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item0072D 1026, 1027
1026
26 June 2004
‘Creating Safer Communities’ Conference
THE IMPACT OF ANTI-SOCIAL
BEHAVIOUR MEASURES ON
CHILDREN
Address by Kathy Evans
23 June 2004
Assistant Director/Policy, The
Children's Society
There can be no doubt that anti-social
behaviour is a real problem right across the country, in rural, urban and
suburban communities – at The Children’s Society we know that, not least
because children and young people are the first to tell us, that they
experience those problems. They tell us, and have been telling us for years,
that they want to feel safer in their communities, that they want
intimidation, drugs and bullying on their streets to stop. We are working at
grass roots level in a wide range of communities, through the Children’s
Fund, through New Deal for Communities, and by facilitating young people’s
participation in local partnerships, and so we know how much effort and
attention is going into local action to improve the quality of life in the
communities experiencing some of the worst problems. We also work with some
children and young people who are subject to Anti-Social Behaviour Orders,
in particular, although not exclusively, through our work with young
offenders.
As we all know, the approaches being taken
to tackling anti-social behaviour vary widely across the country. In some
areas there has been a conscious decision not to target the young
with the kind of enforcement measures in the
Anti-Social Behaviour Act.
Agencies in these areas are instead targeting their efforts on prevention and
diversionary activities for children. In some areas the Police and local
partnerships are really leading the way, by including children and young
people in the solutions to community problems, making clear that children
are community members too. But that is not everywhere. We know, not least
from the Home Office’s
Review of ASBOs in 2002, that over half of all ASBO’s
relate to under 18-year-oldss. Some areas have explicitly decided to target
the young.
Some areas are getting the balance right,
and to those I say simply - "We support the approach that you are taking, and
the fact that children support you is clear from their involvement and sense
of membership of their communities" Regeneration, the Children’s Fund, and all
sorts of investments in children are making a real difference to many
children’s sense of safety and belonging in the communities.
My subject, however, is the impact of ‘Anti-Social Behaviour Measures
on Children’. I want to broaden that out first, to look at the
general community context for children today and the impact of the
anti-social behaviour agenda as a whole, before looking specifically at the
measures that can be employed. My emphasis will be on the evidence we
have gathered about what children and young people think, feel and
experience, rather than a more evaluative approach to the outcomes of
particular measures. Others have spoken about outcomes and effectiveness,
but I think it is the voice of children and young people, and their
perspective on what is going on that can often be lost. And I’d like you all
to try, for the next few minutes, to remember what it felt like to
be a child or a teenager, to try to see things through the eyes of
children - because that is how we could really start to come to grips with
some of the impact.
 I want to start by looking at our
language
and our communication with children about anti-social behaviour. I want to look
at the feelings that so many children are experiencing in
their communities, and how anti-social behaviour measures fit into that
picture. So I need to start with a question:
‘What is anti-social behaviour anyway?’
The assumption seems to be that it is a phrase that explains itself. The law
does not really bother to define it, different local partnerships can create
their own definition. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister reported last
year that -
“Although disorder, youth nuisance and anti-social behaviour were often
identified as priority themes in Crime and Disorder Strategies, there was a
lack of clarity as to what behaviours were being referred to…Any behaviour
could be classed as being anti-social depending on a number of factors
including the context in which it took place, the location, the tolerance
levels of the local community and expectations about the quality of life
in an area”
Two
years earlier, the Cabinet Office’s Policy Action Team highlighted the
vagueness of the term, in their PAT 12 report, and the implications of it
for young people:
“There is no single definition of anti-social behaviour….young people are
often perceived to be responsible for anti-social behaviour, but they are
most at risk of being victims”
And I’m sure several eyes will be rolling
as I raise this question of definition, because it’s been floating around
for some time. Many people think this is an anodyne point - that those who
experience it, know perfectly well what it is, and that’s what counts. But
children rely on us to teach them, to explain to them the world around them,
and the rules we operate by. Children and young people need to know what
anti-social behaviour is, because they need to know what they are not meant
to do in order to avoid having the measures used against them. And as the
Cabinet Office rightly pointed out, the subjectivity of the term is wide
open to prejudice against young people. Many children and young people are
telling us that they do not understand the term - but they do know that it is
targeted towards children. In fact many children and parents who are
already subject to anti-social behaviour measures are telling us that they
often don’t understand the processes they are being involved in, or the
language we use in anti-social behaviour proceedings.
