By: Guest Contributor Ali Cain. Ali is a M.A. Candidate in the European History, Politics and Society Program at Columbia University. Her MA research analyzes how the coronavirus pandemic is impacting the Alternative for Germany Party's anti-refugee policies and rhetoric.
The Alternative for Germany Party (AfD) is a far-right populist party that promotes protecting the German identity, traditional family values and climate change denial. Once a fringe party unable to meet the 5% voting threshold to enter the German Parliament, the AfD’s opposition to migration policies and xenophobia has elevated its support. After German Chancellor Angela Merkel opened Germany’s borders to one million refugees in 2015, the AfD both seized upon and helped instill fears over cultural differences, crime and violence. The Party’s fearmongering tactics were so successful that it became the third largest party in the German Parliament in the 2017 federal election.
The AfD continues to be relentless with its attacks upon refugees as exhibited in its response to the...
Guest Contributor Ali Cain is an M.A. Candidate in the European History, Politics and Society Program at Columbia University. She is additionally the Program Coordinator for the Cardozo Law Institute in Holocaust and Human Rights (CLIHHR). Her research interests include populism, refugee rights and transatlantic relations.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has used over 4 million refugees in Turkey as political blackmail against the European Union (EU). Leveraging the 2016 EU-Turkey Migration Deal, Erdogan has consistently threatened to “open the floodgates” and allow refugees to cross into neighboring Greece whenever his demands are not met. Previous demands have included quicker EU accession talks, European support for a refugee safe zone in northern Syria, and more funding to support refugees.
In late February 2020, Russian and Syrian government forces attacked the Syrian province of Idlib, forcing thousands to flee into northwest Turkey. In response, Erdogan finally fulfilled his threats and allowed thousands of refugees to leave, even providing buses for transportation to the...
Guest Contributor Divya Malhotra is pursuing her Ph.D. from the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and is a non-resident fellow at the Middle East Institute, New Delhi where she monitors and documents Pakistan-Middle East relations. Her areas of interest include human rights studies. Her writing has appeared in the Times of Israel blog.
The world today is riddled with violence and conflict. Countries across Asia and Africa are engaged in a perpetual struggle for political and religious autonomy and self-determination. Be it West Asia’s Arab Spring, Israeli-Palestinian conflict over land, the Baloch and Pashtun separatist movements in Pakistan, or the turmoil in Kashmir, violence has become accepted as a status-quo in these areas. However, one community’s struggle for separation has had an intriguingly peaceful and spiritual dimension: the Tibetan resistance movement.
Historical Background
The Tibetan independence movement is a political movement for the independence of Tibet and the political separation of Tibet from China. It has been principally been led...
Guest Contributors Bodhisattwa Majumder and Devashish Giri are penultimate year students at Maharashtra Law University Mumbai. Their interests include Constitutional Law, Public International law and Maritime law. Any discussion related to the paper can be made via mail at [email protected] or [email protected]
The outbreak of Coronavirus or COVID-19 (“Coronavirus”) from Wuhan, China (“People’s Republic of China “) has engulfed as many as twenty four countries across the globe with a medical emergency and has claimed more than 3,800 lives as of now.
This strain of the virus is graver than the other types of Coronaviruses as it has never been identified in humans before. Coronavirus belongs to the zoonotic group of viruses which can affect a human being with a range of health ailments ranging from the common cold to serious problems such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV). The World Health Organization and other countries including the US have declared it as a “Global Public...
Guest Contributor Ali Cain is an M.A. Candidate in the European History, Politics and Society Program at Columbia University. She is additionally the Program Coordinator for the Cardozo Law Institute in Holocaust and Human Rights (CLIHHR). Her research interests include populism, refugee rights and transatlantic relations.
During her 2019 candidacy for European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen proposed a New Pact on Migration and Asylum to “relaunch the Dublin reform of asylum rules.” Ms. von der Leyen is correct: Europe’s asylum system needs a fresh start. The Dublin Regulation III mandates that asylum seekers register upon arrival in the first European Union (EU) member state he or she enters. At the refugee crisis’ peak in 2015, 1.3 million asylum seekers and migrants arrived in Europe. Many traveled through the Mediterranean Sea, designating Italy and Greece as first ports of entry and, therefore, responsible for processing asylum claims. The influx of asylum seekers has led to immense strains on local governments,...
