Kudos to Champlain College in Vermont

In 2006, President of Champlain College, David F. Finney, noted the large refugee population in and around Burlington, one of about two dozen officially designated resettlement areas in and established a full tuition scholarship for refugees. It is supposedly the only one of its kind in the country. The college's description of the scholarship:

The New American Scholarship is a need-based scholarship for Vermont’s refugee and asylum students. Recipients must be full-time undergraduate students and eligible for a Federal Pell Grant. This scholarship is for tuition only, and the amount varies depending on the students expected family contribution and other need-based grants and scholarships the student is eligible to receive.

In its first year in 2006, the New American Student Scholarship program helped 13 students. Now, about 16 students—from Vietnam, Bosnia and Sudan, among other places—receive a range of scholarships based on need.

Why are other colleges not following suit?

22 Year Old American Arms Dealer

22 Year old Efraim Diveroli is the president of the company AEY Inc. which has according to U.S. government documents, done more than $10 million of business with the U.S. government since 2004. In 2007, it received a contract totaling more than $200 million to supply ammunition, assault rifles and other weapons to the Afghan National Army and police.

His grandfather told news reporters that Diveroli is now in Turkey or Albania doing his "patriotic" duty. "He's all over the world getting what the US military needs."

See the New York Times, CNN and local news story

Lisbon- a city of graffiti

While vacationing in Lisbon, I was surprised to discover the city awash with graffiti. Even certain monuments were tarnished with graffiti in comparison to the pristine pictures the guidebook showed. It was particularly strong in Barrio Alto, which is known as the heart of the city's youth culture. Yet it seemed as if the graffiti has become a large part of the ambiance, what gives the area its Bohemian feel. This was in comparison to more political graffiti found on statues in the main central parts of the city (such in the picture shown here), which was clearly meant for a tourist audience. Traveling further into the suburbs, into Cova da Moura (in Buraca, a neighborhood with people tied to the Cape Verde Islands, Angola, and Mozambique, Guinea, and Eastern Europeans), the part of Lisbon the guidebooks tell you to avoid, where taxis dont go, and of which tourist information officers have very minimal knowledge, we discovered more stylistic mural-like graffiti of figures such as Tupac, ('Tupac lives in Buraca') perhaps meant to express the solace that many marginalized youth have found in the hip hop culture.

Miss Bimbo

While on vacation in Lisbon, CNN International showed a special feature on the internet game Miss Bimbo (created by a young French male) which is growing immensely popular in France and England. The purpose of this internet game, targeting young girls is to " become the most famous, beautiful, sought after bimbo across the globe." When a the girl signs up, they are given a naked virtual character to look after and pitted against other girls to earn "bimbo" dollars so they can dress her in sexy outfits and take her clubbing. The character can even get plastic surgeries to stop at nothing to become the reigning bimbo.

Off course, the site has been the center of criticism, which has led to the website posting a series of caveats now listed on the main page, which a user must view before entering the site.

I do realize that by publishing this post I am perpetuating the sensationalism behind the story and giving the page free publicity. However, I think that such a post is important to demonstrate that gender norms are still being reinforced, but by using a different type of medium.

How the drive for clean air is displacing people in South Africa

The drive for clean air in the world has led to increased demands for platinum, which is used to produce catalytic converters. Nearly 90% of the world's platinum reserves are in southern Africa, and this has caused the forced displacement of many from their ancestral lands. The compensation to mine on peoples' lands and for forcing them to move has been meager.

In a BBC intrview Rose Thlarera, a South African woman, said:

"What the mine is doing to us is worse than the apartheid era - during apartheid we had our water and electricity but we didn't have the mine amongst us. They are forcing us out - they don't care how they are getting their platinum."

Frustrated Young Tibetians

Spiegel writes:

Many young exiled Tibetans have marched through Dharamsala with placards reading, "We want to go home." But for them, "home," means a land they know only from stories. From the terrace of the Central Committee of Tibetan Youth, Dolma Choephel, 34, looks down into a valley. She's wearing a gray t-shirt with the words "Boycott 2008." Dead human heads appear inside the Olympic rings.