“I shouldn’t be on an ASBO because I’ve
not got any convictions. I don’t go robbing, fighting, bullying or
terrorising. I don’t take drugs or drink on the streets….the only thing I
have done wrong is hang around in a group and then I did nothing wrong”
(young person
awaiting appeal)
You can sense this
young person’s bewilderment that he thought he had understood what he was
not supposed to do, and his anger at the goalposts being changed. Perhaps he
does have his own ‘obvious’ understanding of what anti-social behaviour is,
and is finding it hard to apply it to anything that he has done.
The use of this vague, subjective terminology with children has very real
consequences. In
the absence of a clear definition of the behaviour that is
anti-social, children and young people are quickly sensing that it is their
very
existence and their youth that is considered anti-social. If
they are perceived to be anti-social by others, then that seems to be the
defining factor.
Remember too that although there are young people who have heard about the
Anti-Social
Behaviour Act, or
who have otherwise heard the term, there are many, huge numbers, who still know nothing about it. One of the key issues is that there
was no coherent or explicit communication about the Anti-Social Behaviour
Bill with children and young people in the run up to, or indeed during the
passage of the Bill. We can debate among ourselves and with Government
whether the actual intention of the Bill was to target children as the
problem. And we can, of course, make localised decisions about what
strategies will be adopted. But many young people
were essentially left to work out the meaning for themselves, when they discovered that the
Government was passing curfew and dispersal
powers and naming and shaming powers.
Young people at one of our Children’s Fund
projects in Kent clearly felt targeted and labelled by the Anti-Social
Behaviour Bill, saying:
“We know the Bill isn’t just about young people but we
are the main group getting punished”
“It makes all young people look bad”
"It’s like having signs saying ‘No playing ball, No dog poo, No young
people’.”
Once they found out about them, the
UK Youth
Parliament
denounced children’s curfew and dispersal powers as
discriminatory towards children, and were outraged that the Government's
commitment to "consulting and involving children" had evidently disappeared
when preparing the Anti-Social Behaviour Bill. In their 2003
manifesto the Youth Parliament said that:
“...the Bill focuses too heavily on young
people as the problem, and does not seek to work with us, but rather
reduce our civil liberties”
And in response to so much attention given to the anti-social effect of
young people hanging around in groups, they sought to emphasise that
“young people hang around in groups to
feel safer”.
The Northern Ireland Children’s
Commissioner is applying for judicial review on the issues of the
Government’s failure to consult with or communicate to children about the
anti-social behaviour measures, saying that if children are old enough to be
made subject to an order, they are old enough to be consulted about the laws
that created them. And in an England-wide NOP poll of young people aged
10-16, conducted last October -
70% said that Police should not be given
powers to move them on if they have not done anything wrong
80% said curfews are not fair because not
all young people cause problems
Three-fifths (60%) believe curfews will
stop them doing things they enjoy
81% say that Police were very important in
helping children lead safe and secure lives, and
82% said that children sometimes “hang
out on the streets” because there is nowhere else for them to go.
I think those figures show how healthy a
sense of fairness children and young people have. They have high levels of
respect for the Police, but little comprehension of measures that would seek
to punish and restrict them when they have done nothing wrong.
The very
rhetoric -
quite apart from the
implementation of the anti-social behaviour measures - is sending a message to
children that they are at the margins of their communities, often unwanted,
readily excluded. An annoyance just waiting to happen. Children’s
definitions of anti-social behaviour would include adults’ intolerance of
them playing and gathering together when they are not doing any harm to
anyone. Unless we include action to tackle those attitudes in our action to
address anti-social behaviour, then we will fail to convince children that
they are valued members of our communities. Unless we are careful in the
ways we implement anti-social behaviour plans, we are at high risk of
reinforcing a culture of increasing intolerance and fear of children’s
presence in public, wanting and expecting children to be safely out of
sight, and certainly out of earshot, preferably on their parents sofa at
home. Signs routinely ban them from their community’s shops, say no ball
games, no bicycles, no skateboards or rollerblades, no children in this
restaurant.
 Research for national
PlayDay last August showed how fear and intolerance of children just being
outdoors is impacting on children’s normal, healthy play, and their sense
that they are allowed out in their community. Of the 2,600 children and
young people, aged seven to 16, questioned for the
Playday survey
two-thirds
said they like to play outside daily, mostly to meet friends.
