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	When rescue at sea becomes a crime by UNHCR, MSF, agencies   4 Oct. 2018   ''Endless volley of assaults’ aimed at refugees: protection chief calls for ‘humane dialogue’. (UN News)   “Noise, chatter, shrillness, lack of civility, and harsh language,” surround the public debate over refugees, who face a “seemingly endless volley of assaults,” says the UN refugee agency’s (UNHCR) Assistant High Commissioner for Protection.   Volker Turk, made the comments in a key address on Thursday at the UNHCR’s annual Executive Committee Session held in Geneva, where he called for a “more empathic and humane dialogue” focusing on human dignity, to counter fraught debates about refugees.   The world is “facing a watershed moment where two sets of values have emerged,” he said. On the one hand, the Global Compact on Refugees has been developed, with 193 UN Member States joining in a constructive multilateral approach to the issue. Mr Turk said it showed what “can be achieved when we choose to rise above short-term interests to find a common way forward.”   In contrast, he said, some states are succumbing to populist pressures and shirking their responsibilities, at a time when war and persecution have uprooted a record 68.5 million children, women and men worldwide.   “We need to confront the xenophobia, racism, nativism, and bigotry, often driven by fear, anger, and anxieties within communities. These are often used to deflect responsibility as a pretext for demolishing institutions of liberal democracy. This ultimately has a corrosive effect on everyone.”   Respect for dignity must be the antidote to dehumanization, said Mr Türk, underlining how hatred and violence had their origins in reducing individuals and groups to one or two characteristics, which “denigrates, and dehumanizes, challenging the inherent dignity of all.”   On the subject of statelessness and nationality, Mr Turk said that stateless people have told him how they feel invisible, as if they have “fallen through the cracks and do not matter,” and that “individuals are not objects to be governed by the powerful, but are subjects of law, endowed with dignity and entitled to a legal identity.”   Factors fueling conflict and violence must be addressed as a matter of priority, he said, “including the arms trade, extraction industries, the acquisition of land for mining and other purposes, inequality, authoritarianism and environmental change and degradation.”   Mr Turk expressed his surprise that some of the countries that have benefited most from international cooperation and trade are amongst the least willing to be part of international or regional frameworks on population movements, including refugees.   His comments echoed those made by Filippo Grandi, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, who contrasted the decision of countries near regions of conflict or other crises, to those further afield, often rich countries, which are closing borders and “pushing people away,” adding “Today, when I engage with the leaders of countries neighbouring those in crisis, how am I to tell them to take more people, when some in richer countries are discussing how to close their doors?” http://bit.ly/2OhJIoo   * Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide Adama Dieng on the dehumanization of immigrants and refugees in Europe http://bit.ly/2O2mfCt   15 Sep. 2018   When rescue at sea becomes a crime. Who the Tunisian fishermen arrested in Italy really are, by Valentina Zagaria. (open Democracy)   Fishermen networks from Morocco and Mauritania have released statements of support, and the Tunisian State Secretary for Immigration, Adel Jarboui, urged Italian authorities to release the fishermen, considered heroes in Tunisia.   On the night of Wednesday, August 29, 2018, six Tunisian fishermen were arrested in Italy. Earlier that day, they had set off from their hometown of Zarzis, the last important Tunisian port before Libya, to cast their nets in the open sea between North Africa and Sicily. The fishermen then sighted a small vessel whose engine had broken, and that had started taking in water. After giving the fourteen passengers water, milk and bread which the fishermen carry they tried making contact with the Italian coastguard.   After hours of waiting for a response, the men decided to tow the smaller boat in the direction of Lampedusa – Italy’s southernmost island, to help Italian authorities in their rescue operations. At around 24 miles from Lampedusa, the Guardia di Finanza (customs police) took the fourteen people on board, and then proceeded to violently arrest the six fishermen.   According to the precautionary custody order issued by the judge in Agrigento (Sicily), the men stand accused of smuggling, a crime that could get them up to fifteen years in jail if the case goes to trial. The fishermen have since been held in Agrigento prison, and their boat has been seized.   This arrest comes after a summer of Italian politicians closing their ports to NGO rescue boats, and only a week after far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini prevented for ten days the disembarkation of 177 Eritrean and Somali asylum seekers from the Italian coastguard ship Diciotti.   It is yet another step towards dissuading anyone – be it Italian or Tunisian citizens, NGO or coastguard ships – from coming to the aid of refugee boats in danger at sea. Criminalising rescue, a process that has been pushed by different Italian governments since 2016, will continue to have tragic consequences for people on the move in the Mediterranean Sea.   Among those arrested is Chamseddine Bourassine, the president of the Association “Le Pêcheur” pour le Développement et l’Environnement, which was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize this year for the Zarzis fishermen’s continuous engagement in saving lives in the Mediterranean.   