UPCOMING EVENT

STRETCHED TO THE BRINK...

On  September 2nd, 2015 the world woke up to the appalling photograph of a dead toddler lying on a beach in Turkey. The child Aylan Kurdi was three years old. He along with his parents were escaping Syria and fleeing to Europe after Canada rejected their refugee application. Aylan his mother and brother drowned in the Mediterranean Sea. The family was among thousands of Syrian refugees who are fleeing the war-torn country to nearby Europe. The chilling picture has caused global outrage and intense global attention to migration caused by war, political instability and a complete breakdown of law and order in their native land.

Refugee crisis can refer to movements of large groups of displaced persons, who could be either internally displaced persons, refugees or other migrants. It can also refer to incidents in the country of origin or departure, to large problems whilst on the move or even after arrival in a safe country that involve large groups of displaced persons, asylum seekers or refugees.

REASONS 

War and civil war

Human rights violations

Environment and climate

Economic hardship

The European migrant crisis, or less precisely European refugee crisis, began in 2015 when rising immigration numbers of unauthorized foreign migrants arrived in the European Union (EU), travelling across the Mediterranean Sea or overland through Southeast Europe. These unauthorized foreign migrants encompassed not only asylees seeking to apply for refugee status and the right of asylum in claims to be individually determined as genuine or not, but also encompassed various others, such as economic migrants and hostile agents including "Islamic State militants".

A BROKEN SYSTEM

The world’s system for protecting refugees is broken. It is obvious - from Australia to South Sudan’s vast camps, from Istanbul’s cold streets to the European Union’s heavily fortified walls.

Worldwide, more than 21 million people have been forced to seek sanctuary abroad. Governments have a duty to help them. But most rich countries are still treating refugees as somebody else’s problem. Hiding behind closed borders and fears of being “flooded”, they have conveniently allowed poorer, mainly Middle Eastern, African and South Asian countries, to host an incredible 86% of all refugees.

And by ignoring most appeals for humanitarian aid, they have left UN agencies so broke they can’t even feed many refugees properly anymore.

This has to change, now. Amnesty is putting forward eight solutions for how world leaders – in particular the richest countries – can start tackling this massive humanitarian crisis together.

Eight ways to solve the crisis

1. Opening up safe routes to sanctuary for refugees is one important solution. That means allowing people to reunite with their relatives, and giving refugees visas so they don’t have to spend their life savings and risk drowning to reach safety.

2. It also means resettling all refugees who need it. Resettlement is a vital solution for the most vulnerable refugees – including torture survivors and people with serious medical problems.

Right now, 1.2 million people urgently need this lifeline. 

Saving lives

3. World leaders also need to put saving lives first. No one should have to die crossing a border, and yet almost 7,000 people drowned in the Mediterranean alone in the two years since the first big shipwreck in October 2013. 

Thousands of people fleeing persecution in Myanmar suffered for weeks on board boats while Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia bickered over who should help them in May 2015.

States can stop this by investing in search and rescue operations and immediately helping people in distress.

4. And whether they travel by land or by sea, people fleeing persecution or wars should be allowed to cross borders, with or without travel documents. Pushing people back and putting up massive fences only forces them to take more dangerous routes to safety.

Stop trafficking and racism

5. All countries should investigate and prosecute trafficking gangs who exploit refugees and migrants, and put people’s safety above all else. Survivors whom Amnesty met in Southeast Asia said traffickers killed people on board boats when their families couldn’t pay ransoms. Others were thrown overboard and left to drown, or died from because there was no food and water.

6. Governments also need to stop blaming refugees and migrants for economic and social problems, and instead combat all kinds of xenophobia and racial discrimination. Doing otherwise is deeply unfair, stirs up tensions and fear of foreigners, and sometimes leads to violence – even death.

In Durban, South Africa, at least four people died, many were seriously injured, and over 1,000 mainly Burundian and Congolese refugees forced to flee after violence and looting broke out in April and May 2015.  

