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The United Nations Summit for Refugees and Migrants will be held on 19 September 2016 at the UNHQ in New York. The high-level meeting to address large movements of refugees and migrants is expected to endorse an Outcome Document that commits states to negotiating a ‘Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework’ and separately a ‘Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration,’ for adoption in 2018.
LEE & LOW BOOKS celebrates its 25th anniversary this year and to recognize how far the company has come, we are featuring one title a week to see how it is being used across the country in classrooms and libraries today.
Today we are featuring one of our most poignant and moving titles: Brothers in Hope: The Story of the Lost Boys of Sudan.This powerful story of young refugees fleeing war in Sudan was published in 2005 but remains extremely topical today, more than ten years later.
About the book: Eight-year-old Garang is tending cattle far from his family’s home in southern Sudan when war comes to his village. Frightened but unharmed, he returns to find everything has been destroyed.
Soon Garang meets other boys whose villages have been attacked. Before long they become a moving band of thousands, walking hundreds of miles seeking safety — first in Ethiopia and then in Kenya. The boys face numerous hardships and dangers along the way, but their faith and mutual support help keep the hope of finding a new home alive in their hearts.
Based on heartbreaking yet inspirational true events in the lives of the Lost Boys of Sudan, Brothers in Hope is a story of remarkable and enduring courage, and an amazing testament to the unyielding power of the human spirit.
Awards and Honors:
Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award Honor, American Library Association
Notable Children’s Book, American Library Association
Best Children’s Books of the Year: Outstanding Merit, Bank Street College of Education
Notable Books for a Global Society, International Literacy Association
Children’s Book Award Notable, International Literacy Association
Children’s Picks List, Booksense
Author Mary Williams is the founder of the Lost Boys Foundation, whose mission is to assist Sudan’s Lost Boys in attaining a college education. Of the Lost Boys she has met, Williams writes, “They have been neglected and endured severe hardship. Some of them saw their family and friends killed in front of them. They could be the most angry, bitter people you ever saw. But they aren’t. They are so motivated and eager to get jobs and go to school. I just knew I had to help them.”
Skating with the Statue of Liberty continues the story of Gustave Becker begun in Black Radishes. Gustave, now 12, and his family, along with his cousin Jean-Paul and his mother, all French Jews who have finally gotten American visas to leave Nazi-occupied Europe and sail to America. It's January 1942, and the ship the family is sailing must dock in Baltimore to avoid the Nazi U-boats patrolling the waters around New York City. Gustave is disappointed that the Statue of Liberty won't be his first view of America, but arriving in the US is his first taste of freedom since before WWII began.
However, life isn't all that easy for the Becker family in NYC. After staying with kind relatives, they find a small, affordable one room apartment with a shared bathroom on West 91st Street in Manhattan. His father must settle for a low-paying job a as janitor in a department store, and his mother ends up sewing decorations onto hats. Gustave begins school at Joan of Arc Junior High school, hoping the name is fortuitous for him in his new school, home and country.
School issn't too bad for Gustave, who already knows a little English, with except for his homeroom teacher, Mrs. McAdams, who believes that raising her voice at him will make Gustave understand her better. And she also decides that his name is too foreign and begins to call him Gus. He does have one African American student in his class, September Rose, but he doesn't understand why she keeps her distance. Eventually they do become friends, and face some nasty physical and verbal incidents because of it.
Gustave's English improves quickly, and he even gets an after-school job delivering laundry. He and his cousin Jean-Paul, who now lives with his mother at a relative's home in the Bronx, join a French boy scout troop run by a French priest and a French rabbi, the same rabbi who has begum preparing the two cousins for their Bar Mitzvahs. And through his friendship with September Rose, Gustave learns about the Double V campaign in which her older brother Alan and his friends are involved.
But Gustave also worries about his friend Marcel in hiding back in France. Luckily, he is able to write to his friend Nicole in Saint-Georges, France, whose father is in the French Resistance, so there is always hope that there will be good news about Marcel.
I had very mixed feelings about this novel. There is no real conflict in it, really. It is mostly about Gustave assimilation into American life. And while that is very interesting and realistic, it isn't very exciting. In fact, the whole issue around the Double V campaign, including the demonstration staged by Alan and his friends outside a department store in Harlem that refuses to hire African Americans is actually the most exciting part of the book and, I think, it should have been a story in its own right.
On the other hand, and perhaps because my dad was an immigrant, I personally liked reading about Gustave's life in America, perhaps because it is inspired on the author's father's real experiences after arriving in this country. For sure, America isn't portrayed perfect and even Gustave faces incidents of racism and anti-Semitism, but for the most part, he does make friends and has a nice support system in his family, Boy Scouts and school. I certainly appreciate his mixed feelings about which country to give his loyalty to and how that is resolved.
Themes of friendship, family, refugees, racism, hate, and acceptance make this historical fiction novel as relevant in today's world as in 1942. It is a quiet, almost gentle novel that will give young readers a real appreciation of what their family may have lived through coming to a new, unfamiliar country, finding a place in it and giving back as productive members of society.
This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was borrowed from the NYPL
Did the Statue of Liberty really skate in this book? Of course not, but you'll have to read to the end to find out where the title comes from.
Gustave lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, just as Meyer's father did. His school, Joan of Arc Junior High School on West 93rd Street, is referred to in the book as a "skyscraper school" which only means that it was built up not out because of rising property values. But it is also a real school, now landmarked and on the NY Art Deco Registry. As you can see, it is an unusual school:
Gustave also spends a lot of time at the Joan of Arc statue in Riverside Park, at the end of West 93rd Street. It is also a famous landmark and you can read all about it at one of my favorite blogs, Daytonian in Manhattan (he has better photos)
0 Comments on Skating with the Statue of Liberty by Susan Lynn Meyer as of 7/10/2016 7:06:00 AM
It's 1945, Germany is losing the war it had began in 1939, and now, as the Red Army approaches the East Prussian countryside, thousands of people who can are fleeing to escape the brutality that the Russians have been inflicting on Germans everywhere they go.
Among the refugees trying to reach the seaport city of Gotenhafen, where they hope to board a ship that will evacuate them out of the path of the Russians, are three young people whose paths converge en route. There is Joana, 21, a Lithuanian nurse who believes she is a murderer; Florian, a Prussian carrying questionable orders from a top Nazi official; and Emilia, 15, a traumatized young Polish girl wearing a pink hat. Also traveling with them are an elderly shoemaker, one little boy who has just witnessed his grandmother's death, a blind girl named Ingrid and Eva, a large older woman. A fourth young narrator, Alfred, is a Nazi sailor assigned to the ship MV Wilhelm Gustloff docked in Gotenhafen.
