Stop deporting Haitians to Haiti - says UN

The UN independent human rights experts requested States parties in the Americas to investigate all allegations of excessive use of force, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, and racial profiling against Haitians

The experts also called for measures to prevent and combat xenophobic and racist violence and incitement to racial hatred against people of Haitian origin, and to publicly condemn racist hate speech, including those uttered by public figures and politicians

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) sounded the alarm after 36,000 people of Haitian origin were deported during the first three months of the year, according to figures from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).  Some 90 per cent were deported from the Dominican Republic.

Violations and abuses against Haitians

The experts expressed concern over collective expulsions which did not take into consideration individual circumstances and needs.

They also highlighted alleged human rights violations and abuses against Haitians on the move along migration routes, at borders and in detention centres in the Americas region, “as a result of strict migration control, the militarization of borders, systematic immigration detention policies and the obstacles to international protection” in some countries.

Such obstacles exposed these vulnerable migrants to “killings, disappearances, acts of sexual and gender-based violence, and trafficking by criminal networks”, the Committee warned.

Demanding protection for Haitian refugees

Caribbean countries, such as the Bahamas as well as the Turks and Caicos Islands, have announced measures against undocumented Haitian migrants.  The United States in January also made public new border policies to permit fast-tracked expulsions to Mexico of Haitian migrants and others, crossing the southern border of the US without documentation.

Considering the desperate situation in Haiti, which does not currently allow for the safe and dignified return of Haitians to the country, as pointed out by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Committee called for an end to the collective expulsions of Haitians on the move.

It also said assessments of each individual case needed to be carried out, to identify protection needs in accordance with international refugee and human rights law, with particular attention to the most vulnerable groups.

Combatting racism and xenophobia

The independent human rights experts requested States parties in the Americas to investigate all allegations of excessive use of force, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, and racial profiling against Haitians.

They also demanded protection of refugees against other allegations of human rights violations and abuses committed by both State and non-state actors; including at borders, migrant detention centres and along migration routes, to punish those responsible and to provide rehabilitation and reparations to victims or their families.

The experts also called for measures to prevent and combat xenophobic and racist violence and incitement to racial hatred against people of Haitian origin, and to publicly condemn racist hate speech, including those uttered by public figures and politicians.

Independent human rights experts are appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, in Geneva.  They are mandated to monitor and report on specific thematic issues or country situations.  They are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work.

Source

The arrival of Venezuelans seeking better lives has strained the economies—and societies—of Latin American host countries

Venezuela’s Migrants Bring Economic Opportunity to Latin America

By Marco Arena, Emilio Fernandez Corugedo, Jaime Guajardo, and Juan Francisco Yepez

By promptly integrating migrants, the economies of host countries stand to increase their GDP by as much as 4.5 percentage points by 2030

More than 7 million Venezuelans have fled the country since 2015, with 6 million settling in other Latin American countries.  The region’s largest migration episode in history is driven by the collapse of the country’s economy, which has left Venezuelans struggling to meet their basic needs.

Between 2013 and 2021, Venezuela’s gross domestic product is estimated to have declined by more than 75 percent, the most for a country not at war in the last 50 years.  The COVID-19 pandemic compounded the country’s economic and humanitarian crisis, and in 2020 more than 95 percent of Venezuelans were living below the poverty line.

The arrival of Venezuelans seeking better lives has strained the economies—and societies—of Latin American host countries that are already balancing tight budgets, especially since the pandemic.

Colombia, which has received the most Venezuelan migrants, estimated spending about $600 per migrant in 2019.  This covered humanitarian aid, healthcare, childcare, education, housing, and job-search support.  With more than 2 million arrivals, this translates into $1.3 billion in assistance.  In 2019, this cost peaked at 0.5 percent of Colombia’s GDP.

In the long term, however, this investment has the potential to increase GDP in host countries by up to 4.5 percentage points by 2030, as we find in our latest research on the spillovers from Venezuela’s migration.

To reap the benefits from migration, host countries need to integrate the new arrivals into the formal labor force—and society—by promptly offering them work permits and access to education and healthcare.

