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Migrants aiming to cross into Poland camp near the Bruzgi-Kuznica border crossing on the Belarusian-Polish border on Nov. 17. Maxim Guchek/BelTA/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Migrants aiming to cross into Poland camp near the Bruzgi-Kuznica border crossing on the Belarusian-Polish border on Nov. 17.

When the Syrian migrants spotted Belarusian officials arriving at their hostel in Minsk, they knew their hopes of a better life in the West were over. Seven managed to escape through the windows. The rest were rounded up, brought to the lobby and had their passports taken from them.

They were among thousands of migrants lured into the country with travel visas and the understanding that they would be able to reach the European Union. But now they were given an ultimatum: Book a flight out of Belarus the officials didn't care where to or be put on a plane to Syria.

Some of the Syrians in the group described these scenes to NPR earlier this month. "These were our choices," one of the migrants recalls, speaking by phone from Damascus. "If we refused to cooperate they said we'd be arrested and forcibly deported back to Syria anyway."

After engineering a migrant crisis at the borders of the EU, Belarus is now seeking to send those who failed to cross into Poland or other EU countries back to where they came from often with little regard for their safety, say migrants and human rights groups.

It's the latest development in a months-long crisis between the authoritarian regime of Belarus and its EU neighbors. Belarus attracted people from war or poverty-stricken countries with loosened visa restrictions and encouraged them to cross in large numbers through the EU's borders. Migrants say they watched Belarusian soldiers cut wire fences and then organized hundreds of people to storm across a border at the same time.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko visits a center for migrants who remain in the country after attempting to cross into the EU via the Polish border, near Belarus' Bruzgi border point on the Belarusian-Polish border in the Grodno region on Nov. 26. Maxim Guchek/BelTA/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

U.S. and European officials and refugee advocates accuse the regime of Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko of using migrants as a "political weapon" in retaliation for sanctions. EU neighbors Poland and Lithuania have been pushing the migrants back, leaving many of them including children and pregnant women trapped in freezing borderland forests. Many report being beaten, threatened with security dogs or otherwise abused by Polish and Belarusian security forces.

Lukashenko has denied orchestrating the border crisis but warned he would not stop migrants.

Now, often penniless, exhausted and vulnerable, hundreds of migrants are leaving. Some are choosing to take repatriation flights running from Belarus' capital Minsk to Iraq and Syria.

But some migrants tell NPR the Belarusian authorities have forcibly sent them back to their home countries even after the migrants had told those authorities that they were fleeing life-threatening conditions.

On Dec. 8, a repatriation flight by Syria's private Cham Wings Airlines departed from Minsk to Damascus with about 97 Syrians on board, according to news reports.

In separate interviews this month, two Syrians who were on that plane detail how Belarusian officials ordered them and others to take the flight, despite their pleas that returning to Syria a country in a civil war since 2011 could endanger their lives. One of the men also said his request for asylum in Belarus was ignored.

NPR was connected to them by another Syrian migrant who did make it into the EU from Belarus and is now in an asylum center in Germany. The men in Damascus asked not to be named in this story because migration is a sensitive topic in Syria and they fear being arrested for speaking with a journalist.

Both described the men coming to the Minsk hostel flashing badges and identifying themselves as Belarusian government officials; though neither interviewee was certain of which branch of government.

After several failed attempts to cross into Poland, the Syrians' travel visas in Belarus had expired. The men say officials told them they had three days to leave the country. The officials confiscated their passports and said they'd only be returned at the Minsk airport before the migrants boarded a plane leaving Belarus.

Two days later, the officials returned, warning again the Syrians had less than 24 hours to book a trip out of Belarus or be deported the next day on the Cham Wings plane to Damascus.

Police officers stand in the forest near Hajnowka, Poland, on Nov. 11. Western governments have accused Belarus' President Alexander Lukashenko of luring migrants, mainly from the Middle East, to his country and sending them to cross over into EU member Poland. Wojtek Radwanski/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Few countries give travel visas to Syrians, and even fewer do so quickly. Many of the migrants had spent all their savings for visas to Belarus and the promise of a better life in the West. They didn't have the means to quickly plan a route out of the country. The interviewees both said they begged the officials for more time.

"We told them that many of us can't go back to Syria because we are wanted by the Syrian regime," one said. "They didn't listen."

