Bangladesh in Point of View

Geetisha Dasgupta

[is a graduate student at the SUNY, Binghamton]

A researcher of forced migration is continually plagued by concerns like tracing the roots of people, revisiting their origins through documents, narratives, interviews and lived experiences. We try to go back in history and situate people, persons in a particular cross section of time and space which we would coin as his/her home. Thus we try to initiate a homecoming of all those who have been ousted out, forced to move and move on. This continual struggle to transfix the moment called home often faces a crisis, where the researcher is single handedly constructing the past out of the remains, while forgetting that, it might be a ‘normalizing’ act, taking for granted that the past would be equally re-constructible for everyone. We forget that not everyone would like to visit their ‘roots’ on behalf of others.

From this again follows a second premise which shows that people have often ignored the margins drawn by regulatory forces and thereby taking it on history itself. The idea of nation has been challenged through maintaining porosity of borders on the levels of the community; therefore lending more weight to that level of existence which allows them the necessary freedom to subsist. Thus looking at the forced migration situation of India or Bangladesh can never be completed on an India OR Bangladesh OR Pakistan basis. One has to look at it on a holistic basis, keeping in mind the chain of events, the thread that connects all. This edition of our e journal is committed towards taking a look at forced migration situation of Bangladesh. But as will be evident from each of the articles, this is a forced migration situation of Bangladesh vis a vis India.

Priyanca Mathur Velath and Saba Hussain, in their article write about the informal Bangladeshi workers in and around the suburbs of Delhi. These are often undocumented people about whom there is a silence in the administrative structures of both the States as long as their independent histories go. Thus, people that provide the much needed links in the informal economy are termed as ‘illegal’, ‘poor’ and even ‘terrorists’. From there on, it goes deeper to talk about the problems in such situation of ‘silence’ and invisibility which generates a field work anxiety that a researcher faces in mining out the data base as well as the real people that contribute towards it.

Banjan’s article looks at the other side of the same coin, the influx of illegal immigrants especially from Bangladesh. The economic and environmental problems in their home country propel these migrants to explore the opportunities and resources in India and share the benefits of their labour with their families. Many of them receive patronage from political parties who want to accumulate them as vote banks. Despite the media hype and mass movement against immigration there are no figures available with the Government or any other agencies on the exact number of Bangladeshi migrants in India. This ambiguity in identifying the migrants weakens the government’s position in tackling the issue. She looks into the history that brought about the events like formation of separate nation states in the subcontinent and points out that the abnormality lies there itself. It was not nationalism that brought nation state here but quite the reverse.

Naser’s article talks about climate change and displacement, which we will read in the context of massive and sustained population outflows in the recent past out of Bangladesh due to environmental atrocities. He presents the picture rendered imperfect due to the lack of binding international protocols on controlling assaults on the environment and the debates that lead to inconclusive nature of national rules to govern the same.

Bangladesh’s Climate Displacement Nightmare

Scott Leckie, Zeke Simperingham and Jordan Bakker

While scientists and the international community endlessly debate and argue, millions of Bangladeshi citizens have already been displaced by climate change - for them the worst-case 'nightmare' climate scenario is already real

Climate displacement has arrived without mercy in Bangladesh. In Khulna district alone, some 60,000 Bangladeshi citizens have fled what has become permanent coastal flooding in the remote southwest of the country. With no option of returning home, and little access to new land thus far, these climate displaced persons (CDPs) are forced to survive on a 25 kilometre long, 2m high and 3-4 m wide embankment.

This desperate community in Dacope sub-district in Khulna has built rudimentary, makeshift shelters along the length of the levee that was originally designed to protect their now destroyed villages, land and homes. The levee failed, and all they now have are insecure and instable shelters perched precariously atop the embankment, surrounded by unruly water on both sides at high tide and at low tide by thousands of hectares of desolate muddy land that was once fertile paddy and farmland.

Living in this isolated and impoverished corner of Bangladesh, which borders on the famous Sundarban National Park, and completely segregated from political life in Dhaka (and the officials that could assist them in finding new land), the people of the delta see all too little hope or viable options for the future. Ninety-per cent of the CDPs are now without livelihoods, forced to live day by day from aid handouts and are unable to return to lives, land and homes that were completely obliterated by coastal erosion and storm surges. Nor do the displaced in Dacope see any solutions coming from the Government of Bangladesh any time soon, with officials seeming thus far resistant to suggestions that they may need to assist this and other climate-affected communities to relocate to safer areas and provide them with new land.

And as bad as things may be for the delta dwellers, this CDP community is only the tip of the displacement iceberg eating away at Bangladesh’s land and populace. Comprehensive surveys carried out in 2010 by over 200 community-based organisations and coordinated by the remarkable efforts of the Association of Climate Refugees, found that a staggering 6.5 million citizens (1.3 million households) of Bangladesh have already been displaced by the effects of climate change.

Uniquely vulnerable to frequent and severe river, rainwater and tidal flooding, Bangladesh today has the sad distinction of being the world’s most vulnerable country to climate displacement. While climate scientists, the international community and academics vigorously debate about the potential for climate change to affect future population displacement, the millions of Bangladeshi citizens already displaced by the effects of climate change are no longer simply waiting for solutions to their plight, and have begun to organise for climate justice and their basic human rights.

For them the worst-case future climate scenarios have already arrived; for them the future is now.

Earth’s Most Climate Vulnerable Communities

Bangladesh is a low lying, largely flat country with two-thirds of the country located less than 5m above sea level. Situated in the delta region of three of the world’s largest rivers - with a combined annual discharge second only to that of the Amazon – it is no surprise that Bangladesh suffers from catastrophic floods every year. According to government statistics, 25 per cent of Bangladesh is inundated every year and 60 per cent of the country suffers from severe flooding every 4-5 years. What makes the situation so dire now is that the flooded land in the delta is seemingly gone for good. In Khulna, the flood will simply not recede.

And yet, this is far from the extent of climate vulnerability in Bangladesh. The country is also hit by a severe tropical cyclone on average once every three years. These storms form in the months before and after the monsoon season and intensify as they move over the warm waters of the Bay of Bengal. They are accompanied by winds of up to 150kph and can result in storm surges of up to several metres. As experienced by the 60,000 people crammed in miserable conditions on the embankments of Khulna, the results for housing, land, property and livelihoods are devastating.

Of the 160 million citizens of Bangladesh, it is the more than 50 million people who live in the most extreme poverty that are and will continue to be most affected by climate change. These are the people who are forced to live in remote, exposed and vulnerable locations – often on river islands and cyclone prone coastal regions - where the land is cheap but the risks are high. Of Bangladesh’s 64 districts, 24 are already severely affected by growing numbers of climate displaced persons.

As sure as the effects of climate change are in devastating lives and communities in Bangladesh today, it is also clear that the devastation is only going to increase in the future. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that floods, tropical cyclones and storm surges will all become more frequent and more severe in the future due to the effects of climate change. The IPCC also forecasts even higher flows in the rivers that flow into Bangladesh from India, Nepal, Bhutan and China – as a direct result of increasing monsoon rainfalls and the melting of the Himalayan glaciers. Sea level rise as a result of global warming will also result in even more severe coastal flooding in Bangladesh as well as saline intrusion into rivers across the entire southern regions of the country.

The Need for Solutions to Climate Displacement

While the full impact of future climate change is notoriously difficult to accurately predict, it is clear that the 6.5 million climate displaced people in Bangladesh in January 2011 will be joined by many millions more in the future. The effects on communities and the devastation of lands and homes will only become more intense. It is clear that the future is not bright for the people of Bangladesh and equally that land-based solutions are required now.

As poor as they may be, under human rights law, these impoverished and marginalised communities are also the people most in need of having their housing, land and property rights respected, protected and fulfilled. Combined efforts to tackle the challenges of climate displacement with a renewed commitment to HLP rights just might hold out the best hope that CDP’s will a secured a future worth living. And this is precisely what the joint Bangladesh HLP Initiative of Displacement Solutions and the Association of Climate Refugees intends to do.

Despite the considerable efforts of the Bangladeshi Government to combat and address the effects of climate change – including the adoption of the 2005 Bangladesh National Adaptation Programme of Action and the 2009 Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan – the Government has yet to propose clear or practical land-based solutions for addressing the plight of Bangladesh’s current and future climate displaced people.

Though one of the pillars of the Bangladesh Climate Change Action plan is to 'ensure that the poorest and most vulnerable in society are protected from climate change', it is clear that the climate displaced communities living on the embankment in Khulna province and indeed the many millions more across Bangladesh, have thus far received all too little protection, safe housing, or access to basic services from the Government.

Enter the Association for Climate Refugees

Some 200 community-based NGOs throughout the country have recently banded together to form the Association of Climate Refugees (ACR) and to actively find solutions for the citizens of Bangladesh who have already been displaced by climate change. ACR’s founder and director, Muhammad Abu Musa, has chosen for himself one of the world’s more difficult tasks. For this jolly and remarkably optimistic 52 year-old Bangladeshi activist has dedicated his life in recent years towards the gargantuan goal of finding permanent and sustainable residential solutions to the millions of climate displaced people across Bangladesh. If predictions by the IPCC and others are correct, the sprightly Abu Musa will need to find new homes for a further 30 million displaced people in the coming years.