"Tibetan youth are frustrated," the social worker says. She talks about her 21-day hunger strike in front of the United Nations office in New York, meant to raise awareness about the Tibetans' plight. "It didn't help," she says bitterly. The first TV cameras arrived only after 12 days. "But when a bomb explodes or a house goes up in flames," she says, "the UN is right there. The world only reacts to violence. Just like in Kosovo."

Liberia sets up a special court for sexual violence

The Liberian government has created a special court to deal with rising rape cases and other forms of violence against women. Liberia's women rights groups led by the Association of Female Lawyers of Liberia (AFELL) had been advocating for the setting up of the special court for two years. The organization frequently blamed the slow progress of rape cases through the existing courts for lack of justice for rape victims. Liberia’s Chief Justice Johnnie Lewis as recently as October 2006 had rejected calls for the establishment of the court.

Low Level Corruption in the US's Immigration System

Isaac R. Baichu, an adjudicator in the Garden City, N.Y., office of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, solicited sex from a Colombian woman seeking a green card. He coerced her, claiming he would grant her the green card in exchange for sex. She taped the conversations and brought them to the New York Times.

This raises questions about corruption within the system- no one really knows how many cases are handled, tainted with some type of bribery or sexual coercion.

"According to Congressional testimony in 2006 by Michael Maxwell, former director of the agency’s internal investigations, more than 3,000 backlogged complaints of employee misconduct had gone uninvestigated for lack of staff, including 528 involving criminal allegations."

Was Juno right?

A recent article in Slate by Emily Yoffe argues that marriage should be the priority consideration for young people who have unintended pregnancies and choose to keep the baby.

The Centers for Disease Control, teenagers account for only 23 percent of current out-of-wedlock births. That means the vast majority of unwed mothers are old enough to know what they're doing: Unwed births are surging among women ages 25 to 29.

The arguments set forth in the article seem to suggest that young pregnant girls are do not understand the situation in which they put themselves:

"But perhaps in our desire not to make moral judgments about personal choices, young women wholly unprepared to be mothers are not getting the message that there are dire consequences of having (unprotected) sex with guys too lame to be fathers. There is a scene in the teen pregnancy movie Juno in which the title character, a 16-year-old who has decided not to abort her unplanned baby but to give it up for adoption, is having an ultrasound. The technician, thinking she has on the examining table another knocked-up teenager planning to raise her child, makes disparaging remarks about children born into those circumstances. We are supposed to loathe this character and cheer when Juno's stepmother puts her in her place. But I found myself sympathetic to the technician. Why is it verboten to express the truth that growing up with a lonely, overwhelmed mother and a missing father is a recipe for childhood pain?"

But is this assessment fully correct? Do girls really not consider the best option for their babies? Do girls really not have agency in the decision that they make over their children? Juno actually seems to prove otherwise. Though a fictional character and perhaps not representative of many girls, she still displayed overwhelming understanding of her situation and handled it as if she were and adult. See the inspiration behind Juno by screenplay writer Diablo Cody

Negusie v. Mukasey

The New York Times writes:

Federal law prohibits the granting of asylum to a refugee who, before coming to the United States, participated in “the persecution of any person” on account of race, religion, nationality, ethnicity or political opinion. Accepting an appeal from an Eritrean, Daniel Girmai Negusie, the court agreed to decide whether that prohibition bars relief for a refugee whose participation in the persecution was compelled by a threat of torture or death.

Mr. Negusie, caught up in the civil war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, was drafted and forced to be a guard in an Eritrean prison, where he was ordered to mistreat prisoners. He eventually escaped, hiding in a shipping container on a ship bound for the United States. Despite a finding that he was likely to be tortured if returned to Eritrea, he was denied asylum because of his activities in the prison.

Rejecting his appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, ruled that issues of coercion and intent were irrelevant in contrast to the treatment of these questions by other appeals courts.

