Tuesday, May 10, 2016
A crisis of solidarity
Refugee and migrant crisis cannot be addressed by states acting alone,
This September, the United Nations General Assembly will bring together world leaders to address one of the leading challenges of our time: responding to large movements of refugees and migrants.
War, human rights violations, underdevelopment, climate change and natural disasters are leading more people to leave their homes than at any time since we have had reliable data. More than 60 million people — half of them children — have fled violence or persecution and are now refugees and internally displaced persons. An additional 225 million are migrants who have left their countries in search of better opportunities or simply for survival.
But this is not a crisis of numbers; it is a crisis of solidarity. Almost 90 per cent of the world’s refugees are hosted in developing countries. Eight countries host more than half the world’s refugees. Just 10 countries provide 75 per cent of the UN’s budget to ease and resolve their plight.
With equitable responsibility sharing, there would be no crisis for host countries. Yet, too often, we let fear and ignorance get in the way. Human needs end up overshadowed, and xenophobia speaks louder than reason.
On September 19, the General Assembly will hold a high-level meeting to strengthen our efforts for the longer term. To help the international community seize this opportunity, I have just issued a report, “In Safety and Dignity”, with recommendations on how the world can take more effective collective action.
We need to begin by recognising our common humanity. Millions of people on the move have been exposed to extreme suffering. Thousands have died in the Mediterranean, on the Andaman Sea, in the Sahel and in Central America. Refugees and migrants are not “others”; they are as diverse as the human family itself. Movements of people are a quintessentially global phenomenon that demands a global sharing of responsibility.
Second, far from being a threat, refugees and migrants contribute to the growth and development of host countries as well as their countries of origin. The better new arrivals are integrated, the greater their contribution to society will be. We need more measures to promote the social and economic inclusion of refugees and migrants.
Third, political and community leaders have a responsibility to speak out against discrimination and intolerance, and to counter those who seek to win votes through fearmongering and divisiveness. This is a time to build bridges, not walls, between people.
Fourth, we have to give greater attention to addressing the drivers of forced displacement. The UN continues to strengthen its work to prevent conflict, resolve disputes peacefully and address violations of human rights before they escalate. One powerful new tool is the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a blueprint agreed last year by all 193 members of the UN that includes a strong focus on justice, institutions and peaceful societies.
Fifth, we need to strengthen the international systems that manage large movements of people so that they uphold human rights norms and provide the necessary protections. States must honour their international legal obligations, including the 1951 Refugee Convention. Countries where refugees arrive first should not be left to shoulder the demands alone. My report proposes a “global compact on responsibility sharing for refugees”.
There is a pressing need to do more to combat smugglers and traffickers, to rescue and protect people en route, and to ensure their safety and dignity at borders. More orderly and legal pathways for migrants and refugees will be crucial, so that desperate people are not forced to turn to criminal networks in their search for safety.
The number of migrants is expected to continue to grow as a result of trade, labour and skill shortages, the ease of travel and communications, rising inequality and climate change. My report proposes important measures to improve global governance in this area, including through a “global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration”.
Refugee and migrant crises are far from insurmountable, but they cannot be addressed by states acting alone. Today, millions of refugees and migrants are being deprived of their basic rights, and the world is depriving itself of the full benefits of what refugees and migrants have to offer.
The World Humanitarian Summit I am convening in Istanbul May 23 and 24 will seek new commitments from states and others to work together to protect people and build resilience. I expect the September 19 meeting of the General Assembly to point the way toward solutions to the most immediate refugee and migration challenges, and commit world leaders to greater global cooperation on these issues.
Human beings have moved from place to place across the millennia, by choice and under duress, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Only by upholding our duty to protect those fleeing persecution and violence, and by embracing the opportunities that refugees and migrants offer to their new societies, will we be able to achieve a more prosperous and fairer future for all.