The ACR is focusing on capacity building and empowerment at the local level – directly among the climate affected communities themselves. ACR relies on partner organisations - grassroots activists in 24 of the country’s 64 districts, often working out of a single room in the middle of affected communities, to promptly relay first hand information about any developments in climate affected communities.

Abu Musa believes that it is the affected communities themselves who have the best knowledge and resources for self-protection and adaptation. He also strongly believes that having local communities own the problem is the only way for the Government of Bangladesh to listen to their plight – 'If we showed up as an NGO describing this problem, the Government door would be immediately closed, it is essential that the local communities take action themselves', he says with conviction.

The ACR plans to continue its work of monitoring climate displacement across Bangladesh and in the near future to implement a system of both emergency and permanent relocation out of climate vulnerable locations together with their international partners, in particular Displacement Solutions. ACR is aware that some CDPs have relocated to the distant Chittagong Hill Tracts (some 600 kms from Khulna), and in January 2011, ACR acquired a small land plot of 1.65 acres in Kamarkhola Union in Khulna district, donated by a local landowner sympathetic to ACR’s aims.

The land represents the first such acquisition of land for climate affected communities, and will be transformed into a community land trust aptly named 'Community Land Trust for Climate Displacement Solutions in Bangladesh'. This symbolic gesture, which will provide land solutions for some twenty families, will surely not resolve climate displacement in the country, but will hopefully inspire other landowners to donate larger pieces of unused land to assist in finding solutions to the dismal displaced population of Bangladesh.

Abu Musa and many others believe that the climate displacement solution for Bangladesh will frequently lie in relocation to safer areas, and not solely on building higher and higher embankment walls. Many of the 60,000 people on the embankment in Khulna province expect that in the next monsoon season the entire embankment will be under water and that they will have to move again. Accessing new and viable land will be the secret to ACR’s success.

What will the Future Hold?

The work of ACR is admirable and essential, but alone it is unlikely to be able to find land-based solutions for the climate-displaced people of Bangladesh. Similar to popular movements in other climate affected countries such as Tulele Peisa in Papua New Guinea, path breaking groups like ACR need to be able to work with much more than their currently meagre, shoestring budget. Funds from the newly established Green Fund under the Cancun Adaptation Framework (meant to reach 100 billion USD in coming years) need to be earmarked for groups such as ACR and Tulele Peisa to enable them to resolve the displacement caused by climate change.

It is essential for these groups and governments to band together to develop and clarify land-based solutions as rapidly as possible, before the already drastic situation becomes exponentially worse as the effects of climate change become more severe and more frequent.

Importantly, it is increasingly clear that the imperative to resolve climate displacement in Bangladesh is not only a matter of human dignity and human rights, but also one of security. The marginalised communities most affected by climate change may also be the most susceptible to influence by extremists. As a country with a large Muslim population, thus far largely spared the fundamentalist-driven ravages now so commonplace in Pakistan and elsewhere, some analysts have noted that the most disenfranchised and affected communities could turn to Islamic militantism – and transform Bangladesh into another breeding ground for violent fundamentalism.

Unless climate displaced persons are treated as the rights-holders that they actually already are, and enabled to access new housing, land and property, this looming security threat may become ever more real.

The international community now has an opportunity to address the immediate and future climate displacement crisis in Bangladesh. The world needs to capture the momentum of recent positive developments at the 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Cancun, where national, regional and international coordination and cooperation was encouraged in implementing planned relocation of climate displaced communities and where it was stated that human rights should be fully respected in all climate change related actions.

States across the globe should take heed of the climate displacement nightmare that is unfolding in Bangladesh, and at the same time focus on the emerging dream of durable land solutions for all. Land-based solutions to climate displacement can and should be identified now, and excellent community led groups – such as the Association for Climate Refugees – need to be sufficiently well resourced to be able to implement emergency and permanent relocation strategies. The Government of Bangladesh should also be encouraged – through bilateral, regional and international advocacy – to do more to respect the human rights of all people in Bangladesh, including the 6.5 million people already displaced by climate change.

The development of a National Plan to Resolve Climate Displacement, prepared jointly with civil society groups such as ACR, could go a long way to ensure a brighter future for the displaced millions in this country. The situation in Bangladesh is as clear a demonstration to the world as any that contrary to what many people still think, climate displacement is not a problem for the future – for 2020, or 2030 or 2050 – it is a problem now, and one that urgently requires solutions.
For further news please look at http://displacementsolutions.org/ and The Ecologist at http://www.theecologist.org/

Another Time: Coming up Another Occasion to Displace People

Geetisha Dasgupta

The Phulbari coal project in northwest Bangladesh is a proposed open pit coal mine and includes the construction of at least one 500-MW power plant. At full production about eight million tons of coal will be transported by rail and barges to an offshore reloading facility located in Akram Point. An additional four million tons will be exported to India via railway, and the remaining three million tons will be used for domestic energy consumption. Global Coal Management Resources plc. (GCM) operating through its wholly owned subsidiary, Asia Energy Corporation – Asia Energy Corporation is a single-purpose entity established to develop and implement the Phulbari coal project. On 31 December 2010, GCM stated that they will move forward with the Phublari project subject to the government’s approval of the Scheme of Development. The Bangladesh parliamentary Standing Committee on Power, Energy and mineral resources recommended that the country moves towards open cut mining methods of extraction. It was all good up until this.

The project will acquire almost 6,000 hectares of land (60 sq km) and, according to project documents and independent reports, will physically and economically displace between 50,000-220,000 people. This displacement will take place in one of the most densely populated countries in the world and will destroy a critical agricultural region in the country, threatening Bangladesh’s food supply. Over 80 percent of the land taken for this project will be fertile, agricultural land which will not be replaced, leaving farmers and families dependent on the land for their livelihoods with few options for employment. In short, the project would turn hundreds of thousands of farmers into land-less wage earners, competing for jobs in entirely different sectors.

In addition, if the project is implemented, the open-pit mine will destroy or displace: 1,577 ponds (used to earn income through sale of fish); 80,000 fruit and timber trees (plus many thousands of bamboo sticks); 928 businesses; 36,052 homes, barns, boundary walls and toilets; 106 schools; 48 health facilities; 138 mosques, temples and churches; 692 graveyards; and 2 ancient archaeological sites.
In order to keep the open-pit mine from flooding, the company will need to deplete the water table leading to water scarcity for communities around the mine area.

In addition to the impacts the project will have on water availability, it is likely that there will be significant contamination of land and rivers much beyond the mine area due to acid mine drainage. Hundreds of small rivers in the area are linked like a huge net, allowing polluted water to travel long beyond the mining footprint.

Another important environmental concern is that the project may lead to the degradation of the Sundarbans, a UNESCO protected mangrove forest because the coal will be transported through this area in barges. This forest is a habitat for the Bengal Tiger and many endangered species and also serves as a source of livelihood for fisherfolk and other communities dependent on the wetlands for sustenance. The Sundarbans also act as a natural barrier protecting the Bangladeshi people from the impacts of typhoons, floods and other natural disasters.

The grassroots resistance that has formed around the project has been met with egregious violations to human rights. In August 2006, the Bangladesh Rifles, a paramilitary force, opened fire on the 50,000 local people who were conducting a peaceful protest around the Phulbari project area. At least three people were killed, including a 14-year old boy, and over 100 people were wounded.
Following these protests, in January 2007, Bangladesh was put under emergency rule and a military-backed interim government took over in the country. In many ways, rule of law has been suspended in the country. Over the past 18 months, community leaders, individuals from non-governmental organizations, human rights defenders and others have been intimidated, threatened, arrested and tortured. As one example, in February 2007, Mr. S.M. Nuruzzaman, one of the leaders of the social movement in opposition to the project, was falsely arrested and subsequently tortured. The Bangladeshi ‘joint forces’ were reportedly directed by officials of Asia Energy, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Global Coal Management, to arrest Mr. Nuruzzaman.

In Bangladesh, fewer women than men work in formal paid employment (57.2% vs. 89.8%), more women than men work in the informal agricultural sector (67.8% vs. 59.4%), more women than men are illiterate (67% vs. 48%), women generally lack property rights due to patrilineal inheritance laws, and they perform the majority of domestic care work.

Thus, the Phulbari Coal Project’s potential displacement of over 100,000 people from prime agrarian land, plus its plan to de-water the mine area (appx. 314 sq km.), would produce the following effects:
•migrant women and girls would be pushed disproportionately into flexible, exploitative work, including forced prostitution and human trafficking;
•women’s relative economic inequity would deepen as male property owners alone receive financial compensation;
•women and girls’ time poverty would increase as they shoulder care responsibilities for family members exposed to environmental hazards;
•women themselves would face increased risks of disease, including HIV/AIDS, as they collect water contaminated with arsenic or engage in unprotected sex work; and finally,
•women would face increases in gender-based violence as civil unrest, police brutality and community dissolution all rise.

Recently, there was a Wikileaks release stating that US diplomats are, and have been, pressuring the Bangladesh government to reopen Phulbari coal mine negotiations, which was closed due to protest. Now the bulldozers are warming up once more: any moment now the coal mine could be approved that would displace tens of thousands of families, destroy vital farmland, and devastate mangrove forests that protect the climate-fragile country from rising sea levels.