In his Supreme Court appeal, Negusie v. Mukasey, No. 07-499, his lawyers at the Yale Law School Supreme Court Clinic told the justices that with an increase in civil strife around the world, the issue was arising frequently and required a uniform response in the courts. Congress did not mean to apply the asylum prohibition to those whose participation was coerced, the brief argued.

See the Update

Does the asylum system make refugees more political?

The very essence of a refugee is seeking protection for being politically active in another country. However, all of the difficulties associated with seeking asylum seem to cause refugees to become political or more political when they might not have been in the first place or might be seeking stability in their new country of asylum. Yet, the injustices of the asylum system cause instances such as in Ghana:

Voice of America reports:

Police in Ghana have arrested Liberian refugees who were leading protests at a camp outside the capital Accra. The refugees had refused to stop theit month long demonstration against a UN-funded repatriation program. The Liberians are against what is being called a voluntary repatriation program, which is set to expire at the end of June. Ghanaian officials say the Liberians will lose their refugee status and become illegal aliens if they stay in Ghana. The refugees are being offered a free trip and $100 by the U.N. refugee agency to resettle in Liberia, but they say it is not enough and they are afraid to return.

Forced Migration Film Screening in London March 29- April 5

As part of the London International Documentary Film Festival (29th March – 5th April) there will be screenings of four films on the topic of forced migration.

Saturday March 29, 2008 8pm at the Renoir Cinema

“La Americana” (The American)

Dir. Nicholas Bruckman/ Co-Dir. John Mattiuzzi, USA/Bolivia/Mexico, 2008, Special Preview

October 2000, Cochabamba, Bolivia. Carmen, a young single mother, faces a life-changing catastrophe when her nine-year-old daughter is badly injured in a bus accident.

Unable to pay the hospital bills and for specialized care, Carmen makes the dangerous journey to the US to work illegally, staying for 6 years to raise what she believes will be enough money to support her daughter for life.

But when she returns home to Bolivia she discovers her savings are nowhere near enough. Should she stay with her ailing daughter, or make the perilous journey back to the US for a second time?

A portrait of the human side of the current immigration crisis in America.

Tickets £7/£6 Curzon members
Box office: 0871 703 3991

Saturday April 5, 2008 11:05pm at Stevenson Theatre, British Museum

Next Station (Próxima Estación)

Director: Estela Ilárraz, 2007, Spain, 69min, UK Première

A group of Ecuadorean immigrants in Madrid. They came to Spain to work, to support their families, but they desperately want to go home.

But if they go to Ecuador to visit their families, they know they will never again be able to get back to Madrid to work.

Ya Oromia

Director: Amanda Walsh, 2006, Australia, 5min, European Première

In the overcrowded housing estates of North Melbourne lives a young African woman, an Oromo, forced to leave her beloved homeland and family in fear of persecution.

Now she is reunited with her daughters, after more than six years enforced separation. The family must adjust to living together again in a new country.

For My Children (Por Mis Hijos)

Director: Aymee Cruzaleguí, Spain, 2007, 16min, World Première

What is a woman willing to do to make a better life for her children? Norma, a Latin American immigrant in Barcelona, struggles with the pain of solitude, forced to live away from her family in order to support them.

Tickets £3.00
Box office: 0207 323 8181

Iraqi asylum seekers top the global list

A near doubling of Iraqi asylum applications in 2007 has spiked the overall number of asylum seekers in the global north for the first time in five years. For the second year running, Iraqis topped the list of asylum seekers in the world's industrialized countries.

The United States was the main country of destination for asylum seekers of all nationalities in 2007, with an estimated 49,200 new asylum claims in 2007, accounting for 15 percent of all applications in industrialized countries. Sweden saw a 50 percent increase in the number of new asylum applications, from 24,300 in 2006, to 36,200 last year. After the United States and Sweden, the main countries of destination for asylum seekers in 2007 were France (29,200), Canada (28,300) and the United Kingdom (27,900). Greece, Germany, Italy, Austria and Belgium were also among the top 10 receiving countries.