START FUNDING 'BROKE' UN PROPERLY

7. “Financially broke” is how Antonio Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, described UN agencies in September 2015. Wealthy countries quite simply aren’t keeping their high-profile promises to fund aid for refugees abroad.

For example, the UN has received less than half the funding it needs to support Syria’s 4 million refugees. This is now forcing 80% of refugees living outside camps in Jordan to do dangerous, degrading jobs or send their children out to beg.

South Sudan’s forgotten refugee crisis has been met with a pitiful 18% of the money needed for absolute basics like food and medicine.

People are dying while governments spend billions on border control. They urgently need to guarantee full funding to alleviate refugee crises worldwide.

Asylum is a human right

8. The world has a very short memory. In the aftermath of World War II, most countries agreed to protect refugees through the 1951 Refugee Convention, and through UN agencies like the UNHCR.

Barbed wire fences and chronic underfunding have left that vision of a better world in tatters. By ignoring the warning signs, world leaders have allowed a huge, global humanitarian crisis to unfold. Ultimately, it will be resolved by ending the conflicts and persecution that forced people to flee in the first place.

But no one knows when that will be. Meanwhile, we need radical solutions, visionary leadership and global co-operation on a scale not seen for 70 years. That involves setting up strong refugee systems: allowing people to apply for asylum, treating their refugee claims fairly, resettling the most vulnerable of all, and providing basics like education and healthcare.

None of these eight solutions are impossible to achieve, if politicians listen to the millions of people saying “I welcome refugees”, and put solidarity and compassion above petty wrangling over who should host a few thousand refugees.

Social Entrepreneurship in the times of the refugee crisis

In a society and world that seems to be shaken by one economic, social and political crisis after another, social entrepreneurs are celebrated to be today’s disruptors and tomorrow’s brightest stars.

Especially projects claiming to find an “innovative” solution to the migration crisis, seem to be spreading like mushrooms – more than 700 of them alone in Germany. The variety of offered services and products is wide. Take for an example an app that is supposed to facilitate communication or a fancy boat ride on the Aegean Sea where people from first world countries come together to “philosophize” about solutions for migrants without them being included in the idea process. In the meantime, conflicts in refugee camps arise from being literally stuck, and this not in the sense of cosy summer camp conditions, while authorities do not have the manpower, overwhelmed by the amount of paper work stacking on their desk.

But who really profits from such “great” ideas?

Is it considered “social” if wannabe “entrepreneurs” are literally capitalising on the misery of vulnerable people?

But let’s take one step at a time: Who is even an “entrepreneur”?

French economist Jean Baptiste Say, said once: “The entrepreneur shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield”. Joseph Schumpeter identified similarly in the 20th century entrepreneurs as the catalysts and innovators behind economic progress, while Peter Drucker explained that an entrepreneur is someone that is exploiting opportunities. Seeing possibilities rather than problems.

According to this definition, they seem to be entrepreneurs. But he also mentioned that not every (not-for- profit) organization is entrepreneurial. The real struggle of a true entrepreneur is usually to make people understand how their product/ service can enhance our life, trying to find investors especially in the early stages of the lifecycle of their start-up.

So can you consider somebody that spends charity money an “entrepreneur”? Going further, only a few ideas include migrants actually as valuable parts of their teams. Shouldn’t it be mandatory for any start-up in order to understand their so called “core costumer” or beneficiary?

In addition, a “social entrepreneur” should have a social motivation. “Mission-related impact becomes the central criterion, not wealth creation”[1], the core principle distinguishing them from business entrepreneurs. There were always social entrepreneurs out there, even before the migration crisis, but nobody took those serious until it became recently a profitable business, easy and fast money to raise, no long-term view or customer-binding needed.

Furthermore, social entrepreneurship is commonly defined to achieve large scale, systemic and sustainable social change through a new invention. Bringing a profound social transformation means hereby to create a prosperous, stable and peaceful new system that is fundamentally different than the world that preceded it.

