Researching violence
against Syrian refugee women
He
often used a stick or an iron wire to beat her. Her body was covered in
bruises, sometimes in all kinds of colors. Hamada's husband, frustrated
with losing his son and his job in warring Syria, directed his anger and
depression towards the mother of his children.
It
is a fact: War is one of many forms of violence to which women are subjected,
and for some Syrian refugee women it is a prolongation of what has been
happening already in their war-torn country.
They
have been beaten, forced into having sex and asked to never talk about it or
else get killed — by their own husbands.
For
the helpless women, most of whom are mothers, the abuse has been taking physical,
emotional and sexual forms.
So
how do you address and understand the reasons behind this major, often
undermined, issue that adds to the misery of the already miserable women
refugees?
EU court rules
migrants need work to bring in family
The
European Union's highest court on Thursday upheld a Spanish judge's refusal to
let a Moroccan resident bring his wife to join him because he had failed to
show he would earn enough to support them both.
In
a judgment that joins others in the past two years in restricting migrants'
rights as Europe deals with a surge in immigration, the European Court of
Justice said the Spanish ruling was consistent with an EU law that gives
long-term, non-EU residents an entitlement to "family reunification".
"The
directive allows the member states to demand proof that the sponsor has stable
and regular resources which are sufficient to maintain himself and the members
of his family, without him having to have recourse to the social
assistance system," the ECJ said in a statement on the ruling.
Mimoun
Khachab, a Moroccan with a long-term Spanish residence permit, asked in 2012
that his wife too be granted residence. Spanish authorities turned that down on
the grounds, among others, that he worked for only 48 days the previous year
and was unlikely in the coming year to earn enough to live on.
Migration funding
should be 'innovative', Juncker tells Renzi
The
European Commission wants to find "innovative" financial resources to
address the root causes of migration in Africa and elsewhere, the EU
executive's president Jean-Claude Juncker said in a letter to Italian Prime
Minister Matteo Renzi.
Juncker's
letter follows an Italian proposal for an EU "migration compact"
aimed at stepping-up funding to bolster the economies of migrants' countries of
origin, possibly financed by jointly issued European bonds.
Europe
is grappling with its largest migration wave since World War Two, as the
traditional flow of migrants from Africa is compounded by refugees fleeing wars
and poverty in the Middle East and South Asia. More than a million people
crossed illegally into Europe last year.
Renzi
urged the EU to issue common bonds to fund a more ambitious migration policy in
Africa - a funding method that is anathema to Germany, the EU's leading power.
"I
agree with you on the need to look at innovative means to finance our
external action in the field of migration," Juncker said in a letter to
Renzi dated April 20, seen by Reuters. He did not specifically mention the
sensitive idea of Eurobonds.
With
a reduction of the migrant flow in the route from Turkey to Greece since last
month's controversial EU-Turkey deal, Rome fears that larger flows of migrants
may come to Italy from war-torn Libya and other North African countries.
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