See UNHCR
See the BBC
See reliefweb
See Reuters

What happens after asylum? the case of a former child soldier in the US

See the New York Times article: Taking the War out of Child Soldier
Nina Bernstein writes:

The teenager stepped off an airplane at Kennedy International Airport on Nov. 8 and asked for asylum. Days before, he had been wielding an automatic weapon as a child soldier in Ivory Coast. Now he had only his name, Salifou Yankene, and a phrase in halting English: “I want to make refugee.”

Salifou had good reason to be confused and distrustful of the system he had entered when he sought asylum. Like many of the 5,000 unaccompanied minors apprehended each year, he had no valid identity documents. But based on the birth date he gave, he had been placed in a juvenile shelter in Queens.

Within days, after confiding to a counselor that he sometimes heard voices and had once attempted suicide, he was transferred to a mental hospital’s pediatric ward, where he was so medicated, he said, that he could barely move.

Discharged in time for Thanksgiving dinner at the children’s residence, he was suddenly declared to be over 18, not 17 years and 7 months as he maintained, based on an immigration service dentist’s interpretation of his X-rays — a practice that many doctors contest as unreliable. An adult immigration detention center refused to take him, so he was locked up in a county jail in western New Jersey.

His experience evokes the larger international confusion over how to draw the line between juveniles and adults, and what treatment is best for former child soldiers. Should they be legally barred from asylum as persecutors or protected as victims? How can they be healed, and who will help them?"

On Aug. 6, 2001, according to the 25-page affidavit he signed, his father and older sister were shot to death within earshot of the family home in Man, a market town in northwestern Ivory Coast. He remains tormented that as a 12-year-old he was powerless to protect his family when armed men ransacked the house and assaulted his mother.

His father, a civil servant in the defense ministry, had been politically active with an opposition party, but may also have dealt in arms and diamonds. He had been able to afford to send Salifou to a French school, where he excelled.

But after the murders of his father and sister, he fled with his mother, brother and two younger sisters. For three years, they lived in a roving camp for the displaced, and it was all they could do to stay alive.

Late in 2004, troops of the Mouvement Patriotique, the rebel faction that controlled the north, raided the camp for new recruits. As rebels grabbed Salifou and his younger brother, Abdul Razack, then about 13, their mother held on to Abdul’s arm, yelling that he was too young to take. To punish her, Salifou testified, one rebel chopped off Abdul’s hand with a machete. Abdul was left behind, but Salifou was thrown in the back of a truck with other boys and began two years as an unwilling child soldier among thousands — trained, armed, drugged and growing numb to violence.

South End Press- Non Profit Publishers

Looking for some books to read about activism? Look at the South End Press, a nonprofit, collectively run book publisher with more than 250 titles in print.

More on celebrity causes

See the New York Times article by James Traub:

"An entire industry has sprung up around the recruitment of celebrities to good works- the celebrity-philanthropy complex. Stars — movie stars, rock stars, sports stars — exercise a ludicrous influence over the public consciousness. Many are happy to exploit that power; others are wrecked by it. In recent years, stars have learned that their intense presentness in people’s daily lives and their access to the uppermost realms of politics, business and the media offer them a peculiar kind of moral position, should they care to use it. And many of those with the most leverage - Bono- and Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and George Clooney- have increasingly chosen to mount that pedestal. Hollywood celebrities have become central players on deeply political issues like development aid, refugees and government-sponsored violence in Darfur."


Natalie Portman: "It’s the way it works, I guess. I’m not particularly proud that in our country I can get a meeting with a representative more easily than the head of a nonprofit can.”

Picture from New York Times, March 9, 2008

Youth voice as tokenism?

