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An Afghan girl pulls her baby sister along in a pram through the mud and snow. Saman is six and baby Darya is 10 months old. They and their family have been pushed back into Bosnia 11 times by the Croatian police, who stripped Darya bare to check if the parents had hidden mobile phones or money in her nappy.

They searched her as though she were an adult. I could not believe my eyes, says Daryas mother, Maryam, 40, limping through the mud and clinging to a stick.

The Guardian followed the journey of Darya and that of dozens of other migrant children who, every day, walk, or are carried on their parents backs through the snowy paths that cross the woods around Bosanska Bojna, the last Bosnian village before the Croatian border, in an attempt to reach an increasingly inhospitable central Europe. Few families are successful. Most of them are stopped by Croatian police, searched, allegedly often robbed and, sometimes violently, pushed back into Bosnia, where, for months, thousands of asylum seekers have been stranded in freezing temperatures, without running water or electricity.

In December, fire destroyed a migrant camp in Bosnia, making the situation worse.

Out of a total of about 8,000 migrants in Bosnia, about 2,000 people are basically left to fend for themselves in abandoned buildings, squats, makeshift settlements and in forests, Nicola Bay, the Danish Refugee Councils Bosnia director, says. These people include families, children and unaccompanied minors that have practically no shelter, no access to basic services and no access to proper healthcare.

According to the council, in 2020 more than 800 children were pushed back by the Croatian authorities, including many under the age of six. The number of families living on the border between Croatia and Bosnia has increased considerably in recent months, and thus the number of children.

Most of those in transit have come from Greece, where a new law approved by Athens last year has stymied the administrative procedures for the recognition of refugee status. Tired of waiting, just when they thought their odyssey had ended, it has pushed many to get back on the road and try to reach the heart of the European Union through the Balkans.

Its very difficult to have a complete overview on the motivations pushing people to leave Greece and move north to the Balkan road to reach other destinations in Europe, says Stephan Oberreit, head of mission at Mdecins Sans Frontires (MSF) in Greece, but its clear that increasing delays in the asylum processes and in family reunification claims, the appalling living conditions, and lack of protection and integration lead people to continue their perilous journeys until they find safety and dignity.

It is a strenuous journey, crossing mountains and snow-covered forests, with virtually no welcoming facilities for migrants. Many of the children of the migrant crisis living in abandoned or destroyed houses in Bosanska Bojna today were born along the route, like Darya, whose name means sea, and who was born in Lesbos before a blaze in September destroyed the Moria camp.

We were tired of waiting for the Greek authorities to consider our asylum application, says Hasan, 52, the father of Darya and her six siblings, who left Kunduz, in northern Afghanistan, a year and a half before. Hasan says that if there had been no war in his country, he would never have found himself in these forests, watching Croatian policemen search Daryas nappy the searching of babies being a common practice, according to the watchdog organisation Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN).

Although, in most cases, women and children are not directly subjected to physical violence by the Croatian authorities, they are still subjected to what can be described as psychological violence, abuse and humiliation, a field coordinator for BVMN, says. Women and young girls have reported being searched everywhere by male Croatian police officers. Moreover, there are incidents in which the police have searched childrens clothes or babies nappies, thinking their parents have hidden phones or money.

On 16 October 2019, two Palestinian and Syrian families were stopped near the village of Glina, Croatia, and forced to undress. The children were also searched and the babies diapers had to be removed. They were naked, in the forest, in the middle of the night, one told BVMN. In October, BVMN reported the case of an Afghan mother who described feeling uncomfortable when the male officers touched her body to look for phones and money, and then when an officer stuck his hand into the nappy of her 11-month-old baby boy.

We also have had a significant number of cases of women, some of them underage girls, being forced to strip by the Croatian police, Bay says. Their father is asked to cover them with a blanket. When you listen to their testimonies, they say, Im covering my teenage daughter with a blanket, but theres obviously one part of the blanket where you can see through, because you cant pull it all the way around and theres a policeman standing right there.