For more information look at http://www.accountabilityproject.org/article.php?list=type&type=43

The Politics of Silence and ‘Invisibility’: Methodological Dilemmas of working with Undocumented Bangladeshi Migrants in Delhi

Priyanca Mathur Velath

[a member of APRRN, IASFM and an alumni of the CRG Winter Course on Forced Migration, Velath is currently completing her doctoral thesis on the rights of development-induced displaced persons in India at CSLG/J.N.U, New Delhi]

&

Saba Hussain

[(an alumni of the CRG Winter Course on Forced Migration, Saba is currently working as a social development consultant with a Delhi based consulting firm TARU. She has studied Sociology at Delhi University and Development Studies at London School of Economics]

Informal Bangladeshi workers, living in Delhi and its suburbs, have had many tags attached to them – ‘poor’, ‘illegal’ and lately also ‘terrorists’. These adjectives refer to the debates on poverty, illegal migrant and remittance flows and securitization of migration that have been heaped onto the Bangladeshi migrant flows into Indian soil post 1971. Recently intolerance and xenophobia have been added to the debates. (Ramachandran, 2004; 2005, Ramachandran and Crush, 2009)

Moreover, the conflation of the migrants with illegality, crimes and terrorism coincides with the larger urban security paradigm of segregation of the poor This phenomenon is amply illustrated by the policing and surveillance drives culminating into ‘clean-up’ of the poor, mainly floating migrant populations, being conducted in the run up to the recently concluded Commonwealth Games (CWG) 2010 in Delhi. This article intends to revive the discourse on the fieldwork anxieties that emerge when research is attempted on them, by drawing upon the authors’ own experience of working with Bangladeshi migrants across slums in Delhi, before and after CWG.

Politics of ‘Silence’ and Inclusion

Undocumented population movements between Bangladesh and India have heightened the focus upon (in)security, and have forced most of the Bangladeshi workers to illegally acquire citizenship ‘proofs’ or documents. While all the members of the elder generation of Bangladeshis that had come into India post 1971 proudly showed the ‘ID Card’ that late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had issued to them, many in the younger generation claim to have been born on Indian soil. Majority of the Bangladeshi migrants encountered by the researchers had procured signifiers of citizenship such as – Voter ID Card, Ration Card and PAN Card that not only enabled them get certain state sponsored privileges but also the ability to contest claims of their ‘Bangladeshi-ness’. Seen in this way, the monolithic notion of being a citizen is being silently replaced by ideas of ‘becoming a citizen’ through not essentially formal or legal measures (i). The increasing demand for supply of cheap informal labour to the bourgeoning Indian middle class, in cities like Delhi and Mumbai, ensures a continuous ‘pull’ of their services as housemaids, rickshaw-pullers, people entrusted with recycling and garbage disposal, etc.

Number Politics

However, on an issue as commonly debated as this, the lack of any authentic data in terms of reliable numbers is striking for any social researcher. Putting a figure to the number of Bangladeshi migrants living in India is virtually an impossible task. The option of data sources available to the researchers range between the controversial figure of ‘20 million’ quoted by then Governor of Assam (Sinha, 1998, Indian Express 4th Oct 2009), 15 million (Dutta 2004) to a substantially lower 3 million (Census 2001 Report), 3.8 million (Buchenau 2008) to the other end of the spectrum where the Bangladesh government claims that “there is not a single Bangladeshi migrant in India” and maintains “India allowed the migrants to live in its territory for many years, even issued official documents, therefore, these migrants ought to be treated as Indian citizens” (Ramachandran, 2005). Besides, the number and inclusion game plays out when their ‘floating’ populations are used as pawns in vote-bank politics in states like West Bengal.

Working Amidst the Visible Symbols of ‘citizenship’

The problem of lack of data sets on undocumented Bangladeshi migrants in India is further complicated by the very dynamic of the relationship of the migrants with the Indian State. While transborder flows between India and Bangladesh question the idea of nationhood (Samaddar, 1999) and citizenship for the migrants, they also redefine the nature of encounters with the state.On one hand, the migrants themselves view the Indian state as the coercive force behind slum demolitions or periodic rounding-ups of young men for interrogation, and so on.On the other, the same state is seen as the protector or benefactor depending on how well it has been negotiated with.

The authors were constantly grappling responses that reflected the Indian-ness of the respondents. This often deflected the focus away from the areas of research interest around the myriad issues involving the process of ‘becoming Indian’--everyday encounters with the state, the moral economy of protection and patronage, (Chatterjee 2004) and their experience of living and working as migrant men, women and children. And in moments of covert national identity cementing exercises like the CWG in Delhi, the migrants and their groups develop an almost organic strategies to survive through strong information sharing networks, techniques of geographical segregation and camouflage including fake identities and names, adoptions of cultural symbols (like the bindi worn by the majority Hindu women), local dialects and so on. For a social researcher situation like these are equally both intriguing and challenging.

What was striking was that the first step towards inclusion invariably was a lie - on place of origin. The younger and newer migrants in Delhi insisted that their ‘home’ was in the districts of Malda, Nainital or the state of Assam in India. The older generation, resting on the confidence of their ‘Indira Gandhi I-cards’, were more open to revisit their memories of their ardous journey that had forced them to leave their homeland and seek a better life across its borders.

Politics of ‘Invisibility’ or Exclusion

Physical exclusion – pushed to the periphery
Ethnically dominated localities, usually mark all megacities, such as New York’s China Town or London’s South-Asian hub of South Hall. In case of Delhi also it wasn’t very difficult to broadly locate the areas inhabited by Bangladeshi migrants—Govindpuri slum, Nizamuddin Basti, Khadar Colony, Alisia Mor (in Gurgaon). These areas form the periphery of affluent urban (upper) middle class localities of South Delhi, Yamuna riverbank and the gated communities of Gurgaon, which are serviced by the workers from these peripheral localities-mostly slums. Within these slums too, many a times Bangladeshis were found to have been pushed to the outer margins, into lower class professions like waste-disposal e.g., the ‘kabaris’ in Khadar colony.(ii)

However, in the face of the challenges in separating ‘newer’ migrants from the older settled ‘refugees’ of 1971 and the challenges of handling the multiple dimensions of the undocumented-migrant experience, the process of identifying a correct sample became a herculean task. The migrant/settlers were eager to show us the receipts of their being interviewed by Census officials, as proof of their ‘Indian-ness’ but refused to divulge where their roots actually traced back to. Added to this was the anxiety of ‘security’ or ‘well being’ of the respondents (migrants or otherwise) given a heightened surveillance and policing around these locations. This further became agonizing when under state-induced duress they were all asked to shift away or ‘disappear’ from the city during the actual period of the CWG. Overnight guards and maids disappeared from households only to return once the games were over!

Summing up the field work anxieties
It was found that the traditional security perspectives do not offer much clues to understand the issue such as fragmented citizenship, constructed identities and the political economy of patronage and protection. Nor does it offer a humanitarian lens to understand the ‘human tragedy’ of undocumented migration. Based on the restricted experience of fieldwork with undocumented Bangladeshi migrants in Delhi, the authors feel that researchers can contribute towards a solution oriented discourse on undocumented migrants only by continuously deconstructing the politics behind the ‘voices’ and the ‘silences’, the ‘visible’ and the ‘invisible’.

*This article is part of a larger paper being written by the authors. It is based on field work conducted in 2010 that was part of a study of migrant remittance flows between India, Bangladesh and Nepal.

Notes

(i) This particularly effects people with questionable citizenship credentials or what is referred to as the ‘vernacular citizenship’ See Ajay Gandhi (2008), ‘Vernacular Citizenship and Everyday Governance amongst India’s Urban Poor’, Paper Prepared for Roundtable Discussion “Urban Planet: Collective Identities, Governance, and
Empowerment in Megacities”, sponsored by the Irmgard Coninx Foundation. For social researchers working with migrants populations particularly, these ‘vernacular citizenships’ lead to a wide range of methodological dilemmas.
(ii) For a larger study see Ankit Aggarwal, Ashish Singhmar, Mukul Kulshrestha, Atul K. Mittal (2004), ‘Municipal Solid Waste Recycling and associated markets in Delhi’ IIT Delhi.

