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As Afghanistan fell to the Taliban last summer, ordinary Afghans were urged to fight for democracy. The then president Ashraf Ghani asked civilians to defend the countrys democratic fabric; of Afghan troops, President Biden shrugged, Theyve got to fight for themselves, fight for their nation. Days later, Ghani fled the country; weeks later, foreigners military personnel, diplomatic missions, international NGO staff also left, leaving Afghans to face an uncertain future of Taliban rule.

In contrast to Ghani, Ukraines President Volodymyr Zelensky has remained in Ukraine to resist Russias invasion. When offered evacuation, Zelensky reportedly responded, I need ammunition; not a ride. And ordinary citizens willingness to stay and fight, as Michael Walzer emphasises, reveals the extent of their loyalty to Ukraine.

The courage of civilians during occupation and war, from Afghanistan to Ukraine, is in equal parts humbling and inspiring. But the humanitarian disaster of these conflicts has forced many to flee, and it is important to recognise that this is not an act of abandonment. In fact, leaving their war-torn countries can allow refugees to continue resistance from afar. And provided they have secure status, rights and resources, refugees can engage in a politics from below that may help repair the democratic fabric of the countries they have left.

Albert Hirschman, who fought in the Spanish Civil War and helped Jewish refugees flee occupied France, famously identified exit, voice, and loyalty as the options for dissatisfied citizens: they could leave, stay and complain, or stay and accept their circumstances. Although these were initially theorised as mutually exclusive options, the relationship between leaving, protesting and acquiescing is far more complex.

This complex relationship is evident in the context of migration. Exit can reflect loyalty to a particular constitutional vision of society one that is under threat or one that is yet to be built. And exit is often essential for voice: for providing information, for criticising the regime back home, and for pursuing alternative political ideals.

Refugees are a critical source of information, especially when the use of social media and other forms of communication are restricted in the country they have left, as they have been under the Taliban, or when artillery fire makes communication from the front lines impossible, or when communications infrastructure has been targeted. Not only do refugees provide more recent news from the places they have left, but they can also connect media and advocacy organisations abroad with people who are still there. This is especially critical in places journalists have limited access to Afghanistan; Xinjiang, where the Chinese government persecutes Uyghurs and other minorities; and the conflict zone in Tigray province in Ethiopia.

Refugees also provide critical perspectives on the regime they have escaped. From the relative safety of exile, they can speak more openly, engage more critically, and sustain practices of criticism and complaint abroad that are suppressed back home. Exile can be a leveller, upending old hierarchies and ensuring that perspectives marginalised in their home country, say of women and other groups, are more easily expressed and better attended to.

Lastly, the greater openness of exile allows for organisation. Political opposition, such as the Afghan Womens Parliamentarians Network, currently based in Greece, can regroup to reflect on the path forward, and new alliances and associations can be built that devise alternative visions of political life . European and American allies have already discussed how to support a Ukrainian government-in-exile, which would be crucial to ensuring a legitimate voice for free Ukraine in the event that Vladimir Putin installs a puppet regime.

This is not to paint too rosy a picture of refugees political efforts; they do not always play these emancipatory roles. Refugees are often traumatised by the ordeals they have endured, or remain subject to threats in exile, and are unable or unwilling to engage with what is happening in the country they have fled. Since those who are able and willing to leave their countries are often living in different circumstances to those who choose, or are forced, to stay (who may lack, for example, the resources or networks that enable migration), politically engaged refugees may be driven by ideals that do not resonate with many in their homeland. And refugees may engage in the morally hazardous politics of long-distance nationalism where, for example, they help to sustain armed conflicts, through arms and diplomatic support, far away from the front lines.

As a result, refugees are easily dismissed as trouble-making armchair revolutionaries, and some countries have even tried to limit the political rights of refugees and asylum-seekers. This is a mistake. Refugees need more political autonomy, not less, and third parties host states, civil society and international NGOs should enable rather than inhibit the vital roles that refugees play in their home countries.

To begin with, refugees need rights and resources, including safe routes by which to claim these. Otherwise, they are unable to lead minimally decent lives: they are shunted to the margins of society, and risk being contained in detention facilities, camps or isolated asylum accommodation. They are unable to pursue an education, work, or family life much less to engage politically with their home countries. Perpetuating this limbo is an affront to the values of decency, dignity and the rule of law.

