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Police fire water cannon and pepper spray at protesters
March called off after clashes
Dozens of police injured as riots continue into night
Donald Trump is in Hamburg ahead of G20 meeting
Police were fighting running battles with anticapitalists in the streets of Hamburg on Thursday night as protests against the G20 summit turned violent
Masked protesters hurled smoke bombs and glass bottles at police who responded with water cannon.
Police said they were “horrified by the violence”.
Protesters march as world leaders gather for the G20 summit, in pictures
There were scenes of confusion in the nightlife district of Saint Pauli as the black clad masked protesters choked the narrow alley while nervous drinkers looked on from pubs.
Hundreds of armoured riot police ran through the streets.
Police said the violence had broken out after they asked a hardcore of protesters to remove their masks.
The protesters planned to march to the city centre where the summit begins tomorrow.
Police said they could not continue unless they removed the masks.
There was a tense standoff for around half an hour while negotiations continued before the first smoke bombs were thrown.
German riot police use water cannons against protesters during the demonstrations during the G20 summit in Hamburg Credit: Reuters
The ‘Welcome To Hell’ protest was officially cancelled on Thursday night amid the violence, but a hardcore continued in defiance of the order.
World leaders including President Donald Trump are in Hamburg for the start of the summit tomorrow.
Several injuries reports as renewed demonstration underway
Seven police officers were injured in the clashes with protesters, according to official accounts.
There were also many injured among the protesters, including several with severe injuries from police batons, according to Andreas Blechschmidt, one of the organisers of the march.
German riot police detain a protester during the demonstrations during the G20 summit in Hamburg Credit: Reuters
There are unconfirmed reports one of the protesters suffered life-threatening injuries.
A renewed demonstration was underway as Theresa May arrived in Hamburg ahead of the summit around 10pm (9pm BST).
Prime Minister Theresa May and husband Philip arrive in Hamburg for the G20 leaders’ summit Credit: PA
Timo Zill, a police officer, told journalists how he and a colleague had been attacked on the street by protesters and had to take refuge in an ambulance.
Drivers were reportedly trapped inside their cars for up to six hours by road blocks while police battled demonstrators.
Police helicopters were circling overhead the tense scene on a street running alongside the Elbe river harbour with its container cranes, and near mural-covered former squats that saw heavy clashes with police in the 1980s, AFP reports.
Protesters were seen scrambling to leave the scene, some changing out of their all-black gear, as police announced that the organisers have called off the march following the clashes.
Riot police move in through the smoke during the “Welcome to Hell” rally against the G20 summit in Hamburg Credit: AFP
Police say they repeatedly asked a group of hardcore anti-capitalist demonstrators to remove their masks Thursday evening, to no avail. They then decided to separate the group from the rest of the several thousand-strong demonstration.
Black-hooded protesters attacked a police vehicle with bottles and bricks, breaking its window.
The violence broke out near the start of the demonstration at a riverside plaza used for Hamburg’s weekly fish market.
German riot policeman catches a protester during the demonstrations Credit: Reuters
Primer: Moscow hired thousands of North Koreans to build the infrastructure for the Sochi Olympics. Russia still uses North Korean slaves for mining and forestry. The North Koreans are hired slaves that have to send their pay checks back the the Kim regime. Not to be outdone, Qatar is doing the same with slaves from the DPRK, as they are hired to build the stadium for the FIFA World Cup Soccer games in 2020.
North Koreans are hired out to foreign corrupt governments to work 20 hours a day with a pay rate of $100 per month (US$) and 70% of that goes back to Pyongyang as a loyalty payment.
By the way, China, Kuwait, Libya, Africa, Oman and several other countries hire the slaves and their living conditions don’t even qualify as slums, they are much worse.
So, while there is much worry about the missile and nuclear program at the hands of North Korea, China is a major culprit in full assistance and cooperation in that regard. Further, China has aided North Korea and other terror regimes in skirting not only United States sanctions, but those from applied by other nations.
