SolidarityNow on the side of the most vulnerable populations through the operation of Care Hubs in Attica, Epirus, and Eastern Macedonia

As part of ongoing efforts to protect the most vulnerable refugee and migrant groups, special support centers –known as “Blue Dots”- for children, women and families are being rolled out in more than 10 points across Greece to provide vital services, counselling and play in a single location.

SolidarityNow, with UNICEF support, is implementing this innovative approach to connect the Blue Dots on a national scale. Piloted in Greece in the Port of Piraeus earlier in 2016, the Blue Dots concept was developed originally by UNHCR, UNICEF and ICRC to ensure a minimum package of services was available to the refugee population across Europe and foster complementarity amongst protection actors on the ground. The SolidarityNow “Blue Dots” are easily identified, since they have the distinctive mark of the blue dot indicating that through the present structure the several essential services are provided free of charge. Through this program, SolidarityNow is addressing the inadequate supply of services in 4 different geographical areas of the country: Attica (Elefsina and Marathonas), Central Macedonia (Oreokastro and Kavalari), Eastern Macedonia (Drama) and Epirus (Filippiada, Ioannina and Doliana).

The Blue Dots in detail

The “Blue Dots” are Child & Family Care Hubs for children, women and other vulnerable people living in refugee camps in Attica, Epirus and Central and Eastern Macedonia, as well as in the urban environment of these regions, where the greatest populations’ needs are recorded.

Every “Blue Dot” is a safe place for refugee children and their families, while the range of services offered at each one includes legal counseling, psycho-social support, case management and referrals, specific area exclusively for mothers and babies/children.

“The Blue Dot is the image of our world, as envisioned by SolidarityNow – a planet where people will be equally treated and have the same opportunities living in societies based on solidarity and peaceful coexistence and this begins by helping children and families”, says Epaminondas Farmakis, Managing Director of SolidarityNow.

More specifically, the operation of the Child & Family Care Hubs includes:

• Child-friendly spaces that provide recreational and educational activities for children in order to restore the sense of normalcy that they have lost during the journey and while stranded.
• Identification and referral of vulnerable persons to specialized services, including vulnerable families, single mothers, children at risk with a specific focus on unaccompanied children, persons with disabilities or illnesses, cases of suspected trafficking, survivors of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV).
• Breastfeeding corners and provision of reproductive, neonatal, and postnatal care and counseling.
• Sharing efficient and accurate information to refugees and migrants, about their rights (before and after applying for international protection).
• Providing general psycho-social services, and referrals when needed.

Well before Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, I sent a holiday greeting to my friends that read: “These times are not business as usual. Wishing you the best in a troubled world.” Now I feel the need to share this message with the rest of the world. But before I do, I must tell you who I am and what I stand for.

I am an 86-year-old Hungarian Jew who became a US citizen after the end of World War II. I learned at an early age how important it is what kind of political regime prevails. The formative experience of my life was the occupation of Hungary by Hitler’s Germany in 1944. I probably would have perished had my father not understood the gravity of the situation. He arranged false identities for his family and for many other Jews; with his help, most survived.

In 1947, I escaped from Hungary, by then under Communist rule, to England. As a student at the London School of Economics, I came under the influence of the philosopher Karl Popper, and I developed my own philosophy, built on the twin pillars of fallibility and reflexivity. I distinguished between two kinds of political regimes: those in which people elected their leaders, who were then supposed to look after the interests of the electorate, and others where the rulers sought to manipulate their subjects to serve the rulers’ interests. Under Popper’s influence, I called the first kind of society open, the second, closed.

The classification is too simplistic. There are many degrees and variations throughout history, from well-functioning models to failed states, and many different levels of government in any particular situation. Even so, I find the distinction between the two regime types useful. I became an active promoter of the former and opponent of the latter.

