Stéphane Dujarric described the direct transfer of money, mostly to those who have been displaced and lost their jobs due to the fighting, as “a continuation of crucial assistance that we, along with our partners, have provided in most regions of Ukraine”.
He said last year, some six million people across different parts of Ukraine had been provided with cash, and this year more than $200 million had been transferred to help Ukrainians meet their basic needs.
“This was made possible through the coordinated efforts of [more than] 20 partners, including UN agencies, national non-governmental organizations and international non-governmental organizations as well”, said Mr. Dujarric.
One billion target
He added that the target overall, was to provide cash assistance to around 4.4 million people, transferring close to $1 billion in total.
And overall, humanitarians are hoping to provide some kind of relief to more than 11 million people of the nearly 18 million who need assistance in Ukraine.
“To this end, we and our partners requested $3.9 billion for the response”, the UN Spokesperson continued. “So far, we received a total of $900 million so we count on the international community to sustain its support to the humanitarian response in the country, as the war continues to drive a grave humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, particularly in the east and the south.
Over the weekend, the UN managed to provide shelter materials and other vital items to more than 1,500 people in a community along the Dnipro River in Kherson region.
It’s the first time that aid workers have managed to reach the area just a few hundred metres from the frontline, “where the level of destruction is appalling”, according to the UN humanitarian affairs coordination office (OCHA) in Ukraine.
UN Humanitarian Coordinator in the country, Denise Brown, said on Monday that in getting two convoys into the Donetsk and Kherson regions last Friday, UN teams were “inching our way towards the frontline, to relieve the suffering of these communities who are under constant shelling”.
BRATISLAVA, Apr 12 (IPS) – The arrest of a US journalist in Russia has not only sent a chilling warning to foreign reporters in the country but is a sign of the Kremlin’s desire to ultimately stifle any dissent in the state, press freedom watchdogs have warned.
They say the detention at the end of March of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich signals the Russian regime may be tightening its already iron grip on control of information and expanding its repression of critics.
“The scale of this move is enormous. Not only is it the first time since the Cold War that an American journalist has been detained, but very serious charges have been brought against him. This is a big step,” Karol Luczka, Advocacy Officer at the International Press Institute (IPI), told IPS.
“ has been the Kremlin policy for some time now and it seems they are targeting more and more people,” he added.
Gershkovich, a US citizen, was arrested in Yekaterinburg on suspicion of spying. He is being held at Lefortovo prison in Moscow pending trial and faces up to 20 years in jail on espionage charges. Among his recent reporting were stories about problems Russian forces faced in their war effort, as well as how Western sanctions were damaging the Russian economy.
The Wall Street Journal has denied the accusations against their reporter and the arrest has been condemned by western leaders and rights campaigners.
Some have seen the detention as a political ploy by the Kremlin and believe Gershkovich is being held to be used as part of a prisoner exchange with the US at some point in the future.
But press watchdogs say that, even if that is the case, the arrest also sends out a very clear message to any journalists not following the Kremlin line.
“I have no doubt that the arrest is a political thing. When I heard about the charges against Evan, the first thing that I thought was, ‘what high-profile Russian do the Americans have in one of their jails at the moment?’” Gulnoza Said, Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), told IPS.
“Foreign correspondents offer a rare glimpse of the real picture in Russia to a global audience. The arrest sends a message to all foreign journalists that they are not welcome in Russia, and they can be charged with a crime at any time. From now on, it’s clear that the situation for them unpredictable and unsafe,” she added.
Independent media in Russia had faced repression even before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but it has increased since then.
The regime has moved to block websites of critical newspapers, as well as social media platforms, to stop people from accessing information critical of the war, while military censorship has also been introduced with new draconian laws criminalising the “discrediting” of the military.
This has led to some outlets shutting pre-emptively rather than risk their employees being sent to prison, while others have been forced to drastically slash staff numbers, or move newsrooms out of the country, operating in de facto exile.
But until now, foreign media outlets had been relatively unaffected by this crackdown. At the start of the war, many pulled their correspondents out of the country amid safety concerns. But a number, like Gershkovich, returned and had been able to report on the war with comparatively far greater freedom than their Russian counterparts.
For this reason, Gershkovich’s arrest is so worrying for the future of independent journalism under the current Russian regime, Jeanne Cavelier, Head of Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk at Reporters Without Borders (RSF), said.
“To arrest a foreign journalist for such serious charges is a new critical step in Putin’s information warfare. The aim is to intimidate all the remaining Western journalists on Russian territory who dare to report on the ground and investigate on topics linked to the war on Ukraine,” she told IPS.
“It is a signal that they are no more relatively protected than their Russian colleagues. As usual, to spread fear and silence them. Dozens of foreign media outlets have already left Russia since March last year, as well as hundreds of local independent journalists. This blow may worsen the situation and further reduce the sources of trustworthy information from Russia.”
Others believe that the arrest could signal the Kremlin is moving towards a goal of almost total control over information in Russia.
“We are still some way off the kind of censorship that existed in the USSR, but Putin and the Russian ruling regime have said for a long time that the system of censorship in the USSR is a role model for them. This is the way it is going in Russia and the way the government wants it to go. It is deplorable but it is the reality of things,” said Luczka.
“Eventually, it could become like the Cold War when all information coming out of Russia was strictly controlled,” added CPJ’s Said.