Numerous women say they were beaten in front of their children, who were also pushed around.

During the last pushback, my four-year-old son, Milad, asked the police for water, Maryam tells the Guardian. But the Croatians denied him, took him by the shoulder and pushed him away. I tried to react and explain to them that they couldnt do it. Then they kicked me on the back and I rolled to the ground. Today, we will try to cross the border again and inshallah, we hope to make it.

On the road that leads from the Bosanska Bojna valley to the Croatian forest trails, other families leave their shelters and set off again with their entourage of children and strollers. Today, we go for game! yells a smiling six-year-old.

Although there is little fun, the game is what migrants call the crossing from Bosnia into Croatia so that their children see it as a sort of adventure, with the aim of not being caught by the men in black uniforms who hide in the woods. The goal is to reach an elusive place called France, Italy or the UK. In the frost and the mountains, they are encouraged by their parents to play, chasing each other and climbing trees.

But in the late evening, when the children return to their wet and crumbling shelters in Bosanska Bojna, after being pushed back once again by Croatian police, it is easy to see that they did not have fun.

Families including children, the elderly, women and young men who experience this brutality will carry the psychological trauma with them for years, says Maham Hashmi, an MSF humanitarian officer. They will always have in mind that Europe brutalised them instead of protecting them and their right to seek asylum.

The most common mental health issues that we observe among children on the move are related to symptoms of anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress as a result of the violence they have witnessed and that can potentially leave long-term consequences on their mental health, says Tatiana Olivero, a coordinator in Bosnia and Herzegovina for Mdecins du Monde (Doctors of the World). These children have been through highly stressful experiences, such as war and persecution in their country of origin, and have witnessed violence during their path towards Europe, including the abusive treatments imposed on their parents during multiple pushbacks. Some are losing hope for the future and see their childhood denied.

Zohra, 33, a Kabul lawyer and mother of four, says her children are struggling: When we get our things ready for the crossing, my children dont want to go. They cry because they are afraid of being pushed back, or being kicked, like last time.

In 2016, a bomb attack during Ramadan killed her seven-year-old son. His twin, Nourin, now 11, was paralysed on one side of her body. Last November alone in Kabul, a series of bomb attacks launched by insurgents left at least 88 people dead and more than 193 injured. But many European countries continue to repatriate asylum seekers to Afghanistan.

During the lastest attempt at crossing, captured on Guardian cameras, Nourin and her siblings remained hidden for almost an hour in a dried-out ditch at the side of a trail, as two Croatian policemen guarded the area from a hill less than 200 metres away. Zohra and her husband, Ibrahim, later decided this was too much of a risk and not a good time to move on. They will try again tomorrow. During their five-month stay in Bosnia, they have been pushed back 37 times, despite informing the border authorities of their request for asylum.

The pushback record in Bosanska Bojna is held by Fariba Azizi and his three children who, at around 7pm on 22 January returned from the Bosanska Bojna woods after their 54th pushback. When they got back, they found their shelter reduced to rubble: Bosnian special forces that week burned all the informal migrant camps in Bosanska Bojna. According to charities, citizens in the area had protested over the presence of migrants in those places. But mostly the inhabitants of the villages around Bosanska Bojna offer food, blankets and clothing to the migrants. Memories of the war are still fresh in many Bosnians minds. They know all too well what it means to be forced out of their homes.

Of at least eight families the Guardian followed over five days last week, only two managed to cross the border into Croatia. On 28 January, Daryas family informed the Guardian they had made it to Zagreb. It is an important step, but not the last. There are many cases of migrants who reach Croatia and are sent back to Bosnia by the authorities there. The same happens in Slovenia and Italy, where, last week, the court of Rome declared more than 700 pushbacks perpetrated by Italian police in Slovenia illegal.

Pushbacks are illegal, whether they are violent or not, it doesnt matter, says Bay. They fundamentally undermine the right to international protection. Croatian pushbacks are a consequence of EU policy aimed at transferring the responsibility for protecting people outside of the EU. It has become a situation in which member states regularly ignore, circumvent or directly violate EU law, and this has [become] a standard way of managing borders.

