Uta’s Update, 17th September 2015

In October 2011 Peter and I had a look at Port Kembla Beach Swimming Pool. The beach is right next to the pool. It was a bit cool, however there was no wind. We had a great walk along the beach. There were hardly any people, even though the school vacation was still on. The pool cafe was open. We sat outside under the umbrella with some good fruit juice.

On the way home we stopped at a Lagoon Reserve and watched some pelicans. For lunch we had grilled fish with salad and chips as well as tea. Delicious meal in a hidden away cafe in a close by shopping centre. The shopping centre was full of people including lots of children. I wonder, why some of those people weren’t on the beach on a beautiful springday like this?

I must say, the Port Kembla pool water still seemed a bit cold. I prefer our solar heated pool in Dapto where the temperature is never less then 24 Degrees Celsius. Still, at the beach I went with my feet a little bit into the water. This was very enjoyable!

By the end of September 2011 we went up the escarpment along Macquarie Pass and then all the way to Bowral, a lovely township in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, Australia. There are some lovely gardens in Bowral, and most of the tulips there were still in full bloom. Peter took the chance to take lots of pictures on both our outings. We had a lovely time!

Uta’s September2015 Diary

Wednesday, 16th of September 2015

Today we had a look at the flowers in the Leighton Gardens of Moss Vale. We also had a nice visit with our friends in Bowral. Peter took all the pictures for I still have not replaced my lovely digital camera. I miss it so much! On the way home we stopped at the Robertson Pie Shop where we had pies for lunch which taste as good as ever. For afternoon coffee we took some fruit pies home that were filled with beautiful fresh cream. Very yummy indeed!

We were lucky to see some tulips at Moss Vale. We did not mind so much that we did not see the tulips in the Corbett Gardens of Bowral where an immense crowd had gathered for the opening of the tulip festival.

Ongoing War or Peace in Syria?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/15/west-ignored-russian-offer-in-2012-to-have-syrias-assad-step-aside

Syria
West ‘ignored Russian offer in 2012 to have Syria’s Assad step aside’
Exclusive: Senior negotiator describes rejection of alleged proposal – since which time tens of thousands have been killed and millions displaced

Julian Borger and Bastien Inzaurralde
Tuesday 15 September 2015 18.20 AEST Last modified on Tuesday 15 September 2015 23.09 AEST
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Russia proposed more than three years ago that Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, could step down as part of a peace deal, according to a senior negotiator involved in back-channel discussions at the time.

Former Finnish president and Nobel peace prize laureate Martti Ahtisaari said western powers failed to seize on the proposal. Since it was made, in 2012, tens of thousands of people have been killed and millions uprooted, causing the world’s gravest refugee crisis since the second world war.

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Martti Ahtisaari said the failure to consider the Russian offer had led to a ‘self-made disaster’. Photograph: Ermal Meta/AFP/Getty Images
Ahtisaari held talks with envoys from the five permanent members of the UN security council in February 2012. He said that during those discussions, the Russian ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, laid out a three-point plan, which included a proposal for Assad to cede power at some point after peace talks had started between the regime and the opposition.

But he said that the US, Britain and France were so convinced that the Syrian dictator was about to fall, they ignored the proposal.
Russia sends artillery and tanks to Syria as part of continued military buildup
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“It was an opportunity lost in 2012,” Ahtisaari said in an interview.

Officially, Russia has staunchly backed Assad through the four-and-half-year Syrian war, insisting that his removal cannot be part of any peace settlement. Assad has said that Russia will never abandon him. Moscow has recently begun sending troops, tanks and aircraft in an effort to stabilise the Assad regime and fight Islamic State extremists.

Ahtisaari won the Nobel prize in 2008 “for his efforts on several continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international conflicts”, including in Namibia, Aceh in Indonesia, Kosovo and Iraq.

On 22 February 2012 he was sent to meet the missions of the permanent five nations (the US, Russia, UK, France and China) at UN headquarters in New York by The Elders, a group of former world leaders advocating peace and human rights that has included Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, and former UN secretary general Kofi Annan.

Syrian president Bashar al-Assad
The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. Photograph: Syrian Arab News Agency/EPA
“The most intriguing was the meeting I had with Vitaly Churkin because I know this guy,” Ahtisaari recalled. “We don’t necessarily agree on many issues but we can talk candidly. I explained what I was doing there and he said: ‘Martti, sit down and I’ll tell you what we should do.’