But -
-
Four in five (80%)
say they have been told off for playing outdoors
-
Half (50%) say they
have been shouted at for playing out.
-
One in four (25%)
aged 11-16 were threatened with violence
The research also
uncovered examples like these, and I really want you to imagine you are the
child hearing and experiencing these decisions from the adults in their
community:
·
Plans to
put up a netball hoop on a village green in Oxfordshire that were blocked
because residents didn’t want to attract children.
·
Skateboard park in Cumbria refused planning permission due to residents’
objections- despite a 1,500 signature petition and £100,000 raised through
the efforts of local children.
·
And in the north west, 115 No
Ball Games signs put up on one
housing estate where four out of five play grounds had also been shut down
Green space
accessible to children continues to be sold off, with the number of
applications to build on playing fields in 2002/3 being more than double the
figure for the previous two years.
Before we can really understand the effect
anti-social measures are having on the children who are subject to them, we
must ask ourselves what place and
what space we create for all
the children in our communities. Perhaps if we included intolerance of
children in our definition of anti-social behaviour, the neighbour in West
Somerset who got an 8-year-old girl in the
PlayDay research stopped from
cycling down her own street because her bicycle wheels were squeaky would
have been challenged about his intolerant attitude. Perhaps the 3-year-old
boy who had every new ball he had to play with burst by his neighbour each
time they went over his wall, would have seen some action taken about the
damage to his property, and to protect his right to play in his own garden.
Children and young people don’t understand our rhetoric, they understand
what they see and feel to be going on around them. They hear the unspoken
messages, and they hear our own contradictions. We are scared
for
the safety of our children if they are out on their own, yet we are scared
of
them when they gather in the company of friends. We worry about an obese
generation of couch potatoes and computer game addicts, yet we are willing
to ban children from playing ball games because the sound is a nuisance. We
want skateboarders off residential streets, but we fear establishing skate-parks that will attract young people. We want children to learn to make
responsible choices, to obey the law, to understand right from wrong, and
then we make laws that will see them moved on, split up from their friends
and sent home when they are doing nothing wrong, just in case they do.
 No wonder so many children and young people
are confused and angry. We have to make sure we learn from young people’s
reactions so far, and sort out our mixed messages before we communicate with
the rest of the young population about "anti-social behaviour measures".
I propose to focus on two main aspects of the anti-social behaviour measures –
Anti-Social Behaviour Orders
and
Naming and Shaming. I recognise of course
that there are a wide array of measures available, such as parenting orders,
or powers to close Crack Houses, which can also have an impact on children
and young people, not to mention the possible impact on children of their
parents, neighbours or other adults who cause problems being made subject to ASBOs. These aspects of the impact of anti-social behaviour measures on
children undoubtedly warrant exploration, but I’m not aware of
such evaluation having been conducted with children and young people. Curfew
and dispersal powers have also, as we know, been introduced in at least two
areas of the country, and it is vitally important that both the outcomes of
those schemes, and their emotional impact on children are monitored. However
they have only been recently introduced and I am certainly not the best
person to report on the implementation at this stage. I will focus on
ASBO’s
and
naming and shaming
because these are the measures that the
young people we work with have been experiencing at first hand, and are
telling us about.
As I mentioned earlier, the
2002 Home
Office Review of ASBOs
reported that 58% of
ASBOs
had been made against
under 18’s, three quarters against under 21s. It is perhaps salutary to
recall that when the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act was passed,
ASBOs
were
primarily discussed in debate as being intended for adults, and tenants in
particular, building on the pioneering work in Hackney, using injunctions to
address the enormous problems caused by a small handful of intimidating
residents. Even the first consultation draft of the HO guidance for
implementation emphasised that
ASBOs
should only be used for young people in
exceptional circumstances.
But that was radically changed
by the time the final Guidance came out. I say this because, despite their
popularity for use on young people, one should query whether
ASBOs were really designed with young people in mind. We should ask whether the rates of
breach of
ASBOs
for young people may be related to the fact that they were
not conceived of as a "children’s order" at all. The issues that I have already
raised, about language and how to explain anti-social behaviour orders are
very real here. We have doubts, for example, whether many young people are
really comprehending that when they sign an "acceptable behaviour contract",
they could breach it without breaking the criminal law, or that their whole
family may find themselves evicted. Is this really something that we expect
a 10- or 12-year-old to fully take on board, let alone a troubled child? The same Home Office report highlighted that in around one in ten
of the cases they looked into in detail, the young person subject to an
ASBO
had a learning or other educational difficulty, including one who was deaf
and dumb. What then is the meaning of a written contract to them? Are there
procedures for
ASBOs
designed with these children in mind, and how are they
being made understandable to children?