The perpetrators need to be held accountable. For member states that dont comply with these measures, there have to be real consequences. There have to be sanctions of some form. Up until now, for years, essentially, there has been impunity for violations of European [Union] laws.

The Croatian ministry of the interior told the Guardian said they will thoroughly investigate the incidents, including alleged violence against children. However, a spokesperson said in order to achieve their goal, migrants are willing to use all means necessary, including bringing their own lives and the lives of their family into danger, knowing that if they find themselves in such a dangerous situation that the Croatian police will save their lives. Likewise, if the Croatian police prevents them in their attempt of illegal entry, they are ready to falsely accuse the same Croatian police of violence and obstruction of access to the system of international protection.

We would like to point out that the Croatian police are authorised to check persons and their luggage in order to find items which may be used to escape, attack or inflict self-harm. This is a legal power, which police officers regularly exercise during their work in order to protect themselves and to establish general security, they added.

In the email, the minister announced that a group of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) intended to visit Croatia to observe the Croatian polices anti-immigration practices.

The delegation of Italian MEPs, belonging to the parliamentary group of Socialists and Democrats (S&D), arrived in Zagabria last Saturday. They decided to visit the Bosnian border area that same day to witness migrants as they make their way into Europe. But their plans were immediately thwarted as Croatian police chased and stopped them just as they reached the check-point at the Bosnian border, sparking a row in Italy.

This is a grave act, without precedent, the MEPs told the guards as the Italian newspaper Avvenire filmed the exchange. Whats beyond that border? What do you want to hide from us?.

Bosanska Bojna, with hundreds of children stranded in the snow, lies just on the other side.

Some names have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.

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Police searched my baby's nappy': migrant families on the perilous Balkan route - The Guardian

During the springtime lockdowns in Europe, a poem-turned-video you clap for me now, went viral. Its message was to protect the migrants in the EU, who work to keep home-office populations safe, but who often face discrimination and stigmatization.

Between 13% and a third of essential workers are migrants.

Many are left behind in terms of access to unemployment benefits and spiral into hunger, poverty, isolation, and illness. Out of 250,000 undocumented migrants in Switzerland, 90,000 have not accessed healthcare during the pandemic, for fear of being detected, denounced and deported.

Migrants are at a triple loss by the pandemicnot only are their jobs more precarious, their journeys more perilous, but they also face twice the risk of contracting the virus than non-migrant populations.

At the peak of the refugee crisis in 2015/16, some EU Member States raised the resettlement conflict to the UN in the hopes that sharing responsibility for large population movements would be resolved more evenly at the global level. This led to the formation of the Global Compact for Migration (GCM). The GCM figures as the first UN-led global instrument entirely devoted to international migration, which, even if not legally binding, restates the existing international legal obligations on migration and provides a benchmark of where the protection of migrants human rights currently stands at.

The UN Agenda 2030, is a non-binding UN instrument, adopted in 2015, which commits states to achieving 17 Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Though the Agenda does not have a particular focus on migration, it does address issues that are vital to migrant rights such inequality, labor and education, calling for well-managed migration policies that facilitate orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility. Other goals include eradicating poverty and hunger, achieving gender equality as well as health, and well being.

In 2020, COVID-19 was a big test for these UN initiatives. But have they proven useful in the response to the global pandemic especially in protecting migrants?

Surprisingly little can be found in the GCMs 23 objectives about mitigating the effects of a public health emergency, including COVID-19 on migrants. Data about how COVID-19 affects the migration lifecycle is still scant. The GCMs objectives are still far from being achieved, especially when it comes to access to basic services, empowering migrants or eliminating discrimination. In its current form, the GCM is more set to strengthen the global governance of migration under the auspices of the International Organisation for Migration rather than allow a deviation from it.

States like Italy, Portugal and Spain, have been experimenting with regularising undocumented migrant populations during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there is no international framework to monitor and review these one-off programs.