Over the last eight years, the Obama administration has hardly taken any aggressive stance with regard to North Korea and consequences except to shut off humanitarian exports to the country. President Trump meanwhile is trusting Russia and China to deal with North Korea? Worse mistake yet.
Deeper dive…
The Global Web That Keeps North Korea Running
Pyongyang’s ties with 164 countries help it amass money and know-how to develop nuclear weapons
By: Jonathan Cheng in Seoul, Jeremy Page in Beijing and Alastair Gale in Tokyo
WSJ: North Korea may be one of the world’s most isolated countries, but the tightening sanctions regime it has lived under for the past two decades is anything but impermeable.
An examination of North Korea’s global connections reveals that even as it becomes increasingly dependent on China, Pyongyang maintains economic and diplomatic ties with many nations. Those links—from commercial and banking relationships to scientific training, arms sales, monument-building and restaurants—have helped it amass the money and technical know-how to develop nuclear weapons and missiles.
The nature and extent of North Korea’s global ties comes from current and formal officials, researchers, North Korean defectors, U.N. decisions, NGO’s and an analysis of economic statistics.
North Korea: What Comes After the ICBM Test?
In some cases, North Korea leans on old allies, particularly those like Cuba from the former Communist bloc, or those like Syria that are similarly hostile to the U.S. In others, notably in Africa, it has more transactional relationships to supply items such as cheap weaponry or military training. In the Middle East, it supplies laborers for construction work and pockets almost all their earnings.
Sanctions against North Korea haven’t been as broad as those applied to Iran over its nuclear program, nor as rigidly enforced.
David S. Cohen, undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence during the Obama administration, wrote in an op-ed in April that “North Korea has gotten off relatively easy, especially as compared with Iran.”
Trying to crack down on North Korean business activities is like a game of Whac-A-Mole. North Korean defectors have detailed how the regime uses front companies to conceal its commercial activities in foreign countries, or adopts business names that obscure their identity by avoiding using North Korea’s full name, thereby benefiting from confusion over whether the entity is North or South Korean.
Pyongyang maintains diplomatic ties with 164 countries and has embassies in 47, according to the National Committee on North Korea, a Washington-based nongovernmental organization, and the Honolulu-based East-West Center.
Although it lags far behind China, India has been North Korea’s second biggest trade partner in the past couple of years, buying commodities including silver and selling it chemicals among other goods. Russia has exported petroleum products to North Korea and imported items such as garments and frozen fish. Last year, North Korea attempted to export military communications equipment to Eritrea via front companies in Malaysia, according to a recent U.N. report.
Most North Koreans abroad are involved in providing funds for the state, defectors say. One of the primary roles of North Korean diplomats is to help develop and maintain cash flows for the regime, according to former embassy officials. North Korea missions typically have to be self-financed to maximize revenue for the state, these people say.
In recent months, under pressure from the Trump administration, there are signs more countries have begun to clamp down on North Korea. In February, Bulgaria had Pyongyang send home two diplomats in its embassy in Sofia, in line with U.N. Security Council resolutions passed in September calling on countries to reduce the number of North Korean diplomats abroad.
Italy this year moved four North Koreans studying at the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste to switch to less-sensitive majors in line with a Security Council resolution calling for member nations not to provide education that could aid Pyongyang’s weapons program.
In March, Senegal said it suspended issuing visas for artisans from North Korea’s Mansudae Art Studio, a state-run organization that has erected monumental sculptures across Africa.
This image, from North Korea’s KRT, shows what it said was the launch of a Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missile. Photo: /Associated Press
More than 50,000 North Korean workers are employed abroad, according to the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, a Seoul-based think tank, many in construction or factory jobs. For these workers, wages are paid directly to North Korean officials, raising hundreds of millions of dollars a year for the state, human-rights groups say.
These ties are under scrutiny as Pyongyang’s success at launching a missile that could reach Alaska is escalating the crisis over its weapons program. This week’s missile test took place on the back of a Chinese truck imported to North Korea for logging purposes, according to analysts.