Meanwhile, some believe that the arrest is also a signal to the wider population.
In recent years the Kremlin has moved to shut down the opposition, both political and in other areas of society. While vocal critics such as opposition leader Alexei Navalny have ended up in jail, many civil society organisations, including domestic and foreign rights organisations, have been closed down by authorities.
This repression has intensified since the start of the war, and Russians who spoke to IPS said that, particularly following the introduction of legislation criminalising criticism of the invasion, many people have grown increasingly wary of what they say in public.
“It’s crazy. There are shortages because of the war, there are supply problems, and we see it at work all the time. We can talk about the shortages as much as we want to at work, but we cannot say what is causing them – the war – because just using the word ‘war’ can land you in jail for years,” Ivan Petrov*, a public sector worker in Moscow, told IPS.
He added that he knew many people who were against the war but were afraid to express even the slightest opposition to it.
“They know it’s wrong but just can’t speak about it. There is so much censorship. You can get jailed for treason just for mentioning its negative effects on the economy,” he told IPS.
Against this backdrop, Gershkovich’s arrest is likely to reinforce fear among ordinary Russians who do not support the war or the government and stop them speaking out, rights campaigners say.
“It’s hard to separate the stifling of all media freedoms from the stifling of all independent voices – they go hand in hand. When arrest such a high-profile reporter on patently bogus grounds, no matter what the true purpose of the arrest may be, they are no doubt fully aware of the chilling message it sends to the broader public,” Rachel Denber, Deputy Director of the Europe and Central Asia Division at Human Rights Watch, told IPS.
IOM’s Missing Migrants Project documented 441 deaths during this period, though the true toll is likely to be higher.
Investigations continue into several reports of so-called invisible shipwrecks – cases where boats are reported missing but there are no records of survivors or search and rescue (SAR) operations.
The fates of more than 300 people aboard those vessels remain unclear, IOM said.
Delays costing lives
The Central Mediterranean route – stretching overseas from North Africa to Italy and, to a lesser degree, Malta – is the world’s most dangerous maritime crossing.
IOM said the rise in deaths comes amidstdelays in State-led rescue responses and hindrance to SAR operations carried out by non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
“The persisting humanitarian crisis in the Central Mediterranean is intolerable,” said IOM Director General, António Vitorino.
“With more than 20,000 deaths recorded on this route since 2014, I fear that these deaths have been normalized. States must respond. Delays and gaps in State-led SAR are costing human lives,” he added.
Delays in State-led rescues were cited as a factor in at least six incidents in the Central Mediterranean, leading to at least 127 fatalities, while the complete absence of response in a seventh case, claimed at least 73 lives.
NGO vessels detained
Meanwhile, NGO-led rescue efforts have been “markedly diminished” of late, the UN agency said, outlining the latest incidents.
IOM reported that on 25 March, the Libyan Coast Guard fired shots in the air as an NGO rescue ship, Ocean King, was responding to a report of a rubber boat in distress. The following day, another vessel, the Louise Michel, was detained in Italy after rescuing 180 people, reminiscent of the situation of the Geo Barents, which was detained in February and subsequently released.
Over the past weekend, 3,000 migrants reached Italy, bringing the total number of arrivals so far this year to 31,192, IOM said.
On Tuesday, a vessel carrying roughly 800 people was rescued more than 200 kilometers southeast of Sicily by the Italian Coast Guard with the assistance of a commercial vessel.
The Italian Coast Guard also rescued another ship with around 400 migrants that had been adrift for two days between Italy and Malta. IOM noted that not all migrants from these ships have reached safety and disembarked in Italy yet.
A legal obligation
“Saving lives at sea is a legal obligation for States,” said Mr. Vitorino. “We need to see proactive State-led coordination in search and rescue efforts.”
IOM said the troubling situation in the Central Mediterranean underscores the need for dedicated, predictable State-led SAR and disembarkation.
Action must also include supporting NGOs that provide lifesaving assistance at sea, and ending the criminalization, obstruction and deterrence of the efforts of those who provide such assistance.
IOM stressed that all maritime vessels, including commercial ships, have a legal obligation to provide rescue to boats in distress.
IOM further called for more concerted action to dismantle criminal smuggling networks and to prosecute those who profit from the desperation of migrants and refugees by facilitating dangerous journeys.
The main newspapers and news programmes do not treat the climate crisis as an emergency, says Greenpeace Italia Spokesperson Giancarlo Sturloni. Credit: Paul Virgo / IPS
by Paul Virgo (rome)
Inter Press Service
ROME, Apr 11 (IPS) – If an alien landed on Planet Earth today and started watching television and reading the newspapers, it would probably not realize that humanity and the natural world face an existential threat – one that has taken us into the Sixth Mass Extinction, is already devastating the lives of many, especially in the Global South, and is set to hit the rest of us soon.
“I don’t know what is scarier, the fact that atmospheric CO2 just hit the highest level in human history, or that it has gone close to completely unnoticed,” tweeted Greta Thunberg on April 9 regarding data from the Global Monitoring Laboratory (GML) of the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Aside from some notable exceptions, the climate crisis has not brought out the best in the mainstream media.
The scientists and activists who sound the alarm are often portrayed as dangerous extremists or loonies.
