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LA STAMPA

Looking Europe's Migrant Crisis In The Eye

As tempting as it may be to just turn away, we lose a piece of our humanity every time we do.

Youth attempt to enter Spanish territory through the North African enclave of Ceuta  May 21
Youth attempt to enter Spanish territory through the North African enclave of Ceuta May 21
Dacia Maraini

-Essay-

Looking at these photographs means becoming witnesses. The eye sees, preserves and remembers. The eye feeds on presence, and presence is history. These photographs tell us that we are all witnesses and our conscience is implicated; it cannot call itself unaware of events.

But what to do? How to go from testimony to participation? Strange that, with all the tools technology makes available to us, we feel more helpless than ever.

A child is saved by a generous man. We feel an instinct of compassion and gratitude. But who is that child and who is that man? Can knowing this help us understand more? Maybe, yes. The images make their way into our heads and raise many questions: Who, how, when, why?

There is little doubt that the movement of peoples is a constant reality that will not cease after another emergency. We also know that it will be used by politicians to gain power. But what can we do?

Our gaze moves our compassion for those naked bodies, slapped by the water, for those poor feet that don't know comfortable and protective shoes, for those surprised faces that ask for asylum.

"Let them in!" cry those who think, like Saint Martin, that we should cut the cloak we wear in half and share it with those who feel cold. But if migrants become many, if they are thousands of thousands, how can such an intake be managed?

I have only two eyes to look, and a stomach that tightens.

Some argue that we need these people in our ranks as laborers, to swell the workforce. But I find this a cynical argument. With their arms, human beings also carry a faith, a culture, habits that die hard. Are we able to integrate thousands of refugees? Unhappy people cannot be welcomed in order to turn them into cheap workers.

What then? I have no answers, only questions. I have only two eyes to look — and a stomach that tightens — at the sight of so much despair, poverty, pain.

Compassion is certainly not enough. We need to think rationally and understand what we can do not to abuse these unarmed people fleeing hunger and fear.

Does remembering that we, Italians, were once a people of emigrants help us to organize ourselves without losing humanity? Someone speaks of a nemesis: We have plundered territories rich in raw materials for centuries, without leaving behind us roads, houses, schools and an example of good governance.

I got distracted and spoke as if these migrants had landed on our shores. But it doesn't make much difference — today they are in Spain, tomorrow they will be on the Sicilian islands.

I don't know if pity is good for anything. Yet I think that pity, together with reason, can help raise awareness and create a desire to act. And acting means building alliances to face together, without injustice and without wars, the inevitable displacement of peoples.

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Economy

"Fox Guarding Henhouse" — Fury Over UAE Oil Sultan Heading COP Climate Talks

Even with months to go before the next COP, debate rages over who will chair it. Is it a miscalculation or a masterstroke to bring the head of an oil company to the table?

Participants of the Petersberg Climate Dialogue at the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin

Leaders, including Sultan Al Jaber, the UAE’s Minister of Industry and CEO of the National Oil Company, at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, held this May in Berlin.

© Imago via ZUMA Press
Ángela Sepúlveda

-Analysis-

The controversy has already begun ahead of the next COP climate conference in November. The 28th United Nations Conference on Climate Change will be hosted by the United Arab Emirates, one of the world's largest producers and exporters of oil.

Not only will the UAE host, but presiding over the conference will be Sultan Al Jaber, the UAE’s Minister of Industry and CEO of the National Oil Company (ADNOC).

“It's like a fox guarding the henhouse,” said Pedro Zorrilla, a spokesperson for Greenpeace Climate Change. Alongside 450 other international organizations, the NGO has signed a letter addressed to UN president António Guterres, calling for Al Jaber’s dismissal.

For the letter's signatories, the Sultan represents "a threat to the legitimacy and effectiveness" of the conference, they write. "If we have any hope of addressing the climate crisis, the COP must not be influenced by the fossil fuel industry, whether that be oil, gas or coal."

The figure of the presidency may only be symbolic, but Zorrilla points out that the president has decision-making power in this type of international meeting, where nations are expected to agree on concrete decisions to curb the climate emergency. "They are the ones who set the agenda."

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