“He said three things: One – we should not give arms to the opposition. Two – we should get a dialogue going between the opposition and Assad straight away. Three – we should find an elegant way for Assad to step aside.”
UN security council is failing Syria, Ban Ki-moon admits
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Churkin declined to comment on what he said had been a “private conversation” with Ahtisaari. The Finnish former president, however, was adamant about the nature of the discussion.

“There was no question because I went back and asked him a second time,” he said, noting that Churkin had just returned from a trip to Moscow and there seemed little doubt he was raising the proposal on behalf of the Kremlin.

Ahtisaari said he passed on the message to the American, British and French missions at the UN, but he said: “Nothing happened because I think all these, and many others, were convinced that Assad would be thrown out of office in a few weeks so there was no need to do anything.”

While Ahtisaari was still in New York, Kofi Annan was made joint special envoy on Syria for the UN and the Arab League. Ahtisaari said: “Kofi was forced to take up the assignment as special representative. I say forced because I don’t think he was terribly keen. He saw very quickly that no one was supporting anything.”

In June 2012, Annan chaired international talks in Geneva, which agreed a peace plan by which a transitional government would be formed by “mutual consent” of the regime and opposition. However, it soon fell apart over differences on whether Assad should step down. Annan resigned as envoy a little more than a month later, and Assad’s personal fate has been the principal stumbling block to all peace initiatives since then.
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Syria: the story of a revolution
Last week, Britain’s foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, suggested that as part of a peace deal, Assad could remain in office during a six-month “transitional period” but the suggestion was quickly rejected by Damascus.

Western diplomats at the UN refused to speak on the record about Ahtisaari’s claim, but pointed out that after a year of the Syrian conflict, Assad’s forces had already carried out multiple massacres, and the main opposition groups refused to accept any proposal that left him in power. A few days after Ahtisaari’s visit to New York, Hillary Clinton, then US secretary of state, branded the Syrian leader a war criminal.

Sir John Jenkins – a former director of the Middle East department of the UK’s Foreign Office who was preparing to take up the post of ambassador to Saudi Arabia in the first half of 2012 – said that in his experience, Russia resisted any attempt to put Assad’s fate on the negotiating table “and I never saw a reference to any possible flexing of this position”.

Jenkins, now executive director of the Middle East branch of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said in an email: “I think it is true that the general feeling was Assad wouldn’t be able to hold out. But I don’t see why that should have led to a decision to ignore an offer by the Russians to get him to go quickly, as long as that was a genuine offer.

“The weakest point is Ahtisaari’s claim that Churkin was speaking with Moscow’s authority. I think if he had told me what Churkin had said, I would have replied I wanted to hear it from [President Vladimir] Putin too before I could take it seriously. And even then I’d have wanted to be sure it wasn’t a Putin trick to draw us in to a process that ultimately preserved Assad’s state under a different leader but with the same outcome.”
Pushed back into the fire: the refugees who feel compelled to return to Syria
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A European diplomat based in the region in 2012 recalled: “At the time, the west was fixated on Assad leaving. As if that was the beginning and the end of the strategy and then all else would fall into place … Russia continuously maintained it wasn’t about Assad. But if our heart hung on it, they were willing to talk about Assad; mind: usually as part of an overall plan, process, at some point etc. Not here and now.”

However, the diplomat added: “I very much doubt the P3 [the US, UK and France] refused or dismissed any such strategy offer at the time. The questions were more to do with sequencing – the beginning or end of process – and with Russia’s ability to deliver – to get Assad to step down.”

At the time of Ahtisaari’s visit to New York, the death toll from the Syrian conflict was estimated to be about 7,500. The UN believes that toll passed 220,000 at the beginning of this year, and continues to climb. The chaos has led to the rise of Islamic State. Over 11 million Syrians have been forced out of their homes.

“We should have prevented this from happening because this is a self-made disaster, this flow of refugees to our countries in Europe,” Ahtisaari said. “I don’t see any other option but to take good care of these poor people … We are paying the bills we have caused ourselves.”