How is it a more just and fundamentally different world, if the only ones that profit are those with the “business” idea, but the core problems, namely the ongoing conflicts in the regions and the forced displacement of people, are still existing?

European Commission Vice-President Kristalina Georgieva said about the 2017 EU budget “(…).We continue to focus our budget on results, ensuring that every euro from the EU budget will make a difference.” But to be true, the EU and donor organisations seem to spend a great amount of money on projects that are still focused on short-term solutions. And even here, decisions are usually being made by people who have never lived in an emergency state/ a third world country, studied in the most prestigious and expensive universities and never heard of the expression “making a living” so they can’t even slightly understand what the real needs and priorities of the most vulnerable amongst us are.

Moreover, what will happen to these start-ups that are only focused on finding these temporary solutions, all those apps/ specifically designed products and services after the migration wave? In which way is this sustainable? Why don’t we stop duplicating project ideas, using the already existing apps, hubs and co-working spaces etc. and instead spend money on “scaling up” on already existing solutions/ start-ups?

In addition, we should rather focus on projects involving migrants as partners of projects in social enterprises, inspired by refugee social entrepreneurs themselves while thinking about the aftermath and local development of the states of origin, rather than celebrating those so claimed “social entrepreneurs” taking nice pictures with Head of XY, Minister XY or Senior Executive of multinational XY, instead of being out there actively engaged, claiming they found a solution from far without even being in contact with their target group.

Furthermore, let’s also do not forget the numerous positive examples of organisations and projects that even before the migration crisis linked social entrepreneurship and human rights. Innovative social enterprises that have been set-up with human rights issues at their core. Let’s also do not forget about the coast guards who are out there at sea, showing humanity by giving the most vulnerable a hand, gesturing that they are equal and welcome, forgetting for a minute their protocol to make a person smile that has seen the unspeakable .

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/11848875/Refugee-crisis-The-latest-in-pictures.html

https://www.indy100.com/article/these-moving-photos-of-the-refugee-crisis-just-won-a-pulitzer-prize--bkKjVngIbb

https://www.buzzfeed.com/lynzybilling/these-are-the-most-powerful-photographs-of-the-syrian-refuge?utm_term=.de33341Lx#.viMKKpl4o

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2015/10/eight-solutions-world-refugee-crisis/

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

LESS PLASTIC DAY - December 19

Plastic waste has become a pandemic—on land as well as in the world's oceans. What can just one person do about such a global problem? Take these simple steps, courtesy of World Ocean Observatory: 

1. Avoid buying items packaged in plastic. Look for produce and other items that aren’t over-packaged. Buy food in glass jars rather than plastic ones, and detergents in boxes rather than bottles.Not only are you reducing the plastic you use, you’re sending a powerful message to the makers of those products that you don’t like plastic packaging

Using cloth shopping bags is one simple way to lessen your use of plastics. Photo credit:

2. Use cloth shopping bags. Plastic bags are an eyesore and are dangerous to wildlife. Keep reusable bags somewhere handy—in your car or your bike or by the front door—so you don’t forget them when you go to the market, grocery store or mall.

3. Skip bottled water. Carry a reusable canteen. Plastic bottles are one of the top five most common types of litter found on beaches. Since bottled water is much more expensive than tap water, you’ll also save money doing this, and avoid the possible hazards of plastic toxins leaching into your beverage.

4. Upcycle. Think of new uses for old items rather than discarding them or buying new ones. 

5. Bring a reusable mug when you order coffee. Stow it on your desk, in your purse, car or bag so you have it on hand when you order or refill your drink.

6. Say "No straw, please." Straws are one of the top 10 items found on beaches. In most cases, drinking out of a straw is simply unnecessary. If you do need a straw, you can get a reusable stainless steel or glass one.

7. Wear clothing made from natural (not synthetic) materials. Wearing and washing clothes causes fibers to flake off, and polyester clothing is made of plastic.Tiny particles of microplastic found in oceans around the world have been traced to such synthetic fabrics.