The writer is secretary-general of the UN
- Source: Indian Express, 10-05-2016
The ‘everydayness’ of our violence
We are a strangely hypocritical society where our scholars and intellectuals talk at length on how the West decimated tribes and native people but refuse to admit how we submit our own people to an equivalent savaging
India is a country that loves decentralisation and it covers almost every area. I will focus on the subject of tyranny. For example, look at our police stations. We do not need a Hobbesian sovereign ruling over us. In political philosophy, one has what is called the concept of sovereignty which is discussed in Hobbesian terms. Thomas Hobbes’s hypothesis was that the ruler’s sovereignty is contracted to him by the people in return for his maintaining their physical safety. This led him to conclude that if and when the ruler fails, the people recover their ability to protect themselves by forming a new contract. But a policeman in every station is all the tyranny India needs for he or she is the local bully, ruler and judge all rolled into one. The police station is the beginning and end of what constitutes governance in our society. Law is a form of tyranny and has little to do with justice. The point I wish to make is this: why do we need dictatorships in a society when we have tyrannies in everynukkad? For the middle class in particular, India might be an aspiring democracy where there is a chance for them to make their dreams come true, but for the tribal, the nomad, the Dalit and the average woman, it spells a plurality of dictatorships.
A new level of violence
More than the tyranny they face, whereby the law embraces lawlessness, what is even more frightening for them is the quality of violence and the everydayness of violence. I am not talking about Naxal revolts, communal riots, or caste atrocities which we see and read about as occasional outbursts of collective violence. Instead, I am talking about the “everydayness” of violence, where brutality and torture have become a daily routine and which have reached a new level.
Violence begins almost as an act of classification with the police defining who a citizen is — and as a person with rights — and labelling someone who is not. In this world, tribals and nomads have no place. And this is not a Chhattisgarh, parts of Bihar, or of Kashmir or even Manipur restricted by the burden of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). It is only the middle class which can boast of rights, of the power to access green tribunals, the National Human Rights Commission and courts.
There is a deeper fissure here that goes beyond explanations from western theory. To make all this clear, let me cite recent narratives where one can sense why the police station is the functional unit of tyranny.
Savaging our people
This is the story of Kawasi Hidme of Chhattisgarh. In January 2008, a group of tribal women who were eking out a living from a tiny parcel of land, decided to visit a fair. Among them was Kawasi Hidme. She went around to look for a few ribbons and bangles to buy. After walking around a bit, the women searched for a hand pump to quench their thirst. As she reached down to drink water she felt a hand clamp down on her. Spinning around, she found herself staring at a policeman who then dragged her into a police van that was parked outside the fair. With her hands and feet tied, she was thrown on the floor of the vehicle and driven to a police station. She became what was euphemistically called as being “a police consort” — sexually assaulted and transferred from one police station to another. To avoid scandal, as some of the policemen feared she would die, she was arrested and then falsely charged under the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act. The police accused her of an offence that related to the murder of 23 Central Reserve Police Force personnel and the magistrate remanded her to the Jagdalpur prison. In prison, the horrendous physical and sexual torture she was subjected caused her to have a uterine prolapse. She then asked an inmate for a blade and tried to operate upon herself to end the pain. It resulted in more bleeding and screaming inmates alerted the jailor who then rushed her to a civil hospital for treatment. After surgery she was sent back to jail. Soni Sori, an Adivasi teacher, was also in prison during this period, became Ms. Hidme’s saviour. Ms. Sori had also been subject to torture in police custody. After her release, Ms. Sori informed human rights activists about Ms. Hidme’s condition and they in turn were able to get legal aid for her. Finally, in late March 2015, the court ordered her release as none of the charges against her could be proved.
Similar stories have been narrated to the outside world by literary critic Ganesh N. Devy, where, in Gujarat, tribals are easy prey for the police; they are arrested and released on the whims and fancies of the police.
Writer and activist Mahasweta Devi has written about tales of violence in Bihar and West Bengal, most of them involving tribals. We are a strangely hypocritical society where our scholars and intellectuals talk at length on how the West decimated tribes and native people but refuse to admit how we submit our own people to an equivalent savaging. It is a pity that such violence hardly comes within the purview of the law.
Let me cite another example. Jisha, a Dalit law student was found dead in Perumbavoor, Kerala, on April 28. According to the autopsy, she had been subject to extreme violence and assault. In short, her body had been brutalised. What was even worse was that hers was a classic case of indifference by the police. The horrific case has inevitably drawn comparisons with the brutal gang rape and death of a student in New Delhi in 2012.
One can go on with a series of such anecdotes. At one level, one senses the limits of the law in understanding such cases of violence. Yet, at another, it makes one ask why and what it is that makes society react with such indifference to brutality, dismissing it as an aberration when such instances of violence are becoming all too frequent. If society considers this to be normal or treats it with indifference, one has to wonder if society itself is normal.
