylum that people that are on a country’s territory (receive protection), especially if that country is signatory to the convention and has the institutions to deal with (asylum seekers). To export that responsibility to another country runs counter to any notion of international responsibility-sharing.”




UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Filippo Grandi. (AFP/File Photo)

He added: “The UK says we’re doing this to save people from dangerous journeys. Let me doubt that a little bit. Saving people from a dangerous journey is great. But is that the real motivation for this deal to happen? I don’t think so. But I think if really the UK and other countries wanted these dangerous journeys to stop, then there are other ways to do it.”

Grandi said the scheme is a “new ball game that is being superimposed on Rwanda,” a country that, despite having taken in tens of thousands of Congolese and Burundian refugees, does not have the structures to conduct refugee status determination — structures that are well in place in England.

“I made this clear to Priti Patel: This deal makes our work very difficult,” said Grandi, referring to the British home secretary. “The precedent this is setting is catastrophic.”

Asked whether the global food security crisis now underway was likely to push more people to leave their homes, Grandi said he “could not imagine how” it could be otherwise.

He concluded that although he is calling on the world to help with the consequences of conflict, “the problem has to be solved at the root and the war has to be stopped. Negotiations have to resume.”

 


Food shortages bring hunger pains to displaced families in central Gaza

Updated 3 sec ago
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Food shortages bring hunger pains to displaced families in central Gaza

  • Almost all of Gaza’s roughly 2.3 million people now rely on international aid for survival, and doctors and aid groups say malnutrition is rampant
DEIR AL-BALAH: A shortage in flour and the closure of a main bakery in central Gaza have exacerbated an already dire humanitarian situation, as Palestinian families struggle to obtain enough food.
A crowd of people waited dejectedly in the cold outside the shuttered Zadna Bakery in Deir Al-Balah on Monday.
Among them was Umm Shadi, a displaced woman from Gaza City, who told The Associated Press that there was no bread left due to the lack of flour — a bag of which costs as much as 400 shekels ($107) in the market, she said, if any can be found.
“Who can buy a bag of flour for 400 shekels?” she asked.
Nora Muhanna, another woman displaced from Gaza City, said she was leaving empty-handed after waiting five or six hours for a bag of bread for her kids.
“From the beginning, there are no goods, and even if they are available, there is no money,” she said.
Almost all of Gaza’s roughly 2.3 million people now rely on international aid for survival, and doctors and aid groups say malnutrition is rampant. Food security experts say famine may already be underway in hard-hit north Gaza. Aid groups accuse the Israeli military of hindering and even blocking shipments in Gaza.
Meanwhile, dozens lined up in Deir Al-Balah to get their share of lentil soup and some bread at a makeshift charity kitchen.
Refat Abed, a displaced man from Gaza City, no longer knows how he can afford food.
“Where can I get money?” he asked. “Do I beg? If it were not for God and charity, my children and I would go hungry,”

Even with Lebanon truce deal, Israel will operate against Hezbollah — Netanyahu

Updated 17 min 24 sec ago
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Even with Lebanon truce deal, Israel will operate against Hezbollah — Netanyahu

  • Lebanon’s government has largely endorsed US truce proposal to end Israel-Hezbollah war
  • Israel insists any truce deal must guarantee no further Hezbollah presence in area bordering Israel

JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Israel will continue to operate militarily against the Iran-backed Lebanese armed movement Hezbollah even if a ceasefire deal is reached in Lebanon.
“The most important thing is not (the deal that) will be laid on paper,” Netanyahu told the Israeli parliament.
“We will be forced to ensure our security in the north (of Israel) and to systematically carry out operations against Hezbollah’s attacks... even after a ceasefire,” to keep the group from rebuilding, he said.
Netanyahu also said there was no evidence that Hezbollah would respect any ceasefire reached.
“We will not allow Hezbollah to return to the state it was in on October 6” 2023, the eve of the strike by its Palestinian ally Hamas into southern Israel, he said.
Hezbollah then began firing into northern Israel in support of Hamas, triggering exchanges with Israel that escalated into full-on war in late September this year.
Lebanon’s government has largely endorsed a US truce proposal to end the Israel-Hezbollah war and was preparing final comments before responding to Washington, a Lebanese official told AFP on Monday.
Israel insists that any truce deal must guarantee no further Hezbollah presence in the area bordering Israel.