8. Avoid disposable tableware, or use the compostable kind. Try using washable and reusable cups, plates or utensils. When using compostable tableware, be aware they will not biodegrade in a landfill and must be disposed of in appropriate composting conditions.

9. Don't just discard electronics. Aim to repair or upgrade your devices instead of buying new ones. Sell gadgets and computer parts, or find a facility where you can turn them in for recycling.

10. Bring your own container for takeout and leftovers. When ordering takeout or bringing home leftovers, ask if you can get the food in your own reusable container.

http://www.ecowatch.com/10-ways-to-use-less-plastic-every-day-1881820411.html

DEDICATED TO DEVELOPMENT

Inspired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Swachch Bharat campaign, an 11-year-old girl is digging into her piggy bank to build toilets for the underprivileged.

Maudrita Chatterjee, a class VI student of Hilltop School, TELCO, spent her entire piggy bank savings and pocket money to get two community toilets in Potka-block village, Kendadiha, of Chota Govindpur panchayat in Jamshedpur.

After listening to the PM's talk on Swachch Bharat in 2014, a highly motivated Chatterjee decided to do her bit by getting toilets built in her region. She started saving her pocket money and managed to collect Rs 24,000 in 12 months, with which two toilets were built in Potka block.

"I wanted to contribute to the appeal of PM Modi's swachata campaign. I am proud that I could become a part of this drive and could do something for my country. I just want that this should be seem as a campaign and increase consciousness of hygiene and cleanliness," she said.

Calling her a source of inspiration, the Chief minister of Jharkhand, Raghubir Das praised Chatterjee for her efforts. She also received the Sanitation Award of Eastern Singhbhumi Region.

Speaking on the occasion, Chatterjee said she would continue the efforts and ask others also to join the cleanliness drive.

A brother and sister from Madhya Pradesh have put together every penny they could, including their scholarship money and pocket money, to build a toilet for a girl’s school in Narsingpur district.

Sixteen-year-old Memoona Khan and her 14-year-old brother Aamir Khan are students of Class 10 and 9, respectively.  Over the past two years they have been saving the money they received as a scholarship for “minority community” students.

“The school had only one toilet. I’d feel bad seeing students standing in a queue outside the toilet,” Memoona, a student of Kendriya Vidyalaya in Narsingpur, told Times of India. “I talked about it with my younger brother Aamir. Since we were hesitant to discuss it with our parents, we first discussed it with a friend of my father’s, uncle Bablu Gupta. He appreciated our concern and told our father. Luckily, our father agreed.”

“Each of us gets Rs. 2000 scholarship annually.We’d saved two years of scholarship money in our accounts, as our father pays for our schooling expenses. Then, we had also saved from our pocket money – we contributed a total of Rs. 2,000. Thus, we had Rs. 10,000 in total. Seeing our enthusiasm, our father also pitched in with Rs 14,500 for the toilet,” said Memoona.

The siblings’ efforts have been appreciated by P K Lazarus, the Principal of the girls’ school: “Around 1600 students study in our school and we only had two toilets. With the new toilet, there is a great relief.”

Memoona has contributed towards causes earlier too. In 2011, she wrote to MP Chief Minister Shivraj Chauhan, calling him “Mamaji” in her letter, and asked him to build a road to her school. The CM responded by saying, “Bhaanjion ki baat kaise taal sakta hoon?” Two years after writing the letter, the road was completed.

Memoona has also been made brand ambassador of Lado Abhiyan, an initiative to create awareness about the girl child.

The children’s father, Hussain Pathan, runs a tailoring shop in Narsingpur. “Kids are very much into social activities. Memoona had even participated in a protest against an illegal liquor shop,” he said.

UPCOMING EVEVT

TOMORROW AFTERNOON AT RAJAGIRI COLLEGE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

I CAN!

Diving in fearlessly, five-year-old Niveditha did not let the turbulent river or its swirling waters intimidate her.