This is a question that goes beyond rights and democracy. It plunges deep into the basics of what constitutes that which is social. Is not the primordialism and the banality of violence being used to construct a new kind of social? Are the current strategies of law enough to ponder over and philosophise about such events?
The stomach churns and the mind revolts when the media report such events. Yet, one realises that there is little follow-up. It is almost as if such events pile up on the assembly line of memory as society seems unable to assimilate such events. There is both denial and indifference in the way we consume the event. In a strange way, the production and the consumption of the event become cause for concern. One wonders whether newer forms of “non-caring” or violence are appearing. Somehow, silence, even indifference, quietly suppresses a meditation on such events. As a professor, I can recollect the number of occasions when my students have cried as we discussed such events in class. Yet, society seems so indifferent.
Lessons from the West
I am raising these questions because such events are early warning signs of a deeper crisis. As a nation, India is deeply violent, yet it does not want to analyse such events. Our social scientists have no René Girard (the French historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social science) or Hannah Arendt (German-born American political theorist and philosopher) or an equivalent of the Frankfurt school (a school of social theory and philosophy) to go into the roots of violence and link it to the everydayness of our lives. Such analyses need courage and conviction to follow evidence and theory to a new sense of evil and even find a language to articulate it. For example, Arendt did so when she talked about the banality of violence; one has to read her book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Arendt’s subtitle famously introduced the phrase “the banality of evil”, which also serves as the final words of the book. The ordinary Jew revolted when Arendt explained that Otto Adolf Eichmann, who was executed in 1962 for his involvement in the Holocaust, was ordinary and his very ordinariness created a genocidal script.
Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman also shocked us when he showed the scientific roots of Nazi violence in his book Modernity and the Holocaust. He provocatively argued that the Holocaust, far from being a barbaric counter-example to modern morality, was actually in line with many modern principles of rationality. We need such equivalent understandings, in the form of the narrative power of storytelling and the invention of a more courageous social science or a moral perspective, that can explain violence and explain the limits of the law in Indian society. No democracy can survive without the roots of such an ethical and philosophical imagination.
Shiv Visvanathan is a Professor at Jindal Law School.
Source: The Hindu, 10-05-2016
Wisdom of the Desert
MARGUERITE THEOPHIL
|
Once, an old monk who lived in a cave with his disciple became annoyed with the young man and made him leave. When the old man finally went to the entrance and saw the young man still patiently waiting there, he bowed before him, saying, “Come inside. Your humility and patience have overcome my narrow-mindedness. From now on, you are the father, I am the disciple; your good works have surpassed my old age.“This is one of the many stories of the holy desert fathers and mothers, the beloved Abbas' and ` ` Ammas' of fourthcentury Egypt, Syria and Asia Minor, who left the city with its watered down practice of their faith, retreating to the desert to live in prayerful simplicity , in absolute solitude or in small groups. These stories also highlight the discernment and wisdom that knows exactly when to discard these very rules and directions.
Silence had high value. Once, on a visit from Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, the community said to Abba Pambo, “Say a word or two to the bishop, that his soul may be edified in this place.“ The old man replied, “If he is not edified by my silence, there is no hope that he will be edified by my words.“
Humanness had to prevail, as one of my favourite stories teaches: once, some serious and concerned senior monks came to Abba Poemen and asked, “When we see the brothers dozing in the church, must we rouse them, so that they can be attentive?“ He softly answered, “For my part, when I see a brother dozing, I put his head on my knees and let him rest.“
Silence had high value. Once, on a visit from Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, the community said to Abba Pambo, “Say a word or two to the bishop, that his soul may be edified in this place.“ The old man replied, “If he is not edified by my silence, there is no hope that he will be edified by my words.“
Humanness had to prevail, as one of my favourite stories teaches: once, some serious and concerned senior monks came to Abba Poemen and asked, “When we see the brothers dozing in the church, must we rouse them, so that they can be attentive?“ He softly answered, “For my part, when I see a brother dozing, I put his head on my knees and let him rest.“
Self-harm causing most youth deaths
Sushmi Dey
|
New Delhi
|
Also Top Reason For Disability In Them: Study
Self-harm is the top reason for adolescent or youth deaths in India causing close to 60,000 deaths annually in the age group of 15-24 years, a latest global study shows. It is also the biggest reason for disability among youths.Self-harm includes suicide, attempted suicide or any form of self-inflicted wounds.Self-harm is followed by road injuries leading to over 37,000 mortality in the same age group during 2013.