U.N. sanctions are primarily intended to block North Korea’s illegitimate trade and revenue streams that have a suspected link to its weapons programs. The U.N. doesn’t target all of Pyongyang’s business activities abroad, such as the chain of restaurants it operates in Asia and the Middle East, or its dispatch of laborers.
U.S. sanctions go further in trying to disrupt North Korea’s trade and revenue, including a recent move to block access to the U.S. financial system for a bank in China on which Pyongyang relied. The U.S. has sanctioned North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a move that would freeze any of his assets in America.
Video from a North Korean state news bulletin Tuesday was said to show leader Kim Jong Un applauding after the launch. Photo: Yonhap News/Zuma Press
This week, Sen. Cory Gardner (R., Colo.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s subpanel on East Asia, said he was drafting legislation that he says would create a “global embargo” on North Korea.
“We need to shut off North Korea’s access to oil, to trade, to currency, to financial institutions,” he said in an interview Thursday, calling for “Iran-style” sanctions. “They are far from being ‘sanctioned out.’ They are certainly isolated, but they have to recognize they ain’t seen nothing yet.”
China has had close ties to North Korea since the 1950s when it sent troops to fight U.S.-led forces backing the South in the Korean War.
In 2001, China accounted for around 18% of North Korea’s exports and 20% of its imports, ranking behind Japan on both measures, according to customs figures compiled by Harvard University’s Atlas of Economic Complexity.
Since U.N. sanctions on North Korea were tightened in 2009, Japan and other countries have curtailed commercial ties with Pyongyang, leaving China as by far its biggest trade partner.
For the past five years, China has accounted for more than 80% of North Korea’s imports and exports, providing an economic lifeline even as political relations between Beijing and Pyongyang have deteriorated.
During that period, China has imported mostly industrial raw materials from North Korea, especially coal, but also seafood and clothing such as men’s suits and overcoats.
In recent days, President Donald Trump has expressed frustration with China for expanding trade with North Korea despite U.S. appeals to exert more pressure.
China says it enforces U.N. sanctions and since February it has banned imports of North Korean coal—one of Pyongyang’s main sources of hard currency.
However, U.N. sanctions still allow trade that isn’t deemed to benefit North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, and China’s customs figures show that its exports to North Korea have increased this year. Crucially, China continues to be North Korea’s biggest source of crude oil, according to diplomats and experts on the region.
Much of North Korea’s trade takes place over the 880-mile land border with China, which is porous and sparsely guarded. Small Chinese and North Korean companies quietly ferry coal, iron ore and other resources over the border, far from checkpoints.
U.N. sanctions introduced in March 2016 banned exports of North Korean iron ore unless they were exclusively for “livelihood purposes”—a loophole China continues to exploit.
While North Korea gained notoriety in the early 2000s for state-backed exports of illegal drugs and counterfeit U.S. dollars, Pyongyang has mostly shifted its strategy to allow private North Korean enterprises to take the lead, with the regime collecting bribes from these enterprises in a primitive system of taxation, says Justin Hastings, a lecturer at the University of Sydney who has researched North Korea’s overseas smuggling networks.
The shift in strategy means that North Korea can outsource some of the risk involved in the trade while continuing to fill its coffers.
“North Korea is not infinitely adaptable, but it’s far more adaptable than people have thought and its ability to adapt to sanctions has not been reached yet,” Mr. Hastings said.
One informal Chinese trader that Mr. Hastings interviewed for a soon-to-be-published academic paper was importing truckloads and boatloads of North Korean iron ore and other minerals across the river into China for resale as recently as a year ago, when the interview took place.
Pay up Iran, the victim’s families deserve compensation. Obama and Kerry gave you billions.
ToI: Newly analyzed DNA evidence from the 1994 AMIA Jewish center bombing in Buenos Aires could provide a definitive link to suicide bomber Ibrahim Berro, the Hezbollah terrorist who carried out the attack and whose body was never found or identified until now.
NBC
The discovery was announced on Monday by the AMIA Special Investigation Unit of the Argentinian General Prosecution, two weeks before the 23rd anniversary of the bombing that killed 85 and injured hundreds.
