It is of vital importance that rescuees are brought to a “Place of Safety”. However, SAR and the disembarkation of persons in distress at sea in the Mediterranean continue to be met with great reluctance by EU Member States and EU institutions. The study analysis to which extend third countries can be considered "safe" and NGO rescue vessels can be obliged to disembark rescued migrants and refugees in places which are unsafe.
The EU-Africa migration summit in Valletta in November 2015 gave birth to a new European funding instrument: the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF). This study comes to the conclusion that the implementation of migration policy projects supported by EUTF funding primarily benefits the (wealthier) member states of the EU.
Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has been part of the “Balkan route” for smuggling people, arms and drugs for decades, but also a migrant route for people who have been trying to reach Western Europe and the countries of the EU in order to save their lives and secure a future for themselves. This report offers insight into the situation on the field: is there a system responsible for protection, security, and upholding fundamental human rights? What has the state response been like? What is the role of the international community?
Democracy is not an automatic success - it must be fought for, revitalized, and renewed. Learn more about what the Heinrich Böll Foundation and our partners are doing to support democratic engagement worldwide.
Scenes of migrants stranded at the southern borders of the European Union and the United States have become increasingly regular news items, causing debates on immigration policies to intensify. Meanwhile, child migrants face dangerous conditions, detention, and deportation. How are these policies enacted in the EU and US and in comparison to the standards set by international law? By Nicole Johnson, intern at the HBS North America Office.
In the run-up to the 2013 German federal elections, this publication considers three decades of a changing political landscape with the emergence of the Green Party. The authors discuss how the Green Party built its “brand” and, in so doing, ushered in a fundamental change in German politics and society.
Relationships between democracy and more particularly democratization on the one side and climate change and responses to that on the other are underexplored in the two literatures on democratization and climate change. A special issue of the journal DEMOCRATIZATION, with contributions by several Heinrich Böll Foundation authors, explores a variety of facets of this complex and interdependent relationship.
The Heinrich Böll Foundation will close its office in Ethiopia at the end of 2012. The current political and legal situation in the country is such that the Foundation is unable to carry out its work in a politically sustainable and practicable manner. We can no longer fulfil our mission of working with local partners to support democracy, gender justice and sustainable development.
The presidential election this year in the United States, like in many years before, is going to hinge on the outcome in just a couple of "swing states." Why is it that just a few jurisdictions in the country hold the keys to the White House, while other whole regions are largely irrelevant to presidential campaigns? What is the Electoral College and where did it come from? How could a modern democracy still maintain a system that is clearly anti-democratic? Is there any real possibility of reform?
Having fulfilled their historic mission to build the welfare state, social democrats struggle to articulate a vision beyond the status quo. Where should they turn after the third way?