Adam Fletcher from www.YoungerWorld.org:

"Let's stop handing out just enough rope for young people to become sacrifices on the alter of youth voice." He says:

Authentic Youth Engagement is…

• Collective Activities are led by youth and adults together – not individually
• Connected Activities embody interdependence and model it among youth and adults
• Empowering Youth voice is a driving force throughout activities
• Equitable Adults recognize young people have differing backgrounds that require different approaches
• Focused Activities are appropriately outcome-driven
• Healthy Respectful disagreement, speaking up, and other avenues that equalize disparities between youth and adults are at the core of the activity
• Learning Young people gain skills, knowledge and tools to be effect agents of change
• Mutually Beneficial Young people and adults acknowledge each other’s dreams, actions, outcomes and reflections
• Relevant Activities are responsive to the lives of young people
• Responsible Adults and youth develop and sustain their capacity to be “response-able”
• Substantive Activity design and outcomes are designed to impact individuals, organizations, communities and society
• Self-Motivated Young people feel driven to participate

This is response to the fact that when we encourage young people to voice their opinions and experiences, it is often met with empty promises by adults. Instead of reaching out to them and actually supporting the youth's endeavor, we just pat them on back for speaking out.

See Cycle of Meaningful Student Involvement.

See Accessing the Condition for Student Voice.

The new tourism fad: Slum Tours

Sick of seeing historical monuments, parks, religious sites, markets, aesthetic scenery, and other "normal" tourist attractions when traveling to the global south, then why not go on a slum tour? These tours allow visitors to get a feel for the real conditions of how the majority of people live, but from afar and in safety. "From the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, to the townships of Johannesburg, to the garbage dumps of Mexico, tourists are forsaking, at least for a while, beaches and museums for a taste of locality." (See the New York Times, The Guardian)

But these tours raise questions about ethics. What is the responsibility of the tourist to the locals it views...almost like animals in a zoo. Who profits? Certainly not the locals themselves, even though it is their homes that are being toured, but rather the tourist agencies. It seems like another way to make a spectacle out of the impoverished. After all, who would want their home being turned into a zoo?

StatAttack- linking statistics and consumerism

See the new clothing line, StatAttack, that depicts development statistics of Africa on t-shirts. See also Chris Albon's blog post.

Refugees bring a new Bohemian feel to London

The New York Times Travel section today reports about the immigrant packed borough of Hackney, which is "teeming with artists, designers and young bohemians." Having appeared in the New York Times Travel section, it appears that refugees and immigrants add new culture and flavor to the city, attracting tourism.

Unaccompanied Children in UK lack support

Unaccompanied children who have fled persecution to seek asylum in Britain are being deprived of the support they need as a funding shortfall drives councils to save money, according to a report by the children's commissioner for England. There are about 6,035 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in England, of which the majority are in London.

The Youth Bulge - easy blame

The Economist recently reported:

"Gaza and Kenya have more in common than short names ending in “a” and violent squabbles apparently not ending at all. Both have too many people, or, to be more exact, too many young men without either jobs or prospects. The resulting frustration is one of the causes of their present discontents."

Its easy to blame civic unrest on youth and, in fact, this has been done throughout history. The development of the majority of age (legal codification of 18 as adulthood) occurred during the time of the Industrial Revolution as adults became preoccupied with controlling the active resistance and organization of an economically independent group of young working people.

Moreover, Jo Boyden writes: "at the present time most theories of causality in young people's conduct appear to rest on only one form of influence on human development and action, whether an aspect of the environment, personal experience, or individual traits. Most of the existing theories have failed to do justice to the full complexity of human motivation and the forces that mediate this."

Chris Blattman on Ishmael Beah's "A Long Way Gone"

The Australian has alleged that Ishmael Beah fabricated parts of his memoir, A Long Way Gone, on being a child solider in Sierra Leone. See Chris Blattman's post.

"Author Ishmael Beah's bestselling account of his time as a child soldier was proved factually flawed by a document found in a remote Sierra Leone schoolhouse. The school results for March 1993 showed the popular author attended the Centennial Secondary School throughout the January-March term, a time when he claimed in his heartrending book A Long Way Gone that he was already roaming the countryside as a child refugee. Beah, his New York publisher Sarah Crichton Books and his Australian co-publisher HarperCollins have furiously denied reports by The Weekend Australian in recent weeks that have undermined the credibility of his highly profitable book."