Now back in Damascus, one of the interviewees, a father to two small children, says he has only weeks to find a way out of the country or face possible imprisonment or military conscription by the government.

A former activist against authoritarian President Bashar Assad, the man says he had been wanted by Syria's feared intelligence services until he signed a reconciliation deal that offered activists temporary amnesty. But he says that the deal expires in less than two months, at which point he doesn't know if he can remain safely in Syria.

The other interviewee said he specifically asked the Belarusian officials at the hostel for asylum in Belarus. "They told me 'no.'"

Neither the Belarusian foreign or interior ministries replied to NPR's requests for comment.

A man uses a loud-hailer during a rally held outside the Minsk office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to condemn what he considered global institutions' inaction in the face of a migrant crisis on the Belarusian-Polish border. Pavel Orlovsky/BelTA/TASS via Getty Images hide caption

Natalia Prokopchuk, a senior communications officer with the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, in Europe tells NPR the agency is "receiving reports that people are being forcibly returned" to Iraq and Syria. The UNHCR has a small office in Minsk but lacks a presence at the city's airport and hasn't been able to verify the reports of deportation, she says.

Whether a deportation violates international law depends on the specific circumstances of each individual case. "States can deport people from their territory," she says. But as a signatory to the 1951 refugee convention, Belarus cannot return individuals to "a country where they would face the risk of persecution or other serious human rights abuses."

"People also need to be allowed to request asylum," she adds, "to be given access to this procedure, and they cannot be deported before the individual's situation is assessed."

Belarus does have an established asylum system. There are 303 people with refugee status in Belarus, mainly from Afghanistan, Georgia and Syria, according to UNHCR figures as of October.

Prokopchuk says migrants now face border guards and law enforcement officers in Europe who may not have asylum training. Now the situation is much more complex.

Tanya Lokshina, associate director of Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia division, recently co-authored a report on migrant rights abuses by Belarusian and EU security forces. She says the accounts of deportation and denied asylum that Syrian migrants described to NPR are in keeping with Human Rights Watch's own research.

"Based on what we know, Belarusian authorities provide no information regarding the very possibility to apply for asylum," she says.

"Belarusian authorities just want these people to go back to where they came from or go somewhere else. They're not taking into consideration what's awaiting those people there. They do not care about those people at all."

Anti-Syrian regime protesters wave Syrian revolution flags and chant slogans during a demonstration against President Bashar Assad in the Deir Baghlaba area in Homs province, central Syria, on Jan. 27, 2012. AP Photo hide caption

Omar al-Zoubi, a Syrian migrant still in Belarus who wasn't associated with the other interviewees, told NPR he narrowly escaped deportation to Syria where he says he is wanted by the government.

He says he made three failed attempts to cross into EU countries, involving weeks spent in the forest on the border, drinking from puddles and suffering beatings by Belarusian and Polish border guards. He and seven other Syrians he was with were rounded up by Belarusian soldiers who told them they were being sent back to Syria.

Zoubi took part in popular protests against Assad in 2012, then fled with his family to become refugees in neighboring Lebanon. In Lebanon's recent economic collapse, the family became so impoverished he says they could barely scrape together food for meals.

He says his family was once wealthy and owned land in Syria.

When he heard Belarus was providing options for migrants to reach the EU, he thought he had to give it a try. "We just want to live the way we used to; in dignity, with our own money," he says.

So in early November, leaving his fiance and elderly parents behind in Lebanon, he flew to Minsk. His residency papers in Lebanon had expired and Zoubi says, as he left, Lebanese officials at Beirut airport placed a yearlong ban on his reentry into the country.

When he was caught in Belarus, he told the Belarusian soldiers that returning to Syria could be a "death sentence" because he is wanted by the regime.

The soldiers ignored his explanations, he says: "They just kept telling me in broken English: 'Go to Syria.'"

Zoubi says the soldiers forced him and the men he was with into a cab paid for by the government, and ordered the driver to take them to the airport.

"We were scared. At some point all the guys in the car were crying," Zoubi says.

Using Google Translate, the men tried to explain to the driver the dangers of prison, torture and perhaps even execution that could await them in Syria. Zoubi says eventually the driver relented, dropping them around the corner from the airport, and so giving the men a chance to escape.