The treatment dished out last year by a popular television show, Good Morning Britain, to Miranda Whelehan, a young member of the UK’s Just Stop Oil civil-disobedience group, is a good example.
Instead of considering her valid points about the looming dangers outlined in the IPCC’s reports, she was ridiculed and bullied with bogus arguments, including criticism for ‘wearing clothes’ that may have been transported using oil. Was she supposed to turn up naked?
It was so bad that it seemed to have come straight from Adam McKay’s 2021 satirical film about the climate crisis, Don’t Look Up.
But butchering climate coverage is only a small part of the problem.
What is perhaps worse is the extent to which global heating and its effects are largely ignored, with celebrity gossip and sports among the subjects that seem to take precedence.
There are not enough stories about the climate emergency and those that do get published or screened are not given the prominence they deserve.
New research by the Italian section of Greenpeace gives an idea of the scale of the problem.
The ongoing monitoring study, conducted with the Osservatorio di Pavia research institute, showed that the main Italian dailies only publish around 2.5 articles a day explicitly dealing with the climate crisis.
The newspapers give plenty of space, on the other hand, to businesses whose activities generate big greenhouse-gas emissions, running an average of six adverts a week to firms involved in fossil fuels and in the automobile, cruise tourism and air-transport sectors.
The study revealed that less than 3% of the stories on Italy’s biggest TV newscasts deal with the climate crisis.
“The main newspapers and news programmes do not treat the climate crisis as an emergency,” Greenpeace Italia Spokesperson Giancarlo Sturloni told IPS.
“The news is scarce and sporadic; the climate crisis is hardly ever a front-page topic.
“Suffice it to say that in the main prime-time news, climate change is mentioned in less than 2% of the news and in some periods it falls below 1%.
“Moreover, in the Italian media there is little mention of the causes, starting with fossil fuels, and even less of the main culprits, the oil and gas companies”.
Naturally, this problem is not limited to Italy.
In 2019 the Columbia Journalism Review, The Nation, The Guardian and WNYC set up Covering Climate Now (CCNow), a consortium that seeks to work with journalists and news outlets to help the media give the climate crisis the treatment it deserves.
Since then over 500 partners with a combined reach of two billion people in 57 countries have signed up.
But co-founders Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope say that, although progress has been made, much of the media is still failing to convey that climate change is “an imminent, deadly threat” lamenting that less than a quarter of the United States public hear about the issue in the media at least once a month
There are several reasons why the climate crisis is under-reported.
The climate crisis is complicated and often depressing, so editors may be reluctant to run stories that require lots of explaining and risk turning the public off.
Furthermore, Hertsgaard, the environment correspondent of The Nation, and Pope, editor and publisher of Columbia Journalism Review, report that many major outlets have privately said they will not sign CCNow’s Climate Emergency Statement because it sounds like activism and they do not want to look biased.
Sturloni believes that money is a factor too.
“Our analysis shows that the voice of companies is almost always the one that gets the most space in the media narrative of the climate crisis, even more than the voice of scientists and experts,” he said.
“The companies most responsible for the climate crisis also find ample space in the main Italian media, and often take advantage of this to greenwash or promote false solutions, such as gas, carbon offsetting, carbon capture and storage, nuclear fusion etc…
“This is due to the Italian media’s dependence on the funding of fossil fuel companies, which are able to influence the schedule of newspapers and TV and the very narrative of the climate crisis.
“This prevents people from being properly informed about the seriousness of the threat, and thus also about the solutions that should be urgently implemented to avoid the worst scenarios of global warming”.
The Special Rapporteur on the right to freedom of expression said she was encouraged by the Government’s plans to reform media laws in line with international standards.
However, she was also alarmed by “the toxic public discourse, from politicians or public officials and amplified by tabloids, scapegoating the media, human rights defenders, ethnic minorities, LGBTI and those critical of the government.”
Undermining public trust
Ms. Khan warned that public trust in the media is undermined when journalists are labelled foreign agents, traitors, or enemies of the State, which increases the likelihood of attacks against the press while also impacting media freedom and democratic debate.
“Freedom of expression is not a license to harass, intimidate or threaten critical voices,” she stressed.
She urged the government to ensure that all State bodies implement the constitutional and legal framework upholding freedom of expression while combating hate speech and disinformation.
Action against tabloids
“Given the role that tabloids play in spreading hate speech, I am concerned that the electronic media regulatory body (REM) is failing to take appropriate action against the violators, failing to promote pluralism in media content, and allowing smear campaigns and harassment to continue,” the rights expert said.
REM must be “independent, effective and accountable,” she advised.
She also urged the Government to ensure the safety of journalists by taking measures to speed up investigations and legal proceedings related to threats and attacks.
Political will required
Ms. Khan called on the authorities to investigate and prosecute longstanding cases of journalists killed in Serbia. “Killing journalists is the most egregious form of censorship. Impunity must not prevail,” she said.
Finally, she stressed that the adoption of laws alone was not sufficient to protect freedom of expression.
“What is needed is strong, unequivocal political leadership from the commitment to international standards. The legal commitments of the Government must be translated into action.”
Visit to Kosovo
Ms. Khan also travelled to neighbouring Kosovo during her visit. While welcoming the “pluralistic media landscape” there, she encouraged the authorities to continue to strengthen media freedom.
