More Than 71 Million People Internally Displaced Worldwide in 2022

A "perfect storm" of overlapping crises forced tens of millions to flee within their own country last year, sending the number of internally displaced people to a record high, monitors said on Thursday 11th May 2023 An unprecedented 71.1 million internally displaced people (IDPs) were registered in 2022 -- up 20 percent from a year earlier -- amid mass displacement for Russia's war in Ukraine, as well as by the monsoon floods that drenched Pakistan.

A full 60.9 million new internal displacements were meanwhile reported in 2022, with some people forced to flee multiple times during the year, according to a joint report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). That marks an all-time high for new internal displacements, and an increase of 60 percent compared to the some 38 million fresh displacements seen in 2021.

Last year, new internal displacements from conflict surged to 28.3 million -- nearly doubling from a year earlier and three times higher than the annual average over the past decade.

Read more: France 24, https://tinyurl.com/34e4rv2w

EDM 1147: Illegal Migration Bill

Lords Will Target Four Key Themes in Plan to "Shred" Illegal Migration Bill

The House of Lords is preparing to eviscerate the government's Illegal Migration Bill when it arrives in the upper chamber for its next stages of scrutiny in the coming weeks, with one Conservative peer predicting the legislation will be "torn to shreds".

A Conservative peer said the legislation would face "ferocious scrutiny" when it is put before them, telling PoliticsHome they were "really worried about the signals this sends to the rest of the world about Britain's record when it comes to protecting human rights".

The House of Lords is expected to focus its fight with ministers around four major themes when it is put before them in the weeks leading up to summer recess, including modern slavery and how the bill interacts with international law. Peers are also preparing to raise concerns about the detention of children and vulnerable people who arrive in small boats, and push for the Home Office to publish an impact assessment of the legislation, which so far has not been forthcoming.

Read more: Freemovement, https://tinyurl.com/2p9uyed2

Manufacturing Risk: Exclusionary Effect of Positive Discretion in Family Immigration Rules

The immigration rules are full of harsh general rules accompanied by potential exceptions. These exceptions require a subjective judgment to be made and they make the rules complex. They also manufacture risk for applicants, making the outcome of immigration applications hard to predict. Unpredictability, combined with the high financial and other costs of applying, can act as a powerful deterrent to making such an application. Even where the applicant goes ahead despite the risk, they and their family often experience social, economic and emotional punishment as part of the process, as a recent report by IPPR demonstrated.

Exclusion not inclusion: There is no objective need for the immigration rules to exclude so many families from secure immigration status. This is a policy decision. It would be plainly be possible to write the rules differently so that families did not have to resort to the various exceptions.

The exceptions should therefore never be regarded as generous or as enabling in any way. Rather, the immigration rules should be understood as exclusionary. They operate as opportunities for the exclusion of those deemed undesirable or non-conforming.

Read more: Freemovement, https://tinyurl.com/5erxcj6c

Destitute by Design: Trapped in the Immigration System

Migration policy is not only failing people forced to arrive in Britain by boats.Daniel Trilling reports on the myriad ways in which it pushes people into poverty.

Aved and Abena, are people who live in Britain but who we collectively treat in a way designed to make them go anywhere else. Before we get to their individual accounts, we need a bit of context about the substantial—and growing—group of residents that policy seeks to make desperate. Who, exactly, is denied the basic opportunities and even the compromised safety net that most others in the UK can take for granted? And what is the system that locks them in penury?

The migration rules sort people into categories of deserving and undeserving. The logic is that the “undeserving” need to be treated harshly, both to punish them and to encourage them to leave the country. The state achieves this either by restricting their access to benefits, or by banning them from working—or sometimes, through a combination of the two.

Read more: Freemovement, Daniel Trilling, https://tinyurl.com/2sjtvdha

Take Action: Good Clothes - Fair Pay

Like me, you probably don’t know the people who make your clothes – but you would like them to be paid fairly, right? Yet millions of textile and garment workers, mostly women, cannot afford to live in decent housing, eat healthy food, or go to the doctor.

We can do something to help fix this. #GoodClothesFairPay, a European Citizens’ Initiative, is demanding living wages for workers in the fashion supply chain. The goal is to get one million European Union citizens to sign the petition for living wage legislation.