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A New Leadership Style

Malcolm Turnbull makes lunge for the prime ministership. Michelle Grattan writes in The Conversation how the day unfolded:

https://theconversation.com/malcolm-turnbull-makes-lunge-for-the-prime-ministership-how-the-day-unfolded-47482?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest+from+The+Conversation+for+September+15+2015+-+3394&utm_content=Latest+from+The+Conversation+for+September+15+2015+-+3394+CID_2f290e22e6ffe41ad2ae92e0b4723e94&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=Malcolm%20Turnbull%20makes%20lunge%20for%20the%20prime%20ministership%20%20how%20the%20day%20unfolded

Here are a few quotes from yesterday, which sounded to me that Turnbull’s promised style of leadership would be an improvement to what we have been used to.

Turnbull said that Abbott “has not been capable of providing the economic leadership our nation needs. He has not been capable of providing the economic confidence business needs”.

In a swingeing attack on Abbott’s style, Turnbull said: “We need advocacy not slogans. We need to respect the intelligence of the Australian people.

“We also need a new style of leadership in the way we deal with others – whether it is our fellow members of parliament, whether it is the Australian people.

“We need to restore traditional cabinet government. There must be an end to policy on the run and captain’s calls.

“We need an open government that recognises that there is an enormous sum of wisdom within our colleagues in this building and, of course, further afield.”

Australia’s Refugee Intake

THIS IS A COPY OF AN ARTICLE IN THE CONVERSATION

I thought this article gives some very interesting information about Australia’s refugee intake, and that maybe some of my blogger friends would like to have a look at it.

Where does the magic number for Australia’s refugee intake come from?

September 11, 2015 2.30pm AEST

Australia will permanently resettle an additional 12,000 refugees fleeing the Syrian conflict. Reuters/Marko Djurica

Author

Sandy Gifford
Professor of Anthropology and Refugee Studies at Swinburne University of Technology

Disclosure statement

Sandy Gifford receives funding from the Australian Research Council supporting research projects on refugee settlement in Australia.

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Australia commendably agreed this week to take an additional 12,000 refugees affected by the Syrian conflict. This almost doubles the humanitarian intake, from 13,750 to 25,750.

Almost all the discussion about how many refugees Australia should or could take revolve around the figure of roughly 13,000. Why? How did this number come about? Why has it become the de facto starting point for debates about Australia’s response to refugees? And why the number 12,000 for the one-off intake of refugees displaced by the Syrian conflict?

Historical evolution

The answer to how the magic number 13,000 has come about is elusive. Although Australia has been settling refugees for more than 170 years, the current co-ordinated system of refugee resettlement came into being in 1981 with the establishment of the Special Humanitarian Program.

In the early 1980s the annual intake of refugees numbered about 20,000. Then, in 1984, the annual intake was 14,207. It has fluctuated between 11,000 and 14,000 ever since, with the exception of about 20,000 humanitarian visas being issued in 2012-13.

The details of what makes up these numbers is messy, being a combination of refugee and other humanitarian visas. But whatever the rationale was for setting yearly quotas around 13,000 back in the early 1980s, it has persisted for more than 30 years.

With the additional 12,000 places, Australia will now take close to 18,000 refugees. How will these refugees be selected for resettlement? Prime Minister Tony Abbott said that Australia will work with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to resettle 12,000 refugees who are in refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan. Priority will be given to women, children and families from persecuted minorities.

But the UNHCR has commented that this way of selecting UNHCR refugees is highly unusual.

The UNHCR’s role

Each year, the UNHCR sets an annual quota for submission places in its Refugee Resettlement Program. The UNHCR’s capacity to process resettlement applications largely determines actual submission places. It is estimated that, without additional resources, the UNHCR will be able to process only 53% of refugee applications in 2016. This is one reason it can fall short of its target.

Resettlement countries then set their quotas and this shapes the acceptance rates of UNHCR submissions. Finally, there are the actual resettlement departures. This happens after resettlement nations have completed all their requirements for processing those refugees they have agreed to resettle.

Sometimes this can take years. The upshot is that while resettlement under the UNHCR scheme is a critical part of the protection puzzle, it plays a very small part in finding durable solutions for refugees. Increasingly, alternative forms of admission – such as family reunification and labour mobility – are necessary to complement the traditional resettlement program.

So, in selecting refugees under this program, what is “usual” is a partnership process between member nations and the UNCHR. Member nations do not simply say what kinds of refugees they will or will not take, although they do set out their own priorities for filling their quotas within the submissions put up by the UNHCR.

Member nations do this in part through annual meetings held each year in June or July. These meetings, hosted by the UNHCR and held in Geneva, are known as the Tripartite Consultations on Resettlement. They have been held for the past 21 years. NGOs, the UNHCR and member resettlement nations come together and craft policy around resettlement. The meetings inform and are informed by a UNHCR report on projected global resettlement needs for the coming year.