Defiant Lebanese harvest olives in the shadow of war

Updated 19 November 2024
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Defiant Lebanese harvest olives in the shadow of war

  • A World Bank report this month said that “the disruption of the olive harvest caused by bombing and displacement is expected to lead to $58 million in losses” in Lebanon

KFEIR: On a mountain slope in south Lebanon, agricultural worker Assaad Al-Taqi is busy picking olives, undeterred by the roar of Israeli warplanes overhead.
This year, he is collecting the harvest against the backdrop of the raging Israel-Hezbollah war.
He works in the village of Kfeir, just a few kilometers (miles) from where Israeli bombardment has devastated much of south Lebanon since Israel escalated its campaign against Iran-backed Hezbollah in September.
“But I’m not afraid of the shelling,” Taqi said, as he and other workers hit the tree branches with sticks, sending showers of olives tumbling down into jute bags.
“Our presence here is an act of defiance,” the 51-year-old said, but also noting that the olive “is the tree of peace.”
Kfeir is nine kilometers (six miles) from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, in the mixed Christian and Druze district of Hasbaya, which has largely been spared the violence that has wracked nearby Hezbollah strongholds.
But even Hasbaya’s relative tranquillity was shattered last month when three journalists were killed in an Israeli strike on a complex where they were sleeping.
Israel and Hezbollah had previously exchanged cross-border fire for almost a year over the Gaza conflict.
The workers in Kfeir rest in the shade of the olive trees, some 900 meters (3,000 feet) above sea level on the slopes of Mount Hermon, which overlooks an area where Lebanese, Syrian and Israeli-held territory meet.
They have been toiling in relative peace since dawn, interrupted only by sonic booms from Israeli jets breaking the sound barrier and the sight of smoke rising on the horizon from strikes on a south Lebanon border village.
Hassna Hammad, 48, who was among those picking olives, said the agricultural work was her livelihood.
“We aren’t afraid, we’re used to it,” she said of the war.
But “we are afraid for our brothers impacted by the conflict,” she added, referring to the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese displaced by the fighting.
Elsewhere in south Lebanon, olive trees are bulging with fruit that nobody will pick, after villagers fled Israeli bombardment and the subsequent ground operation that began on September 30.
A World Bank report this month said that “the disruption of the olive harvest caused by bombing and displacement is expected to lead to $58 million in losses” in Lebanon.
It said 12 percent of olive groves in the conflict-affected areas it assessed had been destroyed.
Normally, the olive-picking season is highly anticipated in Lebanon, and some people return each year to their native villages and fields just for the harvest.
“Not everyone has the courage to come” this time, said Salim Kassab, who owns a traditional press where villagers bring their olives to extract the oil.
“Many people are absent... They sent workers to replace them,” said Kassab, 50.
“There is fear of the war of course,” he said, adding that he had come alone this year, without his wife and children.
Kassab said that before the conflict, he used to travel to the southern cities of Nabatiyeh and Sidon if he needed to fix his machines, but such trips are near impossible now because of the danger.
The World Bank report estimated that 12 months of agriculture sector losses have cost Lebanon $1.1 billion, in a country already going through a gruelling five-year economic crisis before the fighting erupted.
Areas near the southern border have sustained “the most significant damage and losses,” the report said.
It cited “the burning and abandonment of large areas of agricultural land” in both south and east Lebanon, “along with lost harvests due to the displacement of farmers.”
Elsewhere in Kfeir, Inaam Abu Rizk, 77, and her husband were busy washing olives they plan to either press for oil or jar to be served throughout the winter.
Abu Rizk has taken part in the olive harvest for decades, part of a tradition handed down the generations, and said that despite the war, this year was no different.
“Of course we’re afraid... there is the sound of planes and bombing,” she said.
But “we love the olive month — we are farmers and the land is our work.”


Iraqis face tough homecoming a decade after Daesh rampage

Updated 19 November 2024
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Iraqis face tough homecoming a decade after Daesh rampage

  • Baghdad has been pushing for the closure of the displacement camps, with the country having attained a degree of comparative stability in recent years

HASSAN SHAMI: A decade after Daesh group extremists rampaged through northern Iraq, Moaz Fadhil and his eight children finally returned to their village after languishing for years in a displacement camp.
Their home, Hassan Shami, is just a stone’s throw from the tent city where they had been living, and it still bears the scars of the fight against Daesh.
The jihadists seized a third of Iraq, ruling their self-declared “caliphate” with an iron fist, before an international coalition wrestled control from them in 2017.
Seven years on, many of the village’s homes are still in ruins and lacking essential services, but Fadhil said he felt an “indescribable joy” upon moving back in August.
Iraq — marred by decades of war and turmoil even before the rise of Daesh — is home to more than a million internally displaced people.
Baghdad has been pushing for the closure of the displacement camps, with the country having attained a degree of comparative stability in recent years.
Most of the camps in federal Iraq have now been closed, but around 20 remain in the northern autonomous Kurdistan region, which according to the United Nations house more than 115,000 displaced people.
But for many, actually returning home can be a difficult task.
After getting the green light from Kurdish security forces to leave the camp, Fadhil moved his family into a friend’s damaged house because his own is a complete ruin.

