UNHCR Goodwill Ambassadors and high profile supporters help define the difference between the terms "refugee" and "migrant". These words are being splashed across media headlines because of the ongoing European Refugee Crisis. The film features actors Cate Blanchett, Colin Firth, David Morrissey, Douglas Booth, Kristin Davis, John Abraham and Patrick Stewart, singers Barbara Hendricks and Rokia Traore, writer Neil Gaiman, model Helena Christensen and comedian/tv host Craig Ferguson.
Why are mainstream media outlets like CNN and BBC only broadcasting footage which shows the migrants in a positive light?
Myanmar migrants left abandoned at sea after being refused entry to Thailand have been forced to drink their own urine to survive, it has been reported. At least ten people have died on the fishing boat which has been stranded in the Andaman Sea for the last week with up to 350 Rohingya Muslims on board, the BBC has reported.
An estimated 6,000 Myanmar refugees have been left abandoned as other countries in Southeast Asia turn boats carrying hundreds of people away. The region finds itself in a spiralling humanitarian crisis as members of Myanmar's 1.3 million Rohingya Muslims attempt to flee persecution in the Buddhist-majority country.
Andy Hall is a British campaigner with a special focus on the rights of migrant workers. Two years ago he undertook an investigation on behalf of Finnwatch into potential labour abuses at Natural Fruit, part of NatGroup, a Thai company that processes pineapples and supplies retailers around the world.
Instead of addressing the allegations published in Finnwatch's report, Natural Fruit decided to try and silence Andy with lawsuits. He could now face 7 years in prison and $10 million in legal damages for his investigations.
If this case proceeds and Natural Fruit are successful this would not only be a grave miscarriage of justice for Andy Hall. This process could set a dangerous precedent for other companies in Thailand that might take a similar approach when allegations are raised of modern slavery in their supply chains. This threatens the work of anti-slavery campaigners but also workers in Thailand who might be too afraid to come forward and report abuse.
It comes as a genuine shock, then, that a council has removed one of his paintings instead of calling in the valuers. Tendring district council says it destroyed the new painting that materialised in Clacton-on-Sea – where Tory defector Douglas Carswell is about to fight a byelection for his new party Ukip – after getting a complaint that it was “offensive and racist”. Was it?
Not in a million years. This is the best Banksy I have never seen: a clever and succinct satire on some currents of feeling in contemporary Britain, terrified of “migrants”, menaced by otherness. Far from being by any stretch of the imagination “racist”, it is – was – a witty putdown of the drab, dour vision of Britain touted by those who would push down diversity and hold back the tide of modern human movement.
Then again, the council’s story is at best incomplete – it did not have to instantly act on the reported complaint. Some will suspect its claim of racism is an excuse for removing a work it knows to be precisely the opposite. How convenient to use the language of political correctness to censor an anti-racist artwork.
I know one thing. Banksy suddenly matters again. He has created a powerful image of our prejudiced times. Far from a stupid mistake by a confused council, its destruction is a real and vicious act of censorship. Banksy has not been banned from Clacton-on-Sea because he is a racist. He has been suppressed because he exposed the truth.
More by Jonathan Jones at the Guardian – Banksy website
More than 400 Nepalese migrant workers have died on Qatar's building sites as the Gulf state prepares to host the World Cup in 2022, a report will reveal this week.
The grim statistic comes from the Pravasi Nepali Co-ordination Committee, a respected human rights organisation which compiles lists of the dead using official sources in Doha. It will pile new pressure on the Qatari authorities – and on football's world governing body, Fifa – to curb a mounting death toll that some are warning could hit 4,000 by the time the 2022 finals take place.
It also raises the question of how many migrant workers in total have died on construction sites since Qatar won the bid in 2010. Nepalese workers comprise 20% of Qatar's migrant workforce, and many others are drafted in from countries such as India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
A focus on the Nepalese deaths has seen Fifa and Qatar battling a PR crisis that threatens to cast a long shadow over the event. Last week, appearing before EU officials, Theo Zwanziger, a senior Fifa executive who has publicly criticised the decision to award the tournament to Qatar, pledged that his organisation would be carrying out "on-the-spot visits" to ensure that workers' rights were being respected.
Climate and economic migrants to Bangladesh’s urban slums are contributing to a population boom that is creating social strains in this tiny and impoverished country of 160 million people.
Bangladesh is suffering increasingly frequent flooding from cyclones and from heavy rainfall that experts believe is associated with climate change. Its coastal plains are particularly at risk, but many who live in the country’s interior are also vulnerable to river bank erosion – or conversely to drought.
When flooding and erosion displace families, and in many cases leave them landless and penniless, they often take refuge in urban areas, and have little option but to live in slums. There, lack of education about family planning, poor access to birth control and worries about financial security combine to result in large families.
“These unlucky people feel that in old age they will have to depend on children to secure a living. So, they prefer to take more number of children to be sure that at least one of them will take care of the parents,” said Ainun Nishat, an environmentalist and vice chancellor of Brac University.
The rising tide of anti-migrant sentiment worldwide is caused primarily by the biased, polarised and negative debate on migration, according to a new study released. In its latest World Migration Report released Tuesday, the Geneva- based International Organization for Migration (IOM) said people in destination countries tend to significantly overestimate the size of the migrant population, sometimes by as much as 300 percent.
As an example, the report points out that the actual percentage of migrants in Italy was around 7.0 percent in 2010. Yet polls showed that the population - rather erroneously - perceived this percentage to be around a staggering 25 percent. Similarly, in the United States, some public opinion polls showed that in 2010, the public believed the percentage of migrants in the population was at 39 percent, a far cry from an actual 14 percent.
The report points out that "distorted communication about migration contributes to widespread anti-migrant sentiments, which have recently resurfaced in many parts of the world." Harmful stereotypes, discrimination and even xenophobia have reappeared in societies of destination, resulting in controversy on the value of multiculturalism.