refugees

A national program officer working on polio eradication in Pakistan examines a child accompanied by his father. While polio remains endemic in only three countries, Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan, a new “weakened” virus, derived from oral vaccines, can be transmitted inadvertently. CREATIVE COMMONS 
Recent research reports published by The Lancet could make a lot of people rethink the assumption that once a disease has been declared eradicated, that’s it. Done.

Where precisely, is Jordan now? Is it with the West, or with the Arab world? How independent is it, really, and what future lies ahead?

The sprawling camps in Bangladesh housing one million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar are makeshift at best. Bamboo poles, for example, help stabilize flimsy plastic sheeting and tents vulnerable to the heavy rain and strong winds of the monsoon season underway. TRENTON FRANKLIN

On Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met with French President Emmanuel Macron in a meeting which occurred without media fanfare or notice. That meeting addressed the topics of Syria and Ukraine and came at the request of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

On 24 July 2018, a young woman single-handedly prevented the deportation of an Afghan asylum seeker out of Sweden by buying a ticket for his flight and refusing to sit down so that the airplane could take off. Her noble and courageous act brought tears to my eyes after the recent months’ terrible developments in the insane, obsessive, surreal European conflict over refugees and immigration.

The Helsinki Summit – or the Treason Summit, as some call it – of the 16th of July, has come and gone.  It left a smell of burning hot air behind.

Prof James Petras writes… “Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Colombia, Mexico witnessed the flight of millions of immigrants — all victims of US and EU wars. Washington and Brussels blamed the victims and accused the immigrants of illegality and criminal conduct . The West debates expulsion, arrest and jail instead of reparations for crimes against humanity and…

Displaced Rohingya women, 2017, in Bangladesh. The UN is struggling to help resolve the crisis of millions of Rohingya who escaped a pogrom in Myanmar but face enormous risks in returning home. TASNIM NEWS AGENCY
Among refugee advocates there  has been a growing concern that recent agreements among regional governments and the United Nations on a framework for mitigating the Rohingya crisis could prompt at least some of the million-plus people who have fled the deadly military pogrom in Myanmar to consider risking a return to try to rebuild their lives.

Polarisation within western societies on issues relating to migration and human rights has been intensifying over recent weeks and months. To many observers, it looks suspiciously as if an international order in place since the end of the second world war – one that emphasised universal rights as a way to prevent dehumanisation and conflict – is rapidly unravelling in Europe and the United States.

America’s corporations remain blithely unscathed by not only the refugees that are breaking up the EU, but also by the EU’s economic sanctions against Russia, Iran, and other allies of governments that the US regime is trying to overthrow in its constant invasions and coups.