Issue 21: March 7, 2022
In this issue...
We're covering the declining economic and political stability of Venezuela and the resulting refugee crisis, the plight of the Hazara ethnic community in Afghanistan at the hands of the Taliban, and new humanitarian challenges in the Sahel region of Africa that climate change has caused.
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The IHA is monitoring the rapidly-evolving situation in and around Ukraine. At the time of this issue's publication, circumstances are changing quickly and much important information is unclear. The IHA will be reporting on various aspects of the humanitarian crisis in the region in the next issue of our newsletter.
US Immigration Policy Update
By Marin Theis
The number of migrants detained at the southern border has increased 78% in January 2022 compared to January 2021, according to a report from ReliefWeb. This influx of people has strained the US immigration system and created inefficiencies in the asylum application process.
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As tensions between Ukraine and Russia rose in February, US officials issued warnings to groups and individuals that were potential targets so they could remove themselves from Ukraine ahead of time. Since Russia invaded, hundreds of thousands of refugees have already fled Ukraine. However, despite preparations for such events from neighboring European countries, the United States currently has no policy in place in case of a sudden influx of Ukrainian refugees.
Under the Lautenberg program, established in 1990 after the fall of the Soviet Union, religious minorities with close family ties to the United States from Ukraine and other post-Soviet states can resettle. This program must be renewed annually, and since it was renewed for 2022 it could provide an escape for some Ukrainian refugees.
Declining Economy, Political Instability Force Millions from Their Homes in Venezuela
By Nick Costantino
Venezuela depends on oil exports to keep its GDP (gross domestic product) high and its inflation rate relatively low, but the country has seen sizable economic losses in the past 15 years due to a decline in the price of oil, according to Bloomberg. In 2008, oil cost $100 USD, but it dropped to $57 USD in 2019. According to Bloomberg, inflation in Venezuela in 2018 rose 929 percent, a fact which prompted three million Venezuelan refugees to flee, most of which ended up in Colombia.
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According to the UNHCR, six million Venezuelans have been displaced since 2014 due to rampant violence, inflation, gang-warfare, soaring crime rates, and the shortage of food, medicine, and essential services. Each of these problems have only worsened since President Chavez’s death in 2013, as the Venezuelan government has become more unstable. 20 percent of the country’s population has fled and an estimated 5,000 people are leaving Venezuela every day. 4.8 million of the six million displaced Venezuelans are currently residing in Latin America and the Caribbean, but the ability of host countries like Columbia to provide basic services has become strained under the profound increase in refugees.
According to Bloomberg, Venezuela’s economy has shrunk by more than 50 percent since 2013. 87 percent of the population was below the poverty line in 2017 because of this decline, a downturn which was caused largely by a decrease in oil production. In 2018, President Maduro won the national election, a political event which was not recognized by the United States nor the European Union because of reports of voter coercion. As a result, the Venezuela National Assembly president, Juan Guaido, declared himself the head of state in 2019. Because of this political turmoil and Venezuela's economic struggles, local drug gangs now occupy huge swaths of the country, according to the New York Times.
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According to the New York Times, Colombian guerrilla fighters now operate in more than half of Venezuela’s territory, and Venezuelan authority is shrinking drastically, enabling armed groups to assert control. As a result, these criminal organizations and gangs alike have the ability to, in all practical senses, govern local people in certain regions of the country. For example, along Venezuela’s 1,400-mile border with Colombia, the Éjercito de Liberación Nacional (ELN) and other insurgents hold power. In the border town of Paraguaipoa, the hospital has run out of basic medicines, the power frequently goes out for days on end, and the water pipes have been dry for years, according to the New York Times.
While many have fled their homes to escape such living conditions, many more are trapped where they currently reside. With no jobs available and government help scarce, 74.3 percent of Venezuela’s population lost an average of 19 pounds in 2015, according to a study by three universities in Venezuela.
However, the “UNHCR has joined over 90 partners to establish a Regional Response Plan for Refugees and Migrants (RMRP) with the goal of ensuring a coherent and coordinated operational response to the needs of refugees and migrants from Venezuela” to make sure as many people as possible have what they need and are safe from violent groups and other criminal organizations. The UNHCR provides many refugees with temporary shelters, cash-based interventions, health assistance, and education with the goal of keeping as many people out of harm’s way, and, instead, leading healthy lives.
Hazara Ethnic Community Faces Continued Intense Persecution at Hands of Taliban
By Jack Elworth
Under the rule of the Taliban government, the Hazara ethnic minority group has lost its already meager rights and is at immediate risk of ethnic cleansing. Despite softened rhetoric and dubious promises to protect ethnic groups, the Taliban's actions—or lack thereof—suggest grave danger for the Hazara ethnic group.
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Despite international statements of concern, the Taliban government has failed to protect Hazaras and curb the violence against the Hazaras. In fact, according to Al-Jazeera, the Taliban regime has done precisely the opposite. Al-Jazeera reported that Taliban fighters murdered dozens of non-combatant Hazaras during the Taliban’s sweeping expansion across the country during July and August of 2021.
Al-Jazeera continued to report that once the Taliban established a government and installed judges across the nation, Taliban fighters evicted upwards of 6,000 Hazaras from their own homes on bogus claims that the Hazaras did not own their own land. The Taliban’s judges threw out the jurisprudence of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (the previous government), a governing body which gave the Hazaras more legal protection.
The struggles that the Hazaras face are not new. In fact, a history of oppression against Hazaras has led some experts to label them one of the “most persecuted people in the world,” including members of the Lowy Institute, a think tank focused on international politics. As early as the late 1800s, Pashtun rule saw Hazaras massacred, their villages looted and razed, and their land given to Pashtuns, all of which led to a loss of 60% of the Hazara population.