The novel is told in first person alternating points of view by Joana, Florian, Emilia and Alfred. Each one has a history and a secret that slowly unfolds through their narration. Florian is a talented artist who was mentored as a restoration artist by a Nazi, Dr. Lange, at a museum in Königsburg under Prussian Gauleiter Erich Koch supposedly for the purpose of restoring and saving Europe's greatest art treasures. Now, feeling disillusioned and betrayed by his mentor, he is carrying information about what may have been the Nazi's greatest art plunder, information that the Nazis definitely do not want made public.
Because of her Aryan looks, Joana was repatriated to Germany as a Volksdeutsche (one with German ancestry). Now, however, even as she works to save lives with her nursing experience, she is racked by guilt regarding a choice she made in 1941, a choice that separated her from her family and their fate in her homeland of Lithuania.
Emilia is the youngest, the most vulnerable and the most traumatized of the four narrators and has already run into the advancing Red Army twice, narrowly escaping with her life. She no long has a homeland and a family, and to make matters worse, she is traveling without any identification papers, and guarding her secret with her life - literally.
Alfred, a lowly sailor, obsessively writes love letters in his head to a girl back home describing the importance of his work in the German Navy in general and on the MV Wilhelm Gustloff, in particular. Right from the start, Alfred is a smarmy, untrustworthy character, whose shameful secret involves his behavior towards the girl back home.
Salt to the Sea is a character-driven story about a little known maritime tragedy that resulted in the loss of over 9,000 lives, and about 5,000 of them were children. Each character moves the story forward even as they take the reader back to their past. I found this to be a compelling novel, even though it lacks a traditional plot. But I think the structure that Ruta Sepetys uses makes this a more exciting novel, and the way it is structured lets the reader learns everything they need to know straight from the narratives of the four main characters.
The scenes each narrator provides are emotionally harrowing in their detailed descriptions of fleeing refugees and the chaotic aftermath of the torpedoing of a ship. Just as she did in Between Shades of Grey (my review), Sepetys doesn't spare the reader uncomfortable truths any more than she does her characters when it comes to the horrors of war, but she also reminders us that there are still good, caring people who will never lose their humanity.
Do pay attention to the maps at the beginning and end of the novel to get your bearings of where the refugees traveled from and to. There is lots of great back matter, including an Author's Note and information about the resources and sources Sepetys used. This is the kind of information that adds so much the a novel and why characters like the ones drawn here are so realistic and believable.
Although I wasn't too crazy about the very end of the novel, this is still one of the best novels I read this year, and I've a lot of good ones so far. I particularly loved the way each person introduces themselves to the reader: Joana tells us: Guilt is a hunter; Emilia says: Shame is a hunter; Florian begins: Fate is a hunter; and Alfred: Fear is a hunter. Right off the bat our curiosity is peaked by knowing these are conflicted characters who feel hunted, the question is why. And the answers combined with the historical setting make this a truly riveting novel.
A useful Discussion Guide has been made available for download by the publisher, Penguin Books
This book is recommended for readers age 12+
This book was an ARC from the publisher
0 Comments on Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys as of 1/1/1900
The precarious humanitarian situation at Europe's borders is creating what seems to be an irresolvable tension between the interests of European states to seal off their borders and the respect for fundamental human rights. Frontex, EU's External Border Control Agency, in particular has been since its inception in 2004 embroiled in a fair amount of public controversy.
I just finished the great graphic novel Child Soldier: When Boys and Girls Are Used in War by Michel Chikwanine and Jessica Dee Humphreys and would encourage everyone reading this to pick it up. The story recounts how 5 year old Michel was kidnapped near his school by rebel militiamen in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He eventually escapes, but not after being forced to commit violent acts which haunt him. The book does cover very difficult territory, but does a good job of explaining the history of the conflict and not exhibiting images too disturbing or violent for it’s intended audience. This is an important story to tell and equally important to get into the hands of tween and teen readers. The book begins with Michel arriving in North America, and ends with more details about his journey to safety. He was first a refugee in Uganda, then years later in Canada, and touches upon what it was like to feel as if people here didn’t care about the issues in other countries.
Image from http://www.kidscanpress.com/products/child-soldier.
This graphic novel sparked me to contemplate what role we can serve and what titles we can provide for children who come to the library looking for something that relates to the refugee experience. These books may not only be sought out by children who identify with such experiences, but may also be of interest to curious readers who want to better understand what it may mean to be a refugee. With the current Syrian refugee crisis making news headlines worldwide, young people may be itching for answers. Libraries are safe, inviting places to ask about what it means to be a refugee.
The UN Refugee Agency has a downloadable children’s booklist full of great titles covering the topic. Below are some of my favorite recent titles for children that discuss the refugee experience.
I Lived on Butterfly Hill by Marjorie Agosín. Atheneum Books for Young Readers; 2014.
The Red Pencil by Andrea Davis Pinkney. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; 2014.
Azzi in Between by Sarah Garland. Frances Lincoln Children’s Books; 2013.
Child Soldier: When Boys and Girls Are Used in War by Michel Chikwanine and Jessica Dee Humphreys. Kids Can Press; 2015.
Two White Rabbits by Jairo Buitrago. Illustrated by Rafael Yockteng. Groundwood Books; 2015.
Here at the ALSC blog I’ve been excited to see two posts from fellow librarian bloggers just this week that touch on this discussion of the refugee experience and libraries. We learned about a great new bilingual flier from REFORMA inviting Spanish-speaking immigrants and refugees to visit the library. You can see the flier here. It was created as part of their Children in Crisis project, which is a truly wonderful initiative that aims to help the thousands of Spanish speaking children who are crossing the southern border into the United States. Read more about it on their website if you are unfamiliar with the project, it is inspiring! We also learned about the IBBY Silent Books exhibit, another amazing project.
What are some of your favorite books that help discuss this difficult topic with young readers? Are you currently serving any refugee families at your library? Please share in the comments!
With this family history behind me, questions of immigration are never far from my mind. I owe my existence to the generosity of the UK in taking in generations of refugees, as well as the kindness shown by one wealthy unmarried Christian woman – who agreed to foster my father for a few months until his parents arrived, but as that never happened, becoming his guardian until adulthood.
International Book Giving Day #bookgivingday takes place on 14th February each year. The aim of the day is to get books into the hands of as many children as possible thereby increasing children’s access to and enthusiasm for books.
International Book Giving Day is a 100% volunteer initiative born out of the knowledge that:
Most children in developing countries do not own books.
In the United Kingdom, one-third of children do not own books.
