People smuggling – the case for evidence-based policy

Who are these evil people? Who is so bad that even David Cameron, a beneficiary of unregulated offshore activities, wants to “break their business model”? It is, of course, the people smugglers.

In part, this is the rhetoric of crisis. Social and political issues are very frequently expressed in the language of conflict. We have “wars” on drugs, crime, poverty, terror or any other perceived evil. (This is part of the same ill-considered metaphorical labelling that leads to the UK having an “inequality tsar.”) A “war on refugees” is a step too far even for Europe’s political leaders so we have instead a war on smuggling.

This war – the interception of boats carrying refugees across the Aegean – is of a piece with the deal between the European Union and Turkey to return refugees from Greece, an agreement that is both categorically illegal and destined to fail, even in its own terms. (Since the central element of the deal is that the EU will accept a refugee from Turkey for every one that is returned from Greece, it does not take an expert in game theory to work out that Turkey has no incentive to stop the smugglers’ boats from setting sail.)

However, the smugglers have been in the crosshairs – almost literally – for some time now. In 2014, Operation Mare Nostrum, a search and rescue operation run by the Italian navy, came to an end because no other EU state would support it. It was replaced by Operation Triton, with far broader support from European navies, but a much narrower remit of securing the EU’s borders. Not surprisingly, the death toll from the sinking of overcrowded and unseaworthy vessels increased rapidly.

In parallel, the EU set about launching a military operation, EUNAVFOR Med (rather more snappily known as Operation Sophia), to prevent vessels leaving the North African coast or to intercept them once they have. This entails the “boarding, search, seizure and diversion, on the high seas, of vessels suspected of being used for human smuggling or trafficking.”

There are a couple of points to note here. People smuggling is illegal under international law, which does give a mandate for Operation Sophia. However, the issue is not quite so simple, given that the operation also implicates human rights law (including the right to leave one’s own country) and law on the use of force (not to mention the law of the sea). It is far from clear that the EU navies can simply breeze around the southern Mediterranean boarding any shipping that arouses their suspicion.

Secondly, we should note the rhetorical subterfuge in the wording of Operation Sophia’s objectives. We are now presented not only with smugglers but with human traffickers. This same confusion of smugglers and traffickers has been a regular staple of media coverage of the Mediterranean crisis. For years we have been told about the evils of human trafficking, frequently labelled “modern slavery.” Traffickers are regarded as slave traders – by definition they coerce and transport people for the purposes of exploitation. In the relevant protocol to the Palermo Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, exploitation is defined as:

the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs…

Is that what is happening in the Mediterranean (or indeed the Aegean)? Of course not.

Rather, the confusion of trafficking and smuggling allows Europe to shift responsibility for the deaths of refugees to those who provide transport and away from where it belongs – with the governments that refuse to admit them and consider their claims (as required by international law).

There is, as it happens, a reasonable body of academic research on people smuggling, in the Mediterranean and elsewhere, and a good understanding of why the phenomenon has developed over the past quarter century. Smuggling in the Mediterranean is a direct consequence of the Schengen agreement. Freedom of movement within the Schengen area was accompanied by the creation of strict visa regimes externally. Legal (two-way) migration between North Africa and Europe was replaced by a new transport system that was capable of evading the border controls. You might even say that the smugglers’ “business model” was made in Brussels.

Some suggest that the business model includes the boats sinking and refugees dying. This is obviously nonsense. The continuation of the business depends upon capital assets – the boats. Smuggling is a completely unregulated transport industry (although one that advertises on Facebook and operates travel insurance). It continues to be profitable for the simple reason that refugees have been denied access to safe and regulated transport. Carrier liability and visa requirements prevent refugees from going to Istanbul Atatürk and boarding a Turkish Airlines flight to Frankfurt. Refugees seize the only opportunity our governments have left available to them. Research has established that restrictive entry requirements will only increase the resort to illegal means of immigration. European governments probably know this but windy rhetoric trumps evidence-based policy-making every time.

Richard Carver

Understanding Grassroots Recovery: India Field Trip 2016

In Gujarat, India, a group of nine DEP students worked in partnership with The All India Disaster Mitigation Institute (AIDMI) on a study focussing on the long-term recovery of Gujarat after the 2001 Gujarat earthquake. As a group we decided to focus our research on shelter, livelihoods and lessons learnt over the 15 year period since the quake. While our primary methodology for carrying out this research was interviewing, we also applied others such as transect walks and sketching.