The UNHCR projected resettlement needs for refugees in 2016 is 1,150,000 – an increase of 66% from the estimated needs for 2014. Much of this increase is attributed to the Syrian conflict. The 80,000 resettlement places made available by member nations in 2015-16 will fail to meet this need.

Of the 30 member resettlement nations, 28 have confirmed they will receive Syrian refugees. In the 2016 Global Resettlement Needs Report, many countries were specifically noted for their contributions to meeting this need. Some member nations – including Germany – were welcomed for introducing alternative forms of admission for Syrian refugees.

Australia was noted in the report as having had a negative impact on refugee resettlement. This is due to the change in government policy that removed the right to family reunion for those who arrived by boat.

Raising the number

While the traditional UNHCR refugee resettlement program is important, it is able to make only a small impact on the growing numbers of refugees in need of a permanent solution.

Resettlement needs have always been larger than resettlement submissions, which have always been larger than member nations’ acceptance rates. So, there is a persistent and large gap between resettlement needs and resettlement departures. This underlies the need for alternative forms of resettlement.

This leads back to Australia’s magic number of 13,000, which appears to act as the constraining average for debates on how many refugees Australia should and can resettle. But this number should be substantially higher than it currently is.

Australia claims it leads the world when it comes to refugee resettlement. Much of this claim is true – and this is why Australia should and can take more refugees. Australia’s first co-ordinated resettlement program – the Special Humanitarian Program – brought a significant growth in specialist refugee settlement services, including torture and trauma services.

These programs – the On Arrival Accommodation program, the Community Settlement Services Scheme, and, in 1997, the Integrated Humanitarian Settlement Strategy – built specific expertise in refugee settlement needs across the social services sector.

There is no sound reason why 13,000 should remain the benchmark number around which discussions of how many refugees Australia should take revolve. It is likely that these decisions are largely political.

And why the number 12,000 for the new intake of refugees from the Syrian conflict? It is larger than the 10,000 proposed by the Labor opposition and smaller than the 13,000 that has been the “norm” for the last 30 years. Let’s begin change by making 26,000 the new “black” and go up from there.

Wollongong, January 2013

In January 2013 I published these pictures about Wollongong. Peter had to go to the Hearing Clinic on that morning when we took the pictures. This morning I had another look at these pictures. The mall in Wollongong has undergone extensive renovations over the past couple of years or so. Next time we are in Wollongong I’ll try to photograph what the mall looks like now.

This is part of the Wollongong Mall in January 2013

RIMG0001 — This is the Hearing Clinic where Peter had to go to on that morning in January 2013.

This display in one of the windows caught my eye

RIMG0023 — We refreshed ourselves with coffee and some water.

It was already getting quite warm on that morning. The following Saturday I wrote to a blogger-friend in German:

“Wir hatten gestern 45 Grad! Aber jetzt sind es 20 Grad weniger. Ich habe gut ausschlafen können. Peter schläft zur Zeit noch. Er wird aber wohl auch bald aufwachen. Nachdem am Abend eine Abkühlung gekommen war, konnten wir früh zu Bett gehen.

Ich glaube bei uns in der Gegend hatten wir noch nie 45 Grad gehabt. Das muss eine Rekordhitze gewesen sein. Wir hoffen nun, dass es heute nicht wieder derartig heiss werden wird.

Wir wohnen ja nicht weit weg von Sydney. Gestern gegen 15 Uhr hatte Sydney 45.8 Grad. im Westen von Sydney waren kurz nach 14 Uhr 46.5 Grad!!!”

Hier is what this means in English: Where we live we had on that Friday 45 C. Saturday morning it was 20 C less, probably only about 25 C. We could sleep well after the huge heat during the day for by nighttime the temperature had already dropped quite a bit. I said it was probably the first time that the temperature in our area had gone up to 45 C (120 F!!). In Sydney the temperature around 3 pm on Friday was 45.8 C, in the Western Suburbs of Sydney it was 46.5 C soon after 2 pm!!!

” . . . . but what comes next?”

Australia sends its warplanes into Syria – but what comes next?

Denis Dragovic, University of Melbourne

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has announced an expansion into Syria of Australia’s military operations against Islamic State (IS), joining the US, Canada and several Arab nations. Long-term success will depend upon the government investing equally in regional diplomacy and reconstruction to secure any military gains.

