June, 18 2020, 12:00am EDT
IRC's David Miliband Responds to New Record Number of 79.5 Million Refugees and Displaced People Around the World
With the “Double emergency” of displacement and COVID-19, the IRC calls on governments to step up funding and diplomatic efforts.New IRC analysis shows that vulnerable people in countries hosting the highest refugee populations need an immediate cash boost of $760 million to prevent COVID hunger and economic crisis.
WASHINGTON
David Miliband, President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, said: "Today's record-setting figures arrive at a desperate time for refugees and displaced people around the world, who now face an unimaginable double emergency: conflict and displacement itself, alongside COVID-19 and the global economic crisis it has generated.
"Crisis-affected countries that host most of the world's displaced are combating COVID-19 with extremely limited resources - South Sudan has only four ventilators, more than half of Yemen's health facilities are no longer functioning, in Venezuela, 90% of hospitals lack essential medicine and supplies. Now these countries and the displaced families sheltering within them confront the social, economic and political havoc the pandemic is triggering.
"These two emergencies are powered by a clear failure of global leadership when it comes to strategic and immediate help for the world's most vulnerable amidst a global pandemic. These numbers should serve as a wake-up call to the international community on the human cost of war, and the social and economic implications exacerbated by COVID-19.
"The U.S. and other global leaders must first return to the core diplomatic business of negotiating ceasefires and humanitarian access to the conflict zones that are driving the displacement and misery in the first place. All leaders should heed the UN Secretary General's call and push for ceasefires in active conflicts as well as humanitarian exceptions for all restrictions related to COVID-19. Second, leaders must ramp up the funding for NGOs like the IRC that provide a lifeline amidst a pandemic and who are already on the ground in these contexts and can mobilize quickly. And third, leaders should mobilize their political and economic leverage to bring about sustainable political settlements and economic development that are at the root of today's shocking displacement numbers.
"New IRC analysis shows that vulnerable people in developing countries hosting the highest refugee populations need an immediate cash boost of $760 million over the next six months to prevent more households from going hungry as a result of the COVID-19-triggered recession. Not only are millions struggling to meet their basic needs, but the long-term negative economic consequences for families, just beginning to make progress, are exponential. Further, we will likely continue to see the number of displaced people grow as developing economies suffer devastating consequences of a global recession, and as government donors like the U.S. are too slow to get financial resources to the frontlines of the Coronavirus."
The International Rescue Committee responds to the world's worst humanitarian crises and helps people whose lives and livelihoods are shattered by conflict and disaster to survive, recover, and gain control of their future.
LATEST NEWS
3 Children, 3 Adults Killed in Shooting at Christian Elementary School in Nashville
The shooting took place less than a month after Republican Gov. Bill Lee signed legislation banning gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youths and public drag shows, both of which the GOP claimed were aimed at protecting children.
Mar 27, 2023
This is a developing story... Please check back for updates...
At least three children and three adults were killed Monday by a shooter at the Covenant School, a private Christian school in Nashville which serves students from preschool through sixth grade.
The suspect was "engaged by police" who arrived at the scene Monday morning, and was reported dead, according toThe Tennessean.
In a news briefing, the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department said the suspected shooter was female, and had not been identified as of early Monday afternoon. Spokesperson Don Aaron said she appeared to be in her teens and was armed with at least two assault rifles and a handgun.
Geoff Bennett of PBS Newshour reported the suspect entered the school through a side entrance.
Police responded to a call at 10:13 am regarding an "active shooter."
The Nashville Fire Department reported on Twitter that officials had set up a family reunification center at a nearby church at 2100 Woodmont Boulevard.
As Fox News covered the police department's press conference, a woman stepped up to a microphone on camera and asked the assembled news team, "Aren't you guys tired of being here and having to cover all of these mass shootings?"
"How is this still happening?" said the woman, who said she was from Highland Park, Illinois and survived the mass shooting there last summer. "How are our children still dying and why are we failing them?"
"As we wait for more details, our hearts are with the families and the community in Nashville," said March for Our Lives, the gun control advocacy group started in 2018 by survivors of the Parkland, Florida school shooting. "No child should go to school in fear of being shot. Adults are failing kids."
Shannon Watts, founder of gun control group Moms Demand Action, took aim at Republican lawmakers in the state including Rep. Andy Ogles, who posed with his family holding assault rifles in front of their Christmas tree last year. Ogles represents the district where the Covenant School is located.
Watts also condemned Republican Gov. Bill Lee, who said he was "praying for the school, congregation, and Nashville community."
Lee signed legislation in 2021 to allow most adults in Tennessee carry a handgun without a permit.
Earlier this month, Lee also made Tennessee the first U.S. state to criminalize public drag shows, on the same day that he signed legislation banning gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth. Both laws, Republicans said, were aimed at protecting children.