In the United States, two-thirds of children living in poverty do not own books.
International Book Giving Day’s focus is on encouraging people worldwide to give a book to a child on February 14th. Why not use the day as an excuse to:
1) gift a book to a friend or family member,
2) leave a book in a waiting room for children to read, or
3) donate a gently used book to a local library, hospital or shelter or to an organization that distributes used books to children in need internationally.
For this year’s International Book Giving Day, I’ve teamed up with Sara Stanley who is currently volunteering creating safe and welcoming play spaces for children in a refugee camp in Grande-Synthe , Dunkirk, France.
The children of the camp have few possessions and even fewer opportunities to play. Many show clear signs of trauma after fleeing violence and enduring treacherous journeys to Europe. Quiet safe spaces to read are limited and there are plans to build a structure to house a library.
How can I help?
Sara and I would like to invite you to donate a book for the children in the refugee camp in Grande-Synthe. We’re working with independent book seller MarilynBrocklehurst who runs The Norfolk Children’s Book Centre; order any book you’d like to donate via Marilyn and she will act as a collection point for Sara, who will take the books to the camp following International Book Giving Day. Sara won’t only take the books, she’ll use them in her play with the children in the refugee camp, so you can be sure that any book(s) you choose will actually get into the hand of kids for whom the books will make a real difference.
Sara reading with children in the refugee camp
Languages spoken on camp are Urdu, Farsi, Persian and Sorani Kurdish, though of course residents in the camp are keen to learn English. Children of every age from newborns up to young adults are found in the camp, with the majority being 3-11 years old.
The camp is moving sometime mid to late January onto a better site in Dunkirk and Sara will be organising a better library space. A wonderful refugee called Besh will be helping run reading groups and philosophical play sessions with Sara as well as family share-a-story sessions. So as you can see, the books you could choose to send will really be used, helping to create a space where play and fun can still take place.
Part of the camp at Grande-Synthe
You can order any book you’d like to donate to the children’s library at Grand-Synthe refugee camp in Dunkirk by emailing [email protected] with the details (you’ll then be contacted to confirm details and arrange payment). Anyone around the world can order a book this way. As well as books aimed at 3-11 year olds and books in the languages mentioned above, wordless books, comic books and books which might help children and families around issues many of them have experienced – war, escape, displacement, death – are especially welcome. There are also more general recommended booklists on the Norfolk Children’s Book Centre website.
The current indoor play space at Grande-Synthe
Your donations will help provide a wonderful opportunity for families to rebuild a sense of normality and communication in the universal language of imagination.
Thanks Catherine – I appreciate all spreading of the word! Sara’s work is really amazing – you can find out more, and see lots of photos here: https://www.facebook.com/dunkirkkids/?fref=ts
Catherine @ Story Snug said, on 1/6/2016 4:16:00 AM
Such an amazing initiative and so great that the books are not only being donated but will also be used for play
Zoe said, on 1/6/2016 4:27:00 AM
yes, Sara’s got a great deal of experience using books in play (one of her work specialisms) so yes, the books really will be well used and shared and read.
In light of the current political and social landscape around the world, there has been an increase of refugees abroad and here at home. With the imminent arrival of more refugee children and families from Syria and other war-torn regions, how can we assist these families in assimilating to their new home? How do we find out what their needs are so we can provide them with critical information about literacy, social services, jobs and other resources?
Libraries have long been a champion of freedom of access to materials for all walks of life. How do we leverage our commitment to equitable access to meet the needs of refugees, many of whom are vulnerable children?
Certainly the efforts of REFORMA have been well documented in promoting library services to Latinos and Spanish-speaking refugees. It has provided children from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala backpacks of books and other resources when they arrive in the United States. The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) and Libraries Without Borders are other examples of organizations that aid refugees. CILIP, in the U.K., has outlined a welcome statement framing the types of services they feel are valuable to immigrants. Libraries without Borders has partnered with the United Nations to create a portable toolkit to assist refugees with information, literacy, and digital connectivity.
The Rogers Park and Albany Park communities in Chicago are two of the most diverse Neighborhoods in the entire country. There are over 40 different languages spoken in each of these communities. Several community organizations connect immigrants and refugees to the local libraries to access services, including story times for children. The Howard Area Community Center, Albany Park Community Center, and World Relief Chicago are a few of the community organizations that bring families to the Rogers Park and Albany Park Branch libraries for family story times, Summer Learning Challenge activities and to use the vast wealth of resources available at the Chicago Public Library.
We owe a sense of responsibility not only to the individuals who we can see, those who beckon our library doors and make our patron counts tick- but also to those we cannot see, but have the potential to reach. These people are the most vulnerable and marginalized members of our society, whether they be U.S. citizens or not, so let’s take the lead in designing programs and policies that aid in their general welfare.
A recent study by the Pew Center sites that many Americans say they want libraries to serve special constituents like immigrants. In fact, 59 percent of the study respondents reported they would like to see libraries create services or programs for immigrants and first generation Americans. I say we should all answer the call!
Today, the international community has its hands full with a host of global challenges; from rising numbers of refugees, international terrorism, nuclear weapons proliferation, to pandemics, cyber-attacks, organized crime, drug trafficking, and others. Where do such global challenges originate? Two primary sources are rogue states like North Korea or Iran and failed states like Afghanistan or Somalia.
Anyone who saw the terror on the faces of the people fleeing the attacks in Paris last week will agree that terrorism is the right word to describe the barbaric suicide bombings and the shooting of civilians that awful Friday night. The term terrorism, though once rare, has become tragically common in the twenty-first century.
On 6 November 2015, the New York Times featured a poignant five-minute documentary called “A Conversation About Growing Up Black,” produced by Joe Brewster and Perri Peltz. Brewster and Peltz present Rakesh, Miles, Malek, Marvin, Shaquille, Bisa, Jumoke, Maddox, and Myles. The youngest are 10 and the eldest is 25 years old.
On a blustery St. Martin’s Eve in 1619, a twenty-three year old French gentleman soldier in the service of Maximilian of Bavaria was billeted near Ulm, Germany. Having recently quit his military service under Maurice of Nassau, he was new to the Bavarian army and a stranger to the area.
Not so long ago, we ‘went to the pictures’ (or ‘the movies’) and now they tend to come to us. For many people, visiting a cinema to see films is no longer their principal means of access to the work of film-makers. But however we see them, it’s the seeing as much as the hearing of Shakespeare in this medium that counts. Or rather, it's the interplay between the two.