Remarkably, the preceding public debate has largely been muted – with a few exceptions. These have included reports suggesting that Abbott had initiated the request from US President Barack Obama for Australia’s involvement and off-hand remarks by Vice-Admiral David Johnston, chief of joint operations, that acquiescing to the US request would add little value.

Former foreign minister Bob Carr came out in support of expanding operations into Syria for moral reasons.

The decision to expand operations is justified on operational grounds. To effectively carry out its ongoing mission in Iraq, a limited expansion of military operations into Syria was necessary. Such an expansion – a legal grey area – will allow Australian aircraft to pursue IS personnel fleeing across the border and to attack their command-and-control structures used for attacks in Iraq.

Making the announcement on Wednesday, Abbott emphasised that the aircraft would be targeting IS and not the Assad regime, “evil thought it is”. Airstrikes are expected to begin with the next week.

The widening of the area of operations will not increase Australia’s current troop deployment. This is made up of 400 personnel supporting aerial missions over Iraq, 200 SAS soldiers training Iraqi counter-terrorism units and a further 300 soldiers training Iraqi forces at the Taji training base north of Baghdad.

Why now is the right time

While presented as a limited expansion driven by operational needs, the announcement is also a timely commitment with wider strategic consequences. The decision recognises a rapidly changing landscape.

In late August, Turkey began military operations against IS while continuing its rapproachment with Saudi Arabia. This coming together of two regional powerhouses, along with some European countries considering committing to the fight, makes Australia’s announcement part of a growing international consensus to act.

Additionally, Syrian-Kurdish military groups have had considerable success against IS in recent months. They have cleared key towns in northern Syria. This has left only a small area, between the Euphrates River and the town of Azaz, under IS control.

IS uses this last remaining area along the Turkish border to traffic oil and historical artefacts, resupply food and ammunition and welcome thousands of new foreign recruits.

Australia’s decision, while not committing to supporting a planned US and Turkish effort to expel IS from this northern border area, will add legitimacy to the international community’s collective action while applying military pressure to IS’s eastern operations.

What comes next?

In August 2013, Abbott cautioned against military action in Syria:

We should be very reluctant to get too involved in very difficult conflicts which we may not be readily able to influence for good.

Whether military intervention can now influence the Syrian and Iraqi civil wars for good depends upon there being an accompanying diplomatic strategy that seeks to find a durable long-term solution. Military power alone cannot address the political and ideological motivations driving IS’s successes.

The Syrian civil war is in its fifth year. More than 200,000 civilians have been killed. One-third of the country’s population – seven million people – are internally displaced. Another four million are refugees.

What was an ethnically diverse country pockmarked with different histories, cultures and languages is now uniformly divided. In the west, along the coast, are the Alawites, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s supporters. In the north are the Kurds. In the east are the Sunnis. Interspersed within these three are the minority Druze, Christians and Shia.

Nearly five years of war has effectively redrawn the borders, pushing people to move to what have become self-governed regions. As such, the international community should shift its efforts away from reviving a long-lost idea of a united Syria and instead push for peace by recognising the redrawn ethnic boundaries.

We can look to the experience of the multi-ethnic Bosnia and Herzegovina following its five-year war to see how a previously integrated and heterogeneous society became segregated through conflict, and yet managed to establish a tenuous but peaceful co-existence by establishing autonomous regions.

Similarly, we must learn from the current catastrophe in Libya and the post-invasion debacle of Iraq. In both circumstances, the international community ignored the need to commit resources after the war to sustain the peace – with devastating consequences.

For expanded military operations against IS to succeed, Australia must additionally commit non-military resources, diplomats, stabilisation and reconstruction specialists as well as financing. It must have a realistic view of the end goal and start planning to stabilise and rebuild any territory taken from IS.

Denis Dragovic, Honorary Fellow, University of Melbourne

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Europe’s Refugee Crisis

Only a global response can solve Europe’s refugee crisis
September 8, 2015 6.08am AEST
Author

Phil Orchard
Senior Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies and International Relations; Research Director at the Asia-Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect at The University of Queensland

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Phil Orchard receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
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A global approach would significantly increase the burden-sharing between the refugee-hosting countries near Syria and the rest of the developed world. Reuters/Stoyan Nenov
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The recent deaths of asylum seekers attempting to reach European shores have prompted ongoing calls for action. But, given the scale of the issue, only a comprehensive, global program can go some way to solving the crisis.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) notes that more than 366,000 refugees have arrived in Europe by sea so far in 2015. And 80% have come from the world’s top ten refugee-producing countries, including half from Syria.