We are picking up very different approaches
to the prevention of
ASBOs across the country. As I’ve said, some areas have
committed themselves to prevention as a general approach and are focussing
their efforts on preventing
ASBOs from being made in the first place,
through community based initiatives, through the attention of Youth
Inclusion and Support Panels and the use of Acceptable Behaviour Contracts. However some other areas measure their success by the high number of
ASBOs on children. Some Community and Neighbourhood Wardens have targets for
ASBOs to meet - even before they go out and find out what’s going on and whether
that number are needed, or whether they could be effectively prevented. In
one very small village where we work, 17 children were given
ASBOs in one
week by the new community warden, without any real prior preventative work
being done with them. And in a small village, you can imagine that was quite
a substantial proportion of the entire local youth population. Seeing and
hearing that young people are being treated differently in different parts
of the country certainly doesn’t help in convincing children that there is
any consistency or fairness in how we are using anti-social behaviour
measures on them.
Looking at the impact of some of the kinds
of conditions that young people are being placed under, we are finding that
in some cases
ASBOs are having the effect of preventing young people from
engaging in exactly the kind of activities and services that would benefit
them in improving their behaviour. Indeed with young people, one of
key aims must be to get them to expend their energy on something
constructive, because anyone who has a child will know that making sure that
they are contentedly exhausted by the end of the day is the key to having a
peaceful night! If all we are doing is cooping young people up at home, and
frustrating them by isolating them from peer group activities, like sports
and youth clubs, then we are effectively building up negative energy with
nowhere for it to go. And that’s surely not what we want.
Related to this point are the difficulties
young people face in complying with conditions not to associate with
longstanding friends, particularly when they live locally. These are of
course understandable conditions when we recognise that peer groups are
often the biggest influence on children’s behaviour, and it perhaps only
mirrors the kind of discipline that many parents might seek to impose
themselves if they feel that their children have fallen into bad company. However, in making a court order of non-association, potentially punishable
by imprisonment, the side effects can be more problematic for the child who
really tries to comply than the one who does not. If, for example, the
friend with whom the child cannot associate is playing out in their street,
then they are effectively unable to leave their house. If they share other
friends with whom they are permitted to associate, they have to
negotiate the problems of ensuring that they don’t happen to make parallel
arrangements or movements that would bring them together within the wider
group. And whatever the immaturity or wisdom of their choice of friends, the
emotional impact on a teenager of being cut off from the people they
consider a real friend can be harsh, particularly if they have emotional
problems and challenges to work through, as so many of them do.
It should go without saying that many of
the children being made subject to
ASBOs
do have quite profound personal or
family problems that underlie their behaviour. Many young people not only
need professional support if they are to change their behaviour to comply
with their
ASBO, but for many, home is not the safe, happy, supportive
environment that might encourage them to be home earlier of an evening, or
to take their schooling and behaviour more seriously. For some of these
children, home is precisely the place that they are avoiding by being out on
the streets, and all too often, Social Services find it difficult to stretch
their resources to provide family support or indeed child protection for
teenagers, especially as they near 16. The powers to create Individual
Support Orders, and parenting orders, to run alongside
ASBOs were introduced
last year in the Criminal Justice Act, in recognition of this major gap in
ASBOs for young people. However, we have yet to see how well or how widely
they will be used, or what resources will be made available to provide ISO
interventions. And at The Children’s Society, we are concerned that this
recognition of the need for support comes in the form of
more
breachable requirements imposed on children and parents, rather than obligations on
local services to ensure that families receive the support they need.
Hopefully you will all be aware of The
Children’s Society’s core concerns about children in custody. We have
supported the Youth Justice Board in their drive to provide more community
options for children, and to encourage the decreased use of custody for
children. Having seen some success in reducing the numbers of children in
custody during 2002/3, it was disheartening to see the figures rise back to
their record highs at the beginning of this year. And although we do not
have the precise numbers of
ASBO breaches that are leading to custody,
anecdotal evidence coming directly from the secure training centres and
prisons appear to indicate that
ASBO breaches have contributed to that rise.