References

Buchenau, J. (2008) ‘Migration, Remittances and Poverty Alleviation in Bangladesh – Report and Proposal’, UNDP Bangladesh.
Census of India 2001 - Report of the Technical Group on Population Projections Constituted by the National Commission on Population, May, (2006)
Chatterjee, P (2004) Politics of the Governed: Popular Politics in Most of the World, Columbia University Press.
Crush, J. and Ramchandran S. (2009) ‘Xenophobia, International Migration and Human Development’, Human Development Research Paper, UNDP.
Dutta, P. (2004) ‘Push-Pull Factors of Undocumented Migration from Bangladesh to West Bengal” A Perception Study’, The Qualitative Report, Volume 9, No 2.
Ramachandran, S. (2005) Indifference, impotence, and intolerance: transnational Bangladeshis in India, Global Migration Perspectives, No. 42
Samaddar, R. (1999) The Marginal Nation: Transborder Migration from Bangladesh to West Bengal, Sage Publications Ltd.
Sinha, S.K. (1998) ‘Illegal Migration into Assam’, Report on Illegal Migration into Assam Submitted to the President of India

Climate Change and Forced Migration: An Overview

Mostafa Mahmud Naser

[is an Assistant Professor, Department of Law, University of Chittagong, Bangladesh and Ph.D. candidate, Macquarie Law School, Australia]

Introduction

Forced displacement for environmental reasons is not a phenomenon unique to the present day. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, such migration mainly took place due to natural environmental degradation or catastrophe; such as floods, storms, hurricanes; or owing to scarcity of land resources. In the twentieth century, however, environmental degradation due to global climate change caused by human interferences with the ecology has tremendously increased natural disasters and calamities. Now natural disasters are ‘more intense and frequent and the human impacts are more devastating’. 1 Over the past two decades, the number of major disasters per year has increase from 200 to 400 major. 2 According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (hereinafter as IPCC), human-induced climate change will transform the ecological balance of the earth and lead to calamitous consequences for the human rights of millions of people all over the world. 3 The AR4 of the IPCC report concludes that climate change has already influenced ecological systems and this – with scientific certainty – is creating increased and frequency of natural events including floods, hurricanes, droughts, desertification, scarcity of water resources and unpredictability of seasons.4

Climate change induced displacement: no more prediction but a reality

Thus, the serious and rapid alteration of ecosystems by anthropogenic interference has direct and indirect impact on society which will ultimately lead to mass migration, both permanent and temporary. Human migration, forced or otherwise, will undoubtedly be one of the most significant consequences of environmental degradation due to climate change in decades to come. Many experts argue that large numbers of people are already on the move, with millions more expected to follow as evidence of climate change mounts.5 As early as in 1990 the IPCC argued that the greatest single impact of climate change could be on human migration.

Currently, there is no global assessment of the statistics of environmental displacement since no international organisation collects information on persons displaced by climate change. 6 Nor is there much capacity in developing and least developed countries (LDC) or the international community to gather this sort of data.7 So, the existence and the scope of the issue of climate displacement are often established by reference to the likely numbers of displaced people. Based on a plausible range of emission scenario, current estimates typically range from 50 million to 1 billion, but is usually estimated to be around 200-250 million people by 2050, either within their country or across borders, on a permanent or temporary basis owing to the direct impacts of climate change. 8 However, Professor Myers’ estimate of 200 million climate migrants by 2050 has become the generally accepted figure and is widely cited. 9 It would mean that by 2050 one in every 45 people in the world would have been displaced by climate change. 10 Thus, the number of future climate migration shows a terrifying figure, a ten-fold increase on today’s entire population of documented refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs).

However, numerous fundamental questions about numbers are being asked in scientific, policy and academic circles. 11 The available estimates, generally derived from the environmental academic Norman Myers, are massively contested. The key issue raised by the debate around the numbers of climate change displaced people is whether it is possible to predict with any degree of certainty the likely numbers and distribution of persons displaced by climate change. It is also criticised that such estimates have a large margin of error and mostly depend on underlying assumptions about population growth, economic development, temperature increase, or the degree and timing of climate change impacts such as sea-level rise. 12 The critics also argue that there is ‘no evidence that environmental change leads directly to mass refugee flows, especially flows to developed countries’.13 Migration researcher, Richard Black has criticised the ways of repeated presentation of numbers of environmental refugees by numerous authors as ‘without independent verification of its accuracy’. 14

Lack of international legal framework and importance of developing a new international framework

The climate change poses new challenges to international law. 15 With all the predicted dangers and future catastrophe, the existing international legal frameworks - including its laws and its institutions - do not adequately address the emerging crisis. The current international legal regime does not offer any concrete protection for the environmentally displaced people. There is no legally binding mechanism for protection of these persons. Even they are not yet recognised in international law as an identifiable group whose rights are expressly articulated, or as a formal legal category of people in need of special protection. Obviously this has important ramifications for assigning responsibility to appropriate domestic and international institutions and agencies to address the rights and duties concerned. Because the forced population displacement will induce very real legal, political, economic, human security, human rights, public health and conflict related concerns.16 The international community, specially the developed countries, are both legally and ethically responsible to ensure protection of human rights of this vulnerable section of people.

One solution to the current inadequacy of legal responses is to develop a new international agreement that specifically recognise the plight of individuals forced to leave their homes, families, friends, and livelihoods for environmental reasons. The Convention would establish an international regime for the status, treatment and protection of climate change displaced persons. The new independent convention would prioritise the large and emerging problem of climate change displacement. 17 It would also reflect the underlying issues raised by the climate change displacement problem and fill the legal gap with the specificity states and communities need. This instrument should ensure that climate change displaced persons receive adequate assistance in the form of human rights protections and humanitarian aid. It should also establish an administrative system to implement the elaborate regime in a fair and efficient manner.

Conclusion: Towards a New Legal Framework for Climate Induced Displacement

It is increasingly evident that the numbers of environmentally displaced people are growing at a rapid rate. This vast number of people is largely left unprotected in current refugee regime. States around the world have contributed to or have been affected by climate change. So, the displacement associated with it requires international attention. Since the nature of climate change is global and humans play a contributory role, the international community should accept responsibility for mitigating climate-induced displacement. 18 States should develop an innovative, international, and interdisciplinary approach that can be implemented before the situation reaches a crisis stage.

In recognizing the problem of climate change displacement, this paper has highlighted the present lacuna within the international legal system in terms of effectively recognising and responding to the needs of climate induced displacement. One solution to the current inadequacy of legal responses may be developing a new convention that provides both assistance and protection to environmentally displaced persons and creates affirmative obligations for states to prevent the environmental disasters that force displacement. The new instrument could help alleviate the emerging climate change displacement crisis.

Notes

1.António Guterres, ‘Climate Change could Become the Biggest Driver of Displacement’, (Speech delivered at the press conference at the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009, Copenhagen, Denmark, 16 December 2009. available at http://www.unhcr.org/4b2910239.html at 02 March 2009.
2.David Adam, ‘Food Prices Threaten Global Security – UN’ The Guardian, (United Kingdom), 09 April, 2008. < http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/09/food.unitednations> at 03 March 2010.
3.See, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Summary for Policymakers (2007) 12. < http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-wg2.htm.> 12 September 2009.
4.See, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ‘Climate Change 2007: Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Summary for Policymakers’, Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report (2007).
5.Achim Steiner, ‘Foreword’, (2008) 31 Forced Migration Review, 4.
6.Vikram Odedra Kolmannskog, ‘Future Floods of Refugees: A Comment on Climate Change, Conflict and Forced Migration’ (Norwegian Refugee Council, 2008) 13- 14.
7.Tess Burton and David Hodgkinson, Cliamte Change Migrants and Unicorns: A Discussion Note on Conceptualising Climate Change Displaced People, The Hodgknson Group – Climate Change and Aviation Advisors (Publications) 8 at 23 July 2009.
8.See generally, Norman Myers, ‘Environmental Refugees in a globally warmed world’, (1993) 43(11) BioScience 752.; Norman Myers, ‘Environmental Refugees: An Emergent Security Issue’, 13th Economic Forum, Prague, 23 – 27 May 2005; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Christian Aid, ‘Human Tide: The Real Migration Crisis’ (Christian Aid, 2007), 50.
9.Oli Brown, ‘The Numbers Game’ (2008) 31 Forced Migration Review, 8.
10.From a predicted global population of 9.075 billion in 2050 from 6.54 billion in at an annual growth rate of 1.1%
11.Camillo Boano, ‘FMO Research Guide on Climate Change and Displacement’ (FMO Research Guide, Forced Migration Online (FMO) 2008) 13.
12.For criticism of such estimates, see A. Suhrke, ‘Environmental Degradation and Population Flows’, (1994) 47(2) Journal of International Affairs, 478.; Stephen Castles, ‘Environmental Change and Forced Migration: Making Sense of the Debate’, (New Issues in Refugee Research Working Paper No. 70, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 2002) 2–3.; and Richard Black, ‘Environmental Refugees: Myth or Reality?’ (New Issues in Refugee Research Working Paper No 34, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 2002), 2–8.
13.Stephen Castles, ‘Environmental Change and Forced Migration: Making Sense of the Debate’, (New Issues in Refugee Research Working Paper No. 70, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 2002) 2.
14.Richard Black, ‘Environmental Refugees: Myth or Reality?’ (New Issues in Refugee Research Working Paper No 34, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 2002), 1.
15.The Legal Status of Environmental Refugees, available at http://www.gimun.org/en/2009/committees/6th/environmental-refugees
16.Displacement Solutions, Meeting Report on Climate Change, Human Rights and Forced Human Displacement (2008), 11.
17.Bonnie Docherty and Tyler Giannini, ‘Confronting a Rising Tide: A Proposal for a Convention on Climate Change Refugees’ (2009) 33 Harvard Environmental Law Review, 349-403, 397 -- 401.
18.Ibid.

