http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/02/world/americas/un-united-nations-refugees-migrants.html?_r=0
U.N. Deadlocked Over Draft Agreement on Refugees and Migrants
By SOMINI SENGUPTAAUG. 1, 2016
UNITED NATIONS — More people are forcibly displaced from their homes
today than at any time since the end of the Second World War.
But the plight of these people is so politically contentious that
after days of intense negotiations over a draft international
agreement, the nations of the world have come up with virtually no
concrete commitments to make their journeys any better or safer.
Western European countries, along with Russia, resisted what many had
hoped would be a pledge to resettle one-tenth of all the people
fleeing war and persecution. And the United States balked at language
that would have committed all countries to not detaining undocumented
children who arrive at their borders.
At issue is a 22-page draft “outcome document” that the 193 countries
of the United Nations are trying to agree on before the annual
gathering of world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly in
September. It is not legally binding. Still, the negotiations are so
difficult that a draft text that had been expected to be adopted on
Monday, after being postponed at least once before, was postponed
again.
“This has been a very difficult topic — very, very difficult and
timely,” Dina Kawar, Jordan’s ambassador to the United Nations and one
of two diplomats leading the negotiations, said on Monday.
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
The draft agreement comes at a time when refugees and migrants have
become a divisive element in European and American politics. In the
presidential campaign in the United States, Donald J. Trump, the
Republican nominee, has proposed barring Muslims from entering the
country.
Refugees and migrants will be the biggest issue at the gathering of
world leaders at the United Nations next month. President Obama plans
to lead a meeting at the General Assembly in an effort to nudge
countries to take in more refugees and contribute to countries that
have taken them in for years.
The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, also plans to hold
a meeting on the plight of refugees and migrants. The document under
negotiation will be the centerpiece of his meeting.
While the draft text has no force of international law, every sentence
has been argued and negotiated. The resulting language is sometimes so
vague that it is likely to bring little comfort to the millions of
men, women and children who are seeking safety and opportunity abroad.
Eritrea, for instance, recently complained that the many references to
human rights in the document were “redundant.” (A United Nations
committee earlier this year accused Eritrea of atrocities against its
own citizens.)
Russia resisted a sentence that called for countries to share in the
“burden” of taking in refugees. (Russia takes in very few, except
lately, from parts of Ukraine.)
The United States suggested a phrase asserting that detention is
“seldom” good for children. Activists for immigrants and refugees
found that suggestion so appalling that they fired off a letter on
Friday to President Obama. They argued that any international
agreement should make clear that detention is “never in the best
interests of children” and should commit to ending the practice. (The
United States detains children who arrive from Mexico without legal
papers.)
Amnesty International said in a statement over the weekend that “with
some states trying to dilute the agreement to suit their own political
agendas, we may end up with tentative half-measures that merely
reinforce the status quo or even weaken existing protection.”
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
According to the United Nations, 24 million people worldwide left
their home countries because of war or persecution in 2015. More than
ten times that number — 244 million — were considered migrants, living
somewhere other than the country of their birth.
This draft agreement sets out a long list of principles, most already
enshrined in existing laws. It says refugees deserve protection and
should not be sent back to places where they could face war or
persecution. It urges countries to allow refugees to work and to let
their children attend school, though it stops short of saying refugees
have a right to either jobs or schools.
It asserts that migration can be good for the world, which is wording
that migrant-sending countries wanted. It also calls for countries to
take back their citizens if they travel illegally and fail to get
asylum, which is what migrant-receiving countries, especially in
Europe, wanted.
An early draft had proposed a global compact to allocate where
refugees could be permanently resettled, but that proposal failed.
African and Latin American countries wanted to know why the compact
was on refugees alone, according to diplomats involved in the
negotiations. Why not also have a compact on the rights of migrants,
they asked.
The latest draft sets a 2018 deadline for two compacts — one for
refugees, a second for migrants.
The draft text also says nothing about the rights of the 40 million
people who are displaced in their own countries, or about those who
are leaving their homes because of climate change.
“This is a document very much about the present,” said T. Alexander
Aleinikoff, a former official at the United Nations refugee agency and
now a senior fellow at the Washington-based Migration Policy
Institute. “This is not a document that prepares us for the future.”
Received on Tue Aug 02 2016 - 09:04:55 EDT