On March 3

On this day in ...
... 1976 (35 years ago today), contending that its eastern neighbor had committed acts of aggression against it, "Mozambique closed its borders and cut all links with Rhodesia," now known as Zimbabwe, "and mobilized for defense," according to The New York Times. Lines of communication were severed and rail links broken in a move that Maputo officials said stopped just short of a declaration of war.

(Prior March 3 posts are here, here, here, and here.)

Mixed Migration in Southern Africa

This month, UNHCR released a report assessing its response to three African mixed migration movements: those from the Horn of Africa (pictured left), the Great Lakes region (pictured below right), and Zimbabwe to South Africa. These flows are "mixed" because they include both refugees and labor migrants, groups that can be nearly indistinguishable both facially and legally. Mixed migration movements raise questions about the adequacy of protection categories created by international refugee law and the need to address the interaction between asylum systems and restrictive labor migration policies.

The first two movements, encompassing migrants from Ethiopia, Somalia, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Burundi, often pass through Malawi and Mozambique en route to South Africa. The migration management systems in Malawi and Mozambique, both signatories to the UN and OAU refugee conventions, are struggling to cope with the migration flows. Their response has been to accommodate most refugees in camps, an approach that is bound to fail. Many of these refugees have no interest in staying in camps; indeed, some are fleeing refugee camps in Kenya and Tanzania. They have come to Malawi and Mozambique so that they can get to South Africa, where they hope to find work, family, members and possibly transit onwards to North America or Europe. And of course, while all of the migrants arriving in Malawi and Mozambique face significant protection issues during their journeys -- including inadequate access to food, water and shelter; harassment; robbery; extortion; and exploitation -- only some of them are refugees entitled to the protection of UNHCR.
The report is critical of UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration for failing to engage with the "mixed migration issue" in Malawi and Mozambique, but it is difficult to know exactly where UNHCR should draw its boundaries. Should its mandate be extended to cover those who do not fall within the UN Refugee Convention definition? If not, which UN entity should bear responsibility for protecting non-refugee migrants -- the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, or even the UN Development Program or UN-HABITAT? More importantly, does it make sense to distinguish between refugees and other mixed migrants given the "poor governance and harsh economic circumstances" in their countries of origin? These flows are primarily composed of young men, the vast majority of whom are presumably seeking greater economic opportunity as well as greater political freedoms.
These questions are no more easily resolved in the case of Zimbabwean migration flows, which are characterized by increasingly blurred lines between labor migrants and refugees. The report suggests that most Zimbabwean migrants fall somewhere in between, in a category the authors describe as forced or 'survival' migration.
The migration management system in South Africa further contributes to the blurriness. In 2009, South Africa registered over 220,000 new asylum seekers (most from Zimbabwe). Part of the reason for these extremely high numbers is that the easiest and often only way for migrants to stay and work in South Africa is to apply for refugee status. Because the lawful immigration channels for non-refugees are inadequate to address the demand for labor migration, most migrants turn to the asylum system. Unsurprisingly, South Africa's asylum system has become overwhelmed; it suffers from severe backlogs and exceptionally poor quality decisions. (credit for map of South Africa above left).
These are problems faced by immigration systems around the world; as borders become tighter, pressure on asylum processes increases. It is folly to imagine that mixed migration flows can be stopped through higher fences. Those desperate for a better life will find a way around them. We might do better by designing programs that provide safe and legal means for labor migration, recognizing the humanity in the search for greater opportunity, whether economic, political, or both.

Worldwide Food Insecurity

The Food and Agriculture Organization has developed a new statistic for measuring food insecurity. Called "Depth of Hunger," the new statistic measures the daily calorie deficit experienced by undernourished people. It makes for stark reading. Congo and Haiti top the list --undernourished people in those states consume 400+ fewer calories per day than the needed minimum. (credit for World Food Programme map showing most affected areas in red)
There are very few success stories, and even those are hardly cause for joy. Mozambique for example has reduced the calorie deficit of its undernourished people from 400 calories/day in 1990 to 320 calories/day in 2005. During the same period the percentage of Mozambique's population food insecurity fell from 59% to 38%. At least their trajectory is moving in the right direction, even though the absolute number of malnourished people is still painfully high.
What is particularly startling about the Depth of Hunger statistic is how remarkably consistent the daily calorie deficit has remained for food insecure people over the past 20 years. Across the world, the story remains the same: the prevalence of hunger has remained stubbornly high. Eight hundred and fifty million people do not have enough to eat. Think about that stark fact. That is roughly one in five people on the planet.
These facts are particularly depressing because they come despite high profile UN efforts under the Millenium Development Goal and World Food Summit banners. (Again, there are a few bright spots: Nicaragua, for example has reduced food insecurity from 50% of its population to 22%.)
We have a long way to go if we are going to achieve the goal of halving by 2015 the number of people who experience hunger.
This Valentine's Day, my gift of love is a contribution to Oxfam.

On this day

On April 7, ...
... 1970, Josina Machel (left), a fighter for the Liberation Front of Mozambique (FRELIMO), died in a gun battle with Portuguese troops. She was the wife and "comrade-in-arms" of Samora Machel, the president of FRELIMO, who would become the 1st President of Mozambique when it gained its independence in 1975. (He later married Graça Machel; as we've posted, she later would become a U.N. Special Rapporteur on the plight of child soldiers.) In Josina's honor Mozambicans observe Women's Day every April 7.
... 2003 (5 years ago today), in Virginia v. Black, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed convictions of 2 persons charged with violating a state's hate crimes law, which prohibited "any person … with the intent of intimidating any person or group … to burn … a cross on the property of another, a highway or other public place," and further provided that cross burning "shall be prima facie evidence of an intent to intimidate a person or group." Based on a principal opinion by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (right) a divided Court rebuffed defendants' claim that the statute violated the free speech guarantees of the 1st Amendment.

On September 6, ...

...1974, in Zambia, leaders of Portugal and of the liberation front known as FRELIMO signed a treaty known as the Lusaka Agreement establishing Mozambique as an independent nation-state, and so ending more than 400 years of Portuguese colonial rule. This week Forbes magazine named Mozambican Prime Minister Luisa Diogo the 89th most powerful woman in the world.
... 1860, Jane Addams was born in Cedarville, Illinois, the 8th of 9 children in a family "with Quaker roots" who counted among its friends President Abraham Lincoln, who'd served in the Illinois Senate with Addams' father. "Lincoln's creed of the equality of men became Miss Addams's ideal as a child," the New York Times wrote on the occasion of her death in 1935. It must be supposed that a contemporary reporter would insert "and women" after "men," given this passage from her 1931 Nobel Peace Prize biography:

Jane Addams was an ardent feminist by philosophy. In those days before women's suffrage she believed that women should make their voices heard in legislation and therefore should have the right to vote, but more comprehensively, she thought that women should generate aspirations and search out opportunities to realize them.

The opportunity that she seized was founding of Hull-House, a "settlement house" where Chicago's poor were given access to health care, job leads, education, exercise, and the arts. Over time Addams became active in civic and pacifist movements at home and abroad. She spoke at the 1913 ceremony opening the Peace Palace at The Hague, for instance, and served as President of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom established there 2 years later. Because of her opposition to World War I, the Daughters of the American Revolution expelled Addams from its ranks. Addams' memoir Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910) is an inspiration. (photo of Addams, holding a peace banner at right, with a flag-holding woman believed to be Mary McDowell, courtesy of Library of Congress.)