In July 1867 the British historian Edward Augustus Freeman was in the thick of writing his epic History of the Norman Conquest. Ever a stickler for detail, he wrote to the geologist William Boyd Dawkins asking for help establishing where exactly in Pevensey soon-to-be King Harold disembarked in 1052.
Sometimes, especially in humankind's most urgent matters of life and death, truth may emerge through paradox. In this connection, one may usefully recall the illuminating work of Jorge Luis Borges. In one of his most ingenious parables, the often mystical Argentine writer, who once wished openly that he had been born a Jew, examines the bewildering calculations of a condemned man.
Food lovers with a soft spot for New York City gastronomy congregated to celebrate the upcoming book Savoring Gotham: A Food Lover's Companion to New York City, edited by Andrew F. Smith.
Health care reform in the United States has promoted policies and practices that are evidence-based. Prevention, diagnoses, and treatment decisions are to be guided by the best available empirical evidence. Decisions about what treatments are to be provided are to be informed by findings of randomized, controlled, research studies when such evidence is available.
Robert Hanna presents an argument based on some highly-plausible Kantian metaphysical, moral, political premises, about a huge real-world problem that greatly concerns me: the global refugee crisis, including its current manifestation in Europe.
Barriers, like promises and piecrust, are made to be broken. Or broken down, rather. Translators, like teachers, are great breakers-down of barriers, though, like them, they are almost always undervalued. This autumn our minds and our media are full of images of razor-wire fences as refugees, fleeing war zones, try to cross borders legally or illegally in search of a safe haven.
The international response to the photographs of the dead body of three year-old Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi, washed ashore on a Turkish beach on 2 September 2015, has prompted intense debate. That debate has been not only about the proper attitude of Britain and other countries to the refugee crisis, but also about the proper place of strong emotions in political life.
It's very safe here: we're in Tennessee, in a perfect little house we are borrowing from a midwife who has gone out west to her son's wedding. We are cooking, eating, catching up on our sleep. Amanda's due in a week and her Nesting Instinct seems to be manifesting chiefly in trying to clean out her email inbox. She's also cleaning, washing and folding baby clothes and clean towels. I'm writing a lot, enjoying the lack of cell-phone connection, and the lack of internet connection, and getting things written without distraction. (I wrapped the first draft of a script on Thursday, wrote a preface to SANDMAN:OVERTURE on Friday.) We've felt like a couple for a long time. We're starting to feel like a family.
And the safety feels very fragile, and like something to be treasured.
There's a photo I'm not going to post. You've probably seen it already: it shows Aylan Kurdi, a three year old Syrian refugee, dead on a beach in Greece. It made me cry, but I know I'm overly sensitive to bad things happening to small children right now. I'm reacting as if he's family.
In May of last year I was in a refugee camp in Jordan. I was talking to a 26 year old woman who had miscarried her babies in Syria when the bombs started falling. She had made it out of Syria, but her husband had left her for another woman he hoped would give him babies. We spoke to women eight months' pregnant who had just walked through the desert for days, past the dead and dismembered bodies of people fleeing the war, like themselves, who had been betrayed by the smugglers who had promised them a way to freedom.
I gained a new appreciation for the civilisation I usually take for granted. The idea that you could wake in the morning to a world in which nobody was trying to hurt you or kill you, in which there would be food for your children and a safe place for your baby to be born became something unusual.
Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon have, between them, taken in millions of Syrian refugees. People who fled, as you or I would flee, when remaining in the places they loved was no longer possible or safe.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has made a plea to Europe that you should read (and insist that whoever represents you also read) at http://www.unhcr.org/55e9459f6.html
The only ones who benefit from the lack of a common European response are the smugglers and traffickers who are making profit from people's desperation to reach safety. More effective international cooperation is required to crack down on smugglers, including those operating inside the EU, but in ways that allow for the victims to be protected. But none of these efforts will be effective without opening up more opportunities for people to come legally to Europe and find safety upon arrival. Thousands of refugee parents are risking the lives of their children on unsafe smuggling boats primarily because they have no other choice.
The UN Refugees Agency wrote about words, and how they matter. In this case, the word migrants and refugees: they don't mean the same thing, and have very different meanings in terms of what a government's obligations are to them. http://www.unhcr.org/55df0e556.html
One of the most fundamental principles laid down in international law is that refugees should not be expelled or returned to situations where their life and freedom would be under threat...
Politics has a way of intervening in such debates. Conflating refugees and migrants can have serious consequences for the lives and safety of refugees. Blurring the two terms takes attention away from the specific legal protections refugees require. It can undermine public support for refugees and the institution of asylum at a time when more refugees need such protection than ever before. We need to treat all human beings with respect and dignity. We need to ensure that the human rights of migrants are respected. At the same time, we also need to provide an appropriate legal response for refugees, because of their particular predicament.
It's worth making sure that people are using the right words. A lot of the time they don't realise there's a difference between the two things, or that refugees have real rights -- the rights you would want, if you were forced to leave home.
A lot of people have been asking me about ways that we as individuals can change things for the better for refugees: there's an excellent article in the Independent about practical things you can do to help or make a difference.
UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is feeding and housing and housing and helping literally millions of refugees around the world, always with the eventual goal of getting them safely home one day. Their funding comes from governments and private individuals all over the world. But this crisis has stretched them thin. You can help.
Donate to them at http://rfg.ee/RN3uy -- and please, share the donation link:
With your support, UNHCR will provide assistance such as:
Deliver rescue kits containing a thermal blanket, towel, water, high nutrient energy bar, dry clothes and shoes, to every survivor;
Set up reception centres where refugees can be registered and receive vital medical care;
Provide temporary emergency shelter to especially vulnerable refugees;
Help children travelling alone by providing specialist support and care.
As I said on this blog when I came back from visiting the camps:
I came away from Jordan ashamed to be part of a race that treats its members so very badly, and simultaneously proud to be part of the same human race as it does its best to help the people who are hurt, who need refuge, safety and dignity. We are all part of a huge family, the family of humanity, and we look after our family.
(I'd love it you would spread this post around, and spread the links inside it. People who know that I'm involved in Refugee issues have been asking me about places to donate and what to do and what to read, so I put this together for them, and now, for you. http://rfg.ee/RN3uy was the donation link.)
Part I of this post addressed a familiar question: how should individuals concerned about international issues decide where to donate money? Here I turn to a second, less familiar question that follows from the first: what is entailed in being a responsible donor after the question of where to donate has been settled?
From time to time here on the LEE & LOW blog we like to shine a spotlight on organizations, companies, or projects that move us. Today we’re featuring a special project close to our heart: the Children in Crisis Project from REFORMA, the National Association To Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos.
