Migration, Immigration, Asylum, trafficking, readmissions and all those frameworks to deal with unwanted movement of people in and through Ukraine

This post has the potential to be something of a mish-mash.  In fact it could appear to be bolted together with the crudeness of a 1970’s Lada compared to a smooth finish of a modern day Bentley.

That is the way of things sometimes.

As it happens, it ties together a number of random occurrences over the past few days all of which have in common the movement, legitimate and illegitimate, of people through and from Ukraine.

Firstly, during the last few days I was kindly invited to a meeting at which several people representing differing organisations from around Europe were in attendance together with interpreters.  During the post monologue mix and mingle session, or networking if you prefer, I was approached by a very bright Ukrainian man, acting as interpreter to a chap from one such European organisation, asking if I would be interested in becoming involved in the setting up of an NGO dealing with, specifically, Ukrainian women that are trafficked.

He had, during the sometimes very dull monologues, found me on LinkedIn and felt that the particular and rather specialised circle of contacts I have would possibly be rather useful in the future.  He also put human rights into the search engine of the blog and believed I would be somewhat sympathetic to his proposed cause.  He is right.  In both cases.

So, a little unnerving as it is to be electronically “researched” in real time at such an event by an interpretor to a participant, we will now see how this develops and whether I would want to be a full and integral part of things - or not.

Much will depend upon how much unnecessary overlap there would be with the “Faith, Hope, Love” movement that can be found at Uspenskaya 13 in Odessa that is already partnered with the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Insitute, and the proactive and reactive mechanisms they have in place.

To be fare, the mandate of Faith, Hope, Love seems quite large for such meager financing and small number of staff.  Trafficking is listed as 3rd in a list of 5 areas within which they are active.  It would make sense to work along side of, rather than completely separately from, what they do and have already achieved - even if concentrating solely on a small part of the trafficking sphere (after all his is talking about women rather than all those trafficked).

I have some ideas, as I am sure he does, as will the other Ukrainians he already has interested, so we will see where this goes over the next few months.  From what I know of Faith, Hope, Love there are certainly things I would do differently, particularly in the area of pro-activity and the ability to react to occurrences in foreign nations to the benefit of victims whilst they are still there - without creating an unnecessary scene or ugly diplomatic incident.

Chasing down the perpetrators of such crimes is a job for international law enforcement and governments - not necessarily a job for NGOs.  The victims of this abhorrent crime would have to be the first and possibly only focus of any such NGO I would get involved with.

Returning to my comments about Faith, Hope, Love, that they are not meant  to knock or decry the truly wonderful work that Faith, Hope, Love do.  Simply that nobody has a monopoly on good ideas and even if the good ideas are there, many do not become reality due to reasons of finance first and foremost.  If I thought for one moment Faith, Hope, Love was a useless organisation then I would not be bothered about working in conjunction/collaboration with them and would simply disregard them.  Not so!

It also has to be said, and I mentioned coincidences at the beginning of this post, that Ukraine as a State is not standing idly by and expecting civil society to deal with the issue.   Only yesterday Ukraine made changes to the readmission framework to make it more compatible with its own partners involved in the combating of  the illegal movement and trafficking of people into and across Ukraine.

For now though, I will wait to see how things develop over the coming months.  Naturally I will be sure to let you know if this becomes a reality and the degree of my involvement, (if any), should it do so.