Second, third parties need to act in solidarity with refugees, attending to their perspectives on what is happening in their country, on what counts as assistance or a solution, and on how to bring these about. Needless to say, refugees will not agree among themselves on these vexed questions, but their often well-informed views are regularly ignored by powerful actors abroad and armed actors back home.

Specifically, acting in solidarity with refugees prevents host-state actors from treating them as pawns to further their own strategic interests. This includes the tendency to focus on the economic contributions that refugees make to their home countries: policymakers often treat refugees as resources that can be used to further a variety of economic and political goals, but this fails to recognise refugees as political agents who are entitled to a say in determining what those goals are and how they should be pursued.

It is worth noting that refugees also make political contributions to their adopted countries, which debates about the economic costs and benefits of hosting refugees largely ignore. For one, refugees can helpfully complicate the political discourse in their host countries. They may reveal the connection, past and present, between countries of origin and of exile, and the ways that the states now eschewing responsibility have contributed to the very crises forcing refugees to flee.

In doing so, refugees can reanimate anti-racism and anti-poverty movements in host societies, cultivating transnational solidarity with and among other marginalised citizens contending with the legacies of imperialism, racism and Islamophobia, and economic dispossession.

And finally, refugees can strengthen an incipient international ethos. Latin Americans fleeing authoritarian regimes in the middle of the 20th century played a central role in fostering the global human rights discourse that fundamentally re-oriented global politics and that continues to shape the world today.

Hannah Arendt once described refugees as the bearers of ill tidings, writing that it was not only their own misfortunes that the refugees carried with them from land to land but the great misfortune of the whole world. Arendts ill tidings were of the dangers of nationalism; today, refugees also bring news of rising authoritarianism, imperial misadventure, extreme poverty and climate disaster interrelated phenomena that no border will keep at bay and to which we are all, ultimately, vulnerable.

European countries and their citizens are evidently more able to recognise that they share a common fate with some refugees than others. In response to Russias invasion of Ukraine, the EU has activated the Temporary Protection Directive for the first time; Ylva Johansson, the EUs Home Affairs Commissioner said, Millions more will flee and we must welcome them. This response is a marked departure from the EUs response to other refugees, and reveals, among other things, the capacity to respond to large refugee flows in a way that respects the dignity and agency of refugees. Refugee crises, it turns out, are in part created by the response of host societies.

The response to Ukrainian refugees seems to be driven by the sentiment that if Ukrainians can be refugees, then anyone can, and that what Ukrainians are fleeing is a threat to what those in liberal democracies hold dear. But this is true of most refugees. Afghan refugees, for example, are fleeing authoritarianism and the generalised violence that decades of war and foreign occupation bring, as well as drought and chronic food insecurity induced by climate change and exacerbated by punitive sanctions.

Ultimately, refugees from Afghanistan, Ukraine and other conflicts are not mere messengers bringing advance warning of the crises they have barely escaped; they can also inspire new ways of thinking about communities, belonging and borders, and can be architects of political repair and reconstitution back home and abroad.

Ashwini Vasanthakumar is Queens National Scholar in Legal and Political Philosophy and Associate Professor of Law at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario. She is the author of The Ethics of Exile (OUP).

This article is part of the Agora series, a collaboration between the New Statesman and Aaron James Wendland. Wendland is Vision Fellow in Public Philosophy at Kings College, London and a Senior Research Fellow at Massey College, Toronto. He tweets @aj_wendland.

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How refugees strengthen democracy and solidarity - The New Statesman

The Ohio Redistricting Commission has until March 28 to submit a new map, making it unlikely that a May 3 primary will include state House and state Senate races.

TOLEDO, Ohio The Ohio Supreme Court has rejected proposed statehouse district maps for the third time. The states' Redistricting Commission has failed to present a constitutional map in the eyes of the court, months after the original deadline to do so.

"Courts have sent people to jail for less, on a daily basis, for contempt of court," Ohio Sen. Teresa Fedor, D-Toledo, said.

Fedor says the Republican-controlled commission keeps presenting gerrymandered maps in order to maintain their majority in the statehouse.

"It's hubris. They want to keep the status quo, supermajority and where politicians are ruling, not the people," Fedor said. "Democracy means people rule, not politicians."

And with Ohio's primary election currently scheduled for May 3, the delay in new maps could put that and future elections in jeopardy.