"Just a reminder that the people talking about library books, history classes, and drag queens don't really give a shit about the well-being of children in this country," said Robert Maguire, research director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
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Peace Advocates Say Putin Plan Reveals Dangers of 'Nuclear Deterrence'
"As long as countries continue their complicity in considering nuclear weapons as anything other than a global problem, this helps give Putin cover to get away with this kind of behavior," said one expert.
Mar 27, 2023
In addition to denouncing Russian President Vladimir Putin's plan to station so-called "tactical" nuclear weapons in Belarus, anti-war campaigners are calling into question the effectiveness of "nuclear deterrence" and reiterating their demands for global disarmament.
"As long as Putin has nuclear weapons, Europe cannot be safe," Daniel Högsta, acting executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), said Monday in a statement.
But "he has justified this dangerously escalating proposal to move nuclear weapons into Belarus by citing decades of NATO nuclear sharing," said Högsta. "As long as countries continue their complicity in considering nuclear weapons as anything other than a global problem, this helps give Putin cover to get away with this kind of behavior."
When announcing the Kremlin's plan on Saturday, Putin pointed to the United States' positioning of tactical nuclear weapons in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey.
"We're basically doing the same thing they've been doing for a decade," said Putin. "They have allies in certain countries and they train their carriers, they train their crews. We are going to do the same thing."
"We need to urgently stigmatize and delegitimize the use, threat to use, testing, stationing, and possession of nuclear weapons."
Russia "will not hand over" warheads to Belarus, Putin said. He explained that his country has already provided its ally with a nuclear-capable Iskander missile system and ensured that 10 Belarusian aircraft are equipped to use such weapons. According to Putin, Moscow intends to start training crews next week and aims to finish building a special storage facility for the arms by the beginning of July.
Putin's announcement came 13 months into Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Three days after Putin launched the military assault, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko amended the Belarus Constitution to remove its nuclear-free clause. In late 2021, Lukashenko had offered to host Russian nuclear weapons if NATO moved U.S. atomic bombs from Germany to Eastern Europe.
Moscow's deployment decision also came just days after the United Kingdom unveiled its plan to send armor-piercing tank rounds containing depleted uranium to Ukraine—a proposal that has elicited concerns about provoking a nuclear war as well as causing public health and environmental harms.
Putin said the U.K.'s announcement "probably served as a reason" why Lukashenko agreed to Russia's plan, which he argued won't violate the country's obligations under the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).
As Reutersexplains, the NPT "says that no nuclear power can transfer nuclear weapons or technology to a nonnuclear power, but it does allow for the weapons to be deployed outside its borders but under its control—as with U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe."
ICAN warned Monday that "the deployment of nuclear weapons in additional countries... complicates decision-making and increases the risk of miscalculation, miscommunication, and potentially catastrophic accidents."
Belarusian human rights activist and opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said Saturday that "Russia's deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus directly violates the Constitution of Belarus and grossly contradicts the will of the Belarusian people."
"This unacceptable development" makes "Belarus a potential target for preventive or retaliation strikes," she warned, imploring world leaders to demand that Russia "stop this threatening deployment and impose adequate and severe sanctions on the regimes of Lukashenko and Putin as outright threats to international peace and security."
According toAgence France-Presse, "Kyiv is seeking an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council over the move."
The U.S., for its part, "has reacted cautiously," Reutersreported Sunday. An unnamed senior Biden administration official told the news outlet that "we have not seen any reason to adjust our own strategic nuclear posture nor any indications Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon."
But a European Union official said Monday that the bloc would respond with fresh sanctions if Russia moves ahead with its plan, according toAnadolu Agency, Turkey's state-run news agency.
"That will be a further escalation and direct threat to European security," said Peter Stano, the European Commission's lead spokesperson on foreign affairs.
E.U. authorities "haven't seen any confirmation from the Belarusian side about this being on the agenda or happening anytime," Stano stressed. But if it happens, "there will be consequences."
The Kremlin, meanwhile, said Monday that Russia won't abandon its plan to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus because of mounting Western criticism.
In the words of Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, "Such a reaction of course cannot influence Russian plans."
For Beatrice Fihn, the former executive director of ICAN who led the organization when it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017, the entire episode underscores the dangerous incoherence of "nuclear deterrence" theory, which asserts that threatening to use atomic bombs dissuades governments from taking certain actions and thus helps avert nuclear war.
In a Twitter thread, Fihn argued that "the way nuclear deterrence has been talked about this past year has been so bizarre."
According to Fihn:
Most proponents of nuclear weapons have spent this past year arguing that we now shouldn't believe in nuclear deterrence. They say, "Don't believe Russia's threats, it doesn't deter us," but also, "Don't worry, Russia will definitely believe and be deterred by our nuclear threats."