Chamseddine, a fishing boat captain in his mid-40s, was one of the first people I met in Zarzis when, in the summer of 2015, I moved to this southern Tunisian town to start fieldwork for my PhD. On a sleepy late-August afternoon, my interview with Foued Gammoudi, the then Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Head of Mission for Tunisia and Libya, was interrupted by an urgent phone call. “The fishermen have just returned, they saved 550 people, let’s go to the port to thank them.”   Just a week earlier, Chamseddine Bourassine had been among the 116 fishermen from Zarzis to have received rescue at sea training with MSF. Gammoudi was proud that the fishermen had already started collaborating with the MSF Bourbon Argos ship to save hundreds of people. We hurried to the port to greet Chamseddine and his crew, as they returned from a three-day fishing expedition which involved, as it so often had done lately, a lives-saving operation.   The fishermen of Zarzis have been on the frontline of rescue in the Central Mediterranean for over fifteen years. Their fishing grounds lying between Libya – the place from which most people making their way undocumented to Europe leave – and Sicily, they were often the first to come to the aid of refugee boats in distress.   “The fishermen have never really had a choice: they work here, they encounter refugee boats regularly, so over the years they learnt to do rescue at sea”, explained Gammoudi. For years, fishermen from both sides of the Mediterranean were virtually alone in this endeavour.   Before the Tunisian revolution of 2011, Ben Ali threatened the fishermen with imprisonment for helping migrants in danger at sea – the regime having been a close collaborator of both Italy and the European Union in border control matters. During that time, Tunisian nationals attempting to do the harga – the North African Arabic dialect term for the crossing of the Sicilian Channel by boat – were also heavily sanctioned by their own government.   Everything changed though with the revolution. “It was chaos here in 2011. You cannot imagine what the word chaos means if you didn’t live it”, recalled Anis Souei, the secretary general of the “Le Pêcheur” association. In the months following the revolution, hundreds of boats left from Zarzis taking Tunisians from all over the country to Lampedusa. Several members of the fishermen’s association remember having to sleep on their fishing boats at night to prevent them from being stolen for the harga. Other fishermen instead, especially those who were indebted, decided to sell their boats, while some inhabitants of Zarzis took advantage of the power vacuum left by the revolution and made considerable profit by organising harga crossings.   “At that time there was no police, no state, and even more misery. If you wanted Lampedusa, you could have it”, rationalised another fisherman. But Chamseddine Bourassine and his colleagues saw no future in moving to Europe, and made a moral pact not to sell their boats for migration.   They instead remained in Zarzis, and in 2013 founded their association to create a network of support to ameliorate the working conditions of small and artisanal fisheries. The priority when they started organising was to try and secure basic social security – something they are still struggling to sustain today.   With time, though, the association also got involved in alerting the youth to the dangers of boat migration, as they regularly witnessed the risks involved and felt compelled to do something for younger generations hit hard by staggering unemployment rates.   In this optic, they organised training for the local youth in boat mechanics, nets mending, and diving, and collaborated in different international projects, such as NEMO, organised by the CIHEAM-Bari and funded by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Directorate General for Cooperation Development.   This project also helped the fishermen build a museum to explain traditional fishing methods, the first floor of which is dedicated to pictures and citations from the fishermen’s long-term voluntary involvement in coming to the rescue of refugees in danger at sea.   This role was proving increasingly vital as the Libyan civil war dragged on, since refugees were being forced onto boats in Libya that were not fit for travel, making the journey even more hazardous. With little support from Tunisian coastguards, who were not allowed to operate beyond Tunisian waters, the fishermen juggled their responsibility to bring money home to their families and their commitment to rescuing people in distress at sea.   Anis remembers that once in 2013, three fishermen boats were out and received an SOS from a vessel carrying roughly one hundred people. It was their first day out, and going back to Zarzis would have meant losing petrol money and precious days of work, which they simply couldn’t afford. After having ensured that nobody was ill, the three boats took twenty people on board each, and continued working for another two days, sharing food and water with their guests.   Sometimes, though, the situation on board got tense with so many people, food wasn’t enough for everybody, and fights broke out. Some fishermen recall incidents during which they truly feared for their safety, when occasionally they came across boats with armed men from Libyan militias. It was hard for them to provide medical assistance as well. Once a woman gave birth on Chamseddine’s boat – that same boat that has now been seized in Italy – thankfully there had been no complications.   