We spent six days travelling around different rural and urban communities in Gujarat, particularly in the Kutch area, where we interviewed inhabitants and institutions on their recovery since the earthquake. For some of this time we partnered with the Self Employed Woman’s Association (SEWA), a women’s membership co-operative who work with women to enable their skills to provide them with an income. SEWA worked with communities after the 2001 earthquake in a variety of ways including providing shelter and livelihood opportunities. We visited communities that had benefited from their shelter package and heard inspiring stories of sewing kits being distributed just nine days after the earthquake to enable survivors to continue to generate incomes.

After our period of research on the road, we attended the ‘8th South-South Citizenry Based Development sub-Academy (SSCBDA) in Ahmedabad hosted by AIDMI and the United Nations. The three day conference was a great opportunity to listen to practitioners’ experience from different countries; and to learn more about how micro-insurance programmes for small business can help to mitigate risk. We concluded the SSCBDA with a DEP presentation on our research findings.

We are excited to have recently had our findings outlined in the report 'Youth Leadership in Long-term Recovery', which has been published in March 2016 issue of southasiadisaster.net; a publication that is distributed globally to agencies including the UN.

The field trip was a fantastic opportunity both personally and academically. Academically it allowed us to engage with local people and to understand recovery at a grassroots level. Further, exposure to the work of AIDMI and the South-South academy was interesting and partnering with them was enjoyable. On a more personal level, it was memorable to participate in a culture full of tradition from eating their delicious food to flying kites with locals in the International kite festival. 

Katie Reilly, DEP 15-16

Shelter coordination training, Geneva. April 2016

I am in Geneva to visit the Shelter Cluster Coordination training course. CENDEP validates this course, which means we provide advice on the learning and assessment activities, and participants are awarded Masters level credit from Oxford Brookes for the course.

The course is aimed at people interested in working as coordinators of a shelter cluster, which is the main organisational mechanism for a post disaster or post conflict humanitarian response, and shelter is often one of the most pressing needs in these situations.

It is run and facilitated by the IFRC and UNHCR, and all of the facilitators are experienced coordinators. The scenarios and case studies are all taken from recent disaster responses, so participants get a real insight into what happens in the field from people that were there.

The participants are set scenario presentations and an examination, and for these tasks CENDEP has worked with IFRC and UNHCR to make sure best practice in teaching and learning student experience is used. It is an effective way that universities can partner with humanitarian agencies to add value to humanitarian response.

For IFRC and UNCHR, the benchmarking and validation of the course at masters level is important because it demonstrates the course is effective high level learning and underlines the professional aspirations of the organisers.

The feedback from participants is that although the course is challenging, they feel like they are more engaged in the course content. There is no opportunity to sit at the back and clear your emails!

The training is being held at Villa Moynier, the first Headquarters of the ICRC.

Charles Parrack

Shelter after Disaster 

Measuring human rights in order to improve them

I am just back from Mexico where I attended the First International Conference on Human Rights Indicators. My co-researcher Dr Lisa Handley and I presented the results of our research on the effectiveness of torture prevention measures and it was gratifying to discover that we were the headline event, at least so far as the local press were concerned. In fact, being wearyingly familiar with media distortions of both human rights and academic research, we were encouraged by a strikingly accurate headline summary of the last four years of our lives: “strengthen measurement of torture in order to eradicate it.” (Just a pity that they got the name of the university wrong.)

Actually, despite the label of “first” conference on human rights indicators, this issue has been up for discussion for the last 15 years at least. Sadly, this gathering, while it was an excellent initiative, only went to show how short has been the distance travelled in that time. For the most part, the indicators people at the conference – mainly mathematicians and economists – didn’t know much about human rights, while the human rights people, mainly lawyers and activists, knew just as little about statistics and measurement.

Part of the problem lies with the word “indicators.” The term is very widely used, partly because of the results-based management approach that permeates so many institutions. But what does it actually mean?

In Africa there is a bird known as the greater honeyguide, which feeds off abandoned beehives. In order to do this, it leads humans to the hives, using calls and displays of feathers. Once the people have taken the honey and driven away the bees, the birds can feast on the wreckage of the hive. The Latin name of this bird: Indicator indicator. The bird acts as a proxy for the presence of honey.

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has been working on an indicator framework for human rights for the past decade. Unfortunately it has eschewed the simplicity of the honeyguide and opted instead for a complicated multi-layer definition as follows:

specific information on the state or condition of an object, event, activity or outcome that can be related to human rights norms and standards; that addresses and reflects human rights principles and concerns; and that can be used to assess and monitor the promotion and implementation of human rights.

So, an indicator might be any of the following: a measure of the enjoyment of a human right (directly or by proxy); a measure of the steps taken or factors influencing the enjoyment of a human right (directly or by proxy); or something else related to human rights. (The third category is not intended to be facetious; it is actually what the above definition states.)

