Kenya Insights

Tag: Refugees

  • The Hypocrisy Of African Union As Troubles For Refugees In Tunisia Deepens

    The Hypocrisy Of African Union As Troubles For Refugees In Tunisia Deepens

    By Williams Steven

    On May 10th, an X (formerly Twitter) account called “Refugees in Libya NGO” posted a harrowing video purportedly showing the manhunt and eviction of “Black” Africans which denotes Africans of Sub-Saharan descent. “In the last two weeks a door to door and street collection of any dark skinned persons even those identified as Tunisians are crammed into police vans & deported to the eastern border regions.

    Women, men and children are caught and deported without any of their possessions, documents, savings and other materials they have worked for and accumulated over the years.

    Most of those arrested during the house to house raids are legally entitled to stay in Tunisia, they are students, workers and refugees.” The account said.

    “The African Union is silent while the so—called democratic European countries with their values for human rights are the very ones supporting and financing Kaïs Saeid to act as the border guard of the Fortress Europe. This must STOP” The account added.

    The post garnered 3.5M views which immediately attracted sympathy for the refugees and criticism for various international bodies that are supposed to take care of refugees. “The violent anti-blackness in the Arab world needs to become a major talking point in political discourse. I hate how so many people are willing to ignore it in the hopes of withholding their delusional “POC” ideal. People are dying!!” X user Vuyiswa said.  “cc. African “truth accounts” on Twitter. Tunisia is committing pogroms on blacks. Will you cover this or continue talking about American segregation in the 1950s?” Christopher Haslett quipped.

    The post also happened to attract white supremacist accounts who saw it fit to celebrate the misfortune of “Blacks” for reasons best known to them. Steve Laws, a failed politician and former “migrant hunter” activist from Kent, UK took the opportunity to decry how “Tunisians are finally doing it” which in this case is deportations. Klaus Arminius, who goes by “Independent Reporter Covering Stories The Media Doesn’t Show” byline but is a regular race baiter and rabble-rouser said “Tunisia is expelling millions of black immigrants, launching house to house manhunt.

    Tunisia’s President accused the UN of trying to change the nation’s Berber-Arab demographic with black Africans. If Tunisia can deport millions of immigrants, why can’t the West? The difference is will power. Tunisian politicians want them gone; Western politicians want them to stay. NGOs and pro-open border groups are urging #EU countries to offer ‘free passage’ to sub-Saharan migrants expelled from Tunisia.”

    The coverage and other earlier incidents received limited coverage but an earlier pogrom was reported by The New Humanitarian paper which decried the hostility and ill-treatment of the refugees. The pogroms are part of a concerted effort led by Tunisia’s president Kais Saied. Mr Saied continued his assertion that there was a plot to resettle these migrants in Tunisia, accusing some groups, without offering details, of obtaining millions of euros and dollars to carry out the plan.

    He stated that he had read a document confirming that more than 20 million dinars ($6.4 million) had been allocated through unauthorized means to a single migrant center in the province of Sfax.

    Ironically, Mr. Saied and his government received 105 million Euros from the EU for “border management”. The EU deal with Tunisia was harshly criticized by human rights observers and the EU was accused of “bankrolling dictators”. MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) also denounced the deal.

    The Human Rights Foundation in a May 15th statement, condemned Saied’s “aggressive crackdown on dissidents speaking against the deportation and arrest of migrants and asylum seekers”.

    Amnesty International had earlier decried Mr Saied statements by saying “President Saied must retract his comments and order investigations to clearly signal that anti-Black racist violence will not be tolerated. The president must stop finding scapegoats for Tunisia’s economic and political woes. The community of Black African migrants in Tunisia is now gripped by fear of assault or being arbitrarily arrested and summarily deported”.

    The African Union has been woefully silent on the horrible treatment of migrants in Tunisia. No official statement has been issued so far and efforts by Kenya Insights to reach Ebba Kalondo, who is the “Spokesperson to the Chairperson” yielded no fruits as our emails were not answered by the time of publishing this piece.

    We also tried to reach Esther Tankou Azaa Yambou who is the head of the Media and Information Division but our emails also went unanswered. Emails to the Directorate of Information and Communication were also un-replied by the time of publishing this piece.

    A brief perusal of the social media pages of the African Union indicated no activity or concern about the situation in Tunisia. Suspension of Tunisia from the AU for its grave violation of human rights is suspiciously missing. Ironically. The African Union was quick to issue a statement about Israel’s pending military operation in Rafah. Ebba Kalondo was also particularly harsh on the Israeli delegation. “Have no clue, but I hope they know better than to attempt the thuggish behavior of their officials experienced at our last summit.” she is quoted as having said in reference to the Israeli accreditation saga in Addis Ababa.