Preparing books for donation (image from REFORMA website)
Last year, over 70,000 unaccompanied children crossed the Southern border into the United States. This is a true humanitarian crisis, with many of these children ending up in detention centers, awaiting immigration processing or deportation. They have few or no personal belongings, don’t know English, and have been separated from their families with no sense of if or when they will be reunited.
Oralia Garza de Cortes, Lucía Gonzalez, and Patrick Sullivan are three longtime members of REFORMA who were moved to help. They implemented the Children in Crisis project to solicit donations, purchase, and deliver books and backpacks to the children in detention centers. In the first phase of the drive, they raised enough funds and donations to deliver 300 books to children in the McAllen Texas Centralized Processing Center, and they have since delivered several hundred more. Currently they are coordinating donations of backpacks that will contain books as well as paper, pencils, erasers, crayons and a writing journal for children to use in their journey toward their destination.
The project is a moving illustration of how librarians essentially serve as caretakers of their communities, bridging the gap between resources and the people who need them. “As the immigrant child that I was, I remember that first librarian taking me to the Spanish section with three or four Spanish books. I hope every child will find that librarian, like an oasis in a desert,” said Lucía Gonzalez.
When asked why they felt that librarians should have a role in outreach to these children, Oralia Garza de Cortes said, “We reached out as a humanitarian cause, just something so overwhelming that we really had to come together to do something.”
Patrick Sullivan added, “It’s also a counterbalance to some of those xenophobic Americans. The initial reception that some of these people received . . . was depressing and doesn’t show how we are as Americans. Librarians reach out to their communities every day and this was something we had to respond to. ”
The process for getting the books into children’s hands was a challenging one, given detention centers’ heavy regulation and policing. The group made contact with the border patrol, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and even contractors in order to find a way to deliver the books. “The books were welcome, but the problem was getting in touch with the right people,” said Sullivan. They were prohibited from entering the detention facilities themselves to deliver the books.
Delivering books to a shelter. (image from REFORMA website)
“This is just mega gyms full of people lying on mattresses on the floor and there’s just no space,” said Garza de Cortes. “They are in these freezing warehouses and have no idea what’s happening. If they had a good book, that would take them along on their journey.”
Although it would be an added effort, the group decided to include bookplates in each donated book, an idea that came from longtime REFORMA member Sandra Valderrama. “It was cumbersome, but to have the message in the book saying, ‘This is your book, and you’re free to take it wherever you want and it will give you light and be your companion,’ it was a very powerful message,” said Garza de Cortes.
Said Gonzalez, “For many of them this is the first book they own and it is a very unique experience.”
The group hopes the donated books will serve as the beginning, not the end, of children’s relationship with their libraries. “What we’d like to do is interject ourselves to those kids who will eventually end up in the United States,” said Sullivan. “There are contacts that can happen that go beyond just the books. We’re trying to convey the idea that libraries are these free open places with lots of information.”
“The families need guidance,” said Gonzalez. “If they don’t have a place like the public library, where are they going to go? How are they going to get this information?”
Garza de Cortes, Gonzalez, and Sullivan were named2015 Movers & Shakers by School Library Journal for their work. You can learn more about ways to help here.
0 Comments on Spotlight On: REFORMA’S Children in Crisis Project as of 7/24/2015 8:44:00 AM
I want to frame this picture book and hang it on my wall. To label Teacup as having bucket-loads of appeal for audiences familiar with and sympathetic to displacement, migration, social disruption and family change strips away the myriad of other sophisticated, elegant qualities this book deserves to be described by. It is simply sublime. […]
Calls for more to be done to respond to the plight of refugees will likely intensify as we get closer to 20 June, World Refugee Day, when groups in more than 100 countries will host events and issue reports to increase awareness about the needs of refugees and to mobilize a more effective response.
This free verse novel, written from a first person perspective by three separate and distinct voices, introduces the reader to Daniel, a 13 year old German Jewish refugee who held the hand of his grandfather as he died on Kristalnacht; Paloma, the 12 year old daughter of a corrupt Cuban official who determines, for a high price, who gets a visa to enter Cuba. Paloma also works at a shelter to help the refugees adjust to their new surroundings; and David, an elderly Russian Jew who fled his country in the 1920s because of pogroms and with whom Daniel is able to communicate in Yiddish.
The novel begins in June 1939 and, as each of these three characters tell their story, the reader also learns that Daniel's parents are musicians who decided to save Daniel because they could only scrape together enough money to pay for one ticket on a ship and send him away from the Nazis. It was his and their hope that they would be reunited in New York someday.
Paloma, ashamed of her father's abuse of power and the high price he charges desperate people for a visa, works with the American Quakers in Cuba to help people find shelter and provide them with food and clothing more suitable to a warm climate.
David, who hands out ice cream and food to the refugees with Paloma, befriends Daniel and convinces him to take off the heavy winter coat he brought from home, and metaphorically shedding his old life. Over time, Daniel, David and Paloma become friends and David helps Daniel begin to move on with his life, though never forgetting his parents.
In December 1941, when Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, paranoia that Germany has sent spies to Cuba increases and the Cuban government orders all non-Jewish Germans to be arrested. The three friends watch husbands and wives torn from each other because one spouse is Jewish and the other is Christan, and think of the oldest couple in the shelter. Having crossed Europe together, hiding from Nazis any way they could, Miriam, a Jew, and Marcos, a Christian, are about to be separated in what should have been their place of safety. Are Paloma, Daniel and David willing to risk everything to help this elderly couple hide from the police? Does the fear of German spies mean that ships from Germany will now be turned away from Cuba?
Despite being written in free verse, each one of three characters begins to really come to life as they tell their thoughts and secrets and share the different obstacles they must face and overcome, but each is also willing to do what they can to help others in the difficult times and circumstances they find themselves in.
This is the fourth book I've read about the experience of Jews fleeing Europe and Hitler's cruelty, seeking refuge in Cuba. This book covers a three year period, from June 1939 to April 1942. Read carefully, because Engle packs a lot of information about life in Cuba during that time as the characters speak. There is both corruption and kindness to be found, as well as the anti-Semitic propaganda campaign launched by Germany in Cuba; the eventual turning away of other ships and forcing them to return to Germany and death, and the rounding up of Christians married to Jews and believed to be spies. Engle includes that and more in her spare, yet graceful poetic style.
There are a lot of excellent stories written about the experience of people during the Holocaust, but not many about the experience of Jews and Cuba. Books like Tropical Secrets give us another side of what life was like for Jews living under Hitler and their desperate attempts to escape - sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Ships like Daniels continued to be turned away from the US and Canada, and even though Cuba eventually did the same, it did provide a relatively safe haven for 65,000 refugees.