“I urge the authorities to fully implement the law on languages and call on the international community to ensure adequate support to independent Serbian language media,” she said.
They should also complete investigations into past killings and enforced disappearances of journalists, and ensure justice, she added.
About UN Rapporteurs
Special Rapporteurs are appointed by the UN Human Rights Council to monitor and report on specific country situations or thematic issues.
These experts work on a voluntary basis and serve in their individual capacity.
They are not UN staff and do not receive payment for their work.
UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay was in Ukraine to reaffirm support to the population amid the continuing full-scale Russian invasion, which began on 24 February last year.
She visited the capital, Kyiv, and the cities of Odessa and Chernihiv, during the two-day mission, which concluded on Wednesday.
Pillar of peace
“Since the very first days of the war, UNESCO has stood by the Ukrainian people to help protect culture, heritage, education and the safety of journalists. These are the pillars of our humanity, of our identities; the pillars of the country’s recovery and of peace,” she said, speaking at a press briefing outside Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Throughout the conflict, where Russia has frequently targeted civilian areas, UNESCO has reiterated that the targeting of cultural sites and schools violates international law.
UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay (2nd left) visits a church in Ukraine.
Protection and support
The agency has also deployed a $30 million emergency plan in Ukraine which ranges from protective equipment for monuments and works of art, to the distribution of more than 50,000 computers so that teachers can continue remote education, to the provision of dozens of helmets and bullet-proof vests to journalists working in combat zones.
“This support will continue and increase in 2023,” Ms. Azoulay announced during a meeting with teachers in a school in Chernihiv.
She said that in the coming weeks, UNESCO is mobilizing more than $10 million in additional funding to respond to the education emergency, noting that strengthening of psychosocial support for students is a priority.
Culture recovery plan
Ms. Azoulay also presented figures on the impact of the war on all areas of culture over the past year, including some $2.6 billion in physical damage.
“In order to rebuild but also to redress the situation, it will be necessary to invest $6.9 billion in the cultural sector in Ukraine over the next 10 years,” she said on the sidelines of a working meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay (centre left) meets President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during her mission to Ukraine.
At the meeting, the President welcomed measures already implemented by the UN agency. “Sometimes there are only words. With UNESCO, there are concrete results,” he said.
Mr. Zelenskyy requested UNESCO to support the Government’s development of a recovery plan for the cultural sector, while continuing to coordinate and mobilize international partners.
Preserving Odesa’s heritage
Ms. Azoulay concluded her visit in the port city of Odesa, whose historic centre was inscribed by UNESCO on the List of World Heritage in Danger in late January.
The UN agency will further strengthen actions on the ground, with priority given to preserving and digitizing artistic and documentary heritage while maintaining the protection of historic buildings endangered by artillery fire.
UNESCO will also launch a project to improve the conservation of the city’s archaeological museum collections through financial support from the foundation of its Goodwill Ambassador Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière, Founder and President of French holding company FIMALAC.
Energy sector damage exceeds $10 billion
Relatedly, damage to Ukraine’s power, gas and heating infrastructure exceeds $10 billion, according to an assessment published on Wednesday by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the World Bank.
Attacks have left over 12 million people with limited or no electricity, while also disrupting water supply and heating systems.
It’s estimated that necessary emergency repairs will come with a $1.2 billion price tag.
“Right now, the priority is to keep the lights on and the heat flowing,” said Jaco Cilliers, UNDP Resident Representative in Ukraine.
He added that a key focus will be to secure power supply for critical infrastructure in big cities and in war-affected areas damaged beyond recovery.
The Abortion Dream Team (from left to right Natalia Broniarczyk, Justyna Wydrzynska, Kinga Jelinska) outside the Warsaw court after Wydrzynska’s conviction. Credit: Abortion Dream Team
by Ed Holt (bratislava)
Inter Press Service
BRATISLAVA, Apr 05 (IPS) – “People want the abortion laws here liberalised. Society has changed; even the politicians can see it,” Kinga Jelinska, a Polish reproductive rights activist, says. “In four or five years, I believe, the abortion laws here will be liberalised, because it’s what the people support.”
Jelinska, a member of the Abortion Dream Team (ADT) collective, which provides assistance to women in Poland who need an abortion, spoke to IPS not long after her fellow activist and ADT co-founder Justyna Wydrzynska had been sentenced to eight months community service for giving abortion pills to another woman.
She is disappointed by the ruling but, like her colleague, remains defiant and determined to carry on her work.
“We’re just going to keep going. The court claimed Justyna was ‘guilty of helping’ someone have an abortion. Well, we have to help each other in cases where people are being systematically denied access to care. Without people like Justyna, women are left to take their own decisions , and they may take an unsafe option,” Kinga says.
Wydrzynska’s trial and conviction have, activists such as Jelinska say, highlighted problems connected with abortion access in Poland and the risks women needing the procedure – and those they turn to for advice – often face.
Poland has some of the world’s strictest abortion laws – terminations are only permitted where the pregnancy threatens the mother’s life or health, or if it results from a criminal act, such as rape or incest – and while not illegal to have an abortion, it is illegal to help someone do so.
Many women in Poland who want an abortion self-administer pills bought online from abroad or travel to neighbouring countries with less restrictive legislation, such as Germany and the Czech Republic, for terminations. Some contact groups like ADT for help. It is not illegal to give out information about abortions, including advice on how to buy pills online.
