Refugiados (Continuación)

Little Amal, a giant puppet depicting a Syrian refugee girl creating awareness on the urgent needs of young refugees, with a European Union flag at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France. Photo by FREDERICK FLORIN/AFP via Getty Images.

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One month after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the European Union (EU) already faces its largest refugee crisis since World War Two, with more than ten million people having fled their homes – 6.5 million displaced within Ukraine and 3.9 million escaping to neighbouring countries.

Acting quickly and decisively, European governments have opened borders and European citizens have opened their homes in an unprecedented showing of solidarity towards refugees. But, with all eyes on Ukraine, the Greek coastguard continues to illegally push back asylum-seekers crossing from Turkey while Spanish police forcefully repel those who dare to jump the fence in Melilla.

The painful contrast exposes the double standards in the EU’s approach to refugees.…  Seguir leyendo »

People who fled the war in Ukraine line up to pick clothes from an aid point by the train station in Krakow, Poland, on March 29. Omar Marques/Getty Images

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As more than 3 million refugees flee Russian terror in Ukraine, mostly within the continent, Europe has thrown open its doors, giving housing and support in an unprecedented time frame of mere weeks. Save for the United Kingdom, European countries have admitted large numbers of Ukrainians into their own countries with enthusiasm while supplying those fighting in Ukraine with an equally unprecedented amount of arms. Berlin, in particular, has seemingly reversed its cautious approach to Russia, and the European Union as an entity has not only publicly committed to considering Ukrainian membership but has taken the unprecedented step of directly supporting Ukraine’s military efforts.…  Seguir leyendo »

People, mainly women and children, arrive in Przemysl, Poland on a train from wartorn Ukraine on March 28. Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

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Numbers never tell the full story of a war. Often, however, they offer a good vantage point to look at the bigger picture. The key piece of data that actually tells the story of the future does not feature Ukraine at all—but, at the same time, illustrates the sheer scale of its tragedy. Since the Russian invasion, more than 2.3 million Ukrainian refugees have crossed the border into Poland.

This number in itself might not yet be worrisome. It becomes so, however, when contextualized. According to calculations made by the United Nations refugee agency and the Financial Times, Poland was ranked 101st globally in number of refugees it hosted in 2021.…  Seguir leyendo »

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El Departamento de Educación del Gobierno vasco prepara una inmersión total en euskera para los niños ucranianos que huyen de la guerra. Los refugiados de entre nueve y catorce años se van a integrar en un programa de euskaldunización sin una pizca de españolismo. No sabemos si los habrán recibido también con el aurresku. ¡Pobres! Huyen de una guerra para incorporarse a otra. ¡Qué habrán hecho para merecer esto!

Los niños ucranianos se incorporarán en grupos de diez en aulas de aprendizaje intensivo hasta que adquieran una competencia en euskera que les permita entenderse con los vascohablantes, aunque lo que se van a encontrar en la calle son hispanohablantes.…  Seguir leyendo »

A Ukrainian child fleeing the country, Volytsia, Ukraine, February 2022. Natalie Thomas / Reuters

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Russian forces continue to grind through Ukraine, shelling cities and killing civilians in the thousands. Nearly four million Ukrainians have fled for Poland, Slovakia, and other neighboring countries. The speed and scale of the Ukrainian exodus makes it the biggest and fastest displacement of people in Europe since World War II. And it has upended many assumptions about refugees, including the view that forced displacement is a challenge contained to the “global South”.

Europe now hosts more refugees than any other region in the world. The oft-cited UN figure that 85 percent of the world’s refugees are in low- and middle-income countries no longer holds.…  Seguir leyendo »

Refugee children who fled the Russian war in Ukraine attend a school preparation course last week in Dusseldorf, Germany. (Thilo Schmuelgen/Reuters)

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More than 3 million people have fled Ukraine since Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24. European countries have welcomed them with open arms. Nations in the European Union upheld European Council activated the 2001 Temporary Protection Directive for the first time, permitting Ukrainians to access social services and the labor market.

It was a different story in 2015, when more than 1 million people from Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere crossed into Europe. Countries responded by tightening their borders and quickly negotiating a deal with Turkey to stem arrivals.Since then, European governments have made efforts to deport Syrians, block Afghans and trap sub-Saharan Africans in perilous conditions in Libya.…  Seguir leyendo »

‘War doesn’t just wreck lives, it wrecks education too.’ Ukrainian refugees on a train to Poland. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian

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With 1.5m refugee children having fled Ukraine, we think about the urgent need for humanitarian relief: food, water, shelter and clothing. But we must ensure children’s education is central to the immediate response to their suffering, because war doesn’t just wreck lives, it wrecks education too.