Nationalising Space: Coming to Terms with Rights of Migrants

Vanita Banjan

[is at the Dept. of Politics, SIES College of Arts, Science and Commerce, Sion (W), Mumbai 400022]

The migration narrative unfolds the manner human development has transpired and mankind benefited. Migration is an age old phenomenon but the modernization paradigm hypothesized that it is the rise of industrialisation and thereby urbanisation which encouraged migration on a large scale. 1 Post industrialisation the world saw the rise of nation states and its territorial limits demarcated with rigid borders erected around ethnocultural communities residing within. Having created the territorial reality brought in tow the legal paraphernalia for naturalisation and immigration. But in this process it was forgotten that the decision to migrate was connected to the value of freedom, the right to choose where one wants to live or settle. Today all those who choose to move from one country to another are labelled as immigrants, though there is no agreement on the time one needs to spend in the other country to be identified as a migrant. Borders are today open for free flow of trade and capital but there is a barrier imposed on mobility of migrant labour, and that is the reason the matter has invoked so much deliberation world over. Though migration is a well researched topic in the North, it is only in the recent years that it is being discussed in the South, especially the South-South migration.

The nations in South Asia are comparatively young having won their independence in the 20th Century and are classified as developing nations. Comparatively India is territorially large and better off nation in the South Asian region and draws immigrants from the neighbouring states. Thus the paper focuses on the influx of illegal immigrants especially from Bangladesh. Considering the economic and environmental problems in their home country these immigrants hope to explore the opportunities in India and use their talents with the resources here and share the benefits of their labour with their families. Many of them receive patronage from political parties who use them as vote banks. Despite the media hype and mass movement against immigration there are no figures available with the Government or any other agencies on the exact number of Bangladeshi migrants in India. This ambiguity in identifying the migrants weakens the government’s position in tackling the issue. Today the matter is highly politicised and no political party is interested in resolving the matter but without fail each party tries to benefit from it either by supporting the migrants and generating a vote bank or sensitising the people against it and garnering vote on the basis of the fear so generated. Most nations treat immigrants as criminals, the paper tries to explore a golden mean between a humane approach to the undocumented migrants while maintaining the states responsibility of to its citizens and sovereignty.

Generally it is difficult to measure illegal migrants in a country but despite that it is estimated that it comprises of 10 per cent or greater of all migrants. Illegal or undocumented migration is a response to the legal restrictions at the borders, whenever the legal avenues of migration are constrained the illegal migration swells. 2 The demographic changes in the border districts of Assam and West Bengal and the corresponding clamour of various agencies including the media resulted into the much awaited action of the Central government on fencing of the border area. Crores of rupees were spent on the construction of the fences but certain areas still remain unfenced. Fencing might have reduced border crossing but has not stopped it completely. The cultural connectivity between the two nations and its citizens cannot be exterminated by artificially created fences or walls.

To understand the augmentation of undocumented Bangladeshi migrants and the violent reaction to them one has to glance in the past and trace the genesis of the problem. Since the days of partition, West Bengal and Assam has seen the onslaught of millions of refugees which aggravated during the creation of Bangladesh. India stoically sustained and supported the refugees with the hope that they would return once Bangladesh was created. . But under the Indra- Mujib treaty those who came to India before 25 March 1971(the day Bangladesh was created) were granted citizenship. 3 But the influx refused to stop that is when the borders started becoming rigid to the extent that most of it today stands fenced.

“People flee, primarily, not to wealth, but from poverty” 4. Global warning and the climate change is taking its toll in this country in the most ruthless manner. Every monsoon the flood in the Brahmaputra swallows up villages destroying homes and property creating ‘Mohfiz’. 5 Land is guzzled by the river rendering landowners as landless labourers. Thus the Bangladeshis are largely escaping from the environmental onslaught and find India as a viable alternative where land is fertile; there is a demand for cheap labour and if they manage to cross the border without getting caught they are assured of survival.

The instinct to survive forces a Bangladeshi to move but the immigration rules constitutes an obstacle. But if legal immigration is not possible there is always the alternative of entering illegally or overstaying and being harboured by relatives or friends who have come earlier. 6 As they develop entitlements in India, it becomes difficult to distinguish an immigrant from a citizen. Eventually when they start staking political claims it may undermine the legitimacy of the government and the sovereignty of the state. There are reports that few of these immigrants have won elections in some of the border districts of Assam. Secondly, most of these immigrants vote enbloc which plays a decisive role in the election of candidates to the legislative bodies.

The rise of nation state bought in tow the term of nationalism and nationality. In order to provide security it became essential to identify citizens and construct demographic regimes. Everyone was expected to have only one nationality and it would provide the individual with a measure of protection in a hostile anarchic world of nation-states. Under international law states are not required to admit aliens. But if they do, they are obliged to treat them in humane and civilized manner. Illegal migration puts the nation state in a quandary as they enter without documents or permission and once in, the receiving state is bound by the international norm of ‘non refoulement’. 7 India has no immigration policy whatsoever; hence there is much ambiguity in tackling the case of arrested migrants. When a few of those who are arrested while crossing the border with no authentic document are to be deported, Bangladesh refuses to admit them, forcing an inhuman modus operandi of ‘push back’. In case of Assam, the IMDT Act has failed to detect the illegal migrants, which is discernible by the frugal number of deportations. More over the police cannot be compelled to fritter their energy into the futile exercise of preparing cases against immigrants and on the issuance of the ‘Quit India’ notice they escape from their place of residence to unknown destinations, probably never to be caught again. The Indo-Bangla border is infested with touts, they arrange for the crossing of the borders for an amount, ensuring safe passage, in connivance with the BSF. Locals at the border area also indulge in providing hiding place for such immigrants for a day or two till it is safe for them to move on, for a cost. Over the years the network is well established and has become a matter of routine for all parties involved namely immigrants, locals, touts, BDR and the BSF.

Migration is a two way process it affects both the sending country and the receiving country. For the sending country it is less responsibility on the state to fend for the poor labourers who are a burden on the exchequer but it also means remittance in the long run. Remittance sent back to home country are a source of foreign exchange and important addition to gross national product . 8 This is especially true of the migrants from South Asia to the Gulf; there are instances of how states like Kerala have flourished due to petro-dollars. Though there may not be similar remittance for a Bangladeshi migrant working in India but nonetheless it is better than the starvation or destitution he faces at home. Moreover he has nothing to lose, if he manages to cross illegally he can earn enough to sustain himself and his family but if he gets caught even then he is well taken care of by the Indian jail authorities.

Migrants are often alleged of stealing the job from the locals and reduce the wage below acceptable level. While most of them are able to earn enough for a decent living they are assumed to take away the jobs of the local. These migrants have been forced out of their country for economic reasons and come with an understanding that they have to work hard to survive and do so, for this very reason they are preferred over the locals. Moreover locals haven’t been very enterprising but get jealous when the migrants do well. The resentment due to jealousy against the immigrants was experienced in the Nellie killings in Assam. 9

The ground reality is that if the locals could do the jobs then there would be no opportunity for migrants but because locals refuse to work as farm labourers, construction workers, or cycle rickshaw puller the immigrants are absorbed in. Moreover the immigrants are offered jobs, often knowingly, by locals for the lure of cheap labour. Immigrants have no option but to work hard and thus are ready to go an extra mile to ensure employment; this has been grudgingly acknowledged by locals themselves. Furthermore, since most of the immigrants would be absorbed in particular occupations it would get a social label as “immigrant’s job” resulting into a general denial by locals of taking it up. 10 Hence the liberal paradox: the economic logic of liberalism is one of openness, but the political and legal logic is one of closure.11

Conclusion

Migration is not a norm but a deviation and hence has to be treated accordingly. Taking residence abroad is an exception not a rule. It is estimated that around 175 million people around the world are international migrants, which is just 2.3 per cent of the world’s population. Furthermore, migration doesn’t occur in isolation but sprints parallel to movements of commodities and capital. Though the figure doesn’t necessitate the pressing of the panic button today, it is fitting to predict that the twenty first century is going to be the age of migration.12 Thus the norm prevalent in the modern age of nationalising space for citizens needs to be set right in the post modern era where walls are crumbling under the influence of globalisation and people prefer to be mobile. The phenomena of migration will continue as long as the difference in development and economic opportunities between nations remains as wide as it is. Migration in itself is not a crime, but they are victims of circumstances and in need of protection. 13

Rights conferred on citizens are product of their membership of the nation state. Citizenship is a privilege and denotes exclusivity of those who belong to a nation. The traditional nation state retains the primary powers to grant citizenship and as long as this exclusivity is maintained migrants will continue to remain at the periphery without rights. Citizenship is determined by decent and there are no criteria or task to be performed by a citizen to retain it. Pursuing the line of providing human security each nation facing the issue of migration has to undertake an obligation to share this privilege with migrants. Save for the rights of refugees’ recognised by International community there are no legal guidelines provided for migrants. But the recent development on international human rights law have helped to solidify the position of individuals vis-a-vis the nation-state, to the extent that individuals have acquired a sort of international legal personality, leading some analyst to speculate that we are entering a post national era characterised by universal personhood. 14 In this postnational model, universal personhood replaces nationhood; and a universal human right replaces national right. Thus the individual transcends the citizen 15.

As the Swiss novelist Max Frisch pointed out at, the European governments had ‘asked for workers, but human beings came’. Unlike goods or capital, migrants (qua human beings) can and do acquire rights, particularly under the aegis of the laws and constitutions of liberal states, which afford migrants a measure of due process and equal protection 16.

