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Global refugee numbers at 19-year high

Jun 192013

The number of people who have been forcibly displaced by war and other crises worldwide has risen to its highest level for almost two decades, hitting 45.2 million, according to the UN’s refugee agency.

Annual figures released by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) on Wednesday showed that 1.1 million fled across international borders in 2012, while a further 6.5 million were displaced within their own homelands.

“This means one in each 4.1 seconds. So each time you blink, another person is forced to flee,” Antonio Guterres, the UN high commissioner for refugees, told reporters.

The total figure of 45.2 million included 28.8 million internally displaced people, 15.4 million border-crossing refugees, and 937,000 asylum seekers.

“War is the main reason for this very high number of refugees and people internally displaced. Fifty-five percent of them correspond to the well-known situations of Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, Sudan, and Syria,” Guterres said.

Overall, the Afghan conflict continued to produce the most refugees, a position that it has held for 32 years. Worldwide, one refugee in four is Afghan.

Guterres also cited conflicts in Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic as producing large numbers of displaced people and refugees.

Due to the raft of crises, he said, the total number of refugees and internally displaced had risen to a level unseen since 1994, a year marked by the Rwandan genocide and bloodshed in former Yugoslavia.

‘Multiplication of conflicts’

While last year saw 2.1 million internally-displaced people and 526,000 refugees return home, as well as the resettlement of 88,6000 in rich nations, fresh crises drove the global total higher.

“New refugees, new internally displaced, unfortunately represent much more than those able to find an answer to their plight,” said Guterres, lamenting the international community’s limited capacity to prevent conflicts and to find timely solutions to existing ones.

“We witness a multiplication of new conflicts, and it seems that old conflicts never die,” he said.

Guterres pointed out that the number of people who had fled the spiralling violence in Syria had soared from 650,000 at the end of 2012 to around 1.6 million now, surpassing last year’s total from all conflicts.

The UNHCR has warned that Syrian refugee numbers could hit 3.5 million by the end of this year, while there are also fears that the number currently displaced within the country, 4.25 million, will also climb.

Syrian refugees have flooded into neighbouring Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq, stretching those nations’ ability to cope.

Guterres urged the international community to help shoulder the load, although he said UNHCR-brokered resettlement programmes for Syrians in rich countries were not yet on the cards.

Pakistan top host nation

With the economic crisis having sharpened the asylum debate in developed nations, Guterres said it was important to keep some perspective.

“Who is supporting refugees in the world? Essentially, developing countries,” he said, stressing that 87 percent of the world’s refugees were protected by developing countries, up from 70 percent a decade ago.

“So when we see discussion sometimes that exist about refugees in many developed countries, I think it’s good to remind public opinion in those countries that refugees are not people fleeing from poor countries into rich countries in search of a better life,” he added.

Pakistan remained the world’s top host nation in 2012, with 1.6 million refugees mostly from Afghanistan, followed by Iran, with 868,200, and Germany, with 589,700.

Flood death toll in Indian hilly states climb

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Jun 192013

At least 130 people have been killed and 70,000 others left stranded in devastating flash floods to hit northern India, private television channel NDTV has reported.

The channel said on Wednesday that thousands of houses in the states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh had been swept away in the floods and authorities were using helicopters to evacuate people and drop essential food supplies.

Northern India has witnessed torrential rains at least three times more than usual over the past week ever since the annual monsoon broke a fortnight ahead of schedule, leaving thousands of pilgrims and tourists stranded, officials said.

“The state government and the army are trying to rescue thousands of tourists who are stranded near the submerged valleys and Hindu shrines,” said Jaspal Arya, the disaster relief minister of Uttarakhand.

Arya said portions of the famous Hindu temple, Kedarnath, were washed away on Tuesday and about 10,000 pilgrims were in need of rescuing.

“The Kedarnath temple is submerged in mud and slush. We just hope that it does not collapse,” Arya told the AFP news agency.

Authorities have cancelled pilgrimage trips, fearing further rains and landslides in the state, often referred to as the “Land of the Gods” because of its many Hindu temples and Hindu religious sites.

Officials in Uttarakhand, the worst-hit state, said about 200 cars, two earthmoving equipment and even a parked helicopter had been swept away by floods.

The torrential rains began lashing the region on Saturday and local officials said 40 relief camps have been set up to provide food and water to locals and tourists.

On Tuesday, 250 people were rescued by air force helicopters from different parts of the state and many were moved to the relief camps.

“But many are still stuck and it could take us three more days to rescue all of them,” Arya added.

The monsoon, which India’s farming sector depends on, covers the subcontinent from June to September, usually bringing some flooding.

But the heavy rains arrived early this year, catching many by surprise and exposing the country’s lack of preparedness.

G8 summit fails to deliver on tax reforms

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Jun 192013

The main focus of the second day of talks at the G8 conference has been about cracking down on international tax evasion.