Small wonder, then, that there was apparently no agreement among conference participants about what a human rights indicator actually was. Dr Mónica Domínguez Serrano from Pablo de Olivade University in Spain discussed the process of constructing “indicadores sintéticos” of gender well-being based upon a number of different pieces of data. Dr Simone Cecchini from UN CEPAL presented the UN indicator framework for economic and social rights. Dr Mauricio García Moreno from the Inter-American Development Bank discussed the use of performance indicators in results-based management. And we heard an interesting group presentation on the Global Impunity Index. All fascinating stuff, but there was nothing resembling a common approach that might guide either researchers or activists.

So what was our own approach to human rights indicators? Returning from Mexico, I looked at the manuscript of our forthcoming book on torture prevention and saw that Lisa and I had used the word indicator only twice. First, we had explained why we were not using the UN indicator framework to construct our variables and secondly we had shown how in some countries performance indicators were an incentive to torture. Police with monthly prosecution targets were shown to be more likely to torture at the end of the month than at the beginning.

Our own index of the incidence of torture, the Carver-Handley Torture Score (CHATS), is based upon three different measures of torture: its frequency, severity, and geographical spread. The data to construct the CHATS comes from a wide variety of sources, including official and unofficial statistics and primary interview research.

To measure the causal factors that may determine the level of torture (what social scientists call “independent variables”) we constructed our own “synthetic indicators” (although we did not use this term). Each individual variable was assigned a score, usually on a three-point scale, depending on whether the preventive mechanism was completely present, partially present, or completely absent. These scores were then assembled into a number of indices, which grouped together similar types of preventive mechanism (for example, those relating to detention safeguards, or to investigation and prosecution of torturers).

It might be possible to use these independent variables as “human rights indicators,” but this would have to be approached with extreme caution. It is essential that the causal relationship between the independent variables (the preventive mechanisms) and the dependent variable (the incidence of torture) be solidly proven. In the UN indicator framework, this relationship is asserted rather than demonstrated. One of the outcomes of our research has been an assessment tool in which torture prevention strategies can be evaluated by weighting the score towards those measures that have actually been shown to have a positive impact and away from those measures that appear ineffective.

In that sense, we do indeed aim at “measurement of torture in order to eradicate it.”

Richard Carver

Creation and catastrophe: Meeting at RIBA 7th April 2016

Architects, urban planners engineers, town planners,humanitarian organisations and academics met at the British Architects Institute, RIBA on 7 April 2016 to discuss the different roles of built environment professionals and humanitarian agencies in post disaster reconstruction.

The event was introduced by RIBA president Jane Duncan and there were keynote addresses from Brookes visiting Professor Ian Davis and David Alexander from UCL. Brookes Emeritus Professor Nabeel Hamdi led the final plenary session. The event was truly international with presenters from Australia, Denmark and Spain. UNHCR and IFRC gave presentations from the humanitarian perspective, and the architecture sector was represented by Foster and Partners.

Cathrine Brun, CENDEP director made a presentation about the work of our centre, and Charles Parrack of CENDEP was Rapporteur for the event.

This was a ground breaking meeting to make links between the practitioners and the professions in humanitarian response, to understand better each others roles and expertise.

The event was organised by Red Cross (IFRC), RMIT Melbourne, the Development Planning Unit at UCL and CENDEP.

There were four panels discussing private sector experiences, processes and products,  research and training, and experiences from operational fieldwork.

The meeting agreed to take the following ideas forward:

• Show how built environment professionals can act as development practitioners, especially in urban settings
• Build local capacity to respond to disasters
• Formalise links between the professions and the humanitarian sector. A network of networks.
• Advise educational providers on recommended course content
• Support career opportunities for professionals to gain humanitarian experience
• Commit to learn lessons from failure

Charles Parrack

Creation from catastrophe: The need for architects and social scientists to collaborate

It is early February 2005. I am in Sri Lanka, together with two colleagues, Hans Skotte, an architect, and Ragnhild Lund, a geographer like myself. On December the 26th 2004, just over a month before we arrived, the Indian Ocean Tsunami had devastated the coasts of the island. As a team, we had many years of research-engagement with Sri Lanka. During 2004, and as a result of the ceasefire between the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, we were setting up a collaboration on post-war recovery together with an international humanitarian organisation with long-term presence in the country. We discussed how to influence current World Bank plans to build 100,000 houses in the war-torn north of the country, aiming to advocate for more active inclusion of local knowledge and existing practices together with a more participatory approach. Then the waves hit the coastline, the conflict gradually resumed and all the attention turned to housing needs caused by the tsunami. By January 2005, our initiative had shifted to concentrate on post-tsunami housing.