The findings are part of new research conducted by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) based on 2013 data. The study will be published in the upco ming issue of the international medical journal Lancet.The data shows self-harm has increased rapidly over the last two decades, indicating a rise in stress, mental disorders and changing lifestyle and behavioural patterns. In 1990, self-harm caused a total of 37,630 deaths among youngsters between 15-24 years age.
Data from 2013 shows self harm has replaced tuberculosis as the leading cause for adolescent deaths. In 1990, a total of 52,038 youngsters between 15-24 years of age died due to tuberculosis, of this 18,221were in the age group of 15-19 years and rest were aged between 20-24 years.
“We are certainly not doing enough, for the death toll in youth has been rising for the past decade, even while many other countries like China and Sri Lanka have been able to achieve just the opposite. As an immediate priority, the government must launch a national programme, with the active participa tion of youth, to address these leading causes of death and illness,“ says Vikram Patel, professor for mental health in Centre for Global Mental Health at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
A comparative analysis shows deaths due to self-harm are relatively less in other developing countries like China and Brazil. In China, 11,074 deaths were caused due to selfharm among adolescents (1524 years) during 2013, whereas Brazil reported only 2,697 deaths in the same period and among the same age group.
However, researchers maintain mental health disorders and road injuries are the two main contributors to health loss worldwide for both sexes.The findings of the IHME study shows self harm, road accidents and violence were the leading causes of deaths for 15-24 year olds worldwide in 2013. In India, apart from self-harm and road accidents, diseases like tuberculosis, intestinal infections, heart disorders, and lower respiratory infections are also found contributing significantly to adolescent deaths.
Researchers say evidence shows behaviours that start in adolescence can determine health and well being for a lifetime. “Adolescents today also face new challenges, including rising levels of obesity and mental health disorders, high unemployment, and the risk of radicalisation,“ the report said. Seeking more investments in adolescent health and well being, the study pointed out adolescents aged 1024 years represent over a quarter of the world's population, 89% of whom live in developing countries.
The findings are part of new research conducted by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) based on 2013 data. The study will be published in the upco ming issue of the international medical journal Lancet.The data shows self-harm has increased rapidly over the last two decades, indicating a rise in stress, mental disorders and changing lifestyle and behavioural patterns. In 1990, self-harm caused a total of 37,630 deaths among youngsters between 15-24 years age.
Data from 2013 shows self harm has replaced tuberculosis as the leading cause for adolescent deaths. In 1990, a total of 52,038 youngsters between 15-24 years of age died due to tuberculosis, of this 18,221were in the age group of 15-19 years and rest were aged between 20-24 years.
“We are certainly not doing enough, for the death toll in youth has been rising for the past decade, even while many other countries like China and Sri Lanka have been able to achieve just the opposite. As an immediate priority, the government must launch a national programme, with the active participa tion of youth, to address these leading causes of death and illness,“ says Vikram Patel, professor for mental health in Centre for Global Mental Health at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
A comparative analysis shows deaths due to self-harm are relatively less in other developing countries like China and Brazil. In China, 11,074 deaths were caused due to selfharm among adolescents (1524 years) during 2013, whereas Brazil reported only 2,697 deaths in the same period and among the same age group.
However, researchers maintain mental health disorders and road injuries are the two main contributors to health loss worldwide for both sexes.The findings of the IHME study shows self harm, road accidents and violence were the leading causes of deaths for 15-24 year olds worldwide in 2013. In India, apart from self-harm and road accidents, diseases like tuberculosis, intestinal infections, heart disorders, and lower respiratory infections are also found contributing significantly to adolescent deaths.
Researchers say evidence shows behaviours that start in adolescence can determine health and well being for a lifetime. “Adolescents today also face new challenges, including rising levels of obesity and mental health disorders, high unemployment, and the risk of radicalisation,“ the report said. Seeking more investments in adolescent health and well being, the study pointed out adolescents aged 1024 years represent over a quarter of the world's population, 89% of whom live in developing countries.
Source: Times of India, 10-05-2016
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)