"Beah is estimated to have earned about $1 million from the book, which has already sold more than 650,000 copies. Beah, now 27, did spend some time as a child soldier during his country's civil war, but it appears likely to have been a few months around the age of 15 rather than two years from the age of 13 that he vividly describes in his book. The author, who now lives in New York and has been appointed by UNICEF as an advocate for child soldiers, this week dismissed The Australian's investigations as ridiculous and ill-motivated despite the steady accumulation of evidence that his account of his experiences did not add up."

UNHCR and FC Barcelona Partnership

When is comes to advocacy, UNHCR is no small player- they seem to be able to get the most popular celebrities and athletic teams to promote their cause. Joining the ranks of Angelina Jolie, is FC Barcelona, who has signed a partnership agreement aimed at using sports to provide refugee children with life skills.

"The main objective of the new partnership is to raise public awareness of the protection needs of refugees and other uprooted people around the world and to promote the role of education and sport in the development and well being of refugees, particularly children. As a first step, UNHCR and FC Barcelona will jointly identify and design a number of education and life skills projects through sport activities which will benefit refugees in Ecuador, Nepal and Rwanda."

See:

UNHCR and Barcelona Football Club launch partnership to help refugee children through sport

FC Barcelona and UNHCR

Marathon Fundraiser in Algeria for Sahrawis

UNHCR reports:
"Hundreds of runners taking part in this year's Sahara Marathon have donated US$22,500 to construct a sports centre for Sahrawi refugees from Western Sahara in southern Algeria. Some 400 people, including refugees and runners from almost 20 countries, took part in the February 25 event, which included a full marathon as well as shorter races for adults and children. It was held in and around Smara, one of five camps near the border with West Sahara that hold some 200,000 Sahrawis. Aside from taking part in the races, the overseas competitors were able to experience some of the hardship that the Sahrawis have to endure every day in camps like Smara."

Gulf of Aden- one of the most dangerous places in the world for migrants

Migrants mainly from Somalia or Ethiopia traveling across the Gulf of Aden into Yemen are at risk of death from both the journey across the gulf and also from smugglers. "The journey can take 12 to 36 hours, depending on the weather, knowledge of the routes, sea conditions and the situation upon arrival. If smugglers meet patrol boats en route or see coast guards upon arrival, they either force their passengers overboard or attempt to take an alternative route, often adding many hours to the voyage," reports UNHCR.

Yet, despite these dangers, the numbers are increasing. In 2007, more than 26,000 people each paid between $50-150 to make the crossing. The increase in arrivals this year is said to be partly due to the use of new smuggling routes

Yemen is the only country in the Arabian peninsula to have acceded to the 1951 Convention. There are 95,000 refugees living within Yemen, and 95% are Somalis.

The Impact of Immigration Raids on Children

It is estimated that over 5 million children in the United States have one or more parents who are undocumented and are at risk of arrest, detention, and deportation. See the report entitled, "Paying the Price: the Impact of Immigration Raids on Children" by the National Council of La Raza and the Urban Institute released in November 2007. By studying recent large scale raids in Colorado, Nebraska, and Massachusetts, the report details the short and long-term social, economic, and psychological impact immigration workplace raids have on children left behind when parents are arrested, detained and/or deported.

Advocacy to Curb Forced Marraige

Over 51 million girls under 18 in the developing world are forced to marry, a practice widely viewed as a violation of their human rights. See the article and table of countries with the highest rate of child marraige. The International Center for Research on Women is launching a week of advocacy to raise awareness about forced marriage. Events include:

Stephanie Sinclair's (winner of the UNICEF Photo of the Year award in 2007) photo exhibit of child brides in Afghanistan in the foyer at Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill.

Opening of the 2008 United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, which will include on its agenda a report on the forced marriage of child brides by the secretary-general.