Notes

1.Christiane Harziq and Dirk Hoerder with Gabaccia Donna (2009) What is Migration History? Cambridge, Polity p.1.
2.Anthony M. Messina and Gallya Lahav (Ed) (2006), Migration Reader: Exploring Politics and Policies, Viva Books Private Limited, New Delhi, p.10.
3.The Indo-Bangladeshi Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Peace was a 25-year treaty that was signed on March 19, 1972 forging close bilateral relations between India and the newly-established state of Bangladesh.
4.An observation made by an interdepartmental study group set by the Swedish Ministry of Labour in 1990.
5.Mohfiz is the wretched of the earth. The term is taken from Sanjoy Hazarika (2000) Rites of Passage, Penguin Books, New Delhi.
6.Han Entzinger, Marco Matiniello and Catherine Wihtol De Wenden (Ed) (2004) Migration Between States and Markets, Aldershot, England, Ashgate Publishing Ltd. p. XV.
7.The principle of "refoulement" was officially enshrined in the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and is also contained in the 1967 Protocol and Art 3 of the 1984 Torture Convention.
8.Anthony M. Messina, Op. cit. p. 27.
9.In 1983 the political, economic and social foundation of Assamese society collapsed resulting into Bengali migrants being brutally massacred by the hundreds, sparing none women, children and men alike.
10.Anthony M. Messina, Op. cit. p. 49
11.Han Entzinger Op. cit. p. 4.
12.Castles Stephen and Miller Mark J. (1998) The Age of Migration, London, Macmillan Press Ltd., 2nd Edition. p. 5
13.Anthony M. Messina, Op. cit. p. 27.
14.Han Entzinger, Op.cit. p. 14.
15.Nash Kate (ed) (2000) Readings in Contemporary Political Sociology, Oxford, Blackwell Publishers. p. 269.
16.Han Entzinger, Op.cit. p. 11.

Protection and Prevention – of the Community & Child Migrants

Priyanca Mathur Velath

[a member of APRRN, IASFM and an alumni of the CRG Winter Course on Forced Migration, Velath is currently completing her doctoral thesis on the rights of development-induced displaced persons in India at CSLG/J.N.U, New Delhi]

The dilemma in forced migration studies, of whether refugees and IDPs are distinct and if the former is ‘more’ in need of protection, is perhaps jinxed to remain unresolved. But growing out of it are equally, if not more, pressing concerns like what is protection and who needs it. Who needs it most and who slips through the gaps? Can’t protection needs be minimised through preventive mechanisms? Can a community approach address refugee needs better? While refugees are entitled to rights as they ‘vote through their feet’ and flee into a country outside that of their nationality, IDPs continue to crave for rights within the borders of their own country. While their protection needs may get highlighted, often the R&R needs of those internally displaced by ‘developmental’ projects get neglected. Thus this issue of RWO tries to sew together a tapestry of four diverse key concepts - ‘child migrants’, ‘preventive mechanism’, ‘IDP policy’ and ‘community approach’.

Glebova’s article draws attention to the unfortunate plight of child migrants in the Caribbean who slip through the gaps in the legal protection framework and become ‘invisible’ to rights. They become doubly neglected as they reside in a region where low asylum numbers makes migration an issue of lesser national importance. She rightly highlights that “there is still very little research on measuring the impact of migration on families and their children, whether in the Caribbean or worldwide.” The tragic irony is that all Caribbean states have ratified the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) making it legally binding on their territory but its effective implementation is lagging behind. Issues crucial to these migrant children are access to education and health care, particularly the unaccompanied ones who are not just denied access to legal and practical assistance, but also at times detained in places of institutional care. What is of particular concern is that “unaccompanied children can be wrongly considered to be adult undocumented migrants, and deported without exercising their right to seek asylum, and without regard for the rights of the child”.

Jeyaprakash revives the importance of stressing on the preventive mechanism in displacement dynamics. Today when the world around us erupts sporadically with ‘new’ refugee situations like that arising out of Libya, Jeyaprakash’s attempt to push our attention to the need to look at ‘prevention’ has value in making us question if these conditions could have been averted. Despite the fact that recent research, as he notes, has shown that “conceptual fragility” and “internal inconsistencies” continues to plague the concept of prevention, leading it to even being termed as an “impractical idea”. He argues that the rise in the refugee trend and a worst voluntary repatriation scenario stress clearly the need and the importance of prevention policies. “We cannot deny the need for including prevention concerns in displacement dialectics because of the fact that each and every reality has an assignable cause. This causal knowledge leads to prevention.”

Dahal’s article revives the old argument that even though estimates of the number of IDPs are said to be controversial due to debates over definitions as well as methodological and practical problems in counting, it is widely held that because of new forms of conflict, among other reasons, estimates of IDPs are now greater than those associated with refugees. He focuses on the famous Deng UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and through that lens examines the IDP policy of the Himalayan state of Nepal, where conflict-induced displacement is relatively a new phenomenon. Quoting the UN, Dahal points out that human rights problems and violations faced by IDPs in Nepal are related to a number of factors, including poor security and protection; discrimination; inadequate food, shelter, health care or access to education for children; a lack of personal and property identification documents; and gender-based violence, sexual abuse and increased domestic violence. He also notes the deleterious impact such forced migration has on children in Nepal. Besides, crucial observations that emerge from his piece are that in Nepal the legal identity of every IDP and the integrated rehabilitation programs has not yet been specified. Moreover, displaced persons fear to go back to their place of origin without any guarantee of life or the ability to make a living. According to various sources, up to 70,000 IDPs in Nepal do not want to return to their native areas due to fears about security and discrimination as well as housing, land and property restitution. “This is a problem because IDP National Policy only provides support to those IDPs who are willing to return”.

The article sent by the UNHCR Office discusses the community based approach to refugee protection adopted by them in Delhi, one that is based on the principle of ‘helping refugees to help themselves’. Community building between refugees and the host population in the long run also encourages local integration as a possible durable solution. Such an approach supports refugees and asylum seekers in re-establishing familiar cultural patterns and support structures to work together in exercising and enjoying their human rights. (UNHCR: 2008) In fact the UNHCR’s 2009 policy on refugee protection and solutions in urban areas emphasises on community orientation as one of the key principles. “To ensure the best possible use of its limited resources, UNHCR has gradually shifted away from an individual assistance to a community based approach by targeting assistance to those refugees and asylum seekers most in need, including unaccompanied and separated children, single women, female headed households, the elderly, the infirm and persons with disabilities.” One does hope that in the end such a participatory model of refugee protection helps to build and restore a sense of ‘community’ among otherwise dispersed refugee groups in a complex urban setting like New Delhi.

Finally in our section on Reports, Nandakishor critically analyses the proceedings of a recently held conference on ‘Displacement and Rehabilitation: Solutions for the Future’. He puts forth the key discussion points that emerged on sessions that were held on varied issues like Displacement and Livelihood’, ‘Gender, Ethnicity Indigenous Communities and R& R issues’, ‘Rehabilitation Policy and Implementation Issues’,‘ Civil Society and Corporate Bodies’, and ‘Displacement and People’s Response’. Some commendable suggestions are that displaced families be resettled in the spirit of ‘community transplanted’ so that the displaced will fell less culturally alienated; wider dissemination of the land acquisition notices; formation of evaluation committees that should comprise of stakeholders, academia, civil society and government representatives; consultation and participation of affected groups/individuals; resettlement sites to be fully developed prior to relocation; compulsory employment for one member of every displaced family; and efforts to address ‘psychological’ trauma associated with displacement etc.

We shall look forward to your responses and further contributions.

Call for papers: Labor in the Global South: A Search for Solutions-A global, interdisciplinary graduate student research conference
Venue – University of California, U.S.A. || Date - May 27-28, 2011
It is critical to reexamine the position of labor in the global South, in the context of momentous changes underway in the global economic and political order. Consider some of those changes: Newly rising powers, such as Brazil, China, and South Africa, are assuming greater roles. Increasing numbers of voices are questioning neoliberal prescriptions and market fundamentalist solutions, and pushing for a broader conception of development that includes social as well as economic dimensions. New movements for democracy are stirring in the Middle East, along with continuing struggles over the degree and nature of democracy across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. At the same time, informal and irregular employment continue to make up a huge proportion of jobs in the global South, and the fickleness of global capital flows undermines attempts to carry out sustainable development and upgrade job quality. The UN estimates that over 200 million people world-wide are international migrants (above all from poorer to richer countries), and migrant remittances constitute a major income strategy for families and indeed whole countries in the South.

In this context, it is important to take stock of the state of work and workers in the global South, and to share best practices and critiques of strategies to upgrade jobs and empower workers. This conference will bring together graduate students from the United States and around the world to bring their own research to bear on these issues. The goal is not just to exchange information, but to advance discussions about strategies and solutions. To this end, graduate student presentations, which will make up the bulk of conference content, will be supplemented by innovative labor-related practitioners from the South, in addition to senior academics from the United States. Also, to this end, we ask that paper submissions look toward solutions as well as analyzing current and historical conditions. We welcome submissions that look at a full range of issues involving labor, work, and employment, including formal employment, informal employment, and household and other uncompensated work. Possible topics include, but are not limited to the following themes on labor in the global South:
• Democracy and human rights
• Development
• Gender and family
• Race and ethnicity
• Migration
• Corporations and global commodity chains
• Public policies, labor movements and other social movements, NGOs

Submissions are welcome from graduate students in a variety of disciplines, including but not limited to: sociology, political science, history, geography, anthropology, economics, area studies, ethnic and gender studies, public policy, social welfare, and urban planning.