Leaders want to keep pressing for legislation to cut down on the criminal use of shell companies.

However, they did not take firmer action for now to tighten rules on tax evasion and money laundering.

Chrysler agrees to recall 2.7m Jeeps after initially refusing

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Jun 192013

Chrysler has agreed to recall 2.7 million Jeeps that could be at risk of fuel tank fires, after initially refusing a government request to do so.

The US company said it had resolved its differences with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

The recall affects Jeep Grand Cherokees from 1993-2004 and Jeep Libertys from 2002-07.

Chrysler maintains that the vehicles are not defective, but said it regards safety as a “paramount concern”.

It said dealers would inspect the vehicles and, if necessary, provide an upgrade to the rear structure to better manage low-speed crashes.

Earlier this month, the NHTSA asked Chrysler to voluntarily recall the Grand Cherokees and Libertys, saying that if hit from the rear, the fuel tanks could leak fuel and cause fires.

It said the location of the tanks behind the axle and their height above the road was a design defect.

The agency said it had evidence of at least 37 rear-impact crashes and fires, causing 51 deaths.

At the time, Chrysler said it did not intend to recall the vehicles.

But in a statement on Tuesday, the company said: “Chrysler Group’s analysis of the data confirms that these vehicles are not defective and are among the safest in the peer group.

“Nonetheless, Chrysler Group recognises that this matter has raised concerns for its customers and wants to take further steps, in co-ordination with NHTSA, to provide additional measures to supplement the safety of its vehicles.”

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US House passes measure restricting abortion

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Jun 192013

The US House of Representatives has approved a Republican measure restricting abortion to the first 20 weeks after conception, one of the most stringent pro-life bills in the past decade.

The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act passed the chamber 228-196, largely along party lines, on Tuesday but the symbolic legislation stands no chance of becoming law in President Barack Obama’s administration.

The White House had threatened a veto of the bill on Monday, dismissing it as “an assault on a woman’s right to choose”.

House Speaker John Boehner, however, praised it as “a strong statement that all life is precious”, and he noted that it comes after Kermit Gosnell, a Philadelphia abortion doctor, was convicted for illegally performing late-term abortions in his clinic.

“We have a moral obligation to defend the defenceless, and we will continue to fight to ensure our nation’s laws respect the sanctity of unborn human life,” he said.

Republicans said the grisly trial of Gosnell served as reminder of why this law was needed.

Involuntary manslaughter

In May, Gosnell was sent to prison for murdering three babies and for the involuntary manslaughter of a patient who died of a drug overdose after she went to Gosnell for an abortion.

A clinic worker testified during the trial that Gosnell had delivered live babies during botched late-term abortions and cut their spinal cords.

Abortion rights groups said Republicans were seizing on the tragic circumstances of Gosnell’s victims.

“Their relentless campaign to outlaw abortion will encourage more criminals like Kermit Gosnell,” Ilyse Hoguem, NARAL Pro-Choice America’s president, said.

“They will not stop until they completely undermine the ability of women to make personal, private medical decisions with their doctors.”

The bill, which includes an exemption for women who become pregnant through rape or incest provided they first report the assault to authorities, caused heated debate in the House.

Women included

After being criticised because female House Republicans were not involved in writing or passing the legislation out of the House Judiciary Committee, Republican leaders went out of their way to include women.

Republican Representatives Virginia Foxx of North Carolina and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee helped manage debate on the bill.

Trent Franks, a long-time abortion-rights opponent and the bill’s sponsor, provoked outrage last week when he said in a committee hearing that “incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy [is] very low”.

Democrats criticised Franks and Republican supporters of the bill, which also earned six Democratic votes, as being out of touch with women’s issues.

Most US states allow abortions to the point when a foetus becomes viable outside the womb, considered to be some 24 weeks of pregnancy.

Ten states have passed laws similar to the Franks bill, and several of them are facing challenges in court.

UN warns of Nigeria refugee crisis

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Jun 192013

Thousands of people are fleeing to Chad, Niger and Cameroon as the crisis in neighbouring Nigeria deepens, the UN refugee agency has said.

UNHCR officers said on Tuesday that up to 3,000 refugees had arrived in Cameroon amid reports of at least 6,000 people escaping to Niger over the past weeks as the confrontation between the Nigerian army and the Boko Haram group intensified in the country’s northeast.

“The immediate priority is to secure food and shelter as refugees are entering extremely harsh and difficult areas,” Fatou Lejeune-Kaba, Africa spokesperson for UNHCR, told Al Jazeera.

Cameroon had initially closed its border with Nigeria to prevent members of Boko Haram to enter, but after June 11, the border was re-opened, the UNHCR said.