The collaboration that followed between the architect and the social scientists was crucial for how the project developed and formative for me as a social scientist. But the journey towards that achievement was long and sometimes painful. One example of the differences we encountered, and eventually learnt to appreciate, came on one of these first days in Sri Lanka in February 2005. With Sri Lankan academics and the collaborating organisation, we were invited by the head-planner in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka to visit some of the sites they were planning to use for building houses. When we arrived to the site, the architect and geographers encountered the field in fundamentally different ways.

Arriving at the site used for transitional shelters for people affected by the tsunami, the architect went off with the planner to assess the site, discuss the challenges, and produce drawings. The ethnographically-oriented geographers sat down with the people in the settlement who wanted to talk about the experiences, the losses, the needs and most of all their worries for the future. People in the settlement frequently experienced becoming a silent audience to all the delegations arriving at the site. It was difficult for them to distinguish between the different actors that arrived, foreign and national do-gooders, academic researchers, international humanitarian organisations, journalists. People came – and left – without making much difference, except hassle, for the people affected by the disaster.

At the time, we – the social scientists – considered the architect’s attitude to the field unethical, insensitive and offensive. How could he not see the people, understand their losses, their histories, their plans for the future and take time to be with them? He, on the other hand spent his energy explaining to the planner why – based on his experiences from other disaster- and war-zones – the plans would not work, why they needed to change their approach to rebuilding and recovery.

He, the architect, was right and we, the social scientists, were right too. It took some time, before we managed to understand, appreciate and utilise the different approaches to the field, but it was when we managed to see how our different interests and approaches could help to understand how the material world and the social world came together that we could actually make a difference.

The process of rebuilding the coastal communities in Sri Lanka after the tsunami was highly politicised. After the tsunami and more recently after the end of the war in the country,  a highly technocratic understanding of recovery and development  has dominated the discourse and the practices.  But what we can learn from the RIBA exhibition, Creation from Catastrophe, is that the coming together of the social and the material is needed if we want to create something from catastrophe.

The exhibition showcases grand plans from the cities of the Global North. Creating an entirely new city after the fires in cities such as London and Chicago proved impossible. The grand plans, we now know, did not succeed, largely because the complex property- and landowner structures prevented the planning efforts of the architects and technocrats from materialising. Additionally, the grand plans did not take into account how people went about their lives in the cities. More recently, we are witnessing the same taking place in Aleppo in Syria. The government is designing grand plans for the city, but the residents and users of the city are not being heard.

Rebuilding after a human-made or natural disaster does not provide us with a blank sheet: There is a history already there, a social structure and aspirations among the residents that may not correspond with an abstract idea of the city. War and disasters tend to change the relationship between people and places, but the places are formed by a history that started before the catastrophe struck. The possibilities of recovery in a particular context need to take into account the holistic meaning of a particular building, a particular neighbourhood, and the city. A major challenge for training architects to work in a disaster is thus to integrate the understanding of the social into their work. The main challenge for training social scientists to work in the same context is to open up for an understanding of the role of the material and physical environment. It is about opening up for and being able to work in an interdisciplinary way, to be able to see and understand the context in which housing is created after a catastrophe.

Social scientists, architects and others working in a disaster setting need to learn how to connect theory and practice, and at the same time learn how to think with other disciplines and cross-fertilise different experiences, perspectives and knowledges. This is not only about the architects and the social scientists: more importantly it is about the residents of the houses and neighbourhoods that are being built. It is this relationship between theory and practice and between the different actors and contexts that we aim to create a critical understanding of through our teaching in the Development and Emergency Practice MA at Oxford Brookes.

An exhibition – Creation from Catastrophe - is on at the RIBA till the 24th of April.

These reflections were prepared for a seminar  
“Creation and Catastrophe” on the 7th April 2016 which CENDEP co-organised.

Cathrine Brun, April 7th 2016
  

If you want to read more:

Attanapola, C., C. Brun and R. Lund. 2013. Working gender after crisis: partnerships and disconnections in Sri Lanka after the Indian Ocean tsunami. Gender, Place and Culture 20(1): 70-86.

Brun, C. and R. Lund. 2010. Real Time Research: Decolonising practices or just another spectacle of researcher-practitioner collaboration. Development in Practice 20(7): 812–826.

Brun, C. and R. Lund. 2009. ‘Unpacking’ the narrative of a national housing policy in Sri Lanka. Norwegian Journal of Geography 63(1): 10–22.

Brun, C. and R. Lund. 2008. Making a home during crisis: Post-tsunami recovery in the context of war, Sri Lanka. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 29(3): 274–288.

Skotte, H. 2014. Teaching to learn – learning to teach: learning experiences from the reality of an ever-changing world. In Brun, C., P. Blaikie and M. Jones. (eds.) 2014. Alternative Developmend. Unravelling Marginliazation, Voicing Change, pp. 39 – 54. Ashgate, Farnham.