State rep. Paula Hicks-Hudson, D-Toledo, says the idea that the state would move forward without regarding what the court says is un-democratic.

"That one branch of government should ignore the other co-equal branch of government, that is absurd and it is un-American. It is a flagrant slap in the face of democracy," former Toledo mayor Hicks-Hudson said.

WTOL 11 also reached out to Republican state representatives. The majority did not respond to our request, however, Ohio state Rep. Derek Merrin (R-Monclova Township) did respond, saying his schedule did not give him time to do an interview.

The Ohio Supreme Court is ordering the commission to submit a new map to Secretary of State Frank LaRose by March 28.

In a memo to boards of elections, LaRose, a Republican, describes what he says are political motives for delaying the primary, including pending lawsuits.

LaRose has instructed county boards of elections to continue preparing for a May 3 primary, but without state legislative races included.

"Let there be no doubt, however, that we will continue to prepare for a May 3 primary election that includes statewide, congressional and local contests, unless directed to do otherwise by the Ohio General Assembly or a court order," LaRose writes.

MORE FROM WTOL 11:

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'A flagrant slap in the face of democracy': NW Ohio Democratic politicians react to another round of court-rejected maps - WTOL

Switzerlands president Ignazio Cassis said that Russias invasion in Ukraine is driven by devastating madness and Switzerland is prepared to pay the cost for protecting freedom and democracy.

Although Switzerland generally refrains from taking sides in most global disputes, they have decided to impose the same sanctions on Russia as the European Union. However, Cassis made it clear that Switzerlands neutrality was not at stake due to the decision and it was taken after proper deliberation.

However, he said that Switzerland could not simply stand by in the confrontation between democracy and barbarism and the country was prepared to take an economic hit as a result.

Also read |

On February 24, the face of the world changed, and not in a good way. We must valiantly and tirelessly defend freedom and democracy. This has a price. A price that Switzerland is ready to assume, he wrote in Le Temps newspaper. This war is driven by a devastating madness which shatters all the principles and values of our civilisation, he added.

Although there is no current impact on Switzerlands economy due to the sanctions, Cassis said that the conflict may cause harm to them in the long run and they need to be ready for the possibility.

There is no solution which, with a wave of a magic wand, would save Switzerland from the consequences resulting from the current situation, he said.

Also read |

Switzerland cannot tolerate this war without reacting,.

Russia has massively violated the prohibition of the use of force, a principle anchored in international law. By remaining inactive, Switzerland would have played the game of the aggressor.

Watch |

(With inputs from agencies)

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Switzerland ready to pay for defending democracy in Russia-Ukraine war, says PM - WION

Last fall, the United States was included for the first time on the annuallist of backsliding democraciespublished by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. Broadly defined as those exhibiting gradual but significant weakening of checks on government and civil liberties, backsliding democracies are measured by categories including representativegovernment, impartial administration, and participatory engagement. The European think tank reported that the United States shows significant lapses in effective legislative bodies and freedoms of expression and assembly.

Around the same time, a sweeping abortion ban went into effect in Texas and inquiries about its correlation to our backsliding democracy were raised. TheNew York Timeswas among several news organizations reporting that such a descent is precisely when curbs on womens rights tend to accelerate.

However, there has been notably little discourse about the converse of this proposition: that Americas longstanding and abysmal record on myriad gender equity markershas been the trueharbinger for our downgraded status. According to aUnited Nations report, the trajectory of de-democratization is rarely analyzed initially through the distinct lens of gender equity and there are insufficient efforts to systematically examine the current implications.

To be sure, the United States is in fact experiencing an increase in womens representation.Twenty-seven percentof members of Congress are now women, up50percentfrom a decade ago. On the Supreme Court, women will likely soon account for four out of nine justices, two of whom are women of color. Vice President Kamala Harris is the first woman (and person of color) to serve in the role. At thestate level, more than 30percent of elected executives are women, along with 31percent of legislators.

But these raw numbers alone are an insufficient measure. Womens leadership in the United States stilllagsrelative to much of the world. And the figures are a far cry from robust and meaningful representation, especially for women of color. Today there are zero Black women in the Senate, and a Black woman has never served as state governor.

