A Desk for Daniela

Last Sunday marked the last official day of a UNHCR (The UN Refugee Agency) physical, administrative presence in T&T.

It was not unexpected that a focused, financial squeeze on multilateral, global inter-governmental agencies would have followed the kind of international talk and action we have been witnessing over the years, but now culminating in active, official policy.

So, yes, “funding constraints” have become a recurring issue within the UN system and its long arms in key developmental areas that countries, such as ours in the Caribbean, have benefited from across the full range of technical, financial, and policy support.

In many countries, there has been openly expressed regret and accompanying tragic outcomes. In other instances, governments have tacitly celebrated the gradual retreat of ubiquitous, institutional reminders of principles based on global understanding of the numerous challenges the planet faces.

These include guidance and technical assistance in delivery of health, education, cultural, and human rights aspirations … among others. In this instance, migrant policy has taken a direct hit despite universally accepted values and recommended practices guided by convention, international law, and in some instances domestic legislation.

This is occurring at a time when, perhaps more than ever before in modern history, there need to be orderly administrative regimes and environments committed to minimising harm. There is a degree of recklessness about human welfare and life most of us have never encountered before.

It has not mattered to too many what international humanitarian and migrant law dictate. In some cases, there is a deliberate flouting of accepted principles rooted in well-respected human rights principles.

The absence of national concern in T&T by the collective legal profession, politicians of all shades, colleague journalists, human rights activists, and civil society organisations has been sadly stark, with only a few notable exceptions.

All of this to say that yet another school year is being launched in less than a week from now and close to 1,500 children born here – and another 4,500 or so of other statuses - will be deliberately denied what we boastfully describe as our system of universal primary education.

The figures have been skewed by official and informal guesstimates based entirely on degrees of knowledge, empathy, and understanding. Politicians and commentators have provided guidance along a spectrum of 100,000 to 200,000 to “plenty” to “too many.”

I am no longer exercising patience on this subject. There are well-informed people who will tell you that had we been serious, the required human and infrastructural and administrative resources would have been available to make schooling of migrant children a non-issue at this time.

Today, it is being met by ole talk related to wider “migration policy” based on a “minifesto” promise on “the integration of Venezuelan migrants.”

Yet, this is a subject that has, to some extent, defied political complexion when it comes to public expression of diagnosis and treatment. Pay attention to the partisan trolls and the hate speech being produced … without censure from either their own principals or people who should know better.

The best news reporting guidelines discourage employment of the term “illegal immigrants”, for example, over the tendency of language to dehumanise or degrade the value of people. It’s there in use of the word “Venee”, comparison with animals and the inanimate, and loose association with dishonourable professions.

There is also a real danger, at this time of threatened regime change 11 kilometres from here, that the hate mongers will be incapable of making a distinction between Venezuela, the country, and objectified Venezuelans.

It has happened to us in the past. Read Sam Selvon and George Lamming regarding migrant Caribbean people in the UK and make an effort to get Claude McKay and Paule Marshall on the US experience.

For the umpteenth time last May I reminded people that of the 37,906 refugees and asylum-seekers registered by the UNHCR in T&T, more than 86% are from Venezuela - the other 14% from over 38 additional countries.

These “pests” and “invasive species”, as described in current, unbridled hate speech, include schooled and tragically unschooled children entitled to “birthright citizenship” (jus soli). “Daniela” – now 7 and being “home schooled” by a non-native English-speaking mother and a father too busy making ends meet from manicuring yards – is among the numbers.

I remind you. We have not come to this overnight. This shameful slur on our humanity.  Daniela awaits her desk at school. Some of us are standing in the way.