In February 2020, at the start of the Covid pandemic in Poland, ADT had been contacted by a woman, named Anya*, who was 12 weeks pregnant and desperate. She said she was a victim of domestic violence and was considering going abroad to terminate her pregnancy as the pills she had ordered online were taking too long to arrive.
Wydrzynska decided to give Anya her own pills, but the package she sent was intercepted by Anya’s partner, who reported what had happened to police. Anna later miscarried.
Wydrzynska was convicted of “aiding an abortion” – a crime under Polish law which carries a maximum sentence of three years in prison – by a Warsaw court in March 2023 in what is believed to be the first time in Europe that a women’s health advocate has gone on trial for aiding an abortion.
The conviction was immediately condemned by both local and international activists who said the case should never have been brought to court.
“We were disappointed that Justyna was convicted. We are happy that she is not going to jail, but her trial has dragged on for a year, in which time a lot of international organisations, including gynaecologists, said the case should be dropped. It should never have come to trial, and this would never have happened in another country,“ Mara Clarke, co-founder of Supporting Abortions for Everyone, told IPS.
Amnesty International described the court’s ruling as “a depressing low in the repression of reproductive rights in Poland”.
“This ruling is going to have a chilling effect and we are already seeing women who are worried about what they should do if they found themselves in the situation that they need an abortion,” Mikolaj Czerwinski, Senior Campaigner at Amnesty International, told IPS.
Others believe the trial was part of a wider campaign to crackdown on women’s rights and those of the minorities such as the LGBTQI community, by the right-wing government and its conservative religious allies.
“The case against Justyna was politically motivated,” said Clarke, pointing out that the judge in the case was promoted on the same as she handed down the verdict, and that the Christian fundamentalist group Ordo Iuris was allowed a role in the trial helping the prosecution.
“Who knows what will come up with next?” she added.
The ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has long been accused by critics in Poland and abroad of systematically suppressing women’s rights, and it was instrumental in pushing through a tightening of abortion laws in 2021 which banned abortions even in cases where the foetus was diagnosed with a severe birth defect.
Meanwhile, the European Commission (EC) has raised serious concerns over judicial independence in the country under the PiS with some judicial bodies seen as being under the control of the ruling party.
Czerwinski said that following the trial there were now “questions over the independence of the judiciary in Poland and what impact that might have on women’s rights, and human rights in general, in Poland”.
But while anger remains at Wydrzynska’s conviction, activists such as Jelinska and Clarke believe that the trial has only highlighted how out of touch Poland’s government is with society on abortion laws.
Since the abortion laws was tightened even further in 2021 – a move which was met with massive street protests – surveys have shown strong support for liberalisation of abortion laws. In one poll last November, 70% of respondents backed allowing terminations on demand up to 12 weeks.
“People want access to abortions, public surveys have shown that. We see it too in the work we do every day,” she says, adding that during Wydrzynska’s trial “public opinion was overwhelmingly pro-Justyna.”
In a public opinion poll carried out in February for Amnesty International, 47% of respondents said they would have done the same as Wydrzynska. The survey also found that people were overwhelmingly against punishment for helping to access an abortion in Poland.
Meanwhile, some opposition politicians have suggested they would introduce legislation which would allow for abortion on demand if they get into power, pointing to public support for such a measure.
It is this public support which, Kinga believes, may have stopped the court handing down a jail sentence to the activist.
“This is an election year, and the government knows it would be political suicide to give her a harsher sentence with so many people in favour of liberalising access to abortion,” she explains.
It may also be behind Polish parliament’s rejection in early March of a bill, proposed by an anti-abortion group as a citizen’s legislative initiative under a special parliamentary procedure, which would have criminalised even providing information about abortions. Government MPs voted against it with some reportedly saying they did back it for fear of fuelling protests just months away from elections.
“Even they know that would have been going too far,” said Czerwisnki.
The trial, which was reported extensively in Poland and widely in international media, has also helped raise awareness of the work of groups like ADT and others with some organisations, including the Abortions Without Borders network which has a Polish helpline reporting a three-fold rise in calls since the trial began.
“Justyna’s case put even more focus on the issue and the ways women can access abortion services,” says Kinga.
If the conviction was designed to put activists off their work, it seems to have backfired, said Czerwinski.
“A lot of activists have been re-energised by this because they have seen Justyna and her response to the ruling,” he said. “They are aware of the risks, but at the same time will not stop helping women.”
Wydrzynska has appealed her conviction and insists that she has done nothing wrong. She has also vowed to continue her activism.
Speaking on public radio after her trial, she said: “Even if I should leave the country, I will never stop. In the same way, I know that there are thousands of people who’d do the same for me.”
Manfred Profazi, who is based in Vienna, Austria, has been touring some of the regions in Ukraine which have been most seriously affected by over 13 months of conflict following Russia’s full-scale invasion.
He has told UN News what he’s been seeing across the devastated country and how IOM has provided comfort to people forced to flee their homes due to the fighting and bombardment of civilian areas.
“Travelling in Ukraine these days isn’t easy. When I served as Chief of Mission for the International Organization for Migration from 2012 to 2017 it was possible to fly, or take one of the modern trains across the length and breadth of this vast country.
Now flying is completely impossible, and travel by train still fraught.