In th summer of 207, Rep. Betty McCollum, Democrat of Minnesota and member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on the State Department and Foreign Operations, introduced the International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act. Sen. Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and chair of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law, soon followed with the International Child Marriage Prevention and Protection Act. The week long advocacy includes lobbying Congress to push for these bills.

Arguments have been made about the cultural sensitivity of such campaigns and legislation, but "a lot of what the legislation is about is not dictating and telling people what they have to do," argues Harper, McCollum's chief of staff. "It's taking model projects and model interventions, [such as the NGO Tostan] investing in them and allowing them to be expanded in more areas."

Today's Dish on Service

A new report by the Meyer Foundation and Annie E. Casey Foundation found that next generation's leaders might look to alternative means to NGOs in order to create change.
See: Ready to Lead: Next Generation Leaders Speak Out.

Also see: "The College of William and Mary will host a summit of national leaders in the fields of K-12 and higher education service learning and civic engagement on March 10, 2008. The National Forum on Service Learning, sponsored by the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, is the first of a series of conversations designed to culminate in a fall summit on national and community service"

Born in 1990

Those born in 1990 (a part of the Millennium generation) will be voting for the first time in 2008. See the documentary 18 in '08.

More on Iraqi Refugees

Juan Cole writes:
"The State Department has pledged to help bring some Iraqis who have worked for the U.S. government to the United States. But these efforts are mired in a bureaucratic system so slow it cannot keep up with itself. The number of refugees that the U.S. has promised to bring in is far, far fewer than those who actually make it to our shores. It is nothing less than tragic that in the last fiscal year, Sweden has taken in almost ten times as many Iraqi refugees as the United States."

Robert Putnam on the Rising Civic Engagement among Youth

The 2008 election have been cause for increased civic participation among youth- the extraordinary campaigns calling for change have awoken a sleeping civic mindedness among youth.

But this could all come to a tragic halt if super delegates or party bosses decide the outcome, argues Robert Putnam. Young people will find democratic politics a sham.

Celebrity Advocacy - love it or not

Angelina Jolie published an article in the Washington Post on Thursday February 28, 2008 making a case for increased assistance for refugees in countries surrounding Iraq. While she makes a case for funding and assistance for return, the wider question is about responsibility [burden] sharing, as resettlement quotas in the US have never been met.

Her article also brings to light the impact of celebrities focusing attention on humanitarian issues. We have seen George Clooney be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize over his advocacy of the humanitarian issues in Darfur, Angelina Jolie's (and also Madonna) numerous trips (and adoptions) to bring attention to humanitarian issues as well as numerous other celebrities "adopting" a cause. On one hand, their efforts bring more attention to the issues on a mainstream level. On the other hand, many critique their involvement as another way to garner more attention. While I am reluctant to judge the motivations of peoples' "do goodings," it is important to promote accurate information and ensure that no harm is done in the process.

Question: Anyone find something wrong with Angelina's article?

Answer: She should have used the term "refugee" accurately, as "refugees inside their own country" are internally displaced people (IDPs) and there is a strong legal distinction between the two categories of people. As Goodwill Ambassador to the UNHCR, she should know this.

Government Matters: Bangladeshi refugee camp conditions improve drastically in 2 years

UNHCR has reported that one of the worst refugee camps in the world in 2005, the Nayapara Refugee Camp in Bangladesh has become a much better place to live. Over 27,000 refugees live in this camp and the neighboring Kutupalong Camp. Discrimination against Rohingya Muslim refugees from Myanmar have persisted for years. The camps have been funded by UNHCR for 16 years, but the government administered them until recently.

UNHCR credits this change to increased government cooperation, as it has allowed more UN agencies and independent aid into the area. The recent shift in policy by the government of Bangladesh is due to two factors: 1) The change in government. Bangladesh is currently governed by a temporary military regime which has sought to curb corruption and reform policy. 2) The current regime is also interested in streamlining policies and handing off tasks, such as camp management, to external organizations.