A limited number of travel scholarships (airplane fare only) are available to graduate students outside the United States. Participants from outside Los Angeles will be housed with UCLA graduate students and faculty at no cost.

Proposals (1 page) are due April 8, 2011. Include your name, institutional affiliation (including graduate program name), and country. Please indicate whether you wish to be considered for a travel scholarship. Send to laborintheglobalsouth@gmail.com

Questions? Contact Florentina Craciun at laborintheglobalsouth@gmail.compri

Eviction Left 15 Refugee Families Homeless in Delhi

24 March 2011: Fifteen Chin refugee families, a total of 58 members, are camping out in makeshift shelters in an open space behind the UNHCR Office in Delhi, India after they were evicted from their quarters by the local Indian landlord yesterday.

The families, including children and elderly with health problems, were reportedly forced to move out after the neighbors make complaints to the manager of the flat, Mr. Babulo.

"We were told by the manager that the other neighbors didn't like the smell of our food which includes fish paste (Ngapih). Although we actually refrained from eating ngapih after their initial complaints, they still wanted us out of this area," said Mr. Joshua Hrang Lian Kap, one of the evicted family members.

"Most of the times, we felt that they were hostile to us. Our children got beaten up for no reasons and our properties stolen. We faced verbal and physical abuses. Their intention is clearly to drive us out from this location," continued Mr. Joshua.

The families are now camping out in an open space by the back entrance of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees office, hoping to get assistance and protection from the UN refugee agency.

"They were informed to vacate the rooms on 15 March 2011 by the landlord, who threatened to take legal actions against them if they failed to comply. So, they had no choice but to move out as they couldn't find any other places that they could afford," added the Chin resident in Delhi.

Meanwhile, it has been reported that 42 Burmese refugees were arrested from their work places, including from local restaurants and factories in a police raid in Aizawl, Mizoram State of India on Tuesday.

At least as 100,000 Chins and other migrant workers from Burma, are estimated to be living in Mizoram State.

Refugee Girl Rescued from Attempted Sexual Assault

A Chin refugee girl, 14, was rescued by passers-by around 3pm Indian local time yesterday from an alleged attempted rape by a local Indian while she was washing clothes. Originally from Lingtui village in Matupi Township of Chin State, the girl was allegedly being approached by a naked neighbor identified as Mr. Waahid when passers-by intervened.

"Suddenly, the girl cried out loudly and the nearby people rushed to her help immediately. And the incident has already been reported to the police," said a Chin resident in the neighborhood.
The girl, who is looking after her mentally challenged mother, came to New Delhi in January 2007 and has been recognized as a mandated refugee by the UNHCR in April 2007.
Last year, at least 30 refugee women were reported to have been sexually assaulted or violently beaten by local Indian men during attempted sexual assaults.
http://chinlandguardian.com/news-2009/1245-eviction-left-15-refugee-families-homeless-in-delhi.html

The Libyan Refugee Crisis - Thousands of people are fleeing the violence in Libya every day, the U.N. refugee agency says.
March 25, 2011 |

Tunisia is receiving about 2,000 arrivals daily, most of them Sudanese and Bangladeshi, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said in a statement. Between 1,500 and 2,000 others are crossing into Egypt each day, most of them Libyans and Egyptians but also a growing number from Chad. As of Wednesday, the total number who had fled the fighting stood at more than 351,000, the statement said. The UNHCR is also receiving reports from its partners of increasing displacement inside Libya. The Santa Monica-based International Medical Corps estimates that as many as 20,000 people have taken refuge in the small town of Butwen, east of the contested city of Ajdabiya, the statement said. The Libyan Red Crescent has told the UNHCR that some 5,000 people are displaced in the coastal town of Derna.

The UNHCR said it had sent two convoys with medical supplies to the rebel stronghold of Benghazi through the Egyptian Red Crescent and the Libyan Red Crescent. It has also sent thousands of blankets, sleeping mats and other relief items. But it said it did not have access to other parts of Libya.

Meanwhile, thousands of migrant workers escaping the violence in Libya, many of them Egyptian, are stranded in a makeshift camp on the border with Tunisia, and appeal for their governments to evacuate them. Franco Frattini, the foreign minister, said Italy was bracing for an exodus 10 times bigger than the number of Albanians who fled to Italy in the 1990s when the Balkan nation descended into anarchy. "We know what to expect when the Libyan national system falls – a wave of 200,000 to 300,000 immigrants," Mr Frattini said. "These are estimates, and on the low side ... It is a Biblical exodus. It's a problem that no Italian should underestimate." He said about a third of Libya's population, or 2.5 million people, are immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa who could flee if the popular revolt topples the government of Muammar Gaddafi. Those living in the eastern part of Libya might try to reach Greece, rather than Italy, because it is closer, he said.

Umberto Bossi, a minister in the government of Silvio Berlusconi and the leader of the Northern League party, threatened to dump the problem on other European countries. "If they arrive we'll send them to France and Germany," he said. The number of refugees and economic migrants reaching Italian islands like Lampedusa, which lies close to the coast of Tunisia, fell sharply after Silvio Berlusconi concluded a pact with Col. Gaddafi in 2008 under which the Libyan navy and coast guard intercepted boat loads of Africans. But the UN's agency for refugees appealed to Italy not to block migrants who may flee from Libya.

The UN’s refugee agency has reacted with understanding to Malta’s unwillingness to host any sub-Saharan refugees evacuated to Egypt and Tunisia Libya. The UNHCR had launched an appeal on behalf of thousands of Eritrean and Somali refugees, among others, who have fled the conflict in the embattled North African state but are unable to return home where they would be persecuted. The European Commission responded by trying to lobby member states to accept resettling some of these migrants but the Maltese government has made it clear it would not be part of such an effort. “At this stage, I think we are already carrying a much bigger burden than we can handle in terms of refugees and asylum seekers and so we won’t be making any offers,” Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi said.

However, the UNHCR, which had its fair share of diplomatic disputes with the Maltese government over immigration, told The Sunday Times that while all contributions were welcome it “would not expect that Malta would be among the main resettlement destinations for these refugees”. “Some 1,000 refugees have in recent years benefited from such programmes. The UNHCR considers that this support can provide opportunities for Malta to make further progress with improving the situation also for those who remain in the country,” a spokesman for the agency said. Malta hosts around 3,700 African migrants (79 in detention, 2,224 in open centres and 1,400 in the community) according to official statistics released in November – a far cry from over 10,000 immigrants who were estimated to be in Malta in 2008.However, the government is bracing itself for a possible exodus from Libya once the situation there settles down. Yesterday, the Armed Forces were monitoring a vessel reportedly carrying 300 migrants believed to have left Tripoli on Friday. Asked if Malta should take a symbolic number of migrants evacuated from Libya, a spokesman for the Justice Ministry said: “The EU has already made its position on the matter clear when it pledged its support to the southern member states during an extraordinary European Council held on March 11. “At present Malta is hosting around 4,000 African immigrants while at the same time having by far the highest rate of asylum applications in the EU. “Malta will continue to provide assistance to these people while keeping its size, limited resources and small population in sight. Malta has already proven that it assists and offers protection to those in need,” he said. Earlier this month, about 100 members of the Eritrean community in Malta held a demonstration in Valletta calling on the island and the international community to help evacuate asylum seekers stranded in Libya. They said the Eritreans could not return to their country because they would be prosecuted and as they were not part of the international evacuation effort, they were stranded without protection in Libya. Some were in danger of being shot, being mistaken for Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s mercenaries, they added.

The Jesuit Refugee Service had also appealed to the EU and the international community to take immediate and concrete action to provide resettlement opportunities for some the Eritrean asylum seekers stranded in Libya. When contacted, JRS laid stress on the need for northern Europe to help the south, but urged Malta to give special consideration to refugees whose close family members have already been granted international protection here. “While the Libyan crisis, unfolding so close to Malta, is bound to make additional demands on our structures and resources, the international community and EU member states in particular clearly share the moral obligation to come forward with offers of resettlement for refugees reaching Malta and other southern European states who receive a disproportionate numbers of asylum seekers in relation to their resources,” the JRS said.

Women and Children Aboard Refugee Boat from Libya

27/3/2011 - The first boat of refugees from Libya has arrived in Italy. Women and children are among the passengers.
Yesterday, the first boat of migrants fleeing Libya reached the shores of Italy. The boat carried 350 African migrants. Conditions on the boat are said to be very poor, with roughly ten children and 20 women on board. Most of the migrants aboard the ship are Eritreans, Ethiopians and Somalians. Two pregnant women were aboard the ship. Both were airlifted to hospitals on the shore – one on the island of Lampedusa, the other on the well-known island of Sicily. While the first woman's baby lived through the ordeal, the baby of the second woman did not survive, say medical staff.

