5 Times Fake News Was Used Against Migrants
By Andrea Visentin, 21th July 2021 Fake news in our digital age is an ever increasing problem. In a survey carried out in 2018 across all the European Union, 37% of respondents said that they encountered fake news “every day or almost every day”, while only 17% “seldom or never”. An other study of 2018…
Ethiopia’s conflict needs to be stopped, for youth’s sake
By Andrea Visentin, 06th July 2021 Since November 2020, Ethiopia has been involved in an internal conflict – that at this point might as well be called civil war – between the central government led by the Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the Tigray Defense Force. All communications in the Tigray region, where the fighting…
Human rights or State rights? On the criminalisation of solidarity
By Andrea Visentin, 23rd June 2021 The criminalisation of humanitarian assistance has been a growing problem in the European Union since the migration crisis of 2015. This is not only a practical problem because it puts more lives at risk, but it is also a theoretical one, because it shows the shortcomings of the human…
EDD-European Development Days
In the 14th edition of the EDD (European Development Days) the president of the European commission Ursula Von der Leyen during her opening speech underlines her interest in environmental policy, the main theme since the beginning of her mandate, which become reality with the European green deal. “The EUROPEAN GREEN DEAL has paved the way…
IP rights: are vaccines a common good or a luxury product?
By Andrea Visentin, 10th June 2021 Are vaccines a collective good of humanity that should be available equally to everyone, or are they just another product that provides profits to big companies? In other words, can the rules of capitalism be put aside when they go against basic human rights? On 2nd of October 2020,…
Denmark doesn’t want Syrian refugees, because their country is “safe”
By Andrea Visentin, 21st May 2021 On April 21st 2021, about 1000 people gathered outside the Danish parliament to protest against the government’s decision to revoke residence permits of Syrian refugees from the area around Damascus. Between 2020 and 2021, Denmark has revoked or not renewed 380 residence permits of Syrian refugees. Why has one…
European Union against racism: slow progress or stagnant legislation?
By Andrea Visentin, 11th May 2021 Ever since the Race Equality Directive of 29th June 2000, the European Union has followed a top-down approach in the fight against all forms of discrimination: basically all efforts have been going into creating a legislation that would fight individual acts of racism and discrimination. Now, two decades later,…
Human trafficking, a major European issue
It may seem a distant problem, but it is not. According to the last available statistics, in 2017-2018, 14.145 victims of human trafficking were registered in the European Union (excluding the United Kingdom). To put it in perspective, 9.301 victims were registered in North America (United States, Canada and Mexico) in 2018 (latest data available…
“Luxembourg can be a laboratory for sustainability measures” – Interview with François Bausch (Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Mobility and Minister of Defense of Luxembourg)
In March 2020, Luxembourg became the first country worldwide to provide free public transport. Such revolutionary measure, which is at the same time a part of a mobility plan that started almost ten years ago, brings up a multitude of questions that ECEPAA sought to find an answer to. Why this measure? How can a…
Qatar World Cup 2022: “The FIFA is as responsible as Qatar” – Interview with Emile Franck (Amnesty International)
In late February, The Guardian revealed that, since it was announced that Qatar would host the 2022 football World Cup, over 6,500 migrant workers have died in one of the richest countries in the world. Since 2010, thousands of workers from African and Asian countries (from Nepal, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, the Philippines, Kenya,…