They remain subject to potential arbitrariness, fraud by employers or selectiveness.

For instance, in Italy protection only included undocumented migrants who work in the frontlines, leaving out those working in construction or logistics. More global oversight can help avoid such arbitrary or short sighted decisions and to make sure the rights of migrants are protected and health prevention during the pandemic is insured.

In addition to Italy, Portugal also regularised the status of undocumented migrants who were carrying out frontline functions, including harvesting, healthcare and domestic work. Likewise, Spain considers normalising its roughly 430,000 undocumented migrants. It is no coincidence that the pandemic prompted the city councils of Geneva and Zurich to finally implement a city card for the undocumented, allowing them to seek emergency health care and allowing their children to access schools.

Clearly, to regularise status, means improving access of migrants to health, education, food, and shelter. Yet, the EU return directive only justifies case-by-case authorisations of stay for compassionate, humanitarian or other reasons.

Continued here:
COVID-19 was a big test for UN migration initiatives. Did they succeed? - Open Democracy

Keely Jordan, Todd P. Lewis & Bayard Roberts

Abstract

Background

There is a growing concern that the quality of health systems in humanitarian crises and the care they provide has received little attention. To help better understand current practice and research on health system quality, this paper aimed to examine the evidence on the quality of health systems in humanitarian settings.

Methods

This systematic review was based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) protocol. The context of interest was populations affected by humanitarian crisis in low- and middle- income countries (LMICs). We included studies where the intervention of interest, health services for populations affected by crisis, was provided by the formal health system. Our outcome of interest was the quality of the health system. We included primary research studies, from a combination of information sources, published in English between January 2000 and January 2019 using quantitative and qualitative methods. We used the High Quality Health Systems Framework to analyze the included studies by quality domain and sub-domain.

Results

We identified 2285 articles through our search, of which 163 were eligible for full-text review, and 55 articles were eligible for inclusion in our systematic review. Poor diagnosis, inadequate patient referrals, and inappropriate treatment of illness were commonly cited barriers to quality care. There was a strong focus placed on the foundations of a health system with emphasis on the workforce and tools, but a limited focus on the health impacts of health systems. The review also suggests some barriers to high quality health systems that are specific to humanitarian settings such as language barriers for refugees in their host country, discontinued care for migrant populations with chronic conditions, and fears around provider safety.

Conclusion

The review highlights a large gap in the measurement of quality both at the point of care and at the health system level. There is a need for further work particularly on health system measurement strategies, accountability mechanisms, and patient-centered approaches in humanitarian settings.

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Quality in crisis: a systematic review of the quality of health systems in humanitarian settings - World - ReliefWeb

Ministers swell with pride as they speak of profound ties of history and friendship, while polling shows that a substantial majority of Britons are in favour and newspaper headlines are overwhelmingly positive.

Immigration has always been a contentious issue in Britain. So why, as the UK opens a path to citizenship for millions of Hong Kong residents, is it different this time?

Hong Kong Chinese are seen as a model minority, successors to the status of Ugandan Asians: a thrifty, entrepreneurial and family-oriented community who will skimp to send their children to private schools and boost Britains economic fortunes, while quietly demonstrating that other ethnic minorities could be equally successful if they worked a little harder.

Journalists have been briefed that Priti Patel, daughter of Ugandan Asians, sees this as personal, and a headline in the Times made the link explicit: Hong Kong crisis: Ugandan Asians offer golden example.

Britain is doing the right thing. But the good migrant narrative coalescing around the Hong Kong Chinese is risky for them as well as for other British people of colour.

The impulses behind this narrative combine the imperial nostalgia that helped power Brexit, an importing of US conservative politics, and a racialised caricature of why the Asian tiger economies Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have been so successful.

First, the imperial element. Hong Kongs achievement is seen as an extension of empire, based on the attractions of the English language and rule of law. As the Adam Smith Institute fellow Sam Bowman put it: under British rule, it enjoyed property rights and the rule of law, which made it a magnet for Chinese refugees fleeing the communist regime.