NGO ships and the criminalisation of rescue   During the summer of 2015, therefore, Chamseddine felt relieved that NGO search and rescue boats were starting to operate in the Mediterranean. The fishermen’s boats were not equipped to take hundreds of people on board, and the post-revolutionary Tunisian authorities didn’t have the means to support them.   MSF had provided the association with first aid kits, life jackets, and rescue rafts to be able to better assist refugees at sea, and had given them a list of channels and numbers linked to the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC) in Rome for when they encountered boats in distress.   They also offered training in dead body management, and provided the association with body bags, disinfectant and gloves. “When we see people at sea we rescue them. It’s not only because we follow the laws of the sea or of religion: we do it because it’s human”, said Chamseddine.   But sometimes rescue came too late, and bringing the dead back to shore was all the fishermen could do. During 2015 the fishermen at least felt that with more ships in the Mediterranean doing rescue, the duty dear to all seafarers of helping people in need at sea didn’t only fall on their shoulders, and they could go back to their fishing.   The situation deteriorated again though in the summer of 2017, as Italian Interior Minister Minniti struck deals with Libyan militias and coastguards to bring back and detain refugees in detention centres in Libya, while simultaneously passing laws criminalising and restricting the activity of NGO rescue boats in Italy.   Media smear campaigns directed against acts of solidarity with migrants and refugees and against the work of rescue vessels in the Mediterranean poured even more fuel on already inflamed anti-immigration sentiments in Europe.   In the midst of this, on 6 August 2017, the fishermen of Zarzis came face to face with a far-right vessel rented by Generazione Identitaria, the C-Star, cruising the Mediterranean allegedly on a “Defend Europe” mission to hamper rescue operations and bring migrants back to Africa. The C-Star was hovering in front of Zarzis port, and although it had not officially asked port authorities whether it could dock to refuel – which the port authorities assured locals it would refuse – the fishermen of Zarzis took the opportunity to let these alt-right groups know how they felt about their mission.   Armed with red, black and blue felt tip pens, they wrote in a mixture of Arabic, Italian, French and English slogans such as “No Racists!”, “Dégage!” (Get our of here!), “C-Star: No gasoil? No acqua? No mangiato?” ?” (C-Star: No fuel? No water? Not eaten?), which they proceeded to hang on their boats, ready to take to sea were the C-Star to approach. Chamseddine Bourassine, who had returned just a couple of hours prior to the impending C-Star arrival from five days of work at sea, called other members of the fishermen association to come to the port and join in the peaceful protest.   He told the journalists present that the fishermen opposed wholeheartedly the racism propagated by the C-Star members, and that having seen the death of fellow Africans at sea, they couldn’t but condemn these politics. Their efforts were cheered on by anti-racist networks in Sicily, who had in turn prevented the C-Star from docking in Catania port just a couple of days earlier.   It is members from these same networks in Sicily together with friends of the fishermen in Tunisia and internationally that are now engaged in finding lawyers for Chamseddine and his five colleagues.   Their counterparts in Tunisia joined the fishermen’s families and friends on Thursday morning to protest in front of the Italian embassy in Tunis. Three busloads arrived from Zarzis after an 8-hour night-time journey for the occasion, and many others had come from other Tunisian towns to show their solidarity. Gathered there too were members of La Terre Pour Tous, an association of families of missing Tunisian migrants, who joined in to demand the immediate release of the fishermen.   A sister protest was organised by the Zarzis diaspora in front of the Italian embassy in Paris on Saturday afternoon. Fishermen networks from Morocco and Mauritania also released statements of support, and the Tunisian State Secretary for Immigration Adel Jarboui urged Italian authorities to release the fishermen, who are considered heroes in Tunisia.   The fishermen’s arrest is the latest in a chain of actions taken by the Italian Lega and Five Star government to further criminalise rescue in the Mediterranean Sea, and to dissuade people from all acts of solidarity and basic compliance with international norms.   This has alarmingly resulted in the number of deaths in 2018 increasing exponentially despite a drop in arrivals to Italy’s southern shores. While Chamseddine’s lawyer hasn’t yet been able to visit him in prison, his brother and cousin managed to go see him on Saturday. As for telling them about what happened on August 29, Chamseddine simply says that he was assisting people in distress at sea: he’d do it again.   http://bit.ly/2NSDk5L http://www.msf.org/mediterranean-migration   June 2018   UNHCR shocked by mass drownings off Libya, calls for urgent action.   UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is shocked and saddened by reports that some 220 people drowned off Libya in recent days while attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.   According to survivors, a wooden boat carrying an unknown number of refugees and migrants capsized off the coast of Libya on Tuesday (19 June). Out of the estimated 100 passengers, only five survived. They were rescued by the Libyan Coast Guard and disembarked in Mayia in the outskirts of the capital Tripoli. The survivors have been taken to a local hospital by the authorities for medical treatment. A number of bodies have been retrieved by rescuers or washed up on the beaches.   