My journey this week in Ukraine, from Odesa and Mykolaiv in the south, Dnipro in the East, up to the capital Kyiv and again west to Lviv, was, for security reasons, by road.
It gave me ample time to reflect on my own journey and the millions of individual journeys that have been taken since the start of the war, and indeed before.
Millions of people are in state of flux, caught between being displaced in their own land, or with their families torn apart. Some stay in Ukraine because they cannot leave the land that bore them, some because leaving is not an option, some, of course, stay to fight.
A group of mainly women and children arrive in Kyiv in April 2022 after being evacuated from the southern city of Mykolaiv.
Some 5.4 million people are displaced in Ukraine, and more than eight million have fled across its borders, but it’s impossible to estimate how many million journeys have been undertaken. Many people have been displaced several times. Some have travelled abroad, come back, settled, and left again as the fighting swings this way and that.
This feeling of dislocation affects even communities and people that have not relocated. Communities have been crushed, unsettled, scattered. The damage in places like Mykolaiv, and countless small towns and villages I passed through this week, scars the landscape and the emotions.
Who would not want to flee such a nightmare?
Rising from the rubble
And yet, people stay. People are returning. People are adapting to being in new host communities, and are bringing their skills and their experience to help rebuild their nation. Their homeland.
Of course, rebuilding and reconstruction in the middle of a war is challenging, to put it mildly, but everywhere I went, I saw new infrastructure rising from the rubble. Much of it, I am proud and humbled to say, has been installed by IOM and by organizations working with us, and with local authorities, who have done so much to keep hope alive.
One of many examples is a mobile heating plant, essentially the hangar of a 40-tonne truck, specially adapted to provide heat to a children’s hospital, where hundreds of children – local and displaced – can receive uninterrupted treatment.
IOM Regional Director Manfred Profazi talks to Valeria about her life as a resident in an IOM-supported dormitory in Dnipro.
“I was lucky enough to be able to hear first-person accounts of survival, of resilience and even optimism from young and old alike. These stories, and the dedication of our staff, keep all of us motivated and focussed on our assistance, and on facilitating recovering without fostering dependency.
I’m thinking of Valeriia and her son, who fled the destruction of Bakhmut and are now finally in decent accommodation, thanks to IOM-organized repair works to a dormitory in Dnipro.
She showed me photos of her home, now completely destroyed, and spoke wistfully of her market garden. Now she grows a few greens in a window box. Her son, a diligent student, follows his lessons on a mobile phone, as he doesn’t even have a laptop. They have not given up; they do whatever it takes to retain a simulacrum of normal life.
IOM’s integrated approach allows us to support displaced people and host communities on multiple levels and provide them with a full range of services from infrastructure to income-generation.
IOM / Iryna Tymchyshyn
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is stepping up efforts to help displaced and war-affected people cope with cold weather.
I was Chief of Mission at IOM Ukraine in 2014 when armed conflict in Donbas broke out between Ukraine and separatists; this caused the first wave of displacement. Back then we built the technical know-how and a close relationship with local and central government that stood us in good stead as we scaled up to meet these massive new challenges.
I would like to say there is a light at the end of the tunnel, but, as they say, “prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future”. One thing is sure, there is light IN the tunnel, the light that comes from the resilience, the resolution, even the obduracy of the Ukrainian people, who refuse to submit to despair.
We will continue our efforts to support these people as long as needed in all the ways we can.”
QUEBEC, Canada, Mar 29 (IPS) – In the wake of Finland’s announcement last fall that it will build a barrier along its border with Russia, the discussions surrounding the European Council meeting of 9 February 2023 confirmed that the tide had turned.
Demands for stronger border measures have multiplied and some states have made it clear that they are willing to finance border barriers in other member states on the edge of the European Union.
They are thus projecting their own anxieties beyond their territories: in the midst of a moral panic, Europe now seems to be building what the geographer Klaus Dodds calls a ‘barbed-wire curtain’: a protective bulwark, in the spirit of what Samuel Huntington imagined when he wrote The clash of civilizations.
However, Brussels doesn’t seem quite ready to build a continuous external and concrete border wall itself. Yet.
Europe has a historical yet complicated relationship with walls. At the outset of the millennium, the continent, which had long rejected the idea of border walls as relics of a bygone era, in time would change its tune.
As the European Union expanded, it inherited the fenced-off borders in the heart of Cyprus and on the edge of Lithuania. But these were seen as mere remnants of conflicts from the past.
For in the 1990s, the EU became the champion of a world without borders, a world of free movement and flow. Yet, this was a mirage: the Schengen area abolished internal border controls while the physical barriers on its periphery were gradually hardening — such as Spain, which was walling up its border with Morocco in its two enclaves, Ceuta and Melilla, situated on the African continent. However, towards the end of the Cold War, there were still only 200 km of fenced borders in existence: vestiges of an ancient period, reminders of geopolitical obsolescence.
Breaking ‘the wall’ taboo
The great change towards erecting walls instead of tearing them down in Europe happened in two phases, starting in 2015, when the Syrian crisis led the EU to believe that there was also a ‘migratory crisis’ in Europe.
Then, in the following years, the change in the mindset continued both because of the Russian strategic threat in the wake of the invasion of Crimea and the instrumentalisation of refugee flows by Europe’s cumbersome neighbours.