With fighting only intensifying, and about 3,000 people arriving between June 11-13 alone, there are concerns that this may be the start of a large exodus from the region.

New arrivals

The government of President Goodluck Jonathan embarked on a major military offensive on May 15 to root out the Boko Haram group responsible for a series of bloody attacks in the African country over the past four years, killing hundreds of people.

A state of emergency was imposed on the Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states in a response to the rising attacks, raising concerns of human rights activists of possible violations against civilians.

The UNHCR said crossings into Cameroon began a week ago, with most of the refugees being women and children.

Refugees are being hosted in churches and schools, and relying on food from the local population.

We are working with the authorities to relocate the refugees to safer places away from the border, away from possible fighting, Lejeune-Kaba said.

Meanwhile in Niger, trucks carrying aid was dispatched from Niamey to the southeastern Diffa region, where more than 6,000 people have arrived from northern Nigeria in the past weeks.

This includes Nigerian nationals as well as returning Niger nationals and others nationalities.

Most of the new arrivals in Niger traveled on foot from rural villages across the border and from Maiduguri and Baga towns.

In Chad, refugees have been arriving in small numbers, saying their homes were destroyed after the military accused them of harbouring Boko Haram fighters.

Military offensive

Aid organisation and media have been banned from accessing the frontlines and there have also been complaints that mobile networks were shut down since the offensive started, effectively cutting off the region from the rest of the country and the world.

“The situation is not getting the attention it deserves,” Lejeune-Kaba, from the UNHCR, said.

In late May, Amnesty International urged Nigerian authorities not to use the state of emergency in the north eastern regions as an excuse to commit human rights violations.

Amnesty said detainees were being held without access to lawyers, or being officially charged with a crime.

The human rights group also claimed that services had come to a standstill with schools closed and some towns resembling ‘ghost towns’.

Social protests turn violent in Brazil

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Jun 192013

Anti-government protests in Brazil have turned violent in Sao Paulo, with reports coming in of a group of men trying to storm the city hall.

As many as 10,000 people were on the streets of Sao Paulo, Brazil’s economic capital, on Tuesday as the South American country witnessed some of its biggest ever protest rallies.

The violence erupted just hours after President Dilma Rousseff had embraced the outbreak of protests against her government across the country, which followed similar demonstrations earlier this week.

Rousseff, a former leftist guerrilla who was imprisoned and tortured during Brazil’s 1964-85 dictatorship, said the protests were evidence of a vibrant democracy and acknowledge the need for better public services and more responsive governance.

“The massive size of yesterday’s protests prove the energy of our democracy, the force of the voice of the street and the civility of our population,” she said.

“My government hears the voices clamouring for change, my government is committed to social transformation,” she said.

“Those who took to the streets yesterday sent a clear message to all of society, above all to political leaders at all levels of government.”

Demanding more

The demonstrators are demanding better education, schools and transport after mass protests across at least seven cities on Monday, which intensified after clashes with police in Sao Paulo.

Many of them have begun to demand more from their government and are angry that billions of dollars in public funds are being spent to host the World Cup and Olympics while few improvements are made on infrastructure elsewhere.

The office of the United Nations’ High Commissioner for Human Rights urged the Brazilian authorities on Tuesday to exercise restraint in dealing with the social protests in the country and called on demonstrators not to resort to violence in pursuit of their demands.

The UN body said it welcomed the statement by Rousseff that peaceful demonstrations were legitimate.

A survey by the Datafolha polling agency suggested a large majority of participants at the Sao Paulo protest on Monday night had no affiliation with any political party and nearly three-quarters were taking part in the protests for the first time.

Local news media estimated more than 240,000 people participated in demonstrations Monday night that were mostly peaceful.

However, violence was seen in Rio de Janeiro, where 20 officers and 10 demonstrators were injured in clashes, and in the cities of Porto Alegre and Belo Horizonte.

State legislature attacked

The vast majority of Rio’s protesters were peaceful, but a group had attacked the state legislature building and set a car and other objects ablaze.

As the group moved on to the state legislature building, footage broadcast by the Globo television network showed police shooting into the air.

At least one demonstrator in Rio was injured after being hit in the leg with a live round allegedly fired by a law nforcement official.

Protests also were reported in the cities of Curitiba, Vitoria, Fortaleza, Recife, Belem and Salvador.

Monday’s protests came not only during the Confederations Cup but just one month before a papal visit, a year before the World Cup and three years ahead of the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

The unrest is raising security concerns and renewed questions over Brazil’s readiness to host the mega-events.

RBI pauses, hints at rate cut in July

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Jun 182013

MUMBAI: After three consecutive rate cuts in 2013, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) lived up to market expectations of a status-quo in its mid-quarter policy review on Monday, but raised hopes of a rate cut next month with milder statements on inflation. With no change in policy rates, bankers now forecast a dip in loan rates in the July-September quarter supported by a good monsoon.