I find the current moment in history very painful. Open societies are in crisis, and various forms of closed societies – from fascist dictatorships to mafia states – are on the rise. How could this happen? The only explanation I can find is that elected leaders failed to meet voters’ legitimate expectations and aspirations and that this failure led electorates to become disenchanted with the prevailing versions of democracy and capitalism. Quite simply, many people felt that the elites had stolen their democracy.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US emerged as the sole remaining superpower, equally committed to the principles of democracy and free markets. The major development since then has been the globalization of financial markets, spearheaded by advocates who argued that globalization increases total wealth. After all, if the winners compensated the losers, they would still have something left over.

The argument was misleading, because it ignored the fact that the winners seldom, if ever, compensate the losers. But the potential winners spent enough money promoting the argument that it prevailed. It was a victory for believers in untrammeled free enterprise, or “market fundamentalists,” as I call them. Because financial capital is an indispensable ingredient of economic development, and few countries in the developing world could generate enough capital on their own, globalization spread like wildfire. Financial capital could move around freely and avoid taxation and regulation.

Globalization has had far-reaching economic and political consequences. It has brought about some economic convergence between poor and rich countries; but it increased inequality within both poor and rich countries. In the developed world, the benefits accrued mainly to large owners of financial capital, who constitute less than 1% of the population. The lack of redistributive policies is the main source of the dissatisfaction that democracy’s opponents have exploited. But there were other contributing factors as well, particularly in Europe.

I was an avid supporter of the European Union from its inception. I regarded it as the embodiment of the idea of an open society: an association of democratic states willing to sacrifice part of their sovereignty for the common good. It started out at as a bold experiment in what Popper called “piecemeal social engineering.” The leaders set an attainable objective and a fixed timeline and mobilized the political will needed to meet it, knowing full well that each step would necessitate a further step forward. That is how the European Coal and Steel Community developed into the EU.

But then something went woefully wrong. After the Crash of 2008, a voluntary association of equals was transformed into a relationship between creditors and debtors, where the debtors had difficulties in meeting their obligations and the creditors set the conditions the debtors had to obey. That relationship has been neither voluntary nor equal.

Germany emerged as the hegemonic power in Europe, but it failed to live up to the obligations that successful hegemons must fulfill, namely looking beyond their narrow self-interest to the interests of the people who depend on them. Compare the behavior of the US after WWII with Germany’s behavior after the Crash of 2008: the US launched the Marshall Plan, which led to the development of the EU; Germany imposed an austerity program that served its narrow self-interest.

Before its reunification, Germany was the main force driving European integration: it was always willing to contribute a little bit extra to accommodate those putting up resistance. Remember Germany’s contribution to meeting Margaret Thatcher’s demands regarding the EU budget?

But reuniting Germany on a 1:1 basis turned out to be very expensive. When Lehman Brothers collapsed, Germany did not feel rich enough to take on any additional obligations. When European finance ministers declared that no other systemically important financial institution would be allowed to fail, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, correctly reading the wishes of her electorate, declared that each member state should look after its own institutions. That was the start of a process of disintegration.

After the Crash of 2008, the EU and the eurozone became increasingly dysfunctional. Prevailing conditions became far removed from those prescribed by the Maastricht Treaty, but treaty change became progressively more difficult, and eventually impossible, because it couldn’t be ratified. The eurozone became the victim of antiquated laws; much-needed reforms could be enacted only by finding loopholes in them. That is how institutions became increasingly complicated, and electorates became alienated.

The rise of anti-EU movements further impeded the functioning of institutions. And these forces of disintegration received a powerful boost in 2016, first from Brexit, then from the election of Trump in the US, and on December 4 from Italian voters’ rejection, by a wide margin, of constitutional reforms.

Democracy is now in crisis. Even the US, the world’s leading democracy, elected a con artist and would-be dictator as its president. Although Trump has toned down his rhetoric since he was elected, he has changed neither his behavior nor his advisers. His cabinet comprises incompetent extremists and retired generals.

What lies ahead?