Be sure to read the Author's Note at the end of the book to learn more about Cuba in WWII.
Tropical Secrets is a very moving novel about family, friendship, tolerance, love, and survival.
The American Society of International Law’s annual meeting (8 – 11 April 2015) will focus on the theme ‘Adapting to a Rapidly Changing World’. In preparation for this meeting, we have asked some key authors to share their thoughts on the ways in which their specific areas of international law have adapted to our rapidly changing world.
As a little gift for the Year of the Goat, I'm posting the first chapter of Across the Dark Sea, which begins with the first day of Tet, the Vietnamese New Year. If you prefer, you can download it from my website:
The book has lovely illustrations by Donna Rawlins, but you'll have to imagine that for this excerpt!
Like a cricket to freedom It started on the first day of Tet, in the middle of the fun and firecrackers, when they put old pants and shirts on top of their New Year clothes and took a bus from Saigon to Uncle Huan’s near the sea. Or before that, when Ma sold everything they owned so nothing was left but the furniture and Trung’s bamboo cage for his fighting crickets. Or maybe it started two years before, on that rainy day in 1976 when the soldiers took Ba away because he was a doctor for the army that lost the war. Whenever it started, it happened the night they crept out of Uncle’s house in the middle of the night, Mai on Ma’s back and Trung carrying his parcel of new clothes. A man was waiting on the path to the river. Trung froze so still his breath didn’t come, but his mother hurried forward as if she didn’t know how to be afraid. ‘It’s Ba,’ she whispered. Every morning for two years Trung had prayed to see his father again. This man was thinner and older, with his two front teeth missing, but when he held out his arms, Trung exploded into them like a cricket escaping to freedom. Mai couldn’t remember so long ago; she thought Ba was an ancestor in a photo. She started to cry. ‘Sh!’ whispered her mother, and they hurried on to the river through the moon shadows and strange night noises. A crowd of people were waiting on the bank – men and women, children and grandmothers – and even though they jostled and stared, even the babies stayed quiet as a secret. Trung had so many questions he didn’t know what they were, but he held tight to his father’s hand while a voice inside his head chirped like a happy cricket, ‘Ba’s here and we’ll be all right! Ba’s here, we’re together again!’ Ma and Mai came up behind them. Mai started to cry again till Ma turned around. ‘Silly Mai!’ whispered Trung. ‘It’s Ba!’ Then, from the darkness of the river, Trung saw three dragon shapes gliding towards them. He tugged Ba’s hand hard – then a wave of people pushed them to the water, and the dragons turned into sampans with a boatman poling each one. Trung stumbled as the river snatched him. His feet skidded, his arms waved, and he splashed face-first into the water. His parcel of clothes floated away. Ba grabbed him and dumped into a sampan. More people tumbled in: a bigger boy landed on his foot and someone’s elbow was in his back. Ba turned around for Ma and Mai. The boatman lifted his pole. ‘No more!’ ‘Ba!’ croaked Turn, his throat so dry with fear that his voice didn’t work.
His father grabbed the sampan and slid inside. The night was black and the river was blacker, but blackest of all was the big fishing boat ahead of them, with the line of people scurrying up its side like ants up a honey jar. Then their sampan bumped against it too, Ba hoisted him up to a ladder, and the other boat started poling back to the shore. To get Ma and Mai, thought Trung, as hand by hand, foot by foot, he climbed the prickly rope ladder to the deck. The half –moon came out, its crescent of light shining on the calm sea. It shone on the soldiers who burst out of the woods, and on the sampans racing up the river to hide. It shone on the shore where Ma waited with Mai, while the fishing boat with Ba and Trung sailed out to cross the sea to Australia, 6000 kilometres away.
0 Comments on Happy Lunar New Year - and a book excerpt. as of 2/18/2015 7:47:00 PM
The scraps of an archive often speak in ways that standard histories cannot. In 2005, I spent my days at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, a leading archive for twentieth-century concert music, where I transcribed the papers of the German-Jewish émigré composer Stefan Wolpe (1902-1971). The task was alternately exhilarating and grim. Wolpe had made fruitful connections with creators and thinkers across three continents, from Paul Klee to Anton Webern to Hannah Arendt to Charlie Parker. An introspective storyteller and exuberant synthesizer of ideas, Wolpe narrated a history of modernism in migration as a messy, real-time chronicle in his correspondence and diaries. Yet, within this narrative, the composer had also reckoned with more than his share of death and loss as a multiply-displaced Nazi-era refugee. He had preserved letters from friends as symbols of the ties that had sustained him, in some cases carrying them over dozens of precarious border crossings during his 1933 flight. By the 1950s, his circumstances had calmed down, after he had settled in New York following some years in Mandatory Palestine. Amidst his mid-century papers, I was surprised to come across a cache of artfully spaced poems typewritten on thick leaves of paper, with the attribution “Yoko Ono.” The poems included familiar, stark images of death, desolation, and flight. It was only later that I realized they responded not to Wolpe’s life history, but likely to Ono’s own. The poems inspired a years-long path of research that culminated in my article, “Limits of National History: Yoko Ono, Stefan Wolpe, and Dilemmas of Cosmopolitanism,” recently published in The Musical Quarterly.
Yoko Ono befriended Stefan Wolpe and his wife the poet Hilda Morley in New York City around 1957. Although of different backgrounds and generations, Wolpe and Ono were both displaced people in a city of immigrants. Both had been wartime refugees, and both endured forms of national exile, though in different ways. Ono had survived starvation conditions as an internal refugee after the Tokyo firebombings. She was twelve when her family fled the city to the countryside outside Nagano, while her father was stranded in a POW camp. By then, she had already felt a sense of cultural apartness, since she had spent much of her early childhood shuttling back and forth between Japan and California, following her father’s banking career. When she began her own career as an artist in New York in the 1950s, Ono entered what art historian Midori Yoshimoto has called a gender-based exile from Japan. Her career and lifestyle clashed with a society where there were “few alternatives to the traditional women’s role of becoming ryōsai kenbo (good wives and wise mothers).” Though Ono eventually became known primarily as a performance and visual artist, she identified first as a composer and poet. After she moved to the city to pursue a career in the arts, Ono’s family disowned her. It was around this time that she befriended the Wolpe-Morleys, who often hosted her at their Upper West Side apartment, where she “loved the intellectual, warm, and definitely European atmosphere the two of them had created.”
