Hoping for cool heads and warm hearts in the coming days. From German Lopez at Vox — Although the perpetrators of the Paris attacks remain unknown, Jeff Duncan, a Republican congressman from South Carolina, took to Twitter to say that the tragedy shows Europe and America shouldn’t let in Syrian refugees because it might lead to more […]
Read More On ParisBeing married to a civil engineer who spends his days working with mass transit, stories in the news about infrastructure tend to grab my eye. This recent article in the NYT about the human cost of ignoring maintenance is worth reading for its argument alone (notably echoed by a one Mr John Oliver), but the […]
Read More On trains, planes, and automobilesInteresting set up, really interesting result: The Oxford Martin School hosted a panel to discuss the migrant and refugee crisis + responses and solutions. In her six minutes to address the panel, Bridget Anderson brought up issues around victimhood, agency and morals [@35:20] — On September the 7th in response to the so-called ‘refugee crisis […]
Read More On panel discussions: The Migrant and Refugee Crisis @ Oxford Martin SchoolVia the International Crisis Group, Burundi again faces the possibility of mass atrocities and civil war. Escalating violence, increasingly hardline rhetoric and the continued stream of refugees (more than 200,000) indicate that divisions are widening, and the “national dialogue” is doing little to relieve the mounting tensions. According to Crisis Group’s sources as well as media […]
Read More On push factors [2]News to me: according to John J. DeGioia’s introduction to António Guterres’ lecture at Georgetown on 28 October 2015, Dr. Susan F Martin will be the editor-in-chief of the 2016 ed. of UNHCR’s State of the World’s Refugees. A few quotes from the lecture — (@17:30) On inequality: Guterres: … And, one of the problems is […]
Read More On public lectures: Guterres @ GeorgetownSteven Walt asks the question “Whose lives matter?” in Foreign Policy’s Voice blog — The world has no shortage of victims of terrible tragedies these days. Death tolls are rising in places from Syria to Sudan and some 60 million people have been displaced from their homes worldwide. But which of these people will get widespread support […]
Read More On “the social construction of victimhood”[updated as further suggestions pop up] Islands: Egyptian billionaire: I found the island I want to buy for refugees Open the border: Best way US could help Syrians: open the borders Tradable quota: How a tradable refugee-admission quota system could help solve the EU’s migration crisis; see also: Fernández-Huertas Moraga & Rapoport: Tradable Refugee-admission Quotas (TRAQs), […]
Read More On creative solutionsDavid Miliband, writing in the Guardian, asks why no one is talking about cities — In all the many column inches on the European refugee crisis, one point has barely received a mention: the overwhelming majority of Syrian refugees are not in refugee camps. Rows of white tents in an otherwise sparse landscape are often […]
Read More On citiesFrom Volker Türk’s remarks at the 133rd Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union General Debate — Yet the single-most important challenge to the protection of refugees, as well as to reaping the development potential of migration more broadly comes from populist politics and uninformed public debates. They engender a climate of fear. In some countries there […]
Read More On a crisis of valuesEmanuel Stoakes in Foreign Policy’s Dispatch blog discusses testimonies and documentary evidence shown in the new Al Jazeera documentary, “Genocide Agenda” that purports to link the Myanmar government to anti-Muslim incitement. The film points to a multi-pronged strategy by the government to encourage anti-Muslim hatred across the country, while pursuing policies against the Rohingya that legal […]
Read More On push factors