Pick a humanitarian crisis: Syria, Greece, Afghanistan, Uganda. In every instance, education is the first service children lose. The sad truth is that children who are displaced by conflict remain in that situation for years.

In a time of such suffering and need, why worry about education? Because it provides a sense of normality during upheaval and chaos.…  Seguir leyendo »

Members of the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces take an oath to defend the country, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, in Kyiv, Ukraine March 14, 2022. REUTERS / Mykola Tymchenko

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More than three million refugees have left Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in the early hours of 24 February. The people fleeing are mostly women, children and the elderly, because Kyiv has forbidden men between the ages of eighteen and 60 to leave. This policy is understandable in the face of the existential threat the invasion poses to the country. But it may make the refugees’ journey into the unknown more dangerous and the task of rebuilding their lives much harder. Nor does it appear yet to have contributed much to Ukraine’s actual fighting capacity, since so many women and men have voluntarily stayed behind, eager to take up arms in their country’s defence.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Mientras haya quien se dedica a destruir y sembrar muerte a su alrededor, algunos tendrán que abandonar su casa y su tierra con lo puesto y muy poco más. Es el momento de practicar por nuestra parte la acogida y la hospitalidad con quien no tiene otra cosa que dar más que una sonrisa. Pero es bueno que recordemos que «la acogida –como advierte Almudena Molina– no está para vivirla solo en tiempos de guerra. Un rostro sincero, una sonrisa cedida, una escucha profunda son ya un aliento de hospitalidad y cortesía. Y es que la acogida es amor cotidiano e incesante, religión hecha vida.…  Seguir leyendo »

People who fled the war in Ukraine wait for relocation at the train station in Krakow, Poland, on March 15. (Omar Marques/Getty Images)

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In the three weeks since Russia’s invasion, nearly 3 million Ukrainians have fled to Europe. In response, the Council of the European Union activated its Temporary Protection Directive (TPD) for the first time. The directive allows all Ukrainians visa-free travel in the E.U. and the right to work, education, housing and health care for one year.

Offering Ukrainian refugees E.U.-wide temporary protection is only the most recent result of the bloc’s discussion over more unified migration policies. In the past 20 years, the E.U. has repeatedly used crises to expand its powers in governing migration, adding new migration agencies, joint operations with individual countries, and regional funding.…  Seguir leyendo »

Syrian and other asylum seekers crossing through Europe in 2015. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

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Another great migration is underway.

At least two and a half million Ukrainians have fled Russia’s merciless bombardment to countries across Europe, while roughly another two million have been internally displaced within Ukraine. It is a tragic upheaval: families have been split apart, homes abandoned, lives upended. What’s happening is a horror, a human travesty.

Yet the situation, however bleak, is not without precedents. At the height of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992 one million people fled their homes. By the time the war ended in late 1995, half of the population had been displaced, many of them internally.…  Seguir leyendo »

A group of refugees waiting for a bus to go to a reception area near the border crossing between Ustrzyki Dolne, Poland, and Ukraine.

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Polish people know the pain of being invaded. This is what an opera singer told me as she handed out hot stew to Ukrainian refugees in a tent near the mountainous border between Ukraine and Poland on a chilly night in early March. She had planned to go skiing. She came here instead.

“We were in the same situation in 1939”, said Susan Grey, the opera singer, referring to the Polish people during World War II. “We didn’t have such an opportunity to be welcomed. We didn’t have a place to go”.

It feels as if the entire country of Poland has joined the effort to welcome Ukrainian refugees.…  Seguir leyendo »

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I see parallel images in the floods of humanity coming toward me. One is happening in front of my eyes on the Ukraine-Poland border; large hands clutching little ones, tiny heads resting on weary shoulders, the constant hum of rolling suitcases. I see faces frozen in shock, etched with lines of trauma that will never fully fade. Their eyes glazed over in sheer disbelief, minds unable to comprehend the lives they have left behind.

The other image has superimposed itself in my psyche, created by the torrent of memories from covering the 2015 refugee crisis. Back then, crowds crushed against concertina wire on the Greece-Macedonia border.…  Seguir leyendo »

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La invasión rusa de Ucrania ha llevado a uno de los éxodos más rápidos desde la Segunda Guerra Mundial. En tan solo una semana, más de un millón de personas han salido de Ucrania en busca de refugio. No es la primera crisis de refugiados en Europa, pero sí es distinta a las anteriores: por la proximidad geográfica y cultural, por la historia migratoria de los últimos años, por la política de fronteras abiertas, y porque con ella se ha vuelto a geopolitizar el asilo. Este artículo explica por qué esta crisis de refugiados es distinta y por qué en lo fundamental, es decir, el acceso al asilo y los derechos, no debería serlo.…  Seguir leyendo »

