statista: Lebanon Has By Far The Most Refugees Per 1,000 Population

Turkey hosts the most refugees of any country worldwide with 3.7 million in total at the end of 2018, ahead of Pakistan (1.4 million) and Uganda (1.2 million). As a share of the population, however, Lebanon hosts the most by far with 156 per 1,000 of its inhabitants. Jordan comes second with 72 per 1,000 of its population while Turkey rounds off the top three with 45 per 1,000 of its people. Prior to the war in Syria, Lebanon only hosted 8,000 refugees and the huge influx has pushed its socio-economic absorption capacity to the very limit.

see the graph

Foreign Policy: India and the Global Fight for LGBT Rights

The most remarkable part of the Indian court’s decision is that it didn’t just use a universal standard of human rights to decriminalize homosexuality; it also acknowledged the responsibility of the state to help end the stigma attached to being LGBT. The court could have gone even further and emphasized that the Indian government should put in place mechanisms that would allow the reconciliation of shunned LGBT children and their parents. Doing so would help end the practice of parents forcing arranged marriages on those children—something that can lead to trauma and other mental health problems. It would also help end the shocking practice of “corrective rape,” in which families subject their LGBT children to nonconsensual sex.[...]

India also needs to help reconcile LGBT Indians with their various religious communities; following the court’s decision, many conservative Christian, Muslim, and Hindu leaders, who are often at loggerheads, blasted the ruling as shameful and promised to contest it. Such a reconciliation would right a historic wrong. It was not local religious leaders but British colonialists who introduced these barbaric laws to India. Hinduism, which is the dominant religion in India, was quite accepting of LGBT people before the British introduced Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code in the 1860s, imposing harsh penalties on whoever has “carnal intercourse against the order of nature.” That provision was then extended from India out across the British Empire. It is the reason why most former British colonies are still, to this day, not only hostile to same-sex love but also actively opposed to it.

read the article

The Guardian: As a system, foreign aid is a fraud and does nothing for inequality

he five poorest countries in the world, measured by GDP per capita, are the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Uganda, Tajikistan and Haiti.

One might imagine, then, that these countries are among the top recipients of UK aid. Wrong. The main beneficiaries are, in fact, Pakistan, Syria, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Afghanistan. Not one of the five poorest countries is among the top 10 recipients of British aid. [...]

Nor is it any different with multilateral aid (funds channelled through international organisations such as the World Bank rather than directly between donor and recipient). Again, not one of the poorest countries is among the top 10 recipients of multilateral aid. [...]

Half of all international development aid is “tied”, meaning that recipient countries must use it to buy goods and services from the donor nation. As the USAid website used to boast (until the paragraph became too embarrassing and was deleted in 2006): “The principal beneficiary of America’s foreign assistance programmes has always been the United States. Close to 80% of the US Agency for International Development’s contracts and grants go directly to American firms.” Aid has “created new markets for American industrial exports and meant hundreds of thousands of jobs for Americans”. Long before Trump entered the White House, USAid was “putting America first”. [...]

Aid not only boosts the economies of rich countries but also promotes their foreign policy aims. As a 2014 report by the US Congressional Research Service put it, aid “can act as both carrot and stick and is a means of influencing events, solving specific problems and projecting US values”.

read the article

Quartz: Africa’s quiet LGBT revolution

It is routine. And sometimes borders on the absurd. As Kingsford Sumana Bagbin, the deputy speaker of the Ghanaian parliament did when he recently claimed homosexuality is worse than an atomic bomb. [...]

In South Africa, they may have laws protecting all—and legalizing same-sex marriage—citizens but still some want to silence anything perceived as gay. Earlier this year when the acclaimed South African film Inxeba (The Wound) was released, local censors fought to keep it out of movie theaters. The film tackles Xhosa manhood rites and is a tender love story that depicts wonderfully complex African men on screen.

It was controversial because it displays homosexual love in a heterosexual, hyper-masculine rural mountainside setting. I beamed with pride when this film—shortlisted for an Academy Award, and the first South African film to stream on Netflix—was allowed back in regular theaters, after the courts sided with the filmmakers’ legal challenge. [...]

In Tanzania, the brutal onslaught by the government continues as they bully prominent activist—even as it impacts their own society’s health needs, particularly around HIV/AIDS.

read the article

Quartz: As Robert Mugabe finds a new home, here’s where other African dictators went to retire

In Saudi Arabia, Amin received a monthly stipend and the respect of still being called “Mr President.” Until his death in 2003, Amin was often spotted wandering through grocery stores, going to the health club, and praying at his local mosque. It was a life far removed from one the world’s most brutal dictatorships, during which about 300,000 were killed under Amin’s regime.

Saudi Arabia continues to offer a comfortable retirement to Africa’s strongmen. Ousted Tunisian leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled to Jeddah after the 2011 revolution that ended his 23-year rule. Ben Ali’s retirement has not been as tranquil as he may have imagined, with Tunisia’s new government continuously calling for his extradition.