Let us be in no doubt
– when a child ends up locked-up for breaching an
ASBO then the whole intention of making one has failed. We know that almost nine
out of ten children who go into prison will re-offend when they come out, and
so the problems for their communities are only temporarily alleviated while
they are away. And the more overcrowded our prisons, the less useful any
work done in them with children can be. We have to keep a close eye on the
emerging details about
ASBOs breaches and the numbers of children in custody,
and commit to learning from the results to inform our strategies for the use
and enforcement of
ASBOs on young people in the future.
It’s also important to note, in this
context, the practice of deferring the operation of ASBOs, in the case of young people going into custody, until they come back out. Again, this may, at first sight, seem a sensible
way of preparing for the child’s release back into the community, but from
the young person’s perspective, what they hear is that no-one believes that
being locked up will do anything to change them. We are reinforcing the idea
that being locked up is strictly for punishment, not rehabilitation, and we
are ignoring the fact that any child returning from a sentence of custody
will have a period of YOT supervision, either under the community half of
their detention and training order, or on licence. Aren’t we over-egging the
pudding here? It’s certainly worth a re-think about the point in the process at
which such an
ASBO is made, and what message that is sending to the young
person.
Lastly I want to look at
Naming and
Shaming
practices and their impact on children and young people.
Perhaps the most important point to make
about
naming and shaming,
and one The Childrens’ Society has been making for some time, is
that it is likely to be counterproductive - if the aim is to change
behaviour. Anyone who works directly with young people
who offend will know of young people for whom local notoriety is only fuel
to their fire. But equally, for those who do want to make a fresh start, for
whom being caught and reprimanded has had a cooling effect, the impact of
negative publicity about them can only prolong their problems in engaging
with their community more positively. People who may never have even known
or met them, will know them only as a troublemaker, long after their
behaviour has changed. And as this example shows that if we make people’s
histories follow them as they move to make a fresh start, then we really are
setting people up to fail. All of us will remember from our school days the
fact that reputations stick, and where we are seeing the
naming and shaming
initiatives, there is no parallel effort being put into identifying and
publicising
success
stories, children who have changed their behaviour, to updating the
community members knowledge about these children, or rewarding their efforts
with positive publicity.
Many young people have raised with us the
potential for people to mistakenly identify and report children breaching
their
ASBO
conditions, because many children dress similarly, have similar
haircuts, and so forth, particularly within the same friendship groups. Equally, photographs issued at one point in time may quickly go out of date,
as young people grow and change their appearance and fashions, increasing
the likelihood that people can make mistakes in identifying young people
correctly. Many young people also have a real sense of injustice that
malicious reports can be made up or exaggerated, and the breach process does
not require those reports to be tested against a criminal standard of proof,
even though the result is a criminal conviction for breach.
And overall, children and young people
report to us that
naming and shaming
is exacerbating tensions between young
people, adults and authorities, as they feel under constant negative
scrutiny from the adults around them, whether or not they are under an
ASBO
themselves. The
naming and shaming
approach is of necessity a philosophy
that encourages community members to feel that they have a role in policing
their community, which in the most general sense they do. But without being
very careful about what that means in practice, it can lead to over-zealous
and malicious ‘amateur’ policing and surveillance, such as private
individuals videoing and photographing children as they go about their
community.
In any other circumstance we would view such behaviour highly
suspiciously, and we must appreciate how intrusive this feels for children.
If we do not show children that we have respect for their privacy, then we
will have great difficulty explaining what privacy means and why they should
show respect for other community members’ privacy. I have here perhaps one
of the most shocking pieces of local journalism that I have ever seen. It’s
not quite
naming and shaming, in the sense that the 84 photographs of
children published in it are put up for the public to identify, rather than
naming them as being on orders. The offences of which they are accused are
graffiti offences, which, while I would agree are indeed offences and in
need of addressing, hardly warrant the language used in this piece. I
have some doubt as to whether some of these children are even ten years old. But let me read you the text:
“Enough is enough. It’s time for
decent, law-abiding members of society to have their say and take the scum
off our streets. We’re sick and tired of the yobs and vandals who think
they can ruin the lives of ordinary people without being brought to task.
It really couldn’t be simpler. You
identify these lowlife and we will work with the police to take action
against them. Why should we be terrorised, and have things we care about
destroyed, by jumped-up, thoughtless scumbags like these?