Accompanied by her coach Saji Valasseril, the tiny tot on Tuesday swam the 600-metre stretch between Adwaithasramam and Manalppuram in just 25 minutes, probably becoming the youngest girl to swim across the Periyar.

Mr. Valasseril has been coaching the girl, a UKG student of Guardian Angels’ Public School, Manjummal, since September this year.

Benefits of swimming

According to him, Niveditha, through her feat, intended to spread awareness on the benefits of learning swimming.

“ The Periyar has been witnessing an increase in the number of drowning deaths over the past few years. The young girl wanted to tell the world that through fierce dedication and hard work, anybody can conquer it,” he said.

Having completed her first mission with ease, Niveditha is raring to take up more such challenges in the future.

For someone who has trained over 600 children in swimming, it was never a risk for Mr. Valasseril to let the child into the river. “I am acquainted with the length and breadth of this river and was confident about completing the task. Besides, precautionary measures, including the service of expert divers, were taken,” he said.

Niveditha used to accompany her father, Sucheendran E.S., when he took her sister Devananda, a Class 8 student, for swimming classes. Her father enrolled her in the class, considering her interest in swimming.

In June last year, Mr. Valasseril had helped a 12-year-old visually challenged boy, Navaneeth, swim across the same stretch by giving him special training of just 12 days.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Kochi/5-year-old-girl-swims-across-Periyar/article16728931.ece

HUMAN RIGHTS PROTECTION OR VIOLATION?

http://kavehadel.com/blog/2011/12/political-cartoon-human-rights-day-by-cartoonist-kaveh-adel/

Human Rights Day is marked annually on 10 December to commemorate the day in 1948 when the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A milestone document in the history of human rights, it set out, for the first time, how fundamental human rights were to be universally protected.

300,000: Estimates suggest there are as many as 300,000 child soldiers around the world. Both boys and girls serve in government forces and armed opposition groups, fighting on the front lines, acting as spies or guards, participating in suicide missions or being forced into sexual slavery.

 370: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the most translated document in the world. It is available in 370 languages.

 21m: Nearly 21 million people around the world are the victims of forced labour, and the majority are women. According to the International Labour Organisation, the illegal human trafficking industry is worth around $150bn (£120bn).

200m: It is estimated that more than 200 million girls and women alive today have undergone female genital mutilation, with an estimated three million girls at risk of undergoing FGM.

5: Nepal is one of around five countries where your gender can now appear as "other" on official documentation.

4: In 2015 alone, the death penalty has been abolished in four countries.

3m: More than three million under-fives die every year from environment-related diseases, with many more affected by environmental issues such as water and air pollution.

30: According to UN Women, more than 30 countries worldwide exempt rape perpetrators from prosecution when they are married to the victim – or if they subsequently marry them. Around the world, a third of women have experienced either sexual or physical violence – mostly at the hands of an intimate partner.

2015: Last year, the number of transgender homicide victims hit a historic high, and almost all of the victims were transgender women of colour.

15m: Globally, 15 million girls will never have the opportunity to learn to read and write in primary school. Around two-thirds of the world's illiterate people are women.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/here-are-10-things-you-need-know-about-human-rights-day-1595741 

HUMAN RIGHTS DAY - December 10

Human Rights Day is celebrated annually across the world on 10 December every year.

The date was chosen to honour the United Nations General Assembly's adoption and proclamation, on 10 December 1948, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights(UDHR), the first global enunciation of human rights and one of the first major achievements of the new United Nations. The formal establishment of Human Rights Day occurred at the 317th Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly on 4 December 1950, when the General Assembly declared resolution 423(V), inviting all member states and any other interested organizations to celebrate the day as they saw fit.

The day is normally marked both by high-level political conferences and meetings and by cultural events and exhibitions dealing with human rights issues. In addition it is traditionally on 10 December that the five-yearly United Nation Prize in the Field of Human Rights and Nobel Peace Prize are awarded. Many governmental and non-governmental organizations active in the human rights field also schedule special events to commemorate the day, as do many civil and social-cause organizations.