Thus, in 2023, all over Europe, stretching from Finland to Greece, from Ukraine to Calais in France, there are 17 walled-in dyads. While 1.7 per cent of Europe’s land borders were barricaded at the end of the 20th century, 15.5 per cent are fenced today – 2008 kilometres of walls now scar the continent.
The fact that Europe is fully embracing the walled-in world and its own border limits is effectively breaking a taboo – that of the wall – as explicitly expressed by some heads of government on the eve of the European summit in February 2023. The Trumpian formulae, both gruesome and horrifying, is no longer an exception.
The wall has become an acceptable solution no longer limited to the vocabulary of populism and the Far Right, but rather entering fully mainstream discourse; legitimising exclusion as a tool of identity-based resistance in a world shaken by the winds of globalisation.
Yet, walls, which now represent a lucrative and globalised market with astronomical direct and indirect costs, do not fulfil the objectives for which they are being built. While political rhetoric suggests they are intended to seal and render the border impervious, it fails to recognise that flows shift – both spatially and temporally – when impeded.
Smuggling (whether of drugs, weapons, or people), irregular crossings and insurgency reorganise and become more opaque and thus more difficult to monitor. Flows disappear briefly to reappear elsewhere or in other forms. In the meantime, passage (both legal and illegal) becomes more costly and a magnet for organised crime.
Thus, although border walls sketch a fantasised imperviousness, they are not meant to serve as watertight membranes but rather as mere sieves.
Research shows that not only do walls burden bilateral trade and borderlands’ health, and affect a nation’s image, but they are also limited in effectiveness, as they do not block unwanted flows nor do they significantly increase security. Indeed, the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) website has long claimed that the wall serves only as a ‘ speedbump’.
This perspective is shared by Finland’s Border Guard which states that the prototype barrier being tested will ‘slow down and guide the movements of any crowds that form’, adding that ‘even if people skirt the fence, it still fulfils its task by slowing down illegal entry and helping the authorities to manage the situation.’
However, this clear-mindedness doesn’t necessarily spill over into the public arena because border walls, as Trump proved in 2016, are an undeniably effective electoral weapon. An aspect that does not seem to have escaped the Austrian chancellor when he recently called for the erection of a wall along Europe borders – with the upcoming legislative elections in Austria less than a year away.
The wall as a silver bullet?
Just as a wall obscures the other side of the border, it also hides disagreements and opportunities for cooperation between border actors and border security policies. By de-structuring border areas economically, politically and ecologically, border walls amplify vulnerabilities and differences, which in turn accentuate violence. In their subsequent quest for security, states engage in damaging behaviours (such as suddenly shifting funding priorities, militarising border areas and mismanaging labour migration at the expense of local economies and ecosystems) – motivated by the prevailing rhetoric of a visible, theatrical silver bullet: the wall as a panacea.
As a matter of fact, border walls accentuate the global hierarchisation of mobility: a wall isn’t an impenetrable rampart for everyone but a filter that dissociates flows, selecting which is the wheat and which is the chaff. For some, it will impose cruel choices and added difficulties. For others, it will be barely a speck in the landscape.
For a few, it will even be an opportunity to enrich themselves. This unbalancing contributes to the political longevity of the wall-building process while also accomplishing a self-fulfilling prophecy: it becomes the announced remedy to the instability it breeds. Border walling creates a ‘tragedy by design’.
Hence, any transgression of the wall – Professor Scott Nicol calls these barriers ‘ladder magnets’ – becomes a demonstration of its very necessity, despite the fact that the wall itself is the reason some of these activities are now illegal.
By succumbing to the sirens of border fortification, European states are contributing to the normalisation and dissemination of the walling phenomenon. Walls are – above all – an admission of failure (of cooperation – both international and European) and a renouncement of the founding values of the European Union.
The resulting backlash will see an increased rift, accentuated flows, growing incomprehension and fears that are ever more primal, for which only greater cooperation can offer a remedy. For walls do not solve the problems they address. They merely act as a bandage on a broken limb, a smokescreen before increasingly glaring problems that remain unsolved.
Élisabeth Vallet is an Associate Professor at the RMCC-Saint Jean in Canada. She is also the director of the Centre for Geopolitical Studies of the Raoul-Dandurand Chair in Strategic and Diplomatic Studies (UQAM-Canada). Her main field of interest include Borders, border walls and US politics.
Source: International Politics and Society (IPS) which is published by the Global and European Policy Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin.
Pinar Selek, a Turkish writer, is the victim of one of the most Kafkaesque trials in Turkey’s history. Credit: Juantxo Egaña/IPS
by Karlos Zurutuza (biarritz, france)
Inter Press Service
BIARRITZ, France, Mar 23 (IPS) – The woman we’re meeting in a house on the outskirts of Biarritz -800 kilometres southwest of Paris- is a university professor, the author of several books and hundreds of articles, and a well-known human rights activist.
According to Turkish courts, she also planted a bomb that killed seven people and injured more than 120 in Istanbul’s Spice Bazaar 25 years ago.
“Up to four scientific reports, including the one from the Turkish police themselves, pointed to a gas explosion, but later they said that it had been a bomb, and that I had planted it,” Pinar Selek tells IPS. This 51-year-old Turkish woman is embroiled in one of the strangest trials in the history of the Turkish judiciary.