The boat is reportedly taking on water, but is being assisted by a Canadian ship taking part in the NATO-enforced naval arms embargo on Libya. “We are monitoring the situation very closely and confidently,” said a NATO spokesperson. According to a spokesperson for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the only migrants to arrive on Lampedusa were Tunisians until yesterday's boat arrived.

Arriving mostly in small fishing boats, 15,000 Tunisian refugees have made their way to Lampedusa since January's ousting of former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. There are still about 250 Tunisian children on the island. Another 250 mostly teenaged children were taken to homes in other parts of Italy. Conditions on the island are said to be very crowded and unfit for children. This led to the transfer of 96 children to a US Coast Guard base elsewhere on the island. However, the Libyan migrants will not be taken to Lampedusa. Instead, they'll be taken to a refugee centre on the island of Linosa.

Earlier this month, one international child charity reported that the lives of one million children were endangered by the fighting between government and rebel forces in Libya. Children in capital city of Tripoli and the surrounding area were said to be particularly vulnerable. An estimated 700,000 children call Tripoli home, though many are becoming fearful for themselves, their family and their friends. Already, 100,000 people have fled to neighbouring countries Egypt and Tunisia. According to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), there are 180 children and 149 women waiting to be evacuated by the Egyptian border. The number of women and children leaving the country is reported to have increased in recent weeks.

The UN authorized the implementation of a no-fly zone over Libya almost two weeks ago. Air strikes with the purpose of civilian protection were also authorized under UN Resolution 1973. Resolution 1973 passed in a 10-0 vote, with China, Russia, Brazil, Germany and India abstaining.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8343963/Libya-Italy-fears-300000-refugees.html
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110327/local/unhcr-understands-government-s-refusal-to-take-refugees-from-libya
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2011/03/libya-thousands-fleeing-every-day-un-refugee-agency-says.html
http://www.soschildrensvillages.ca/News/News/child-charity-news/Pages/Children-Refugee-Boat-Libya-661.aspx

‘Invisible’ Children of the Caribbean: Child Migrants fall through the Cracks of Legal Protection throughout the Region

Ksenia Glebova

[works for UNICEF in Suriname, South America. Ksenia is a freelance journalist and Ph.D student interested in child rights, migration discourse, identity and borders]

The Caribbean is a region of extensive migration with currently the highest percentage of out-migration in the world (i). The region is a source, place of transit en route to the United States or Canada, and final destination for both forced and voluntary migrants coming from within the Caribbean, South and Central America, and more recently also from Africa and Asia.

The percentage of migrant population in the Caribbean states varies greatly from 0.1 in Cuba to 34% in Aruba and 53% in the US Virgin Islands whereas in terms of forced migration, the absolute majority of refugees from the region come from Haiti that over 24,000 persons left in 2010(ii). A total of 40 persons were recognized as convention refugees in the Caribbean itself.(iii) Due to the very low number of persons seeking asylum from the Caribbean, asylum issues are a low priority for most states focusing on migration from the national security perspective.

Caribbean societies were “largely formed through immigration, both forced and free” (iv), as a result of slave trade and colonial relationships, and in the recent decades as a strategy of economic survival. The region is characterized by complex and mixed migratory patterns including asylum seekers, refugees, economic and environmental migrants, and other vulnerable migrants such as victims of trafficking and unaccompanied minors.

Children (v) are often among the most vulnerable groups in these mobile societies that jeopardize the rights and well being of accompanied and unaccompanied child migrants as well as of children left behind by one or both parents who have migrated. The effects of migration can have a profound impact on the child’s development let alone safety and well being(vi). However, there is still very little research on measuring the impact of migration on families and their children, whether in the Caribbean or worldwide.

The Other Side of the Postcard

Against the postcard image of tropical tourist paradise, children are part of the little-known side of global migration. Migration trends in the Caribbean region are very similar to those of migration by sea routes from North Africa to Southern Europe. Similarly, the Caribbean is transit point for human traffickers and smugglers operating the route to the US and Canada. There is no reliable data on the number of people who perish due to natural hazards en route but every year several hundred men, women and children do not make it to the shore alive. Those who do are facing familiar discrimination and abuse in breach of the Geneva Convention relating to the status of refugees. Yet the situation in the Caribbean receives far less public attention.

Eleven out of thirteen independent Caribbean states have acceded to the 1951 Geneva Convention, but only the Dominican Republic and Belize have adopted it into national legislation. Similarly, all Caribbean states have ratified the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)(vii) making it legally binding on their territory but its effective implementation is lagging behind. Refugee children have the full rights of children under the CRC and the full rights of refugees under the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees in the countries that ratified the Convention.

Article 2 of the CRC states that “State parties shall respect and ensure the rights set forth in the Convention to each child within their jurisdiction without discrimination of any kind, irrespective of the child's or his or her parent's or legal guardian's race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national, ethnic or social origin, property, disability, birth or other status”. Therefore, the CRC extends the obligations of the state to protect the rights of all children within its territory, including the rights of migrant children, regardless of their migration status. The “best interests of the child” principle (Article 3) should guide all procedures affecting the child.

However, despite the legal framework protection of child migrants in the Caribbean is more than often only de jure. The global key issues for refugee girls and boys are separation from families and caregivers, sexual exploitation, abuse and violence, access to education and specific concerns of adolescents or young people resonate in the Caribbean, although the absolute majority of migrant children are not forced migrants. In the region, migrant children and especially undocumented children face serious difficulties in securing their access to education and health care, both of which are basic rights guaranteed in the CRC. Even if they secure access to education, there are no special education support programmes tailored to child migrants in this multilingual region, where they may face considerable language challenges in school as do, for example, Guyanese English-speaking children in the Dutch-speaking Caribbean. Birth registration, another basic right enshrined in the CRC, is also problematic, especially for the thousands of Haitian children residing outside their country of origin.

Following the devastating earthquake in January 2010 thousands of Haitians, including unaccompanied children, moved to other Caribbean states that temporarily accepted migrants entering their territory legally and illegally. The island states in closest geographical proximity to Haiti hosted the majority of the migrants. In the Bahamas, the repatriation of Haitians who have entered the country illegally has been put on hold. The government of Dominica extended the stay of all Haitians already on the island for extra six months, regardless of their legal status. However, the Haiti momentum is over and the time has come to guarantee the rights of migrants beyond temporary emergency assistance.

Beyond Safety

Finding safety in the Caribbean is feasible but securing wider child rights, though guaranteed by the Geneva Convention, is more challenging. The asylum systems are weak and underdeveloped and the rates of recognition are uniformly low putting genuine refugees at life-threatening risk of deportation. Especially unaccompanied child migrants in the Caribbean are denied access to legal and practical assistance and at times detained in place of institutional care. Unaccompanied children can be wrongly considered to be adult undocumented migrants, and deported without exercising their right to seek asylum, and without regard for the rights of the child (viii).

The island of Aruba in the Caribbean Sea is a case in point of complex mixed migration, where authorities do not separate between economic migrants and asylum seekers under the Geneva Convention, but only between those who entered the country legally and illegally (ix). Many of those who arrived illegally in Aruba, and other Caribbean islands, may qualify for the Convention status having fled their countries as a result of genuine persecution.

Nevertheless, forced migrants are often taken for economic migrants, detained for illegal entry and promptly deported before they have a chance to submit an application for asylum. Public awareness of the differences between economic migrants and refugees is modest at best, reception facilities do not cater to the needs of migrants who spent weeks at sea, there is no specialised health care. Undocumented child migrants, both forced and voluntary, are consistently among the lowest performing students in schools across the region and have disproportionately high drop out rate (x).

Towards de Facto Child Protection

The discussion on the subject of child migration, both forced and voluntary, in the Caribbean is still relatively new and evolving. Despite their extensive migration experience, the countries in the region do not guarantee even basic protection of the rights of child migrants, let alone in accordance with the principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. As a result the host governments are failing those often most vulnerable.

The 2010 humanitarian crisis in Haiti demonstrated the capacity of the Caribbean states to respond with extraordinary temporary protection measures as opposed to providing consistent minimum standards of child protection, especially for unaccompanied minors. However, it is precisely the legal and social policy reform that is needed to translate the Convention on the Rights of the Child into national legislation and guarantee rights of all children irrespective of their country of origin and legal status.

Endnotes

i.UN ECLAC (2006) Migration in the Caribbean – What do we know? An overview of data, policies and programmes at the international and regional level to address critical issues.
ii.UNHCR North America and the Caribbean website at http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49e45bc56.html
iii.Ibid..
iv.Elizabeth Thomas-Hope (2003) Irregular migration and asylum-seekers in the Caribbean, UNU Wider Discussion Paper no 2003/48.
v.Article 1 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) defines a ‘child’ as any human being under the age of 18.
vi.Bakker, C. et al. (2009) Impact of Migration on the Children in the Caribbean, UNICEF Barbados and Eastern Caribbean.
vii.UN (1989) Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/crc.htm
viii.OHCHR (2010) Study of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on challenges and best practices in the implementation of the international framework for the protection of the rights of the child in the context of migration.
ix.Ibid..
x.CRC Committee (2009) Concluding observations on the State Report of the Netherlands, including the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba.