Over 7,000 Indians filed applications for asylum in US in 2017: UN report

There are about 40,391 asylum seekers from India at the end of last year

Over 7,000 people from India filed applications for asylum in the US last year, according to a report by the UN refugee agency which said America was the largest recipient of new asylum requests in 2017.

The UN Refugee Agency said in its annual Global Trends report that 68.5 million people globally were displaced as of the end of 2017. Among them were 16.2 million people who became displaced during 2017 itself, either for the first time or repeatedly indicating a huge number of people on the move and equivalent to 44,500 people being displaced each day, or a person becoming displaced every two seconds.

Wars, other violence and persecution drove worldwide forced displacement to a new high in 2017 for the fifth year in a row, led by the crisis in Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan’s war, and the flight into Bangladesh from Myanmar of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees. Overwhelmingly it is developing countries that are most affected, it said.

In the US, the trend of increasing asylum claims from people originating from the north of Central America also continued. Salvadorans made up the largest nationality of applicants with 49,500 claims, almost half again as much as the 33,600 submitted in 2016.

Asylum claims from Venezuelans increased by 63 per cent to 29,900, reflecting the challenging conditions in the country. Other nationalities from which there were more than 5,000 claims in 2017 were Mexico (26,100), China (17,400), Haiti (8,600) and India (7,400). Altogether claims were received from nationals from 168 countries, the report said.

According to the report, there were 197,146 refugees as at 2017 end in India and 10,519 asylum seekers with pending cases. There are about 40,391 asylum seekers from India at the end of last year, the report said.

It added that for the first time since 2013, Syria was not the most common country of origin for new asylum-seekers. The highest number of asylum claims filed by individuals were from nationals of Afghanistan who submitted 124,900 claims in 80 different countries.

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How to tackle Kashmir militancy? Youth need change, not surrender policies

This time, the youth has to be wooed and the realities of mass media mean that the government needs to 'market' its product efficiently

 

It is called the ‘New Age Militancy’. Youth who are younger than 20 years of age, indifferent to their parents’ pleas, are joining militant groups, only to be killed a few weeks later. Like Faizan Bhat of Tral who was all of 15, and remained a militant for two months before becoming a casualty statistic. More recently, it was Faid Mushtaq Waza of Khanyar who was 18 and was last seen on social media posing with a gun. This shift in militancy patterns has disastrous consequences for everyone, barring the militants’ leadership and their backers.

For Kashmiris, it’s yet another indication of the failure of the state. To the security forces, it means a compounded threat, since the youth are so much more willing to die for a cause they barely understand. For the jihadis, the death of a young militant is a cause for celebration. That means that a brother, father or a group of friends are likely to join before they too are killed. For the government, however, it can be both a problem and an opportunity. A problem, because tired old rehabilitation policies being regurgitated by police officials have little meaning to idealistic youth; opportunity, because imaginative measures have the potential to significantly change the situation, provided there is a willingness to learn lessons from the past.

Overview of surrender policies

The very first surrender policy announced on Independence Day in 1995 was under the Governor, General (retd) K.V. Krishna Rao’s administration. This virtually replicated the policies introduced earlier for Naxalites, with a one-time fixed deposit of Rs 1.5 lakh, a monthly stipend of Rs 1,800, and some vocational training. Some 2,229 militants surrendered under this first policy indicating a desire to change. However, accounts of that period indicate that promised incentives remained undelivered. For instance, banks refused to back a plan to provide loans to finance small businesses. Promised training suffered due to poor facilities and lackadaisical funding. A rehabilitation council provided minimal funds for widows or children of militants, not the ex-militants themselves.

Click Here  : Kashmir Youth