In 2008, I wrote a letter to Ono, asking her about the poems in Wolpe’s collection. Given her busy schedule, I was surprised to receive a reply within a week. She confirmed that she had given the poems to Wolpe and Morley in the 1950s. She also shared other poems and prose from her early adulthood, alongside a written reminiscence of Wolpe and Morley. She later posted this reminiscence on her blog several months before her 2010 exhibit “Das Gift,” an installation in Wolpe’s hometown Berlin dedicated to addressing histories of violence. The themes of the installation trace back to the earliest phase of her career when she knew Wolpe. During their period of friendship, both creators devoted their artistic projects to questions of violent history and traumatic memory, refashioning them as a basis for rehabilitative thought, action, and community.
Guggenheim Museum, 88th St. & 5th Ave., New York City. Under construction II, 12 November 1957. Gottscho-Schleisner, Inc., photographer. Library of Congress. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Virtually no historical literature acknowledges Ono’s and Wolpe’s connection, which was premised on shared experiences of displacement, exile, and state violence. Their affiliation remains virtually unintelligible to standard art and music histories of modernism and the avant-garde, which tend to segregate their narratives along stable lines of genre, medium, and nation—by categories like “French symbolist poetry,” “Austro-German Second Viennese School composition,” and “American experimental jazz.” From this narrow perspective, Wolpe the German-Jewish, high modernist composer would have little to do with Ono the expatriate Japanese performance artist.
What do we lose by ignoring such creative bonds forged in diaspora? Wolpe and Ono both knew what it was to be treated as less than human. They had both felt the hammer of military state violence. They both knew what it was to not “fit” in the nation—to be neither fully American, Japanese, nor German. And they both directed their artistic work toward the dilemmas arising from these difficult experiences. The record levels of forced displacement during their lifetimes have not ended, but have only risen in our own. According to the most recent report from the UN High Commissioner on Refugees, “more people were forced to flee their homes in 2013 than ever before in modern history.” Though the arts cannot provide refuge, they can do healing work by virtue of the communities they sustain, with the call-and-response of human recognition exemplified in boundary-crossing friendships like Wolpe’s and Ono’s. And to recognize such histories of connection is to recognize figures of history as fully human.
Headline image credit: Cards and poems made for Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree and sent to Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington), 7 November 2010. Photo by Gianpiero Actis & Lidia Chiarelli. CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
I've read two books about European Jews escaping to Cuba in the late 1930s, and both were works of fiction based on true events. Passing through Havanna by Felicia Rosshandler is an interesting YA/Adult novel based on the author's experiences. The Other Half of Life by Kim Ablon Whitney is a middle grade/YA fictionalize version of the trip 938 Jews made on a ship sailing to Cuba and the US and Canada and not being allowed to enter one of these countries and based on the actual trip the MS St. Louis made in 1939.
Liesl's Ocean Rescue is also a fictionalized version of the fated ship, the St. Louis and based on one girl's true experience of her disappointing trip to safety from the Nazis in Germany. Liesl's trip began on the night of her father's 56th birthday, November 9, 1938. While celebrating, the gestapo shows up and arrests her father simply because he was Jewish. Later that night, more Nazis showed up, but luckily Liesl's mother gets her out of the house in time. The following day they discover that their house was ransacked and everything is broken and ruin. The same destruction happened all over Germany, but only to Jewish homes and businesses.
Liesl is sent to the country for safety, but a month later, after her father was released, her parents come to get her. It is time for the Joseph family to leave Germany. On May 13, 1939, they board the ship MS St. Louis and head for Cuba.
On board, young Liesl experiences a freedom she has never known before. She is able to go wherever she wants, to sit wherever she pleases and even go to see the movies that are played on board, all things that Jews were forbidden to do in Nazi Germany. And Liesl enjoys her trip, exploring the ship, make friends with the crew and playing checkers with other new friends.
But Cuba refuses to let the passengers enter Havana when the ship arrives, so does the US and Canada. Negotiations take place, with the Captain and Mr. Joseph heading a committee, hoping to find a country that would accept the fleeing Jews so they wouldn't have to return to Germany. In the end, countries are finally found that would accept the passengers.
Barbara Krasner's Liesl's Ocean Rescue is the only book for younger readers that I have found that covers the ill-fated rescue voyage of the Jews on board the MS St. Louis. It is well written and sticks to Liesl's story, ending just as the passengers find places to go to, but I;m afraid the end is a little too abrupt. What happens to the Joseph family? It is included but it is in the Author's Note: the real Liesl and her family first went to London, England, and in 1940, they emigrated to the United States.
I found this to be an excellent introduction to the Holocaust for young readers. It doesn't cover the Holocaust per se, but the ordeal of being Jewish and trying to get away from the Nazis even before the war started. Putting it into a story about a very confident, very friendly, and very happy 10 year old I think makes the story all that much more poignant.
Along with and complimenting the story are black and white pencil illustrations by Avi Katz.
Besides her Author's Note, Krasner has also included a Selected Bibliography and other sources for finding out more about the MS St. Louise and her passengers.
Liesl's Ocean Rescue is an ideal picture book for older readers who want to learn more about the Holocaust and have an interest in realistic historical fiction.
This book is recommended for readers age 8+
This book was sent to me by the author
You can read an interview with Liesl Joseph Loeb done in 2009 for the Prescott News HERE
Liesl on board the St. Louis
Liesl passed away in 2013 and you can read her obituary in the Jewish Exponent HERE
0 Comments on Liesl's Ocean Rescue by Barbara Krasner, illustrated by Avi Katz as of 1/9/2015 3:24:00 PM
We begin with Amira's 12 birthday. She is finally old enough to wear a toob yet young enough to enjoy her Dando lifting her to the sky. Amira lives on a farm in South Darfur surrounded by friends and family, but changes are afoot. Amira's best friend Halima and her family are packing their things and moving to the city. They say the city has more opportunities. Amira wishes she could go with them to Nyala and attend the Gad Primary School with Halima. Amira is not so sure about her Muma's old fashioned ways.
"She does not like the idea of Gad, or any place where girls learn to read or write, in Arabic or English or think beyond a life of farm chores and marriage." (p. 13 arc)
Soon, the extra chores of 12, missing Halima, and trying to solve the ongoing bickering between her father and villager Old Anwar seem anything but troubling. The relative peace of her village is shattered when the Janjaweed attack, changing Amira's very existence.
Amira and the other survivors must pick up the pieces and leave the ruins of the village to find safety. Their trek takes them to the refugee camp Kalma - the Displaced People's Camp. Amira doesn't like this space surrounded by fences and barbed wire.
"Everywhere I look, I see people, people, and more people.