The final report after two years of investigation by a forensics team, reveals for the first time the existence of a genetic profile among the preserved remains in the laboratory of the Federal Police that “doesn’t belong to any known victims.”
With this information prosecutors have taken steps “in the field of international cooperation to try to match the profile obtained with that of samples of relatives of the suspected individual.”
A man walks over the rubble after a bomb exploded at the Argentinian Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) in Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 18, 1994. (AFP/Ali Burafi)
In 2005 special prosecutor Alberto Nisman identified Berro as the suicide bomber who carried out the attack. Berro’s brothers denied he was involved, claiming he was killed in fighting in Lebanon. Some Argentinian journalists also cast doubt on the assertion.
In May 2016, US Attorney General Loretta Lynch and FBI director James Comey met in Washington, DC, with Argentine Justice Minister Germán Garavano and offered to extend technical help to the Argentinean Justice Department regarding the AMIA attack and the death of Nisman.
Prosecutors Sabrina Namer, Roberto Salum and Leonardo Filippini have led the AMIA Special Investigatory Unit since their predecessor Nisman was discovered shot dead in his apartment in January 2015, hours before he was scheduled to appear in Congress. Nisman had been about to present allegations that then-President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner orchestrated a secret deal to cover up Iranian officials’ alleged role in the AMIA bombing. Fernandez denied the allegations and judges threw out the case. It was reopened one year ago, though no conclusions have yet been announced.
Late Argentinean public prosecutor Alberto Nisman gives a news conference in Buenos Aires, May 20, 2009. (Juan Mabromata/AFP/Getty Images)
The two years work on the DNA analysis was conducted by the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, the Forensic Medical Body and the University of Buenos Aires. The same team one year ago identified victim number 85 of the AMIA attack.
Berro grew up in Lebanon. According to his brothers, around 1989 he changed radically, leaving school and becoming interested in Hezbollah, where his brother Ali was an active member. His mother feared Berro would end up badly, and applied for a visa for him to go to Detroit — to where some of the family had emigrated — but the application was turned down because Berro was underage. He then traveled to Iran, where he presumably received training.
Berro is suspected of having entered Argentina near Ciudad del Este — a region known for smuggling, drugs, and other illegal activities — where Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina share a border, accompanied by a man named Ahmed Saad.
The bombing, in which a van full of explosives opposite the AMIA building was detonated, was similar to the March 1992 Israeli Embassy attack in Buenos Aires, possibly also committed by Hezbollah. The attacks, it appears, occurred with the support of Iran,[3] though the Iranian government repeatedly denied these charges.[4]
Two months after the attack, Berro was reported by radio stations in Lebanon to have been killed by the Israeli army, apparently an attempt to cover up his role in the attack in Argentina. After the bombing, Berro’s wife received $300 a month from Hezbollah.[5]
In late 2005, Berro was identified as the bombing perpetrator after years of investigation and speculation into who committed the bombing. According to official Argentine government prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, Hussein’s two US-based brothers had testified that he had joined the radical Shia militant group Hezbollah. “The brothers’ testimony was substantial, rich in detail and showed that he was the one who was killed,” Nisman added.[6] A U.S. House resolution in July 2004 declared Berro was the suicide bomber,[7] but the identification was not declared positively until November 2005 after Berro’s relatives in Detroit identified his photograph. Berro was also recognized with “80 percent certain[ty]” [8] by eyewitness Nicolasa Romero, who saw the driver in the van near the AMIA building. Some Argentine journalists, however, have expressed reservations about these alleged findings; in an op-ed for La Nación, Jorge Urien Berri objected to those who “insist in taken hypotheses as proven when they not”, and contested Berro’s involvement in the incidents”.[9] Berro’s two brothers also had denied this version in April 2005 before a US prosecutor, stating that Berro had died on September 9, 1994 during combat in Lebanon. No proper autopsies or DNA tests were done. The police dumped in a bin the head thought to be that of the bomber.[6]
Berro’s brother, after apparently identifying Berro in a photograph, now denies that Berro had any role in the attack. “They changed the truth,” he said. “I gave them the photo [of Berro] at 17 years old, but when I saw photo in the news, I said, ‘How are they publishing the photo that I gave them a few months back? They said in the news that I identified the photo, and it’s not true. I gave them the photo of him at 17, but I don’t know who is in the others.”[8]
In a May 2007 interview, James Cheek, Clinton’s Ambassador to Argentina at the time of the bombing, told La Nación,[10] “To my knowledge, there was never any real evidence [of Iranian responsibility]. They never came up with anything.” The hottest lead in the case, he recalled, was an Iranian defector named Manoucher Moatamer, who “supposedly had all this information.” But Moatamer turned out to be only a dissatisfied low-ranking official without the knowledge of government decision-making that he had claimed. “We finally decided that he wasn’t credible,” Cheek recalled. Ron Goddard, then deputy chief of the US Mission in Buenos Aires, confirmed Cheek’s account. He recalled that investigators found nothing linking Iran to the bombing. “The whole Iran thing seemed kind of flimsy,” Goddard said.