The group ran into Minsk. The cousin of one of the men in the group paid for their stay in a private home in the Belarusian capital that has become a sort of "safe house" for migrants, according to Zoubi. Many of the migrants' Belarusian visas have expired and they fear staying in hotels could lead to their capture and deportation by the Belarusian authorities.

One man in the group was so scared of being deported to Syria, Zoubi says, that he refused to go to the hospital when he became seriously ill.

Zoubi is one of hundreds of migrants still trapped in Belarus.

When NPR checked in with Zoubi this week, he was back in the forests on the Belarusian border, trying to survive the freezing temperatures as he searched for a way to cross. He and the others in his group have almost no money left and they've barely even eaten in days. But, he says, this is the only choice he feels he has.

Read the rest here:
Syrians say Belarus deported them even though they're wanted by Assad's regime - NPR

Research fellow of the Henry Jackson Society, Dr Rakib Ersan, spoke to Express.co.uk about the migrant crisisin the Channel and why it was seen to be such a big issue in the UK. Polling from YouGov has shown immigration has overtaken environmental issues in Britons top three important issues facing the country tracker. When asked why the issue was seen to be more important than crime or education, Dr Ersan suggested the electorate had been promised by the Government they would handle border control better post-Brexitbut they have failed to deliver on escalating crossings.

Speaking to Express.co.uk, Mr Ersan was asked why is the migrant crisis becoming a big political issue for voters around the country.

He explained: I think that for Brexit voters, in particular, I feel that concerns over immigration, border control and just the desire for the restoration of national sovereignty

When it comes to immigration and more broadly border security, that played a strong part in the Brexit vote that was delivered back in June 2016.

And much of that was that desire you've heard the slogan take back control, but at the moment it doesn't look like the UK Government has control of our own national borders.

So of course, there is a cut through because there are voters who felt that there's going to be a fundamental restoration of national sovereignty and we're going to be able to take control of how our national borders operate.

But the illegal channel crossings have shown that the Government does not have a firm grip of the situation when it comes to matters of immigration.

According to YouGov, 36 percent of Britons have immigration and asylum in their top three important issues facing the country.

The issue comes behind the economy which is second place with 38 percent and health with 51 percent.

In November, YouGov found 71 percent of respondents believe Boris Johnson is handling immigration badly.

Dr Ersan also explained to Express.co.uk he was confused why the UK Government did not continue the Dublin III regulation post-Brexit.

The regulation lays out the mechanisms for returning asylum seekers to their country of origin and determining who is responsible for their applications.

However, the agreement was not continued after the UK left the European Union meaning it is harder for the UK to send asylum seekers entering the country illegally to the European countries they came from.

Disagreements between the UK and France have ramped up over the past few months as the UK sees record numbers of migrants crossing the Channel.

The UK provides France with funding and support to police its northern beaches to prevent boats from illegally entering the UK.

But French authorities have been accused of not doing their job after record numbers have made the journey and images emerged of French police doing little to prevent them from leaving.

In November, 1,185 migrants made the journey to the UK which is the highest daily record.

Data also shows 1,327 migrants have been detained by Border Force this month, compared to 211 at the same time last year.

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ITV reporter Jonathan Swain revealed he spoke with French police but they told him they were in a tricky legal position.

He explained: "French patrols will just pass them by and won't stop them at all or intervene.

"And we saw those pictures from yesterday as well where dozens of people get into a boat that potentially make it across the channel.

"I spoke to French police officers, they're very reluctant to deal with the media, particularly British media, but the ones that have sort of spoken to say that well actually it's not their job to stop migrants from crossing the water.

Because actually, they're not doing anything illegal by getting into a boat on a beach and crossing the water.

"It's illegal to get into the UK, but not illegal to leave the French coast so politically it needs to come down from the top from President Macron to put that pressure on the French police to stop them even before they get into the water.

"I have to say having been here and seen it for myself, it's not that difficult to stop them from getting into the water because they are openly walking to the beaches carrying dinghies around the villages."

On November, 27 people died in the Channel after a boat capsized on its journey to the UK.

Go here to read the rest:
Migrant crisis cutting through to voters as key Brexit pledge not upheld by Tories - Daily Express

NIJMEGEN, the Netherlands The email came at 3 a.m., giving Nematullah Khosh Ahmadi and his wife, Masouma Ebrahimi, three hours to decide whether to get on an evacuation flight to the Netherlands and leave Afghanistan, their homeland, perhaps never to return.