The same day, a rubber dinghy with some 130 people on board sunk at a different location off the Libyan coast. Sixty survivors were rescued by local fishermen, who took them back to shore in Dela (35 km west from Tripoli). Seventy people are believed to have drowned in this incident.   On 20 June, the Libyan Coast Guard conducted a rescue operation off Garabulli, 64 kilometers east of Tripoli. The refugees and migrants rescued were disembarked in Tajoura. The survivors reported that over 50 people travelling with them had perished.   UNHCR is dismayed by the ever-growing number of refugees and migrants losing their lives at sea and is calling for urgent international action to strengthen rescue at sea efforts by all relevant and capable actors, including NGOs and commercial vessels, throughout the Mediterranean.   At the same time, access to protection in countries of first asylum should be ensured, as well as alternative pathways for refugees in Libya trying to cross the sea in search of protection and safety. All these steps are crucial to ensure that no more lives are lost at sea.   On Monday (18 June) the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi tossed a bouquet of flowers into the sea at Abu Setta in Libya before leading a moment of silence to commemorate the thousands of refugees and migrants who have perished at sea trying to reach Europe.   “These tragic deaths are a reminder that wars and poverty continue to drive people to take desperate journeys that cost them their life savings, their dignity and ultimately their lives,” said Grandi.   “With record numbers of people on the run, it has never been more urgent to address root causes, improve conditions in Libya and other countries along the route, provide safe alternatives and, always, rescue people at sea.”   These latest fatalities have pushed the death toll in the Central Mediterranean route to over 1,000 in 2018. As the summer season starts, it is expected that the number of refugees and migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean will increase. So far this year, the Libyan Coast Guard has disembarked more than 8,000 people at disembarkation points along the Libyan coast.   UNHCR and its partners are present at these points to provide food, water, relief items and medical assistance upon disembarkation. UNHCR is also working to ensure access to asylum seekers from all nationalities and that alternatives to detention are available for refugees rescued or intercepted at sea by the Libyan Coast Guard. http://bit.ly/2K9XbrX Visit the related web page
	Reimagining democracy by Civicus: World Alliance for Citizen Participation   Each year, as part of our State of Civil Society Report, we examine a key current trend that impacts on civil society, and to which civil society is responding.   In 2018, our ‘reimagining democracy’ theme focuses on current challenges to democratic freedoms and democratic practice around the world, and civil society’s work to make democracy real. Our analysis is of, from and for civil society.   Bending the arc of democracy, by Lopa Banerjee, Director, Civil Society Division, UN Women   Democracy was born of the aspiration for fundamental equality; out of a commitment of people towards each other in crafting a common destiny; and based in the mutuality of moral action for the public good. The idea of governance of the people, for the people, by the people calls to the highest ideas of solidarity and shared endeavour and to the notions of common freedoms, thought and debate, between the governed and those who govern. And it is these ideals of collective aspiration that inspired struggling and oppressed peoples all over the world to emerge into hard-fought, vibrant, sometimes shambolic, free democracies.   But democracy is failing us today.   Mostly it is failing the women of the world, the young, the poor, the refugees, the asylum seekers, those living on the margins yearning for peace and hope. The very value of social solidarity that underlines democracy, the idea of the democratic state as a consistent champion of the public interest and human rights, is under siege today.   And instead what we see is the ascent of illiberalism; an uptake of the notions of insular nationalism, a rejection of multilateralism and global institutions of cooperation and solidarity; and the adoption of binary perspectives, where national sovereignty, culture and interests are pitted in confrontation with international norms and standards of human rights, justice, progress and well-being.   The shift in the nature and complexity of peace and security threats, including the rapid proliferation and entrenchment of armed conflicts, climate shocks, global health pandemics, austerity measures to address volatile and insecure economies, neo-conservative politics and fundamentalism are undermining notions of the common good, social justice and human solidarity.   The gender equality agenda is in particular peril. In a number of countries, hardening political and social conservatism, along with entrenched sexism and misogyny, are rolling back women’s rights - including reproductive rights and legal protections from violence - and are harkening back to traditional stereotypes of gendered roles, and in some cases, the violent enforcement of traditional gender norms.   Further, the scale of humanitarian crises and human displacement, unprecedented since the Second World War, has led to catastrophic change and challenges that disproportionately affect women and girls.   