How France Makes Migrants' Lives a Misery: Daily Brief
French authorities are subjecting migrants to daily harassment and humiliation; masked men push back asylum seekers at Bosnian-Croatian border; UK's wrong turn before hosting the climate summit; Tanzania bans pregnant students from attending school; all-male foreign delegation meetings with the Taliban send the wrong message; US federal judge halts Texas abortion law; and vaccine mandates alone won't stop the pandemic.
French officials regularly subject adults and children living in migrant encampments around Calais – a town in Northern France, 34 kilometers off the coast of Britain – to degrading treatment. Five years after French authorities demolished the sprawling Calais migrant camp frequently called the “Jungle,” mass eviction operations and near-daily police harassment have forced more than 1,000 people to stay in encampments in and around the town.
The humanitarian crisis in France is mirrored at the EU's Eastern borders, where new joint research by a media cooperative has documented pushbacks at the border between Croatia and Bosnia. Video footage allegedly shows masked Croatian police officers violently beating asylum seekers. Human Rights Watch documented similar events in the past.
With just four weeks before the UK hosts the climate summit COP26 in Glasgow, Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government's pledge to be a climate and environment leader is again contradicted by its own actions, with the UK opposing a UN Resolution that recognizes the right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment.
Tanzania’s ban on pregnant students and adolescent mothers attending school has denied tens of thousands of girls their right to education. Public schools across mainland Tanzania conduct compulsory pregnancy testing on female students and expel pregnant girls before they complete their compulsory education. Most other sub-Saharan African countries have by now adopted laws, policies, and strategies to uphold the right to education of pregnant students and adolescent mothers.
Many state delegations and representatives of international organizations meeting with Taliban leaders in Afghanistan have excluded women from their conversations. Foreign governments and aid groups should demonstrate by their actions that all discussions and all delegations should include women.
A US federal judge has temporarily stopped the enforcement of a recently passed Texas law that bans nearly all abortions. The law essentially prohibits abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, before most people know they are pregnant, with no exception for rape or incest. It also permits any person in Texas to sue someone they suspect has broken the abortion law and to collect thousands of dollars in damages if they win.
Finally, while vaccine mandates can be an important tool in curbing the Covid-19 pandemic, they must be rooted in a non-negotiable broader strategy to make vaccines and other preventive measures genuinely accessible. If implemented poorly, vaccine mandates risk backfiring by further entrenching distrust of vaccination campaigns, and vaccines themselves - especially while other forms of healthcare remain geographically and financially out of reach. If we can make vaccines free and compulsory, it’s natural to ask why can’t we make other forms of healthcare at least free.