Living under Taliban rule was not an option for the couple, who are filmmakers who had long documented the violence that the extremist group had inflicted on Afghanistan. But that did not make the decision any less heart-wrenching, they said. They packed up their important documents, a video camera and a pair of gloves for their infant daughter and they fled.

Mr. Ahmadi and Ms. Ebrahimi, who were among roughly 2,000 Afghans evacuated to the Netherlands this summer, in the frantic weeks before the United States left Afghanistan, are now living in a temporary camp deep in a forest near the eastern town of Nijmegen. The camp houses about 1,000 evacuees, who live in shared tents that allow little privacy and, although heated, cannot keep out the winter cold.

The evacuees recently heard that they would be moving in coming weeks, but for many, their hopes for more solid housing appeared to be dimming given a shortage of more permanent social housing for poor Dutch and refugees alike.

The Dutch government said that all residents of the Nijmegen camp would be moved to different refugee centers by the end of January, but an official from the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers said those could include structures like containers, tents and even boats.

All of the Afghans evacuated in August have already received permits to stay, sparing them the bureaucratic headaches they endure in some other countries. But the uncertainty about housing has been extremely destabilizing for the Afghans in the camp, who, while grateful to the Netherlands for having taken them in, have been struggling to reconcile themselves with their new lives.

If you take a tree and plant it somewhere else, it will stay alive, but it will not give fruit, Mr. Ahmadi said. My generation had great dreams about changing our country for the better. I never wanted to leave.

Mr. Ahmadi and Ms. Ebrahimi arrived in the Netherlands at a time when it was embroiled in an increasingly heated debate about immigration. The nations toughened stance on the issue contributed to the chaotic evacuation of people from Afghanistan when the Taliban took over in mid-August, critics said, and has made bringing in additional Afghans more difficult.

In the Netherlands, as elsewhere in Europe, politicians fear a repeat of the 2015 migrant crisis, when more than a million people, mainly from war-torn countries like Syria and Afghanistan, sought asylum in the European Union, setting off a populist backlash.

Afghanistan Under Taliban Rule

With the departure of the U.S. military on Aug. 30, Afghanistan quickly fell back under control of the Taliban. Across the country, there is widespread anxiety about the future.

The Dutch government has been accused of failing to move quickly enough to evacuate many Afghans eligible for asylum, and at first was focusing only on interpreters who had worked with the Dutch military as part of the NATO presence in Afghanistan.

Both the foreign and defense ministers resigned after coming under pressure over the issue in Parliament, and the Dutch government eventually moved in the last days before the U.S. withdrawal to evacuate some Afghans who worked in sensitive fields, including journalists.

But in October, in a sign of a hardening stance on asylum seekers as voters increasingly turn toward far-right parties opposed to more immigration, the Dutch government tightened the criteria for those still in Afghanistan, leaving hundreds in limbo.

Since September, only a few hundred of the 2,100 eligible Afghans have been evacuated, according to the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

For many people in the Netherlands, the situation brought back the trauma of the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia in 1995, when Dutch peacekeepers failed to protect Muslim men from Bosnian Serb militias. About 8,000 people were killed.

Many people said, We are doing it again, said Lenie van Goor of the Nijmegen chapter of the Dutch Refugee Council, a charity. Those Afghans are our responsibility.

Ahmad Khalid Nawabi, who worked as a technology specialist with the European Unions police mission in Afghanistan, said one of his former colleagues from the mission was killed by the Taliban in October. An interpreter, who was on the Dutch evacuation list, was also killed in October, according to news media reports.

Although not officially confirmed, it is plausible that the interpreter in question has been killed, three government ministers wrote in a recent letter to lawmakers, saying it was impossible to determine those responsible.

Kati Piri, an opposition lawmaker who has called for more Afghans to be evacuated to the Netherlands, called the Dutch response shameful, saying that the lists of people approved to get on flights were drafted chaotically and late.

The Dutch government was extremely careful not to open the doors to too many Afghans, she said.

Sigrid Kaag, who was the Dutch foreign minister at the time of evacuation but resigned in September, defended the governments actions to Parliament. But she acknowledged that the Netherlands and other nations had had a blind spot in underestimating how quickly Afghanistan would collapse.