This can be a deadly voyage. The International Organisation for Migration reports that at least 2373 migrants have already died trying to reach Europe this year.

This reflects the immensity of the crisis created by the Syrian conflict. More than 4 million refugees are now in the countries bordering Syria – Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan – while an estimated 7.6 million are internally displaced within Syria.

An individual country response?

Individual countries have begun to show leadership. This began with German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s commitment that Germany would begin processing all asylum seekers who applied on its territory. In so doing, she waived the European Union’s (EU) Dublin Regulation, which establishes that asylum seekers must lodge their claim in the first EU country they enter.

Merkel’s plan may lead to Germany taking up to 800,000 refugees this year. She laid out her country’s response in stark moral terms. She argued that:

Germany is a strong country, we will manage … If Europe fails on the question of refugees, then it won’t be the Europe we wished for.
The UK has reversed its previous position. Prime Minister David Cameron said:

We will do more in providing resettlement for thousands more Syrian refugees.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has announced that Australia will take a “significant” number of Syrian refugees beyond the 4500 that it has already pledged to accept.

However, the scale of the crisis means that no single country can deal with it alone. Germany’s plan would involve direct EU responsibility for registering and looking after newly arrived refugees in Greece and Italy, as well as creating a common policy on safe countries of origin.

The UNHCR has argued that Europe cannot respond to this crisis “with a piecemeal or incremental approach”. Instead, it has recommended a mass relocation program with 200,000 places, coupled with improved reception capacities – especially in Greece.

But neither Germany’s nor the UNHCR’s plan would deal with the main issue: refugees would still have to risk death crossing the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe to access these programs.

A regional response?

Others argue for a regional response. One suggestion is the creation of a safe zone, which would allow Syrians to remain within the country. Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has echoed this call.

Ethicist Peter Singer has argued that the affluent countries need to provide much more support to the countries supporting large numbers of refugees. Singer also said that sending asylum seekers to safe refugee camps supported by the developed world would eliminate people smuggling.

But these proposals reflect the flipside of the problem: that the world needs to respond to the refugees crossing the Mediterranean and also assist the countries harbouring the bulk of the 4 million Syrian refugees.

The UNHCR has announced that its budget this year will be 10% less than last year’s, while the World Food Programme (WFP) has had to cut the rations being provided to the refugees. The most vulnerable refugees in Lebanon will have only US$13 per month to spend on food, and the WFP may need to cut all assistance to refugees in Jordan.

The UNHCR’s budget for providing support for refugees is 10% lower than last year’s. Reuters/Osman Orsal
What’s really needed

What is needed, therefore, is a comprehensive, global program. This would include three elements:

increased humanitarian assistance to the countries around Syria

safe processing centres in Turkey and in either Libya or Tunisia to process asylum claims

a global resettlement scheme for refugees and provisions for safe returns for those denied claims.

With respect to humanitarian assistance, the UN Syria Regional Refugee Response Appeal is requesting US$4.5 billion to respond to the situation in Syria and neighbouring countries, but has received only 37% of that total.

This shortfall has been the case since the Syrian conflict began. Most yearly appeals have received only around 50% of the request funding. This has placed immense pressure on both the international aid agencies responding to the conflict and on the refugee host countries themselves.

A safe processing centre model would serve to deter refugees from crossing the Mediterranean and have the advantage of centrally co-ordinating the processing of individual refugee claims. This, in turn, could:

… enable a fairer distribution of responsibilities among states for providing protection and assistance to refugees.
The UNHCR has noted that such centres could be legal under international law if they clearly reflect the international legal standards – including the UN Refugee Convention and the principle of non-refoulement – and have formal authorisation from host nations. The UNHCR would be the obvious organisation to run the refugee determination process within these centres.

Critically, the centres would need to be safe and agreements would need to be made with the individual host countries. Turkey would likely support such an initiative. Given the current insecurity in Libya, however, a centre would either need international protection – such as peacekeepers – even with government consent, or alternatively could be established along the border in Tunisia.