Until now, Mugabe himself has provided a safe haven for fallen autocrats. In 1991, Ethiopia’s Mengistu Haile Mariam fled the capital Addis Ababa and into safety in Zimbabwe. His departure brought an end to his Marxist-leaning government, which for 14 years was bedeviled by war, famine, failed economic policies, and a mass crackdown on enemies known as the Red Terror. [...]

Until now, Mugabe himself has provided a safe haven for fallen autocrats. In 1991, Ethiopia’s Mengistu Haile Mariam fled the capital Addis Ababa and into safety in Zimbabwe. His departure brought an end to his Marxist-leaning government, which for 14 years was bedeviled by war, famine, failed economic policies, and a mass crackdown on enemies known as the Red Terror.

read the article

VICE: “Film is my tool”

This December, several hundred film fans from around the world are expected to gather in Kampala, Uganda. There will be no red carpet, no palm trees, and no billboards, just a series of text messages directing the guests to a series of otherwise undisclosed locations. Welcome to the Queer Kampala International Film Festival, the only gay film festival organized in a country where homosexuality is illegal. [...]

Kamoga Hassan is the lead organizer of the festival and one of a committed core of LGBTQ activists who dare to make their voices heard in one of the world’s riskiest places to be gay or lesbian. A 2014 Amnesty International report found that openly gay Ugandans have faced arbitrary arrest and sexual harassment, including when reporting crimes. Local NGO Sexual Minorities Uganda reported more than 260 “acts of intimidation” aimed at LGBTQ people in 2014 and 2015, of which 35 were violent vigilante attacks and 73 concerned loss of property or job loss. When openly gay or lesbian Ugandans organize public events, arrests are a regular occurrence. A 2014 anti-homosexuality act proposed the death penalty for gay men under certain circumstances. It was later nullified on procedural grounds, but human rights groups warn that vigilante groups continue to use the law to justify arbitrary violence. Under British colonial laws that have remained on the books, LGBTQ Ugandans still face a minimum two-year prison sentence for openly expressing their identity. [...]

I’ve been doing this work for almost six years now. I wanted to start earlier than that, but I felt it was too risky. In 2011, David Kato, who we consider the father of our gay rights movement, was killed. The entire community was shocked. Everyone was in fear; we didn’t know what to do. Should we run away and leave our country or should we stay behind and fight on? Then there was another incident where a guy working for an advertising company was outed — his photos and contact details were put in the newspapers. He lost his job and he was kicked out of the place he was renting… and then he was killed. They said he was a motorbike thief, but we think someone who knew about his sexuality used that excuse to justify that barbarity. That was when I decided to make my first [LGBTQ-related] film, “Outed,” based on his story. [...]

When you look at Uganda, it’s a very Christian country, 90 percent of the population, and it’s a poor country. We have a problem with radical evangelical pastors who come from outside Uganda, from countries like the U.S. They can’t pass antigay legislation in their own countries, so they’re doing it here, through our local religious leaders. It’s easier, because in a country where people are poor, people can be used. And a lot of people in the LGBT movement don’t have anything to fight back with.

read the article 

Business Insider: You may be surprised by the 10 countries that hold over half the world's refugees

Ten countries, accounting for just 2.5 per cent of global GDP, are sheltering 56 per cent of the world’s 21 million refugees, according to a report published on Tuesday.

The rights group criticised the wealthiest countries for showing “a near absence of leadership and responsibility” while the refugee crisis escalates. [...]

The report highlights the contrast in the number of refugees from Syria taken by its neighbours and by other countries with similar populations.

The UK has taken fewer than 8,000 Syrian refugees since the country’s civil war began in 2011, while Jordan, which has a population almost 10 times smaller than the UK and just 1.2 per cent of its GDP, hosts more than 655,000 Syrian refugees. [...]

“It’s disgraceful that the UK hosts less than one per cent of the world’s refugees when our size and prosperity mean we should do so much more. Desperate families are forced into the hands of traffickers precisely because countries like ours have pulled up the drawbridge. Smaller, poorer neighbouring countries are left to try and cope, and when they can’t, more people are forced to try to move on, seeking a basic level of safety

read the article 

The Washington Post: Israel’s Netanyahu seeks to make new friends in historic first visit to Africa

In Uganda, Netanyahu held a summit with leaders of seven African nations in the region aimed at strengthening ties, with Israel providing them with its expertise in security and technology, while receiving in exchange support from new friends that will refrain from criticizing Israeli policies and also provide diplomatic backing in international forums.

The effort comes as Israel’s ties with some of its longtime allies such as the United States and European Union have come under strain recently. Netanyahu’s right-leaning government has drawn sharp criticisms in the United States and Europe over its failure to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians and its continued building of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, land that the Palestinians seek for a future state. [...]

“Netanyahu wants to improve Israel’s standing with these countries in Africa so that at international conferences they will not join the Arab countries in their resolutions against Israel,” said Aryeh Oded, a former Israeli ambassador to Kenya and Swaziland and non-resident ambassador in Zambia, Mauritius, Seychelles, Tanzania and Uganda.

read the article