There is a grain of truth in this account, though it ignores the crucial geographic and economic facts that underpin Hong Kongs position today. The territory is the conduit between global capital and Chinas largely closed financial system. This role will continue to fuel Hong Kongs economy even if many of its people leave for Britain, and it is not a business they can export with them.

Both Hong Kong and Singapore adapted elements of their colonial heritage and made them work for their economic benefit. Both places have also deployed colonial laws to repress their people. Last September, the Hong Kong democracy activist Tam Tak-chi, a former radio presenter known as Fast Beat, was charged under a sedition law, the Crimes Ordinance, brought in by the British to curb dissent. If were going to remember imperial history, lets do so in full.

Second, being generous to Hongkongers neatly complements the Conservative partys new obsession, a hawkish attitude to China. The China Research Group, launched last year by a group of Conservative MPs, makes valid criticisms of Chinas human rights abuses and Beijings cavalier attitude to international law. But the launch of this group is also a signal of a pricklier and more combative turn in British conservative attitudes to Beijing, echoing the hostility to China in US Republican circles.

Third, there is a simplified version of the tigers story that emphasises the natural abilities of hardworking people allied to Confucian culture. This is a modern-day version of old-fashioned stereotypes about colonial races.

In 1915, an Australian management consultant who had just toured factories in an Asian country fretted about the quality of its workforce. The workers, he concluded, were a very satisfied easy-going race who reckon time is no object. The country in question was Japan, and the story, told in Ha Joon Changs Bad Samaritans, is a reminder of the fluidity of the cultural narratives we use to explain the world.

The success of places like Hong Kong and Singapore has to do with effective governance and astute economic policy decisions, such as containerising their ports earlier than competitor nations and focusing on export-oriented industrialisation. Harnessing the talent and efforts of their labour force is a part of this story. But this, too, is a consequence of policy rather than innate genius. An exceptional education is part of the answer here: Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea all rank among the highest-performing school systems in the world, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Hongkongers will reshape our societies in ways that we cant predict. Postwar Commonwealth migration, including the arrival of Ugandan Asians, helped bring about a reckoning with race relations that sought to tackle Britains deep-seated racism. More recently, eastern European migration was exploited to drum up anti-EU sentiment.

One of my closest friends is the son of migrants from Hong Kong and Singapore. His Hong Kong Chinese mother fulfilled one part of the immigrant dream by working as a nurse to put her son through the best (private) education she could afford. She was baffled, to put it mildly, when my friend pursued an erratic career as a film-maker and visual artist rather than choose a more secure and lucrative profession.

The point of this anecdote is that people are people, with all of the complex desires and varied talents that this implies. It is risky to assume that an infusion of Hong Kong migration will give Britain an entrepreneurial rocket boost. Worse, a handful of cherrypicked success stories could easily become a stick to beat others with.

Hongkongers seeking a new life in Britain are not economic assets. The reason to welcome them is, simply, because it is just. And their freedom should include the freedom to be a slacker.

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Britain should welcome Hongkongers, but not the 'good migrant' narrative - The Guardian

Politics, and media coverage of politics, is powered by conflict and spectacle. But social scientist Andrew Markus wants to focus on something quieter: the resilience and optimism of Australians during a crisis; a country under duress that chose not to fracture.

Markus is principal researcher on the Scanlon Foundations annual Social Cohesion report a project that has mapped a migrant nation since 2007. The report published on Thursday is a snapshot of a country managing a once-in-a-century crisis.

The research (sample size 3,090 respondents) is normally conducted in July. Given Australia was at that time about to tip into a second wave of coronavirus infections in Victoria, and had slipped into the first recession for 30 years, the Monash University emeritus professor was puzzled when many of the snapshots of community sentiment were positive.

That seemed counterintuitive.

