With 783 Million People Going Hungry, A Fifth of all Food Goes to Waste
“Food waste is a global tragedy. Millions will go hungry today as food is wasted across the world,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP, explaining that this ongoing issue not only impacts the global economy but also exacerbates climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.
Most of the world’s food waste comes from households, totalling 631 million tonnes – or up to 60 per cent - of the total food squandered. The food service and retail sectors were responsible for 290 and 131 million tonnes accordingly.
On average, each person wastes 79 kilogrammes of food annually. This is the equivalent of 1.3 meals every day for everyone in the world impacted by hunger, the report authors underscore.
Some 19 per cent of food available to consumers was lost overall at retail, food service, and household levels. That is in addition to around 13 per cent of food lost in the supply chain, as estimated by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), from post-harvest up to the point of sale.
Read more: UN News, https://shorturl.at/bdtxA
Nine More Asylum Seekers Died In First Half of 2023 Than Home Office Disclosed
Three times as many asylum seekers died during the first six months of last year than the Home Office disclosed in official information, it has emerged. Earlier in March, the Guardian reported on a freedom of information (FoI) response from the Home Office to an organisation called The Civil Fleet, a news blog that focuses on support for refugee rescue and support missions across Europe.
In that FoI response, the Home Office confirmed there had been five deaths in asylum seeker accommodation between January and June last year. After publication of the article the Guardian was approached by another FoI applicant, who said he had obtained deaths in asylum accommodation data for the same period revealing almost three times as many deaths – 14 rather than five.
Home Office sources confirmed that the reason for the large discrepancy between the information disclosed to two questioners apparently asking the same question was officials’ interpretation of the word “in”.
Read more: Diane Taylor, Guardian, https://shorturl.at/qryQZ
Immigration: Role of Primary Legislation
The key piece of primary immigration legislation is the Immigration Act 1971. This Act gives the Home Secretary the power to make immigration rules subject only to the negative resolution procedure in Parliament. It sets out the scheme of permission to enter, remain and settle in the UK. It imparts a power to deport even settled non-nationals should the Home Secretary consider it ‘conducive to the public good’ to do so. It also sets out a series of criminal offences imposed on migrants and others for non-compliance or breach of immigration law. It also grants the Home Secretary extensive powers to make secondary legislation: rules, regulations and orders.
One of the reasons that immigration law is complex is because there is little consistency of approach in the legislation. Criteria for entry, residence, settlement and expulsion are normally contained in the Immigration Rules (see below). But there are examples of such criteria being incorporated into primary legislation. This is the case with deportation. The Immigration Act 1971 gave the Home Secretary extremely wide powers to deport non-citizens but subsequent legislation in 2006 and 2014 sets out constraints on that discretion by imposing a duty to deport certain individuals subject only to very narrow exceptions. Most of the criteria for deportation can therefore only now be changed by primary legislation.
Source: Freemovement, https://shorturl.at/lsGQV
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63,000 Migrant Deaths in 10 Years - Fleeing More Lethal Than Ever
More than a decade ago, the death of 600 migrants and refugees in two Mediterranean shipwrecks near Italian shores shocked the world and prompted the U.N. migration agency to start recording the number of people who died or went missing as they fled conflict, persecution or poverty to other countries.
Governments around the world have repeatedly pledged to save migrants’ lives and fight smugglers while tightening borders. Yet 10 years on, a report by the International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project published Tuesday shows the world is no safer for people on the move.
On the contrary, migrant deaths have soared. Since tracking began in 2014, more than 63,000 have died or are missing and presumed dead, according to the Missing Migrants Project, with 2023 the deadliest year yet.
Read more: AP News, https://shorturl.at/gDMS2
Institute of Race Relations - Informing the Struggle for Racial Justice
Over the last weeks, we have witnessed stronger and more extreme anti-immigration policies mooted across Europe. In Portugal the far-right Chega party distributed leaflets campaigning against ‘uncontrolled Islamic Immigration’ in the lead-up to its general election; Finland passed temporary legislation to allow border guards to block asylum seekers crossing from Russia; and both Germany and the European Commission are pushing for more ‘offshoring’ of asylum seekers. All this as the UK sees significant actions against the government’s controversial flagship Rwanda scheme.
A week after the union representing civil servants threatened the Home Office with legal action over its Rwanda scheme, the House of Lords again delayed the government’s controversial flagship legislation, proposing 5 amendments to the Bill. But the government is determined to push through the legislation which is a key component of its ‘stop the boats’ narrative. As the campaigning for the 2024 election hots up anti-immigration rhetoric will only increase, and, sadly, with no moral high ground from opposition parties. Labour announced its hard-line approach to immigration with a 1,000-strong ‘returns and enforcement unit’. Our campaigns and fights have to hot up too.
A fight that is all the more important as, this week’s calendar reveals the intensification of anti-Palestinian racism; with a new definition of extremism in the teeth of warnings from counter-terror experts, former home secretaries and archbishops about not politicising the issue; a large police mobilisation against a small pro-Palestine demo at Battersea power station which had finished by the time the vans arrived; the arrest of Socialist Labour group members on racial harassment charges for hissing at a Newham councillor; and, reportedly, a warning to civil servants by HMRC that donating to Medical Aid for Palestinians is ‘contrary to civil service values’. Meanwhile, a High Court case revealed that every single visa application from Gaza since 7 October has been refused.
Read more: IRR, https://shorturl.at/yDHN2
Role of the Immigration Rules
The Immigration Rules set out the criteria for entry, residence, settlement and also general grounds for refusal for all immigration categories. The rules are not strictly speaking secondary legislation in the normal sense and are not statutory instruments, but they are very similar. Legally they can be adjusted at any time and with no notice by means of the negative resolution procedure in Parliament (see Immigration Act 1971, section 3(2)). It has become customary to make sets of changes four times a year unless a change is particularly urgent. Usually a future date is specified when new rules will come into effect. If no date is specified or if the new rules explicitly state they start immediately, they start immediately, even for applications which have already been made but have not yet been decided.
This means that it is straightforward as a matter of law to change the criteria for the entry, residence, settlement or expulsion of family members, skilled workers and all other migrants. This includes not just changing the criteria, periods of permission to stay and eligibility for settlement but also creating and scrapping entire immigration routes. For example, scrapping the investor visa route was straightforward, as was creating the graduate visa route.
Source: Freemovement, https://shorturl.at/lsGQV
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