I am confident that democracy will prove resilient in the US. Its Constitution and institutions, including the fourth estate, are strong enough to resist the excesses of the executive branch, thus preventing a would-be dictator from becoming an actual one.

But the US will be preoccupied with internal struggles in the near future, and targeted minorities will suffer. The US will be unable to protect and promote democracy in the rest of the world. On the contrary, Trump will have greater affinity with dictators. That will allow some of them to reach an accommodation with the US, and others to carry on without interference. Trump will prefer making deals to defending principles. Unfortunately, that will be popular with his core constituency.

I am particularly worried about the fate of the EU, which is in danger of coming under the influence of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose concept of government is irreconcilable with that of open society. Putin is not a passive beneficiary of recent developments; he worked hard to bring them about. He recognized his regime’s weakness: it can exploit natural resources but cannot generate economic growth. He felt threatened by “color revolutions” in Georgia, Ukraine, and elsewhere. At first, he tried to control social media. Then, in a brilliant move, he exploited social media companies’ business model to spread misinformation and fake news, disorienting electorates and destabilizing democracies. That is how he helped Trump get elected.

The same is likely to happen in the European election season in 2017 in the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy. In France, the two leading contenders are close to Putin and eager to appease him. If either wins, Putin’s dominance of Europe will become a fait accompli.

I hope that Europe’s leaders and citizens alike will realize that this endangers their way of life and the values on which the EU was founded. The trouble is that the method Putin has used to destabilize democracy cannot be used to restore respect for facts and a balanced view of reality.

With economic growth lagging and the refugee crisis out of control, the EU is on the verge of breakdown and is set to undergo an experience similar to that of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Those who believe that the EU needs to be saved in order to be reinvented must do whatever they can to bring about a better outcome.

Original Text

George Soros, the chairman and founder of the Open Society Foundations, today pledged to invest up to $500 million to help to meet the challenges posed by the global crisis of forced migration.

Mr. Soros announced the initiative on the morning of the Obama Administration’s “Call to Action,” which has assembled U.S. business leaders at the United Nations in New York to make concrete commitments in response to the crisis.

“Our goal is to harness the private sector for public good,” Mr. Soros said. “We will invest in startups, established companies, social impact initiatives, and businesses started by migrants and refugees themselves. These investments are intended to be successful. But our primary focus is to create products and services that truly benefit migrants and host communities. I hope my commitment will inspire other investors to pursue the same mission.”

The investments will be owned by Mr. Soros’ non-profit organizations, and the profits will go to fund programs at the Open Society Foundations, including programs that benefit migrants and refugees. Mr. Soros said he would work with organizations such as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Rescue Committee to establish appropriate investment principles for the initiative.

Filippo Grandi, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said: “The UNHCR firmly supports Mr. Soros’ pledge to make investments that will help refugees become self-reliant and help host communities. Refugees need access to financial and legal services, education, and employment opportunities; we believe the private sector is uniquely placed to help build the infrastructure needed to support these services.”

The promised funds will be in addition to philanthropic efforts already undertaken by the Open Society Foundations. The Open Society Foundations have been involved in the issue of forced migration since the early 1990s, when we sought to assist people displaced by the wars in the Balkans and by political repression in Burma. The Foundations’ response to the current crisis in Europe has included the setting up of “Solidarity” community centers in Greece in 2013 to aid both migrants and local people, and an initiative to provide Syrian refugees in the Middle East with basic legal advice. The Open Society Foundations also fund groups working with refugees, forced migrants, and migrant workers in North America, Asia, and the Middle East.

David Miliband, the president of the International Rescue Committee, said: “George Soros has shown extraordinary leadership with today’s announcement. By earmarking $500 million for investments that address critical needs of refugees and their host communities, Mr. Soros is showing how compassion and innovation can combine to meet the challenge of our age. Evidence from the International Rescue Committee’s work around the world proves that the private sector has a vital role to play in helping refugees become self-reliant. We look forward to helping Mr. Soros identify opportunities for investment, especially in the area of job creation in host communities.”