The United States also performs pitifully on essential ingredients for womens participation in the body politic. For example, while maternal mortality has decreasedglobally dropping by43percentover the last three decades rates in the United States remain on the rise. We currentlyrank46th in the world. The crisis isparticularly acutefor Black women, who are three times more likely to die during pregnancy and childbirth in America than white women. Globally, paidmaternity leave averages 29weeks. We are one of only six countries, and the only wealthy nation, without any form of national paid leave.

Further, the United States is an outlier on constitutional equality, even as the Equal Rights Amendment now navigates final ratification after a century-long fight.Eighty-five percentof United Nations member states have explicit constitutional provisions that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex and/or gender. Of those with constitutions adopted since 2000, all do so; France is among those that have amended their older, established constitutions to acknowledge equality.

Across domestic agencies we have too few guardrails against abusive institutional practices and too many reports of barbaric treatment of women and girls, including of those who are incarcerated or detained by the government beingsterilizedwithout their consent, shackledduring childbirth, ordeniedmenstrual products.

And the list goes on. These are not merely the byproducts of a democracy on the decline. Rather they also drive a downward spiral and can inevitably lead to deeper inequality and wider gaps in participation, a truly vicious cycle.

As indicated above, Americas standing in the global reproductive landscape offers a real-time glimpse at what to expect from our backslide. For the past two decades, as much of the world has expanded access to abortion, the United States is one of three countries joined by Nicaragua and Poland actively rolling back rights.Though most Americans support legal abortion, weve now seen overtly unconstitutional laws glide through state legislatures and be met with staggering indifference by the courts. Later this spring, the Supreme Court willlikely uphold the 15-week ban in questioninDobbs vs. Jackson Womens Health Organization, thereby gutting the precedent ofRoe v. Wade. All of which has spurred even more extreme proposals like a billinMissourithat would allow citizens to sue anyone who attempts to help a person seek an abortion out of state.

As theTimesreporter above reflects: For all the complexities around the ebb and flow of abortion rights, a simple formula holds surprisingly widely. Majoritarianism and the rights of women, the only universal majority, are inextricably linked. Where one rises or falls, so does the other.

Except we cannot expect to measure the ebb and flow of a truly inclusive democracy withoutfirstlooking to gender equity. It is not a chicken and egg equation but rather where we must start and end the inquiry. Womens rights have been the canary in the coal mine all along.

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Women's Rights and Democracy Are Inextricably Linked - brennancenter.org

The 42nd Session of the Congress will take place from 22-24 March. A debate on the situation in Ukraine will take place on Tuesday afternoon, March 22nd. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been invited to address the Congress by video conference and the Congress will adopt an institutional declaration.

Also on the agenda are reports on the application of the European Charter of Local Self-Government in Germany, Luxembourg, Turkey and the United Kingdom. The competent ministers have been invited to participate in the debates: Juliane Seifert, Germany, Taina Bofferding, Luxembourg, Sleyman Soylu, Turkey, and Michael Gove, United Kingdom. Congress members will also consider reports on the observation of the latest local elections in Armenia and Georgia, and local and regional elections in Denmark, and Morocco. They will hold two debates: one on the use of deliberative methods in European municipalities and regions, in which the Mayor of the City of Mostar Mario Kordi will participate, and the other on the situation of independent candidates and opposition in local and regional elections.

Debates are also planned on the participation of children in the sustainable development of their cities, democratic pluralism in regional governance, regions and diaspora, rural youth and the role of local and regional authorities, as well as on "Fake news, threats and violence - pressures on mayors in the current crises in Europe". In addition, as at every session since the launch of the Congress' "Rejuvenating Politics" initiative in 2014, youth delegates will participate in the debates.

Among the invited personalities are also Mariastella Gelmini, Minister of Regional Affairs and Autonomy, on behalf of the Italian Chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers, Tiny Kox, President of the Parliamentary Assembly, Marija Pejinovi-Buri, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Roberto Gualtieri, Mayor of Rome, Italy, Apostolos Tzitzikostas, President of the European Committee of the Regions, Jean-Claude Marcourt, President of the Conference of European Regional Legislative Assemblies (CALRE) and President of the Walloon Parliament, Belgium, and Stefano Bonaccini, President of the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR)

Agenda and documents: 42nd Session webpage

Aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine | special page

Originally posted here:
Congress 42nd Session: situation in Ukraine; local democracy in Germany, Luxembourg, Turkey and the UK; fake news, threats and violence against mayors...