    Seeking refugee and asylum is a human right enshrined under the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol. Tunisia is a party to both. Failure to implement the Convention is an indictment on the Tunisian government and non-state bodies like the African Union. We hope for the best.

  • Finland: World’s Happiest Country Is Seeking Migrants

    Finland: World’s Happiest Country Is Seeking Migrants

    Repeatedly dubbed the happiest nation on the planet with world-beating living standards, Finland should be deluged by people wanting to relocate, but in fact it faces an acute workforce shortage. “It’s now widely acknowledged that we need a spectacular number of people to come to the country,” recruiter Saku Tihverainen from agency Talented Solutions said.

    Workers are needed “to help cover the cost of the greying generation,” the recruiter explained. While many Western countries are battling weak population growth, few are feeling the effects as sharply as Finland.

    With 39.2 over-65s per 100 working-age people, it is second only to Japan in the extent of its ageing population, according to the UN, which forecasts that by 2030 the “old age dependency ratio” will rise to 47.5.

    The government has warned that the nation of 5.5 million needs to practically double immigration levels to 20,000-30,000 a year to maintain public services and plug a looming pensions deficit.

    Finland might seem like an attractive destination on paper, scoring high in international comparisons for quality of life, freedom and gender equality, with little corruption, crime and pollution. But anti-immigrant sentiment and a reluctance to employ outsiders are also widespread in Western Europe’s most homogenous society, and the opposition far-right Finns Party regularly draws substantial support during elections.

    Tipping point

    After years of inertia, businesses and government “are now at the tipping point and are recognising the problem” posed by a greying population, said Charles Mathies, a research fellow at the Academy of Finland.

    Mathies is one of the experts consulted by the government’s “Talent Boost” programme, now in its fourth year, which aims to make the country more attractive internationally, in part through local recruitment schemes.

    Those targeted include health workers from Spain, metalworkers from Slovakia, and IT and maritime experts from Russia, India and Southeast Asia. But previous such efforts have petered out.

    In 2013, five of the eight Spanish nurses recruited to the western town of Vaasa left after a few months, citing Finland’s exorbitant prices, cold weather and notoriously complex language.

    Finland has nonetheless seen net immigration for much of the last decade, with around 15,000 more people arriving than leaving in 2019. But many of those quitting the country are higher-educated people, official statistics show.

    Faced with the OECD’s largest skilled worker shortage, some Finnish startups are creating a joint careers site to better bag overseas talent. “As you can imagine, this is a slow burner,” Shaun Rudden from food delivery firm Wolt said in an email, adding that “We try to make the relocation process as painless as possible.”

    Systemic problem

    Startups “have told me that they can get anyone in the world to come and work for them in Helsinki, as long as he or she is single,” the capital’s mayor, Jan Vapaavuori, said said. But “their spouses still have huge problems getting a decent job.”

    Many foreigners complain of a widespread reluctance to recognise overseas experience or qualifications, as well as prejudice against non-Finnish applicants.
    Ahmed (who requested his name be changed for professional reasons) is a 42-year-old Brit with many years’ experience in building digital products for multinational, household-name companies.

    Yet six months of networking and applying for jobs in Helsinki, where he was trying to move for family reasons, proved fruitless. “One recruiter even refused to shake my hand, that was a standout moment,” he said.

    “There was never a shortage of jobs going, just a shortage of mindset,” said Ahmed, who during his search in Finland received offers from major companies in Norway, the UK and Germany, and eventually began commuting weekly from Helsinki to Dusseldorf.

    Recruiter Saku Tihverainen said shortages are pushing more companies to loosen their insistence on only employing native Finnish workers. “And yet, a lot of the Finnish companies and organisations are very adamant about using Finnish, and very fluent Finnish at that,” he said.

    Changing priorities

    For Helsinki mayor Jan Vaaavuori, four years of Finland being voted the world’s happiest country in a UN ranking have “not yet helped as much as we could have hoped.” “If you stop someone in the street in Paris or London or Rome or New York, I still don’t think most people know about us,” he mused.

    Mayor Vapaavuori, whose four-year term ends this summer, has turned increasingly to international PR firms to help raise the city’s profile. He is optimistic about Finland’s ability to attract talent from Asia in future, and believes people’s priorities will have changed once international mobility ramps up again post-coronavirus.

    Helsinki’s strengths, being “safe, functional, reliable, predictable — those values have gained in importance,” he said, adding: “Actually I think our position after the pandemic is better than it was before.”

    Agence Fance-Presse