“Water arrives by tanker trucks and there is no electricity,” said the 53-year-old.
Although the rubble has been cleared from the structure he now lives in, the cinder block walls and rough concrete floors remain bare.
Across Hassan Shami, half-collapsed houses sit next to concrete buildings under construction by those residents who can afford to rebuild.
Some have installed solar panels to power their new lives.
A small new mosque stands, starkly white, beside an asphalt road.
“I was born here, and before me my father and mother,” said Fadhil, an unemployed farmer.
“I have beautiful memories with my children, my parents.”
The family survives mainly on the modest income brought in by his eldest son, who works as a day laborer on building sites.
“Every four or five days he works a day” for about $8, said Fadhil.
In an effort to close the camps and facilitate returns, Iraqi authorities are offering families around $3,000 to go back to their places of origin.
To do so, displaced people must also get security clearance — to ensure they are not wanted for jihadist crimes — and have their identity papers or property rights in order.
But of the 11,000 displaced people still living in six displacement camps near Hassan Shami, 600 are former prisoners, according to the UN.
They were released after serving up to five years for crimes related to membership of IS.

For them, going home can mean further complications.
There’s the risk of ostracism by neighbors or tribes for their perceived affiliation with Daesh atrocities, potential arrest at a checkpoint by federal forces or even a second trial.
Among them is 32-year-old Rashid, who asked that we use a pseudonym because of his previous imprisonment in Kurdistan for belonging to the jihadist group.
He said he hopes the camp next to Hassan Shami does not close.
“I have a certificate of release (from prison), everything is in order... But I can’t go back there,” he said of federal Iraq.
“If I go back it’s 20 years” in jail, he added, worried that he would be tried again in an Iraqi court.
Ali Abbas, spokesperson for Iraq’s migration ministry, said that those who committed crimes may indeed face trial after they leave the camps.
“No one can prevent justice from doing its job,” he said, claiming that their families would not face repercussions.
The government is working to ensure that families who return have access to basic services, Abbas added.
In recent months, Baghdad has repeatedly tried to set deadlines for Kurdistan to close the camps, even suing leaders of the autonomous region before finally opting for cooperation over coercion.
Imrul Islam of the Norwegian Refugee Council said displacement camps by definition are supposed to be temporary, but warned against their hasty closure.
When people return, “you need schools. You need hospitals. You need roads. And you need working markets that provide opportunities for livelihoods,” he said.
Without these, he said, many families who try to resettle in their home towns would end up returning to the camps.


Even with Lebanon truce deal, Israel will operate against Hezbollah: Netanyahu

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, in Jerusalem, November 18, 2024. (Reuters)
Updated 18 November 2024
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Even with Lebanon truce deal, Israel will operate against Hezbollah: Netanyahu

  • Netanyahu also said there was no evidence that Hezbollah would respect any ceasefire reached

JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Israel will continue to operate militarily against the Iran-backed Lebanese armed movement Hezbollah even if a ceasefire deal is reached in Lebanon.
“The most important thing is not (the deal that) will be laid on paper,” Netanyahu told the Israeli parliament.
“We will be forced to ensure our security in the north (of Israel) and to systematically carry out operations against Hezbollah’s attacks... even after a ceasefire,” to keep the group from rebuilding, he said.
Netanyahu also said there was no evidence that Hezbollah would respect any ceasefire reached.
“We will not allow Hezbollah to return to the state it was in on October 6” 2023, the eve of the strike by its Palestinian ally Hamas into southern Israel, he said.
Hezbollah then began firing into northern Israel in support of Hamas, triggering exchanges with Israel that escalated into full-on war in late September this year.
Lebanon’s government has largely endorsed a US truce proposal to end the Israel-Hezbollah war and was preparing final comments before responding to Washington, a Lebanese official told AFP on Monday.
Israel insists that any truce deal must guarantee no further Hezbollah presence in the area bordering Israel.