But these centres would not work without a clear onward path for processed refugees. The EU is now discussing possible resettlement numbers. Other than the UNHCR’s proposed 200,000 figure, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has suggested that individual EU states resettle 120,000 asylum seekers who are currently in Hungary, Greece and Italy. Others have suggested higher figures.

A global commitment to take 400,000 refugees – 10% of the Syrian total – from these processing centres in not unreachable. The model here is the Comprehensive Plan of Action, negotiated in 1979 to respond to the Indochinese boat people. The plan included regional screening for refugees and, while not perfect, resulted in the resettlement of more than 500,000 refugees over six years.

A resettlement scheme could also be combined with a temporary admission process. The EU already has a temporary protection directive created after the war in Kosovo. That directive allows for refugees to be granted temporary protection in accordance with the Refugee Convention for a period of one year, which can be extended.

Given the nature of the Syrian war, a longer protection period would be warranted.

By combining these three approaches, individual countries would have the opportunity either to commit to refugee resettlement or to fund the centres’ humanitarian operation and costs – or both. Most importantly, these approaches would significantly increase the burden-sharing between the refugee-hosting countries near Syria and the rest of the developed world.

Refugees
Middle East
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What is the Fate of Europe?

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2015/08/07/us-is-destroying-europe.html

U.S. is Destroying Europe,
an article by Investigative historian Eric ZUESSE | 07.08.2015

This is what it says towards the end of this article: “By weakening European nations, and not only nations in the Middle East, Obama’s war against Russia is yet further establishing America to be “the last man standing,” at the end of the chaos and destruction that America causes.”

I do not copy the whole article, but here is a bit more about what the author reckons is the weakening of European nations:

” . . . Libya has become Europe’s big problem. Millions of Libyans are fleeing the chaos there. Some of them are fleeing across the Mediterranean and ending up in refugee camps in southern Italy; and some are escaping to elsewhere in Europe.

And Syria is now yet another nation that’s being destroyed in order to conquer Russia. Even the reliably propagandistic New York Times is acknowledging, in its ‘news’ reporting, that, “both the Turks and the Syrian insurgents see defeating President Bashar al-Assad of Syria as their first priority.” So: U.S. bombers will be enforcing a no-fly-zone over parts of Syria in order to bring down Russia’s ally Bashar al-Assad and replace his secular government by an Islamic government — and the ‘anti-ISIS’ thing is just for show; it’s PR, propaganda. The public cares far more about defeating ISIS than about defeating Russia; but that’s not the way America’s aristocracy views things. Their objective is extending America’s empire — extending their own empire.

Similarly, Obama overthrew the neutralist government of Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine in February 2014, but that was under the fake cover of ‘democracy’ demonstrations, instead of under the fake cover of ‘opposing Islamic terrorism’ or whatever other phrases that the U.S. Government uses to fool suckers about America’s installation of, and support to, a rabidly anti-Russia, racist-fascist, or nazi, government next door to Russia, in Ukraine. Just as Libya had been at peace before the U.S. invaded and destroyed it, and just as Syria had been at peace before the U.S and Turkey invaded and destroyed it, Ukraine too was at peace before the U.S. perpetrated its coup there and installed nazis and an ethnic cleansing campaign there, and destroyed Ukraine too.

Like with Libya before the overthrow of Gaddafi there, or Syria before the current effort to overthrow Assad there, or the more recent successful overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych, it’s all aimed to defeat Russia.

The fact that all of Europe is sharing in the devastation that Obama and other American conservatives — imperialists, even — impose, is of little if any concern to the powers-that-be in Washington DC, but, if it matters at all to them, then perhaps it’s another appealing aspect of this broader operation: By weakening European nations, and not only nations in the Middle East, Obama’s war against Russia is yet further establishing America to be “the last man standing,” at the end of the chaos and destruction that America causes.

Consequently, for example, in terms of U.S. international strategy, the fact that the economic sanctions against Russia are enormously harming the economies of European nations is good, not bad.

There are two ways to win, at any game: One is by improving one’s own performance. The other is by weakening the performances by all of one’s competitors. The United States is now relying almost entirely upon the latter type of strategy.”

A Candle in the Window

https://tonari.wordpress.com/2015/09/05/eine-kerze-gegen-rassismus/

Frau Tonari reminds that all over the world a candle may be placed in the window. The candle symbolizes that you are against racism and against hate of foreigners.

It seems to me, the lighting of a candle may contribute to uniting people in peace and friendship. What a peaceful world it would be if nobody would get attacked any more!