Furthermore: A report by The Hill says Obama has been making regular calls with Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez. According to an anonymous source in the DNC, Obama jokingly told Perez, “Hey man, it’s only the future of the world in your hands.” Working out of his D.C. office, Obama is said to be conducting one-on-one meetings with other legislators, like Maryland’s freshman Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen. Still, sources that spoke to The Hill stopped short of divulging a more complete list of the meetings Obama has had. More here.
BusinessInsider: “WTF” is a fitting abbreviation for LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman’s newest project to rethink what the Democratic Party is today.
Called Win the Future, WTF is starting as a “people’s lobby” where people can vote on policy topics that are important to them, like making engineering degrees free for everyone.
“We need a modern people’s lobby that empowers all of us to choose our leaders and set our agenda,” said Mark Pincus, the billionaire cofounder of Zynga who is partnering with Hoffman to start WTF. “Imagine voting for a president we’re truly excited about. Imagine a government that promotes capitalism and civil rights.”
Despite its roots with two powerful tech founders, WTF is taking an old-school approach to start. People will vote on the policies and discuss them on Twitter. The group plans to turn the ones that seem to resonate into billboards in Washington, DC, with congressional leaders the target audience.
While it wants to get the attention of members of Congress, WTF is also unabashedly “not for pro-politicians.” According to Recode, one of WTF’s more audacious plans has been to recruit political outsiders to run as “WTF Democrats” and challenge the old stalwarts of the Democratic Party. Pincus specifically targeted Stephan Jenkins from the band Third Eye Blind, according to Recode.
Those plans are on hold for now, though, as the group focuses on the launch of its billboard campaigns and on building a political platform.
Progressive leaders have already criticized WTF’s launch, however, as an incredibly off-base pet project for two billionaires, according to a Huffington Post report.
“I am not sure the creators of the lamest and the most annoying social-media experiences are the exact people who should be rewiring the philosophical core of the Democratic Party as they say they want to,” Alex Lawson, the executive director of Social Security Works, told The Huffington Post.
Despite the early criticism, Pincus and Hoffman have together committed over $500,000 to build out the project — and they’re still raising money to bring the billboard campaign to life.
“We can’t wait until elections to fight for what we care about. We can’t hope for a benevolent leader who may choose to listen to us,” Pincus wrote in his note on the vision of WTF. “We need a network that lets the best ideas and leaders rise to the top through an open, inclusive democratic process.”
***
So….who is on this Obama team now?
David Simas, CEO The Obama Foundation, previously chief of staff for Deval Patrick
Marty Nesbitt, Chairman The Obama Foundation, long history and vacation/golf buddy of Barack
J. Kevin Poorman, President The Obama Foundation, president of PSP Capital Partners of which Penny Pritzker is the founder.