According to the European Commission, European Union nations have so far evacuated 28,000 Afghans and have committed to taking in 40,000 more. The Netherlands pledged to admit 3,159 Afghans, but according to a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, this includes about 2,000 already evacuated.

Amnesty International warned in a recent report that Afghans faced formidable obstacles to seeking safety outside the country, and that if they managed to flee, they would be subject to illegal pushbacks, detention and deportation in Europe and Central Asia.

While all Afghan evacuees received their permits to stay, other Afghan asylum seekers, who arrived in the Netherlands earlier or without authorization, are left in a legal limbo, said Wil Eikelboom, an asylum lawyer.

Their asylum requests have effectively been on hold since this summer. Usual waiting time for a decision is 18 to 24 months, Mr. Eikelboom said. I have clients who are very frustrated about this. Those awaiting decisions are housed in reception centers run by a government agency.

For Afghans evacuated to the Netherlands, the wait for housing has been difficult.

Migrants are usually provided with accommodation within 14 weeks of being approved as refugees, said Sonja Kloppenburg, the spokeswoman of the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers. But because of a housing shortage, it is unlikely that the Afghan evacuees will be able to find permanent homes anytime soon.

The Interior Ministry says it does not know how long the Afghan evacuees will have to wait because 12,000 refugees from various countries are currently in line for homes.

The authorities in Nijmegen have, however, managed to get Afghan children from the Nijmegen camp into local schools. About 300 Afghans ages 5 to 11 started school in the last week of October. With the help of retired teachers, they are learning Dutch.

It is going to be a long road for me to rebuild my life, said Fardin, 40, a photographer from Kabul who asked to be identified only by his first name, and whose son Subhanallah was attending the local school. But I am hoping this will be an opportunity for my son.

Subhanallah, 8, seems ready to embrace the future in the Netherlands.

When asked about his dream job, he said he wanted to one day be the countrys leader.

Mr. Nawabi, who worked with the E.U. police mission, said this month that he would be taking an important step in his new life in the Netherlands and would be moving to a house in Nijmegen in late December.

I just got lucky, and my faith might have helped, he said. But not everyone has a house.

Link:
After Chaotic Evacuation, Afghans in the Netherlands Struggle to Find Stability - The New York Times

News & Politics

(PAP) mb/mrb/mf December 28, 2021

The Polish foreign minister and the US Secretary of State have stressed the need for coordinated steps in support of the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

In a telephone conversation on Tuesday, Zbigniew Rau and Antony Blinken said Ukraine needed concerted backing in efforts to preserve its independence.

"It is crucial for the international community to uphold its unity, integrity and solidarity in the face of the Kremlin's aggressive policy," the Polish foreign ministry quoted Rau as saying.

The ministers also stated that any Russian aggression on Ukraine would have "serious consequences" for Russia.

Concern over Ukraine's safety have arisen in connection with Russia's recent deployment of a large military presence on its border with the country.

The ministers also discussed Russia's long-term policy towards Ukraine and the migrant crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border.

During the conversation, Blinken repeated US President Joe Biden's earlier pledge of a strong US and allied response to any Russian attack on Ukraine.

Continue reading here:
Polish, US FMs agree on coordinated backing for Ukraine - The First News

In terms of raw page views and reader engagement, that is, keeping site visitors on our pages longer and coming back for more (and perhaps converting them into donors and subscriberswhats holding you back?), few people do more for America than our favorite Jesuit.

Pope Francis has figured in more than 400 articles, columns and reports that America published in 2021, stories that have drawn almost 5.3 million page views.

The pope also scores well with long-time site visitors and flighty page hoppers alike and regularly draws both digital and print subscribers. Folks love reading about Pope Francis and hearing most of the things he has to say, but do they read the stories Pope Francis might wish they would read?

Hundreds of thousands of visitors storm the America website when the pope figures in political entanglements like the quadrennial Communion wars, issues unexpected decrees on important ecclesial matters or after an off-the-cuff remark (or three) create global headlines.

But the topics Pope Francis personally returned to a lot in 2021 dont always get as much attention.But dont fret. A new year is coming when we can all try to follow the Pope Francis newsfeed a little more faithfully. To catch you up until then, heres a rundown of some of the issues the pope tried to keep at the forefront of the news in 2021 and articles about them you may have missed.