Migration flows

After a brief interruption during the pandemic, when many countries closed their borders, migration from Venezuela has resumed and is expected to continue in the coming years, although at a slower pace.

We estimate that Venezuelan migrants will number around 8.4 million by 2025—more than 25 percent of the country’s population in 2015.

 

The characteristics of migrants have evolved as the economic crisis intensified.  The first wave of migrants were mostly professionals with high levels of education.  The second consisted of middle-class young people with a university degree.  Since the economy collapsed in 2017-2018, migrants have tended to be from low-income households and with lower levels of education.

Overall, the demographic profile of Venezuela’s migrants is like that of the local population in host countries.  Almost two-thirds are of working age and almost half are female.

Most have settled in other Latin American countries, while some have migrated to North America and Europe, mainly the US and Spain.

While Colombia remains the main destination, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru have also received sizable flows, with their combined number of migrants exceeding 2 million, more than 3 percent of the local population on average.

Effect on labor markets

Our research finds that Venezuelan migrants—many of them more educated than the local populations—face higher unemployment, are more likely to initially work in the informal sector, and earn less than the local workers. 

We didn’t find evidence that migrants are displacing domestic workers, although we have seen downward pressure on wages in the informal sector.

The wage gap between domestic and migrant workers grows with the level of education, which suggests a misallocation of human capital—workers’ skills, knowledge, and expertise—as educated migrants tend to only find unskilled jobs.  On average, domestic workers earn about 30 percent more than migrants.

Cost and benefits

Our analysis finds that providing migrants with humanitarian assistance and access to public services carries a sizable fiscal cost and puts pressure on the budgets of host countries, as the Colombia example shows.

 

But the analysis also identifies large medium-term gains in productivity and growth resulting from an increase in the labor force and better alignment of migrants’ human capital with jobs.  These gains are greater for countries that receive larger and more educated migrant flows relative to the domestic population.

We estimate that, with the right support and integration policies, migration from Venezuela has the potential to increase real GDP in Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, and Chile by 2.5 to 4.5 percentage points relative to a no-migration baseline by 2030.

 

We also project that the cost of integrating migrants would narrow over time as migrants join the labor force, increasing economic activity and expanding the tax base.

Continued support

Early in the migration crisis, countries in Latin America welcomed Venezuelan migrants and provided support in the form of visa waivers, mobility cards, and access to humanitarian assistance, healthcare, education, and childcare.  Migrants also received work permits and credentials to help them integrate into the labor market.

However, in 2018 and 2019, we saw a shift in policies as migration flows intensified.  While some countries introduced new programs to facilitate the integration of migrants, others made it harder for Venezuelans to enter by requiring additional documentation.

Countries should continue supporting migrants and helping them integrate into the formal sector so they can find jobs that are in line with their human capital and increase productivity in the economy.

This will require improving transitional arrangements and asylum systems, bringing in migrants into the health and education systems, and formalizing migrant workers by giving them work permits and accelerating the accreditation of skills and education.

To cover the costs of implementing these policies, countries should seek help from donors and international institutions.  The IMF is analyzing the impact of migration and coordinating with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and other relevant agencies to help countries access funding sources.

Countries in the region should also agree on a coordinated response to the migration crisis, in which each one contributes its fair share to the support and integration of migrants.

Source

The Summit of the Pacific Alliance: ...Return of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)?

Pacific Alliance: Return of the FTAA?

By Anubis Galardy

THE Summit of the Pacific Alliance, comprising Mexico, Colombia, Chile and Peru, which took place May 23 in Cali, Colombia, left clear its pretension to become the new economic and development organization for Latin America and the Caribbean, within a framework of the free circulation of goods, services, capital and persons among its member states.

The idea of former Peruvian President Alan García, formalized in Chile in 2012, the implementation of this new regional mechanism has generated rejection, criticism and distrust.

Argentine political analyst Atilio Borón defined it as a political-economic maneuver on the part of Washington to retrieve its lost influence in the region, after the 2005 defeat in Mar del Plata of its grand strategic project, the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

In other words, the plan is to build a kind of contra-insurgency or reactionary corridor to counterbalance the radical or moderate left in the region, Borón emphasized.