Juliana Smoot, White House social secretary for Obama, Deputy Assistant to Obama, she also worked for Dick Durbin, John Edwards, Chuck Schumer and her husband is the chairperson for the Michigan Democrat Party
Robbin Cohen, real estate developer and president of investment firm in Chicago, formerly of the Pritzker Group.
Yohannes Abraham, former chief of staff for Valerie Jarrett, now the senior advisor for The Obama Foundation
The Obama Foundation is working on a start up for citizenship, it is an ongoing project for the 21st century. This project has a global objective and will include being a digital citizen.
Terror-related acts committed by refugees widespread, according to new report
FNC: At least 61 people who came to the United States as refugees engaged in terrorist activities between 2002 and 2016, according to an explosive new report coming on the heels of the Supreme Court’s reinstatement of much of President Trump’s travel ban.
The alarming report by the Heritage Foundation identified scores of refugees, including many who came prior to 2002, as having taken part in activities ranging from lying to investigators about terror plots, to actually taking part in them. The report, aimed at reforming the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, or USRAP, calls for stricter limits and restrictions on refugees.
“There is no universal right to migrate, resettlement is not the solution to mass displacement, and U.S. policymakers have a responsibility to ensure that the United States takes in only as many refugees as it can safely vet and assimilate,” the report states. “The United States operates the program not because it is obligated to resettle refugees, but because the U.S. is a humane country and USRAP serves its national interests.”
Refugee Admissions Totals from Global Regions to the U.S. (The Heritage Foundation )
The report, written by policy analyst David Inserra, could lend weight to the Trump administration’s effort to curtail the number of refugees who come to the U.S. every year. But perhaps most worrisome, the report warns that no amount of refugee vetting can account for the “1.5 generation” — those who come to the U.S. with peaceful intentions and then become radicalized while living in America.
“Given the threat that we found in the 1.5 generation, more needs to be done in the U.S. assimilation process,” said John Cooper, spokesman for the Heritage Foundation. “We can’t vet an 8-year-old to see if he will become a terrorist when he turns 18 or 28. Instead, we as a country need to rethink the way we assimilate refugees, and immigrants as a whole for that matter.
The Vetting Process for Refugees Coming to the U.S. (The Heritage Foundation )
“In the past few decades, the United States has drifted from its strong assimilation ethos, and the terrorism in Europe paints a disturbing picture of where non-assimilation leads,” he added.
The Trump administration has taken measures to both limit and more tightly screen refugees. Earlier this year, the administration reduced the number of refugees that it would accept this fiscal year from the Obama administration’s intended 110,000 to 50,000 – and that cap has almost been reached.
“A review is especially critical following the Obama administration’s rapid, and largely unprecedented, expansion of the program in the final year of his administration,” Cooper added. “Any administration has a responsibility to ensure all existing refugee and immigration programs, including the USRAP, best serve U.S. interests.”
A U.S. State Department official told Fox News the administration will soon provide guidance regarding those already scheduled for travel before last week’s Supreme Court decision lifting an injunction against Trump’s executive order banning travel from six mostly Muslim countries plagued by terror.
But the report leaves little doubt that the perpetrators of future terror attacks are already here, including some who may not yet be radicalized. It recommends a long-term focus be placed on migrants “embracing an American creed, learning English and gaining an education” which will in turn help them to develop and sustain “an American identity and sense of belonging.”
The report also supported the widely reported claim that refugees coming to the U.S undergo more vetting than any other immigrants coming to the country under other types of programs and visa categories. The vetting process for refugees typically takes 18 to 24 months from the time of the initial referral by the U.N. refugee agency, but “in the waning months of the Obama administration the U.S. reduced the time to as little as three months for Syrians by surging resources to the region.”
It also mandated that a “foolproof vetting system” is impossible, with obvious limitations, such as lack of identification or forged documents especially when fleeing war.
“To be as cost-effective as possible – which saves the most lives – the U.S. should focus the majority of its refugee efforts on helping front-line states care for the refugees they shelter,” the report states.
Specifically, the report suggests that the U.S. can do more to urge Middle Eastern countries – most notably the oil-wealthy Gulf States – to resettle Syrian and Iraqi refugees.