Human migration: The world continues to experience unprecedented levels of migration as refugees from conflict, poverty and hopelessness head north from the Caribbean and Latin America to the United States or across the Mediterranean into Europe from the Middle East and Africa. The United Nations reports a global tally of more than 281 million international migrants. Most170 millionare international laborers, but about 90 million are refugees, asylum seekers and displaced people. Spiking populations escaping conflict and political chaos this year came from Afghanistan, Central America and troubled African and Middle Eastern states.

The fate of the worlds refugees and migrants has been a special focus for Pope Francis since the beginning of his papacy. His first trip outside of Rome in 2013 was to Lampedusa, an island then at the heart of the ongoing Mediterranean migrant crisis, where he said Mass for the refugees and migrants lost at sea in their attempts to reach Europe.

Throughout 2021, Pope Francis continued to urge attention to this humanitarian crisis that concerns everyone, culminating in his last official visit of the year to Greece and Cyprus. On Dec. 5 he visited a migrant reception facility in Mytilene, on the Greek island of Lesbos.

The pandemic, he said, preached the interconnectedness of the world. We have come to understand that the great issues must be faced together since in todays world piecemeal solutions are inadequate, he said.

We live in an age of walls and barbed wire, the pope said. Yet problems are not resolved and coexistence improved by building walls higher, but by joining forces to care for others according to the concrete possibilities of each and in respect for the law, always giving primacy to the inalienable value of the life of every human being.

Migration stories you may have missed:

Climate change and care of creation: In May, Pope Francis raised alarms about the urgency of combating climate change, asking Catholics around the world to join the Laudato Si Action Platform, a seven-year journey that will see our communities committed in different ways to becoming totally sustainable, in the spirit of integral ecology.

We need a new ecological approach that can transform our way of dwelling in the world, our lifestyles, our relationship with the resources of the Earth and, in general, our way of looking at humanity and of living life, he said.

He urged the coordinated response of the global community. Only in this way will we be able to create the future we want: a more inclusive, fraternal, peaceful and sustainable world.

In his address to the U.N. conference on climate change, COP26, in Glasgow in November, he asked the worlds advanced economies, and not coincidentally the ones most responsible for carbon burning, to accept their obligation to confront climate change engendered by global warming. We find ourselves facing an epochal change, a cultural challenge that calls for commitment on the part of all, particularly those countries possessed of greater means, Pope Francis said. These countries need to take a leading role in the areas of climate finance, decarbonization in the economic system and in peoples lives, the promotion of a circular economy, providing support to more vulnerable countries working to adapt to the impact of climate change and to respond to the loss and damage it has caused.

Care of creation stories you may have missed:

Economic and social inequities, especially in distribution of Covid vaccines: Pope Francis has implored the worlds wealthy states to pursue a comprehensive and equitable distribution of the Covid-19 vaccine, in a service to themselves as much as everyone else. Unfortunately, hoarding by wealthy states has, as predicted, allowed Covid-19 variants to emerge that have undermined the efficacy of the worlds existing vaccines. Vaccine hoarding has been only one aspect of his ongoing critique of the maldistribution of the worlds wealth and resources or the rampant waste of them through arms races and what he has memorably called the throwaway society.

Let us remember what the pandemic has shown us, namely that we cannot remain healthy in a world that is sick, he said in an address to world political and religious leaders attending a meeting on peacemaking organized by the lay Community of SantEgidio. In recent times, many people have contracted the sickness of forgetfulness, forgetfulness of God and of our brothers and sisters, Pope Francis said. This has led to unbridled individualism and the desire for self-sufficiency, which has overflowed in insatiable greed. The earth we inhabit bears the scars of this, while the air we breathe is rich in toxins but poor in solidarity. We have thus poured the pollution of our hearts upon creation.

In a letter in April to the participants in the spring 2021 virtual meeting of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, Pope Francis called for a model of recovery from Covid-19 capable of generating new, more inclusive and sustainable solutions to support the real economy... and the universal common good, not a return to an unequal and unsustainable model of economic and social life, where a tiny minority of the worlds population owns half of its wealth.

Economic and social inequities stories you may have missed:

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Stories from 2021 that Pope Francis wished you would have read - America Magazine