I'm glad to stop walking. I'm glad we have finally reached who-knows-where. But already I do not like this place." (arc p. 139)
It would be easy enough to give up in such a desperate place with no real end in sight. Amira and her family have lost so much. But when Amira meets Miss Sabine and is given a gift of a red pencil she discovers some things about herself, her family and those on the journey with her.
Written in free verse, The Red Pencil is a story of family and loss and hope. It was eye opening for me on a number of levels. One is that it is so easy for me not to see what is happening in the world from my perch here in NYC. The horrors of Darfur in the early 2000s seemed so far away in time and place that I wonder how many people in North America are aware of what was happening. I find myself very impressed with the deftness of Andrea Davis Pinkney's hand when it came to writing the passages dealing with the violence. She truly tells the story from a 12 year old's point of view, and the free verse format allows for silences that speak volumes. The illustrations by Shane W. Evans are playful within this serious book and somehow bring a feeling of safety to the pages.
A must read for librarians, teachers and students.
0 Comments on The Red Pencil, by Andrea Davis Pinkney as of 1/1/1900
After a short lull in the late 2000s, global refugee numbers have risen dramatically. In 2013, a daily average of 32,200 people (up from 14,200 in 2011) fled conflict and persecution to seek protection elsewhere, within or outside the borders of their own country. On the current trajectory, 2014 will be even worse. In Syria, targeting of civilians and large-scale destruction have led to 2.5 million (and counting) refugees fleeing the country since 2011. The vast majority shelter in neighbouring Lebanon (856,500), Jordan (641,900), and Turkey (609,300). As I write, hundreds of thousands are fleeing the advancing forces of the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) in neighbouring Iraq. And civil wars and ethnic violence have resurged in many parts of Central Africa and the African Horn.
What future for humanitarian action in this dire scenario? This question was raised on the fifth of May by the UN Secretary-General, Ban-Ki Moon, when he launched a programme of global consultations, which will culminate in the first ever World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul in 2016, poised to “set a new agenda for global humanitarian action”. The UN has raised four sets of challenges, to deliver humanitarian aid more efficiently, effectively, innovatively, and robustly.
The launch of these consultations is timely, but it avoids an important challenge to the future of humanitarian action: the policies of donor governments.
At first glance, this may seem like a strange assertion. After all, although needs continue to surpass the ability to provide, donor funding for humanitarian operations has skyrocketed. From less than US$1 billion in 1989, the global humanitarian budget stood at US$22 billion in 2013. Most of these funds come from a small number of Western donor states. But coupled with this rise in funds comes a donor agenda that risks, even if unintentionally, undermining the humanitarian ideal. This challenge is far from the only one posed to humanitarian action — much worse for the security of humanitarian workers are the terrorist groups that target them, leading to the killing of an estimated 152 aid workers in 2013. But because humanitarian action depends on a moral consensus over its meaning and worth, the current trajectory of donor policies is worrisome.
The humanitarian ideal is based on international solidarity: that outsiders can and should provide aid and protection in a principled, non-partisan, needs-based manner to civilian casualties of war and political violence. This ideal of politically disinterested solidarity with fellow human beings caught up in war and violence, regardless of who or where they are, has always been at some remove from the reality of humanitarian operations, but a consensus has nevertheless existed that it is an ideal worth aspiring to. Recently, though, donor governments have been increasingly open and unapologetic about using humanitarian aid to further their own political or security objectives.
One such objective is to keep immigration down. Since most man-made humanitarian crises have displacement as a core component, one objective of Western donor support of humanitarian aid to refugees is to contain population movement. The vast majority of refugees — people who have fled for their lives across international borders — remain within their near region, in camps or regional cities. Only a small proportion attempt the long journey to Europe, Australia, or North America in hope of jobs and a better future. Western humanitarian donors would prefer that even fewer asylum seekers make it to their own shores, while refugee host states in the Global South would like burden-sharing and solidarity to mean more than monetary charity from the well-off to the poorer.
Containment strategies seem to be working. While refugee numbers are increasing overall, including in industrialized states, the proportion of refugees hosted by developing states has grown over the past ten years from 70 percent to 86 percent. In Lebanon, there are 178 Syrian refugees for every thousand Lebanese inhabitants (in Jordan, the number is 88 per thousand). But efforts by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to resettle particularly vulnerable Syrian refugees have had lukewarm responses. This donor attitude of charity from afar coupled with hostility to asylum seekers and unwanted migrants in general, undermines the moral underpinnings of humanitarianism. After all, the Good Samaritan, often put forward as the embodiment of the humanitarian spirit, did not leave a few coins with the battered traveller he found by the wayside. He took him home and nursed him.
Another trend undermining the humanitarian ideal is the increased, and increasingly unapologetic, strategic use of aid to further donors’ own foreign and security policy objectives. There is a clear increase in the past couple of decades in the earmarking of funds and channelling of resources, not necessarily to the neediest of humanitarian victims, but to those deemed more relevant to donor interests. The ‘hearts and minds’ campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq in the 2000s are the starkest representatives of this trend. As US-led intervention forces aimed to win over local populations by disbursing aid, the overall share of US overseas aid channelled through the US Department of Defense rose from 5.6 percent in 2002 to 21.7 percent in 2005.
These donor trends of openly pursuing domestic, foreign, and security policy goals through humanitarian aid are detrimental to the long-term future of humanitarian action, since they undermine the consensus and the ethical values underpinning the humanitarian ideal. While other challenges also loom, the strategies (and strategizing) of donors should have been included as a core topic of the Global Consultations.
To learn more about refugees, conflict, and how countries are responding, read the Introduction to The Rise and Decline of a Global Security Actor: UNHCR, Refugee Protection and Security, available via Oxford Scholarship Online. Oxford Scholarship Online (OSO) is a vast and rapidly-expanding research library. Launched in 2003 with four subject modules, Oxford Scholarship Online is now available in 20 subject areas and has grown to be one of the leading academic research resources in the world. Oxford Scholarship Online offers full-text access to academic monographs from key disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, science, medicine, and law, providing quick and easy access to award-winning Oxford University Press scholarship.
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Author Mary Williams is the founder of the Lost Boys Foundation, whose mission is to assist Sudan’s Lost Boys in attaining a college education. Of the Lost Boys she has met, Williams 
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Thanks Catherine – I appreciate all spreading of the word! Sara’s work is really amazing – you can find out more, and see lots of photos here: https://www.facebook.com/dunkirkkids/?fref=ts
Such an amazing initiative and so great that the books are not only being donated but will also be used for play
yes, Sara’s got a great deal of experience using books in play (one of her work specialisms) so yes, the books really will be well used and shared and read.