Guest Contributor: Ararat Osipian is the Alexander Mirtchev Visiting Professor and Scholar at the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center, Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University, Fellow of the Institute of International Education, and Fellow of the New University in Exile Consortium, USA. His research interests include corruption, inequalities in access to education, and sexual harassment.
Recent events in Moldova, including the political turmoil and the fight against corruption, sometimes become reminiscent of a witch-hunt. For Moldova, the story is not so new, as the pro-European Union Moldovan Parliament has been fighting pro-Russian President Igor Dodon for years. For the world, this is just a storm in a teacup. According to the locals, Moldova’s fight against corruption is mostly for resources and economic assets that may be accessed through the use of state power. Some of the formative results of such a fight are arrests on charges of corruption. Due to the anti-corruption campaign, some individuals prefer to...
As Spanish Government Turns a New Page, a Chance to Lead EU on Migration
Pedro Sanchez is the new Prime Minister of Spain after a stunning no-confidence vote. The refugee crisis deepens. The people want reform. Spain’s potential as a future EU trailblazer on migration policy rests in his hands.
By Madison Chapman
Part I
Madrid, Spain—Ndiogou spends the hottest part of the day—when many Spanish people take a siesta— with a group of fellow Senegalese men near the main plaza of Lavapiés, a lively migrant neighborhood in Madrid. When I met him one humid March afternoon, he was eager to chat, casually leaning on the wall of one of many nearby Lycra Mobile shops. Surrounded by the slight waft of tapas, it is hard to imagine that Ndiogou has had a tough life in Spain. Yet he spent his first decade in the country unable to obtain official paperwork—and with it, public assistance. His lack of work authorization forced him to...
Brian Dan is a guest contributor from the University of Strathclyde and a L.L.M. candidate in human rights law
Is Brexit just a snag in European Union integration without accompanying regression in human rights legislation? Of course not. Brexit signals a backsliding in human rights protections and imperils the closest thing to a constitutional framework for human rights in the United Kingdom.
The U.K. has over 40 years of EU law transposed into its own laws. Together, the EU laws, which are supreme to the domestic laws of the EU states; the Common Law system of England and Wales, which is law created by judges in courts; and the legislative directives of the Council of Europe, an international organization comprised of 47 European states, constitute an overarching, legally-binding system for the promotion, respect and protection of fundamental human rights and freedoms.
The human rights protections provided to British citizens by the U.K.’s membership in the EU and Council of Europe are distinct but also...
By Izzy Tomico Ellis, a journalist and activist who has been heavily involved in the refugee crisis since 2015. Additional reporting by Niamh Keady-Tabbal.
Syrine* is sitting on the edge of a bed inside a tidy room for two, in City Plaza — a squatted hotel in Greece where solidarians from all over the world have flocked to bring respite to its refugee residents. Her little son started walking yesterday. In between our conversation, she holds out her hands to catch him as he falls down. Soothing him, she recalls, "I looked on Facebook to find out what to do when he was crying. I was alone with a baby…I didn’t know anything."
When we asked her if we could write down her story, she smiled, "I’ve thought about telling it a lot."
The strength with which she carried herself had compelled me to ask, and at the same time made me worry she’d laugh. For her, a 21-year-old mother, bravery comes so naturally.
When we first met...
by Ulia Popova, a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University ISHR
November 7 marks the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, an event that set in motion one of the controversial political experiments of the 20th century, the development of a socialist state. The legacy of the Soviet experiment is contradictory, given the greatness of the idea that inspired it and the tragedies it engendered. The Soviet treatment of the rights of ethnic minorities is particularly instructive in this regard, not least due to its relevance to the contemporary debate over inclusion and diversity.
Terry Martin, a Harvard historian, called the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) the “world’s first Affirmative Action Empire.” With the exception of India, no other multi-cultural state before or after the USSR, Martin writes, took action of equivalent scope in support of the cultural and political rights of ethnic minorities. The architects of the Soviet Union envisioned it as a state based on the principle of...