“It’s Kafkaesque,” she blurts. “The case is based on the testimony of a Kurdish man who said that we had planted the bomb together. Later, he claimed to have confessed under torture, and that he didn’t even know me. He is free in Turkey, and I am in exile.”
On June 21, 2022, the Turkish public news agency Anadolu announced the annulment by the Supreme Court of Turkey of Pinar Selek’s fourth acquittal. Previously, she had been found innocent in three criminal proceedings.
But the sentence to life imprisonment is already firm and unappealable. On January 6, 2023, the Istanbul Court of First Instance issued an international arrest warrant for her.
Martin Pradel, Selek’s lawyer, talks about a “purely political case”.
“I have never heard of any other case that has gone on for 25 years without legal evidence of any kind. And this is without mentioning that Pinar has been acquitted up to four times,” Pradel told IPS over the phone from Paris.
The lawyer urged the French state to give Selek protection as a French citizen. If not, he added, the next step would be to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
Several French town halls such as the one in Marseille have also turned to her case. On March 29 she will receive the Medaille de la Ville de Paris, a recognition awarded by France´s capital city (Courtesy Pinar Selek)
“Where are they?”
Born into an Istanbul family of left militants, Pinar Selek has devoted her life to making visible those “invisible” in her country of origin: women and Kurds, prostitutes, Roma, homosexuals, Armenians…
“Where are they?” has always been her question as a researcher, and also as an activist. It was this vital commitment that brought her to prison in 1998, after refusing to hand the police a list of Kurdish contacts for one of her sociological studies.
“When they started building new prisons, we resisted being transferred. More than 300 died under attacks in which prisons were even bombed,” remembers Selek.
She was released after more than two years of captivity, torture, and a hunger strike in which, she says, dozens died. Back on the street, she was one of the founders of Amargi, a groundbreaking feminist organization in Turkey, and also the first feminist bookstore in the history of her country.
She has added a set of tales and a few books of her own to its shelves, but she has not been back in a long time. She had to leave the country in 2009 and, after getting her French citizenship in 2017, she settled down in Nice, where she teaches at the University Côte d’Azur, a public institution.
Ilya Topper, a Spanish journalist and analyst based in Istanbul for more than ten years, sees the trial opened against Selek in 1998 as “part of that brutal campaign against everything that seemed to treat Kurdish demands as a topic that could be discussed.“
“Until around 2005, anyone within a hundred meters of a protest which held a banner with a slogan that had any remote resemblance to a phrase once said by someone from the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) would be put in jail for many years,” the expert told IPS over the phone from Istanbul.
Until just over a decade ago, he adds, mayors were still sentenced for saying something in Kurdish on charges of “speaking a non-existent language.” He illustrates it with a concrete case:
“In 2011, a Kurdish mayor was sentenced to half a year in prison and a fine of 1,500 euros for naming a public park after Ehmedi Xani, an 18th-century Kurdish poet. The controversial issue was not the writer, but the initial letter of his last name: it is written with X, which exists in Kurdish, but not in Turkish.”
The trial against Selek, underlines the analyst, “highlights the deterioration of the Turkish Judiciary in a country where you can go to prison for any reason.”
Pinar Selek fears that her international arrest warrant will affect her family in Turkey and restrict her movement even within France. Credit: Juantxo Egaña/IPS
Solidarity
Several human rights watchdogs have consistently denounced Selek’s case. Human Rights Watch describes it as “the perversion of a criminal justice system”; the International PEN Club – a world association of writers with consultative status at the UN- includes Selek in its list of 115 authors who suffer harassment, arrest or violence around the world.
In a telephone conversation with IPS, its president, Burhan Sönmez, mentioned other notorious cases in Turkey, such as that of the publisher and human rights defender Osman Kavala, or the opposition politician Selahattin Demirta?
“Both remain behind bars despite the European Court of Human Rights ruling for their immediate release,” Sönmez stressed from London.
Solidarity goes hand in hand with denunciation. More than a hundred personalities including intellectuals, political leaders and social agents will attend the hearing to be held in Istanbul on March 31. It’s a legal formality to notify Selek of her firm life sentence.
Michele Rubirola, former mayoress of Marseille and today the first deputy of the consistory, is the one chosen to represent the city. In a telephone conversation with IPS, Rubirola spoke of “someone who is a victim of injustice and oppression.”
“Selek ‘s academic struggles have turned into political struggles, and the relentlessness of the political and judicial power she is facing consolidates her as a true human rights activist,” added the delegate.
A judicial process that has lasted a quarter of a century is reaching a key moment just a few weeks before decisive elections in Turkey, a referendum on the more than two decades in the power for Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdo?an.
“My trial is one of the indicators of the evil rooted in Turkey: it reflects both the continuity of the authoritarian regime and the configurations of the repressive devices,” laments Selek.
She also confesses concern about how it may affect her family in Turkey, and herself in her host country.
“I am convicted of a massacre and my movement may be restricted internationally, and even within France. Moreover, Turkey is asking me for millions in compensation for the deaths and the destruction and there´s an international financial convention that could be executed in France,” she recalls.
Today, her only certainty is that she will try to move on with her life. Other than her work at the university, she also gives talks and organizes events and protests. Exile, she says, “may have uprooted me from my country, but not from the street.”
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