To add a little further interest to you
task, not to mention to treat these wastrels with the disdain they
deserve, we have come up with an EXCLUSIVE game for News Shopper readers
as we ask you to play the first ever game of SHOP A YOB BINGO!
Simply identify three yobs in a row or
four corners on any one page and you will be in with a chance of winning…a
great digital camera….Just think, you might be able to take a few pictures
of your own!”
Now I know that this is not happening all
over the country: it is from a local London newspaper, in Plumstead. And I know that it is perhaps the most extreme of
examples. But we must recognise that a
naming and shaming
approach, if encouraged, leads to overriding their rights to privacy and, in this case, their right
to be considered innocent until proven guilty. It is not difficult to imagine
the reaction of a child reading this article at the breakfast-table, and for
them to get a very clear message about their value to society, and that of
their friends.
And so to sum up, the key points that I
want to emphasise are these -
(1)
Children are as concerned as we all are
about anti-social behaviour, but a great many are feeling misunderstood
and excluded by the adult agenda in their communities
(2)
We
must communicate about anti-social behaviour
much more effectively with children, and make sure we involve them in
designing our responses to anti-social behaviour;
(3)
We
need to look holistically
at the needs and situations of children and
young people who cause trouble, in learning whether and how to use
behavioural contracts and orders with them;
(4)
Anything
that results in more children being locked up is failing to address the
problem effectively;
(5)
Finally, we must be very careful
about the language and publicity that goes out in communities about
children’s anti-social behaviour, and whether it actually contributes to
easing or exacerbating tension.
I will end by leaving you a message that
young people in Thanet, Kent wanted you to hear.
“We know your
trying to keep us safe
But keeping us
grounded shows no faith”
End
Does
this resonate with you? Drop me a line
<
Back to Home Page
1027
26 July
2004
From: Michael
Davis
Australian
Immigration & Investment Center (AIIC)
24 July 2004
Dear Roger
 In
1938, in the town of
Evian,
there was a Conference to discuss the question of refugees (mainly
Jewish, at that time) - and the leading countries of the world fudged
the issue. I think that it is time to have a real and serious
international conference on
migration/refugees/statelessness. The world situation is getting worse and
steps need to be taken to stop the decline into anarchy.
There are 'countries of migration', capable of receiving migrants, and
there are countries that are not. We need to be clear about these two
groups. Not every country can take people, but those which don't can
contribute in other ways.
There are also laws and administrative conventions around the world that
exacerbate the problem. For example, it is in everyone's interest to
establish an international law that deals conclusively with the legal status
of every child who is born. Whichever way you cut this particular
problem, clearly it is best for world order for every child to gain -
immediately and irrevocably - the citizenship of the place where he/she is
born.
Currently, in many countries around the world, your citizenship derives
from your father, but not your mother; from your religion; from your
tribe; from every conceivable consideration
except the territory where you first
entered God's poor Earth. This
dog's breakfast of arrangements adds fuel to the flames of refugeedom and
the hopelessness of statelessness.
The
opposition to this idea is immense. Muslim clerics faint at the idea
that status could derive from your mother. That makes mother equal to
father! Danes are appalled that non-whites born in Copenhagen could ever be
Danes! Israel's Knesset is currently discussing a law which
intends restricting citizenship to Jews only! Japan's population is
collapsing, but try becoming Japanese if your race is wrong!
These crazy
ideas abound in the world - and they contribute, on a daily basis, to
worsening a serious problem. This matter cries out for a most
serious attempt by the forces of modernism (UK, USA, Canada, Australia,
NZ, France and other like minded counties) to put in place an
overarching, and legally pre-eminent, international law that gives an
equal citizenship to all children
based on the geography of their birth.
As a
way forward, the United Nations could also give a child a passport that
states that the child is a 'UN citizen'. This passport would be
internationally valid and would allow travel, subject to the acquisition of
residence visas in other countries. For many people, it is their
simple lack of "papers" that engenders hopelessness, and the panic of flight
to the West.
The
190+ sovereign states won't be happy to see the emergence of a 'UN
citizenship'. But the failures of the many sovereign states - by
simply allowing the refugee/stateless/mass migration problems turn into a
crisis, now means that new ideas are necessary.
Best
regards
Mike Davis
Australian
Immigration & Investment Center (AIIC)
What do you think? Drop me a
line
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