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Since then, Hazaras have remained marginalized and discriminated against in Afghanistan. Slow civil rights progress ensued for Hazaras, as they were unable to serve in the army, hold high-level government positions, attend higher education institutes, or even openly show their ethnicity. Then, when the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, Hazaras were targeted and massacred because of the Shia president’s paranoia of a Hazara offensive against Shias.
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Three years later, the Taliban took control, and its officials immediately suggested that one of its goals was to rid the land of Hazaras, according to Al-Jazeera. The Minority Rights Group marked the destruction of Buddhist statues, important in Hazara culture, by the Taliban in 2001. These statues represented Hazara heritage; thus, the Taliban aimed to suppress Hazara culture and to establish a physical and cultural dominance over them. Other parts of this effort included banning the celebration of Hazara traditions and holidays in coordination with the destruction of culturally important Hazara items.
In the decades since, the Hazaras have often found themselves the target of extremist violence such as suicide bombers. This violence is often committed with the goal of preventing Hazaras from protesting for their civil rights in cities. For example, a 2016 suicide bombing in Kabul killed 85 protesters and wounded more than 400 additional protestors according to reports from the Minority Rights Group.
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Despite this history of oppression, Hazaras maintain a fighting resilience and courageous stubbornness to survive and preserve their culture. Foreign policy decisions in Western nations may play a key role in the fate of the Hazaras in the months and years to come.
Climate Change Creates New Humanitarian Crises, Exacerbates Old Ones in Sahel Region
By Harrison Huang
The Sahel region of Africa, a semi-arid region that stretches across the continent, passes through parts of Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Eritrea, and Sudan. Although it served as the transition zone between the arid Sahara Desert and tropical savannas further south for centuries, the Sahel region now faces total destruction of its abundant natural resources that lie in the fertile farmlands and grasslands.
Over 80 percent of the Nigerien population depend on local agriculture. The predominant crops, both for subsistence farming and for trade (pearl millet, sorghum, and cowpea), require a specific climate to mature. Since the early 20th century, the average temperature in Niger has increased 0.15 degrees celsius each decade, and rainfall has steadily decreased. Repercussions of climate change, most notably desertification, droughts, and soil degradation, continue to push Nigerien farmers and herders to abandon cultivated lands and move further up north.
Accompanying the environmental crisis in Niger are other humanitarian crises across the Sahel region, referred collectively by the UNHCR as the Sahel Emergency. Intense conflicts arose from neighboring Burkina Faso, where the government abuses its people through systemic violence by exploiting local security forces. Frequent radical jihadist movements and terrorist attacks on the non-Muslim population in Nigeria, Mali, and Burkina Faso—such as Boko Haram, a violent campaign to overthrow the Federal Republic of Nigeria and establish a Sunni Islamic state—also create a destabilizing force that displaces many.
The number of internally displaced people across the Sahel region quadrupled in recent years, and the number now exceeds 2 million. As one of the largest refugee-hosting countries in Africa, Niger hosts 250,000 refugees and asylum seekers as of January 2022, a majority of which are Burkinabé, Nigerian, and Nigerien returnee refugees that have been displaced multiple times.
Conditions of refugee admission and resettlement in Niger are insufficient. As of 2017, Niger had 1.5 million people affected by food insecurity and another 1.5 million who were chronically food insecure. Environmental destruction renders land unusable and human efforts of cultivation hopeless. 80,000 to 120,000 hectares of farmland degrade each year due to the loss of vegetation, deficient rainfall, and intensive irrigation.
The economic loss from land degradation in 2015 amounted to 19 percent (US$3.535 billion) of Niger’s GDP.
Soil degradation exacerbates another ongoing problem: the competition for land between pastoralists and farmers, and between pastoralist groups. Increased land and water scarcity has given rise to tensions over grazing rights and agricultural land usage.
The recent influx of refugees and asylum seekers in Niger adds pressure to the competition for arable lands and pasturelands. This competition sometimes grows into violent armed conflicts which threaten the countryside (where over 80 percent of the Nigerien population dwell). Crop failure and fodder shortage lead farmers and herders to see each other as threats encroaching on the exceedingly limited resources. As a result, the rural population of Niger and other parts of the Sahel region remains sharply divided. Intermittent farmer-herder violence has resulted in over 15,000 deaths, most of which occurred in the past 4 years as the effects of climate change became more pronounced.
A majority of such conflicts, unfortunately, are concentrated on the Nigerien-Malian, Nigerien-Burkinabé, and Nigerien-Nigerian borders. These conflicts push pastoralists, who used to depend most on seasonal access to grasslands, further south into tropical forests or north into Niger, where social inequality, food insecurity, and severe depletion of natural resources await them.
The following are ways in which you can help the Niger refugee crisis:
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Learn about the priorities of the Nigerien government through the 3N Initiative: “Nigeriens Nourishing Nigeriens”
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Solutions of Non-governmental Organizations that address Nigerien persons of concern
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UNHCR - PSEA (Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse) against gender-based inequalities
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World Bank - (PARCA) Niger Refugees and Host Communities Support Project for income support and welfare
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African Development Bank - (CRMA) Climate Risk Management and Adaptation Strategy and (CEIF) Clean Energy Investment Framework for transition towards a green economy
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Donate to Oxfam International and its partner, AREN (Association pour la redynamisation de l’élevage au Niger) to support resilient solutions against climate change in Niger.