“Many Syrian and Iraqi refugees share similar cultural and religious values with the people of the Gulf States, which have the financial capacity for resettlement,” the report found. “Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have donated hundreds of millions of dollars each for relief efforts, but the U.S. should urge the Gulf States to increase their aid for their Arab Muslim neighbors by resettling Syrians with all the rights and protections due to refugees.”
As it stands, the Gulf States are not signatories to the U.N. Refugee Protocol and thus do not offer refugee status. They will admit some primarily as migrant workers or to reunify families.
Fraud is also a cause for concern, according to the report. It cites as an example the Dadaab refugee camp in northern Kenya, which was exposed several years ago for developing an entire industry centered on “coaching applicants” and selling resettlement slots for as much as $10,000.
The report goes on to outline ways in which the U.S. could minimize fiscal costs and improve economic outcomes by establishing private resettlement programs on a trial basis rather than relying solely on government. But above all, the report emphasizes the need to ensure the program first and foremost puts America first.
It argues that refugee resettlement can indeed advance national interests by enabling the U.S. to “assert American leadership in foreign crisis,” providing “the U.S. with a way to respond positively to intractable crisis” and assisting allies and partners in crisis. But reviews by the Trump team to the program to achieve this objective are crucial.
The Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) is one of the State Department’s “functional,” as opposed to “geographic” bureaus. This indicates a Bureau that focuses on a particular issue wherever it arises around the world. As described in our mission statement, our focus is refugees, other migrants, and conflict victims. Our goal is to protect these people, who are often living in quite dangerous conditions.
The Bureau’s mission statement:
The mission of the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) is to provide protection, ease suffering, and resolve the plight of persecuted and uprooted people around the world on behalf of the American people by providing life-sustaining assistance, working through multilateral systems to build global partnerships, promoting best practices in humanitarian response, and ensuring that humanitarian principles are thoroughly integrated into U.S. foreign and national security policy.
What does the Bureau do internationally?
The Bureau works with the international community to develop humane and what are termed “durable” solutions to their displacement. The three durable solutions, are:
Repatriation – going home when they are no longer at risk of persecution
Local Integration – settling permanently in the country to which they have fled
Resettlement – settling permanently in a third country
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), fewer than 1% of refugees worldwide are ever resettled. However, although resettlement often is the durable solution of “last resort,” it remains a vital tool for providing international protection and for meeting the special needs of individual refugees who are unable to return home.
Are internally displaced persons (IDPs) part of the Bureau’s portfolio?
Internally displaced persons are people who have been displaced from their homes but who have not crossed an internationally recognized border. The Bureau supports the work of UNHCR and ICRC when these organizations respond to the needs of internally displaced persons.
Numerous other organizations, such as UNICEF, the World Food Program, and others also provide assistance to IDPs that complement the activities of UNHCR and ICRC. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) funds the work of these other international organizations as well as non-governmental organizations to respond to IDP needs as well.
Who does the work?
The Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) has approximately 130 civil service and foreign service staff. On the foreign aid side, we are divided into geographic offices. Our program to resettle refugees in the United States is handled by our Admissions Office. We also have a policy office that monitors and evaluates the relief work conducted by the organizations we fund.
How does the Bureau deliver assistance to refugees?
The Bureau does not operate refugee camps, or otherwise give aid directly to refugees. Instead, in the interests of effectiveness and efficiency, we work with the United Nations (UN) and other international organizations, as well as with non-governmental organizations, that operate these programs. The Bureau manages the contributions to these organizations, and monitors the programs we fund: we make sure they are working properly and ascertain that they are in line with U.S. government policies.
For instance, take the refugee relief set-up on the border between Thailand and Burma. Many of the camps were built with assistance from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The Burmese refugees receive health services, in part, from a private American charity, International Medical Corps. In Bangkok, the refugee resettlement center, called an “overseas processing entity,” handles cases of Burmese referred for resettlement, and is managed by another U.S.-based group, the International Rescue Committee. All these groups receive funding from the Bureau.
NBC