This doesn't make any sense. And I genuinely would like to know from pro-nuclear weapons people in the U.S., U.K., France, and NATO, what could Putin do with his nuclear weapons that would deter you?
If your answer is "nothing" then you either admit nuclear deterrence doesn't work or you're basically saying nuclear deterrence only is credible when you do it but it's not when your enemies do it.
"We know Putin is a war criminal who has no problem killing civilians, so how can you be so sure he won't go ahead with this while at the same time [be] so sure that Putin... would be convinced that Biden would?" she asked.
"Nuclear weapons don't seem to deter any real war and conflict situations," said Fihn. "They only possibly deter hypothetical abstract scenarios in people's minds."
She continued:
None of this means that I'm saying Putin won't use nuclear weapons. There is a risk that Putin will use nuclear weapons in this war. We can debate how high it is, but everyone knows that this risk isn't zero and agrees that it has grown this last year.
But the decision to use nuclear weapons doesn't actually have much to do about believing or not believing in nuclear deterrence, it's just a decision by one man—and will be made based on whatever goes through his head at that point.
He makes the decision based on whatever he's thinking at that moment. Are you really that confident he will always think the right thing? That he'll always make the decision you think he should be making?
"We have to stop being so stupid by continuing to say nuclear deterrence works," Fihn added. "We need to urgently stigmatize and delegitimize the use, threat to use, testing, stationing, and possession of nuclear weapons."
For the first time since the Cold War, the global nuclear stockpile—90% of which is controlled by Moscow and Washington—is projected to grow in the coming years, and the risk of weapons capable of annihilating life on Earth being used is rising.
"We need to use all available methods and tools of the international community to pressure Russia on this," said Fihn. "And then we need to urgently work to eliminate nuclear weapons and remove this option from all counties. For Ukraine and also for every other country and person on this planet."
In October, U.S. President Joe Biden warned that the war in Ukraine had brought the world closer to "Armageddon" than at any point since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Just days later, however, his administration released a Nuclear Posture Review that nonproliferation campaigners said increases the likelihood of calamity, in part because it preserves the option of a nuclear first strike. The U.S. remains the only country to have used nuclear weapons in war, destroying the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs in August 1945.
"As we're hurtling straight towards climate disaster, where large parts of our Earth will become inhabitable, the incentives for some leaders to use nuclear threats to grab whatever land and resources they feel they need will only increase," Fihn argued. "Nuclear disarmament and stopping climate change are the two central fights for the fate of humanity. You need to get on the right side of these two issues if you want a chance for us all to survive."
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'The Inhumanity Defies Words': Italy Seizes Banksy-Funded Migrant Rescue Ship as Dozens Drown
"These deaths are not an accident nor a tragedy," said the ship's crew. "They are wanted."
Mar 27, 2023
Italian authorities on Sunday seized a migrant aid ship financed by renowned British street artist Banksy after the vessel allegedly violated a decree by Italy's far-right cabinet by refusing to head to port following a rescue operation.
Reutersreports the Italian coast guard instructed the MV Louise Michel—named after the French "grande dame of anarchy"—to dock at Trapani in Sicily after rescuing migrants in the Libyan search and rescue zone. Instead, the ship went to aid distressed migrants in Malta's search and rescue area. The 30-meter vessel, painted bright pink and white, ultimately docked in Lampedusa Saturday with 178 rescued migrants aboard.
Louise Michel's Twitter account said Monday that the ship's crew "received official notification that the ship is detained for 20 days due to violation of the new Italian decree law" and that "we will take all necessary steps to fight this detention."
Last month, Italy's parliament codified a December 2022 decree by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her neo-fascist Brothers of Italy cabinet requiring ships to proceed immediately to an assigned port after a rescue instead of providing aid to other distressed vessels, as is commonly done. Critics say humanitarian vessels are being assigned to distant ports in order to keep them from rescue zones for as long as possible.
Under the new law, migrants must also declare while aboard a rescue ship whether they wish to apply for asylum, and if so, in which European Union country. Captains of civilian vessels found in violation of the law face fines of up to €50,000 ($53,900) and confiscation and impoundment of their ships. Migrant rights advocates have slammed the new legislation as "a call to let people drown."
Following the drowning of more than 60 migrants whose boat broke apart just off the Calabrian coast last month, Meloni's cabinet approved another decree establishing a new crime—death resulting from people smuggling—punishable by up to 30 years in prison.
On Sunday, Tunisia's coast guard said it recovered the bodies of at least 29 migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa who were attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Italy when three boats capsized. There has been an increase in violence against Black people and spike in migrant departures from the North African nation since its president, Kais Saied, delivered an inflammatory speech earlier this month blasting what he called "hordes of illegal immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa" who bring "violence, crime, and unacceptable practices" to Tunisia and threaten its "Arab and Islamic" character.
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