I’ve just signed it. Please join me, and add your name today:
https://www.goodclothesfairpay.eu/

And please don’t be alarmed when the form asks you for your national ID number. It’s required because this is an official “European Citizens’ Initiative,” a method enshrined in law to give people a way to shape EU policies. If it reaches one million signatures of verified EU citizens, the European Commission is required by law to address the issue. (You can read more on this useful tool for citizen action here.)

Source: Human Rights Watch - https://tinyurl.com/yr7f2xhs

King Charles: Patron of a Disgraced Regiment

As Charles accedes to the throne, his role as Colonel-in-Chief of the Parachute Regiment for 46 years is not forgotten in Northern Ireland where Paras have committed a shocking number of killings, some still being revealed in court.

As some people across Britain celebrate the accession of King Charles III – complete with a carefully-crafted image – his status as Colonel-in-Chief of the British army’s Parachute Regiment is not forgotten in Northern Ireland, despite the presence of Sinn Fein’s Michelle O’Neill at the coronation. O’Neill has made it clear she is attending Westminster Abbey in her role as First Minister designate of the suspended Stormont power-sharing executive – rather than as the deputy leader of her republican party. Many of Sinn Fein’s followers, however, while understanding her rationale – that she must represent both communities in Northern Ireland – must be scratching their heads. A recent poll found 0% of her party’s supporters favour the monarchy.

It will not have passed them by that Charles continues to personify the Parachute Regiment whose record in Ireland includes an eye-watering number of criminal actions, some of which are still being revealed in court. This is, after all, the regiment behind the shooting of 14 people in January 1972 on Bloody Sunday in Derry, labelled as “unjustified and unjustifiable” by former British prime minister David Cameron in his response to the findings of the Saville Tribunal. It is also the regiment behind the shootings of a further 11 people in the “Ballymurphy massacre”, five months before Bloody Sunday.

An inquest verdict in May 2021 found all the dead were innocent. Victims included a priest trying to help the wounded and a mother of eight who bled to death where she lay for hours, unattended. The Coroner, Mrs Justice Keegan (now the Lady Chief Justice for Northern Ireland) concluded: “What is very clear, is that all of the deceased in the series of inquests were entirely innocent of any wrongdoing on the day in question”.

Read more: Anne Cadwallader, Declassified UK, https://tinyurl.com/28p7anar

Continuing Conflicts That Create Refugees - May 2023

Conflict Risk Alerts: Sudan, Nagorno-Karabakh, Ukraine

Deteriorated Situations: Israel/Palestine, Sudan, Lebanon, Ecuador, Nagorno-Karabakh, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Indonesia, Thailand.

CrisisWatch identified deteriorations in nine countries in April

Israel-Palestine, Israeli security forces’ brutality at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan triggered a multi-front escalation, including the largest cross-border rocket barrage from Lebanon since the 2006 war.

Thailand’s deep south witnessed a surge in militant attacks, casting a shadow over the dialogue between the government and the main separatist armed group.

Nigeria: Surges in criminal, herder-farmer and communal violence in Nigeria left hundreds of people dead across the country, with a particularly heavy toll among civilians.

Burkina Faso: Amid sustained fighting between government forces and jihadist groups in Burkina Faso since the government declared a “total war”, both sides conducted large-scale massacres of civilians.

Ecuador’s government declared terrorism a security threat amid a spike in gang violence, enabling the military to deploy in the streets to confront these groups without instituting a state of exception.

Sudan: Fighting erupted in Sudan between the army and a powerful paramilitary force, killing hundreds, triggering a humanitarian crisis and fuelling fears of a protracted, all-out civil war.

Azerbaijan installed a checkpoint along the Lachin corridor that connects Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia, prompting Yerevan and Moscow to condemn Baku for breaching the 2020 ceasefire agreement and raising concern that heightened tensions could escalate further.

Ukraine: As expectations for Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive grew, Russian shelling killed and injured dozens; Moscow may deploy long-range weapons in the coming weeks, causing more civilian suffering.

Yemen, the first diplomatic visit by Saudi Arabia in eight years and a prisoner swap injected momentum into talks between Riyadh and Huthi rebels raising hope for a more comprehensive halt to hostilities

Resolution Opportunities: Yemen

Source: Crisis Group, https://www.crisisgroup.org/crisiswatch