Peruvian researcher Carlos Alonso agrees with this perception. For him, the Alliance is also a resurgence of the failed FTAA, this time in an undisguised neoliberal version.

The Pacific Alliance has emerged in the face of other regional integration mechanisms such as the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), MERCOSUR, the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).with a concrete divisive and pro-Washington mission, to facilitate the United States repositioning itself with force in the region, he noted.

The Pacific Alliance divides South America into two: a part which seeks to play a role in world politics, for which it needs to act within a framework of sovereignty, and another with clear right-wing leanings, and inclined toward Washington, Alonso continues.

In summary, it is simply a merger of the Free Trade Treaties that Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Chile and shortly Panama and Costa Rica (currently observer countries) have with the United States, among themselves and with other countries in the region sharing a Pacific coast, Alonso concludes.

In his opinion, all of this is pointed toward a supra-free trade area with the Asian-Pacific region (Pacific Arch) which the United States is seeking to dominate.

Meanwhile, in Colombia, which assumed the rotating presidency of the Alliance at the Summit, Eduardo Sarmiento, director of the School of Engineering’s Economic Observatory, stated, "The free interchange of goods among members of this new bloc could possibly generate cheaper products, but at the cost of sacrificing employment and the country’s growth." (Orbe weekly)

June 06, 2013

 

Granma.cu

 

Bahamas Blog International 

Obama's trip to South America: Not before time

By David Roberts




We all know US diplomats, or any other diplomats for that matter, don't say what they mean when they speak in public - we never needed WikiLeaks to show us that - and in recent days we've been subject to yet another insult to our intelligence in the form of various officials from the US and elsewhere claiming that President Barack Obama's forthcoming tour of Latin America, announced recently in the State of the Union address, is proof of Washington's high degree of interest in the region and of Latin America's importance to the administration. In fact, the exact opposite is true.

The fact that Obama's first visit as president to South America - the March trip will encompass Brazil and Chile, while El Salvador is the other country on the itinerary - is scheduled to take place more than two years after he took office, shows Washington's lack of interest in the region and how low a priority Latin America is for US foreign policy. Obama will have visited nearly every other region of the world before he finally sets foot in the southern part of "America's backyard," although he did make previous trips to Mexico and Trinidad & Tobago.

Nevertheless, the countries he has chosen to visit "to forge new alliances across the Americas," as he puts it, should take advantage of the honor. Details of the trip are still sketchy but Brazil as the region's economic powerhouse was an absolute must for Obama, and the visit is long overdue. While in Brazil, which under President Lula experienced at times tense relations with the US, especially over Iran, Obama will meet with new President Dilma Rousseff and the two are expected to discuss issues such as clean energy, the Haiti situation and the sale of fighter jets, among others. But the important thing as that Rousseff sets her own agenda, and uses the occasion to help Brazil take its rightful place on the world stage.

In Chile, Obama is expected to discuss with President Sebastián Piñera topics such as nuclear security, clean energy and crisis management, in the wake of last February's earthquake. Piñera needs to take advantage of the visit to get the almost forgotten topic of free trade in the Americas firmly back on the political and international agenda.

El Salvador is at first sight a curious choice to include on the tour, but issues such as immigration to the US will undoubtedly be featured in talks between Obama and President Mauricio Funes. Indeed, the need to win back the votes of many Latinos in the US may well be the prime motive for the El Salvador visit.

Perhaps equally interesting are the countries in the region not included in the tour. The omission of Venezuela was no surprise to anyone, given its leftist leader, but not including Colombia, where the US has some unfinished business in the form of ratifying the free trade deal between the two countries, and Argentina, and perhaps Peru too, may be seen as a snub. Some have said Obama did not want to be seen to be meddling in the upcoming elections in those latter two countries, but even so, he will probably never make it to those important and friendly nations, at least not unless he wins a second term in office, and that is another indication of Washington's - and not just this administration's, the same thing has been true under several previous presidents - lack of interest in the region.

bnamericas

Bahamas Blog International