To be certain of the findings, a second survey of 2,793 respondents was conducted in November. In November, we again got very positive data, he says. By positive data, this is what Markus means. Stepping through his findings, a supermajority was on board with Scott Morrisons response to the crisis, and the level of trust in government in Australia hit the highest point in the history of the survey.

People had confidence in the public health response. More than 90% of respondents in the five mainland states said lockdowns to suppress transmission were definitely or probably required. While the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, endured a period of being flogged by the Murdoch media for locking down the state, 78% of respondents backed Andrews, and when they were asked whether the lockdown was required, 87% said yes.

While America and Britain battled resurgent nativism, the inward turn triggered by the global financial crisis of a decade ago, Australians, walled in behind a preemptive international border closure, and marooned periodically behind hard state borders, continued to look to the world.

The survey asked respondents whether globalisation was good or bad. More than 70% of respondents in the two surveys said good. While protectionism was back in vogue, and the global economy convulsed because of a trade war between a real autocrat in Beijing and an aspirational one in Washington, in 2020, Australians looked through the static and continued to believe trade with the world was good for the country.

As governments put businesses into hibernation around the country during the first wave, the economy tanked and consumption stalled, one in four respondents had their jobs impacted jobs lost, hours wound back.

This cohort was more inclined to pessimism about the future than other respondents, and less sanguine about the health of their household balance sheet. But 73% of respondents remained satisfied or very satisfied with their financial outlook a result up almost 10 points on that recorded in mid-2019. Canberra rolled out income support and the household savings ratio notched up a record rise.

Young people bore the brunt of the crisis. Reflecting that reality, Australians under 24 in the survey were less optimistic about the future than people over 24. A couple of indicators bear this out: 58% of respondents aged between 18 and 24 say they are optimistic compared with more than 70% of respondents aged from 25 to 74, and less young respondents agree with the proposition that Australia is a land of economic opportunity where hard work yields a better life (61% compared with 72% of the 25-34-year-old cohort).

But rather than blame outsiders which is a common default during times of high unemployment young Australians remain more positive about immigration, multiculturalism and ethnic diversity than older Australians. Only 18% of people aged between 18 and 24 agree with the idea that immigrants take away jobs from Australians, while 30% of people in older cohorts agree.

Australians continue to support multiculturalism. The idea that multiculturalism has been good for Australia is strongly supported, with 84% of the sample agreeing in 2020, up four points in a year. But while Australians strongly support a diverse society at a time when multiculturalism is regarded as a failed project in some parts of the world, there is a flipside. We profess to support multiculturalism but Australians can also harbour negative sentiment about Africans, Asians and people from the Middle East. The survey terms this a hierarchy of ethnic preference.

With Donald Trump adding the Chinese virus to the lexicon, 59% of Chinese Australians surveyed observed that racism in Australia during the Covid crisis was either a very big problem or a fairly big problem. The Scanlon Foundation also undertook a separate survey between May and June, tapping sentiment from 500 Chinese Australians on WeChat. Asked whether they had experienced discrimination during the crisis, 27% said yes and a further 20% declined to answer the question.

Markus says he has reflected on why many Australians have experienced one of the toughest years of their lives, but have remained largely positive. Australia was not in such a bad position prior to the pandemic when you compare Australia with England and the United States."

Both of those societies were seriously fractured prior to the pandemic. Brexit sharply divided England, as did Donald Trump in the United States, he says.

There have been times when Australia has been much more fractious under the leadership of Tony Abbott as opposed to the leadership of Scott Morrison, and I think Anthony Albanese can struggle to position himself but he is basically a consensus figure.

This made it possible for Australia to respond to the pandemic quickly and in a cohesive way. To me this is the key point: we possibly undervalue the good things about Australia and how Australians will respond in a crisis, Markus says.

This, for me, is a really big takeaway and its important because it is probably not acknowledged. What we get in the media is the cut and thrust of politics rather than the long-term fundamental understanding of what works in Australia and what doesnt work.

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Toughing out Covid: how Australias social fabric held together during a once-in-a-century crisis - The Guardian