Mick Clifford: Refugee supports highlight inequalities

Protesters gathered outside the Russian Embassy in Dublin to mark one month since the invasion of Ukraine. The embassy has become the focal point for Irish anger over the war raged by Vladimir Putin and the latest demonstration was organised by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. Picture: Damien Storan/PA

On Thursday, a demonstration against the war in Ukraine took place outside the Russian embassy in Dublin. Among the speakers was Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) chairman Keven Callinan.

“It’s humbling to see such a magnificent display of solidarity from ordinary working people as we remember those who have died, those who are grieving, and those who have lost everything because of this terrible war,” he said.

According to Sean Murray’s report in this newspaper, Mr Callinan went on to say he hoped the Irish response to this crisis could be a model for our future treatment of refugees and asylum seekers.

The comments touched on a theme that has come to the fore in the last few weeks. Nightly on the news, we are shown how desperate Ukrainians, having fled for their lives, are being accorded a welcome in this country in an attempt to alleviate the suffering they are enduring. We are, to use a hackneyed phrase, stepping up to the plate to do our bit for the victims of the war. There is also an element of self-congratulations in the coverage, as is often the case. As a nation, the Irish live to love and love to be liked.

However, is this the only humanitarian disaster requiring a generous response and how has the country acquitted itself when others beyond Europe have been thrust into similar nightmares?

A reply to that question, which chimes with many others who have addressed it, came during the week from Bulelani Mfaco, a prominent campaigner to end the direct provision system.

“African/Middle Eastern/Asian child waiting months in hotel for Irish state to issue documents so they can find school & other services vs Irish state puts in place all necessary measures to ensure Ukrainian child finds school after 5 days in Ireland,” he tweeted.

Mfaco was responding to a piece in the Dublin Inquirer, which reported on an African family seeking asylum who had to wait four months for a temporary residence card and PPS number, and to organise schooling for their children. In contrast, a one-stop shop has been set up to fast track all these matters for arriving Ukrainians.

Pitting one group of war refugees against another is crude and unfair, but the question is valid. Why is Ireland — at both state and societal levels — showing the best of the national character in welcoming those displaced by European conflict yet appears to display indifference to those in similar situations elsewhere?

MEP Mick Wallace is out of step with the vast bulk of opinion in relation to Russia, but in a radio interview this week he did provide one noteworthy answer while noting that the UN estimates that a million children could die in Afghanistan in the next 12 months.

“Is it that Ukrainians are the same
colour as us? That they have white skin? That their religion is like ours? The level of racism is violently obvious and it is sickening,” he said.

Wallace is not alone in attributing the differential to racism, but is that fair?

Racism is a virulent reality in Irish society, as it is in most others, but attributing the current urgency applied to welcoming Ukrainians to their ethnicity is to simplify what is going on.

Human nature dictates that we relate easier to those geographically close to us. If, for instance, war broke out in Scotland, would society in this country react in the same way as it would to a vicious conflict in Outer Mongolia? Admittedly, Ukraine, as the crow flies, isn’t that much nearer than Syria, but it is in Europe and therefore more relatable to most people.

Ideally, human beings should have the capacity to relate to all suffering equally, but that is not the way of human nature. Neither, however, is it simply down to race.

The location of the war in Europe also dictates the coverage. The media is quite rightly top-heavy with coverage. We can see practically in real time how cities are being reduced to rubble, lives lost, and the heart rending plight of those who have to flee. There persists, I believe, for many of us, a sense of disbelief that this is happening at all in the 21st century. All of that feeds into the emotional response at a public policy and societal level.

The same destruction occurred not so long ago in Syria — also perpetrated to some extent by the Russians. Aleppo then is Mariupol today, yet there was nothing like the same coverage of that conflict. Some might attribute blame to the main body of political opinion and the media for the paucity of focus on that war, but equally it could be argued that this apathy merely reflected that felt among the public in general.

Elsewhere, there is practically no coverage of the savage conflict in Yemen, in which one of the world’s poorest people are being bombed back to the past by the great western ally Saudi Arabia. That conflict is so bad that media access is hugely limited but even if it was possible to better shine a light on what is going on there, would there be an appetite among the public to read or tune in to the same extent as for the war in Ukraine?

There is another factor in the generosity of this country’s response to the current crisis. The body politic, State apparatus, and society in general in this country excel in crisis to an extent that seems beyond everybody in dealing with day-to-day problems. This was apparent during the pandemic.

A major study was published this month in medical journal The Lancet about excess deaths during the pandemic. Ireland had one of the best outcomes in the world, behind only Norway and Iceland in Europe. There is plenty to be unearthed about how the country responded to Covid, but it would appear that in the most important indicator — the capacity to save lives — Ireland did extremely well. The health service in the broadest sense is in bad shape in this country but, when the chips were really down, the capacity was there to provide an excellent outcome to the benefit of a large swathe of the population.

So it would appear to go with the response to Ukraine. A sudden and vicious war in a fellow European country has prompted a response that demonstrates that, when pushed, the State and society have the capacity to operate above and beyond the normal.

Notwithstanding that, it can be reasonably asked why we can’t do the same for other refugees in circumstances that may appear less urgent but are no less traumatic for them.

The observation from Mr Callinan is worthy of consideration. Why not strive to improve the response to all people who flee war wherever it
occurs?