“While there was no expectation of a rate cut for this month, we stick to our earlier stance that there is scope for a cut in benchmark rates later this year, perhaps even next month,” said Keki Mistry, vice-chairman and CEO of HDFC. He said that although liquidity has improved, deposit rates are yet to come down. “One big worry is the current account deficit and the currency. But as inflation eases, more money will come into bank deposits and banks will be in a position to cut rates,” he said.

Bankers and economists said RBI’s earlier statement that there is “little room” to cut rates – which RBI governor D Subbarao stated twice in the past – was conspicuous by its absence. In its mid-quarter review, the governor merely said that RBI will have to wait for a durable reduction in inflation before cutting rates.

While the governor has been less hawkish on inflation, a new element introduced in the policy statement has been the exchange rate concerns. “The rupee depreciated by 5.8% against the dollar during the current financial year up to June 14. It fell by 6.6% during May 22-June 11 due to sell-off by foreign institutional investors, reflecting risk-off sentiment triggered by apprehensions of possible tapering off of quantitative easing by the US Fed,” RBI said. On Monday, the rupee weakened by 34 paise against the dollar to 57.87 in the interbank foreign exchange market.

Large public sector banks have been citing high interest rates on small savings schemes as a deterrent to bringing down rates on deposits. However, Shikha Sharma, MD & CEO, Axis Bank, pointed out that in the past banks have offered lower returns on deposits even when small savings schemes offered prevailing rates. She said that the cost of wholesale funds has to start coming down before banks can lower deposit rates.

“It is apparent from the communication that while RBI is now more comfortable with the domestic atmosphere that can support monetary easing, it has heightened its risk perception of the external atmosphere. Thus, it mentions its worry on the pass-through effect of rupee depreciation. Further, the apprehension of RBI comes from the fact that there could be a sudden stop and reversal of capital flows from emerging markets, including India,” said Indranil Pan, chief economist, Kotak Mahindra Bank.

“After factoring in the risks to inflation and also the global financial markets, we see a bigger probability for the RBI to stay on a pause in the July policy meeting. We also believe that the chances of an extended pause have increased,” he added.

With data showing that GDP grew at sub-5% in Q4, there is a clear need for a pro-growth stance. But as banks pointed out, it was not absence of funds that was holding back investments in core projects but government clearances.

Also, cutting rates when the rupee is under pressure goes against text book economics which calls for higher interest rates to protect the exchange rate.

The less-hawkish-than-expected statement triggered a rally in government bonds and in the equity markets. But the rupee weakened by 34 paise against the dollar to 57.87 paise in the interbank foreign exchange market.

“With monsoon progressing well and with softening global commodity prices, we expect inflation to continue on its southward journey. This is likely to lead to a situation of ‘durable receding of inflation’ and should pave the way for monetary easing in short to medium term,” said Shyam Srinivasan, MD & CEO, Federal Bank.

Cheaper loans in 2nd qtr?

The fact that RBI did not say there is “little room” to cut rates after stating it twice before has boosted sentiment Bankers see a dip in loan rates in July-Sept quarter on back of good monsoon and an improvement in liquidity CAD and weakening currency remain top worries: If inflation eases, banks can cut rates after more money comes into deposits.

Eight new faces in cabinet reshuffle

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Jun 182013

Eight new ministers have been sworn into India’s cabinet in what is being seen as the final reshuffle before elections due next year.

PM Manmohan Singh appointed Mallikarjun Kharge as railways minister.

Oscar Fernandes has been given the roads ministry and Sis Ram Ola the labour ministry: Both are veteran politicians.

The moves are being seen as an attempt to re-energise the Congress Party-led government ahead of the 2014 polls.

Girija Vyas, former head of the National Commission of Women, has been given the housing, urban development and poverty alleviation portfolio.

With the eight new ministers the size of the cabinet, known as the Union Council of Ministers, has increased to 77.

Mr Kharge was previously in charge of the labour and employment ministry.

The reshuffle comes after two senior ministers, CP Joshi and Ajay Maken, resigned over the weekend following directives from the party.

Positions vacant

Apart from Mr Joshi and Mr Maken, vacancies in the cabinet have been created by the resignations of PK Bansal and Ashwani Kumar.

Mr Bansal quit as the railway minister after allegations of corruption involving his nephew and a senior bureaucrat in his ministry.

Mr Kumar resigned the law ministry following a controversy over an investigation into the allocation of coalfields. Both men deny any wrongdoing.

A number of positions in the cabinet have also been lying vacant since two prominent allies of the government, the regional Trinamool Congress and DMK parties, pulled out last year.

The Congress Party has been the dominant force in Indian politics for almost all of the past 66 years.

But since its re-election in 2009, it has been tainted by allegations of corruption and the mis-selling of national assets.

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