A child on a train that carried her from Iasi, Ukraine, to Bucharest, Romania, on March 9. (Robert Ghement/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)

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Two weeks into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees estimated that more than 2 million people have fled the conflict, most presumably into the European Union. As Western news outlets reported on a refugee crisis that’s the largest since World War II, many media figures’ comments revealed racially biased attitudes. A French reporter on BFN TV said, “We’re not talking here about Syrians fleeing. … We’re talking about Europeans”. On CBS News, foreign correspondent Charlie D’Agata said, “This isn’t Iraq or Afghanistan. … This is a relatively civilized, relatively European city”.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian Consulate lodged a formal objection to a racial divide in how those fleeing Ukraine were treated in neighboring E.U.…  Seguir leyendo »

A family of Ukrainian refugees at a train station in Przemysl, Poland, the closest city to the border crossing in Medyka. Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York Times

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The United Nations reports that at least 1.5 million refugees have fled the fighting in Ukraine. Sadly, that figure is likely to grow.

To ease the suffering caused by Vladimir Putin’s invasion and strengthen our position against him, the United States should open its doors both to Ukrainian refugees fleeing the conflict and to Russians seeking to escape Mr. Putin’s tyranny.

There are several things we can do quickly: President Biden has taken a valuable first step by making Ukrainians in the United States eligible for temporary protected status, which will shield them from deportation and allow them to seek employment.…  Seguir leyendo »

A woman and her child wait to get on a bus after crossing the Ukrainian border into Poland at the Medyka border crossing on Monday. (Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images)

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Russia announced six new evacuation routes — allowing Ukrainians to flee the conflict by heading to Russia or Belarus. The Ukrainian government decried the suggestion, demanding safe routes to allow Ukrainians to flee to Poland and elsewhere in Europe.

This news is the latest example of Russia’s faulty assumptions about Ukraine and expectations of an easy victory. As Russian troops entered the country just two weeks ago, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations declared, “the people of Ukraine will be happy when they are liberated from the regime that occupied them.”

To justify the invasion and previous occupation of the Donbas region, Russian President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials have repeatedly argued that Ukrainians in the eastern parts of the country are ethnic Russians living under Ukrainian occupation.…  Seguir leyendo »

“I miss my father terribly,” said Valery, right, who left the Lviv Oblast with his friend and their mothers, Przemysl, Poland, March 3, 2022

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Editor’s note: More than a million Ukrainians have fled the country in the ten days since Russian forces invaded. Millions more have been internally displaced, as the conflict continues. The French photojournalist Louis Witter reached the small town of Medyka, in southeastern Poland close to the Ukrainian border, at the beginning of the week. There he found hundreds of newly arrived Ukrainians, bewildered, lost, and lacking basic items. It was cold, sometimes snowing; many people had brought with them their pets, which now shared the harsh conditions.

Soon, humanitarian volunteers from all over Europe began arriving to help, buses started ferrying the refugees to the nearby city of Przemyl, and local Polish people mobilized to take care of the more than three hundred thousand people crossing the border.…  Seguir leyendo »

A traffic jam on a boulevard leading out of Kiev is seen as Ukrainians flee the city following the Russian invasion on Feb. 24. Emilio Morenatti/AP

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As Ukrainians flee in massive numbers, Europeans have opened their countries and homes with unprecedented speed and generosity. The scale and pace of the Ukrainian refugee exodus—more than 1 million within only a week—dwarfs even the worst of recent humanitarian crises and is quickly approaching the epic dislocations last seen in Europe in 1945. In Syria, it took two years before refugee flows reached a similar level. In 2015 and 2016, the European Union took in 1 million asylum-seekers each year from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, and this so-called migration crisis quickly turned into an existential issue for the continent.…  Seguir leyendo »

Olena Zhuk con su hija, Anna, e Ira Slyvkanych con su hija, Milena, en Leópolis, Ucrania, después de cruzar la frontera con Polonia el sábado. Maciek Nabrdalik para The New York Times

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Debido a la invasión rusa de Ucrania, el equilibrio de poder militar en Europa está en juego. También está en juego el equilibrio moral. Occidente tiene que demostrar que puede estar a la altura de sus valores, además de defenderse.

El deseo de Vladímir Putin de desafiar las normas internacionales hace que los 44 millones de ciudadanos ucranianos teman por sus vidas y su futuro. Todos los resultados posibles implican sacrificio y sufrimiento a gran escala.

Más de 500.000 personas ya han huido a través de las fronteras de Ucrania; al menos 160.000 más han sido desplazadas internamente a causa de los combates.…  Seguir leyendo »