The ascent of illiberalism   Over recent decades, corrupt and ineffective governments in many countries of the world failed to deliver social services and public goods to their citizens. This led to widespread citizen distrust in public institutions and democratic decision-making. Citizens became disillusioned with the promise of democracy and disengaged themselves from the pursuit of democracy, leaving the space free for undemocratic actors.   At the same time, unchecked globalisation exacerbated economic inequality in countries; along with the austerity measures adopted by many governments in response to the financial crisis of 2008, and the aggressive pursuit of neoliberal economic policies, this led to widespread economic upheaval. Societies fragmented and fractured along faultlines of identity, ethnicity and race.   Populist leaders embarked on an agenda of bold conservatism and fundamentalism and were able to separate people from their histories and contexts and coalesce them around simplistic, uni-dimensional identities. At a time when people were reeling from the insecurity of their lives and livelihoods, this worldview offered people familial stability, security and homogeneity; that it came at the cost of liberties, plurality and solidarity mattered little.   So today we are at a moment when societies are viciously polarised and divided. People identify in tribes rather than in communities and this has led to wins for the politics of fear, exclusion and prejudice. The erstwhile democratic ideals of tolerance, diversity and curious, questioning societies have given way to a muscular idea of democracy that promotes heteronormative, homogenous, jingoistic societies and marginalises people with impunity.   In this manifestation of democracy there is an emphasis on law and order above the idea of justice. This allows for the legitimisation of discrimination, prejudice and xenophobia and a subversion of the ideals of democracy, from solidarity, diversity and pluralism to brutal majoritarianism.   Thus people - and in particular the disenfranchised, minorities and the already marginalised - are wilfully ignored and excluded in the pursuit of order and security for the majority.   Telling the better story   Notwithstanding this, wave upon wave of civic activism led by feminist mobilising is surging. Against all odds, people, in particular, women, are organising and mobilising, on the streets, in communities and on the internet, to demand justice, equality and dignity, so long denied. And so we find ourselves in the #MeToo moment. From #MeToo to #Time’sUp to #NiUnaMenos to FeesMustFall to BlackLivesMatter to #JusticeForNoura to successful campaigns against ‘marry your rapist’ laws, all over the world, in different ways and across different issues, this is a moment of reckoning by women.   From Ireland to Turkey to Lebanon to India to South Africa to Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, the United States, Sudan and in a multitude of other countries, women are speaking out at scale and upturning entrenched discriminatory norms that normalise, accept and justify discrimination against women and girls.   What is so significant about this moment is that women’s mobilising is challenging the implicit hierarchies of power for everyone. In challenging gender discrimination women are fighting for equality for all. They are interrogating unequal power relations in society and resisting the traditional perceptions of duties, entitlements and privileges that foster multiple inequalities.   This discourse is shining the light on individual, community, societal and institutional norms, practices and stereotypes that limit opportunities for people and restrict them to certain roles in private and public spheres.   This is the better story to tell in these times of radical discontent and divisiveness. And democracy must be reimagined and realised in this story, beyond the rule of the majority, to a manifestation of substantive equality and inclusion so that no one is left behind in its arc and reach.   And we have the framing for that in the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which sets out the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which prioritise universality and the notion of leaving no one behind in the quest for people, planet and prosperity.   The unanimous adoption in 2015 of the SDGs, with their far-reaching aspiration for equality and prosperity for all people on this planet, was a pinnacle of democratic decision-making, demonstrating that international solidarity, collective visioning and global action is possible even as the world is wracked by war, inequality and the discontent of its citizens.   The adoption of the SDGs was momentous not only because the goals were negotiated by all governments of the world and are applicable to all the countries of the world, but because there was clear recognition among governments and leaders that civil society and women’s rights groups had made huge contributions to the development of this new agenda and were going to be essential partners in its implementation.   This came at a time when the space for civil society activism and democratic dissent was already threatened and eroding.   Bending the arc towards plurality and equality   The development of the SDG agenda and its adoption was the glory of democracy in action.   In much the same way, reimagining democracy must be about the building of social alliances, going beyond race, class, gender and majorities to understand and respond to the ways in which people’s identities interconnect in diversities of age, geography and culture.   It must be about multilateral and global institutions actively breaking intellectual and political hierarchies and seeking moral collaboration across political ideas, constituencies and generations. 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