WVPU student Anna Soińe presents project at the Humanitarian Congress Vienna

WVPU undergraduate psychology student Anna Soińe brings her “Interchanging Opportunities” project to the table. She tells us about her plan of action and what inspired her project.

By Bridget Carter

April 2019

Photo by Kellner Holly Thomas

The University of Vienna’s main ceremonial chamber of stucco marbled walls and fresco ornamentation held its full capacity of spectators on March 29 for Vienna’s fifth Humanitarian Aid Congress. In her opening remark, Director of Global Responsibility Annelies Vilim proclaimed “humanitarian aid is not an act of charity, it is a human right”, thus encapsulating the very essence of the Congress itself.

Organized by five organizations, including Caritas and the Austrian Red Cross, the Humanitarian Aid Congress aimed to bring together international stakeholders in the fields of humanitarian aid, business, politics, media, and academia to discuss recent developments and future visions of humanitarian aid. Panel discussions centered around topics such as the increasing numbers of vulnerable populations, climate change, geo-political shifts, and emerging technologies.

The opening ceremony consisted of Austrian Federal Minister Karin Kneissl’s welcome note urging that humanitarian aid should not be seen as a substitute for political solutions, while Mark Lowcock, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, addressed three big challenges to humanitarian aid today: how to better deal with mass displacement and climatic-induced crisis, and the importance of addressing causes rather than symptoms of problems. “If we continue to work around the symptoms, the problem will get worse,” proclaimed Lowcock in his keynote address.

Later in the afternoon, the student-based Humanitarian Aid and Future Generations panel, moderated by Webster’s Dr. Samuel Schubert, addressed crucial humanitarian challenges generated by climate change, armed conflict, and famine while posing the question: Will future generations engage more in or withdraw from humanitarian efforts as a lost cause? Student panel-members came from a number of schools including the University of Vienna, the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, and Webster Vienna Private University.

One of WVPU’s very own, undergraduate psychology student Anna Soińe, presented her project “Interchanging Opportunities" that aims to bring together two socially marginalized groups — refugee children and the Austrian elderly —  to manage their (re-)integration process into Austrian society. The idea of Soińe’s project is to provide a local platform to connect refugee children in need of guidance, support, skills, and knowledge with the elderly in need of company, activity, and purpose. By doing so, migrant youths are better able to integrate and contribute to society, while the elderly are better able to regenerate a sense of purpose and combat loneliness.

How does this look in practice? With the cooperation of local institutions and educational facilities, “Interchanging Opportunities” can reach participants via social media campaigns, local humanitarian aid services, care facilities, and people living in communities, all of which require very little financing. By posing the question: “What can we, the normal population, accomplish?” Soińe approaches migrant integration not as an insurmountable problem, but rather as an issue that the community can engage in and improve together.

Soińe came to WVPU from Germany to study psychology with a minor in international relations. She has been engaged in projects working with disabled children, refugee children, and language tutoring for migrant adults. It was these very projects that inspired “Interchanging Opportunities.”

Soińe was drawn to the idea of focusing on the elderly because “society is aging and the elderly can be extremely lonely,” she says. “How can we help them?” With this question in mind, she believes that the aging population are excellent candidates for helping migrant children integrate. “We can only continue to help people and solve humanitarian problems if we are a stable society,” she says. “But we can’t be a stable society if we don’t talk to each other and tackle our own issues.” Her plan of action is a way to bring people together from both generational ends of the spectrum and reinforce community ties in order to sustain a more stable society.

“People need to contribute to society, but how does one do that if they are not integrated?” She rhetorically asks. “We need to do something right now.” And we, the average people, can do something right now. We can start by talking to each other and to our neighbors. “We as citizens can talk to our neighbors to encourage long-term growth,” she encourages. For, at the end of the day, “we are all humans.”

Bridget Carter, the Co-Founder and Editor in Chief of World Dip magazine, is an International Relations graduate student at Webster Vienna Private University where her areas of focus include gender and migration and post-conflict development. Her background in the field of forensic science and journalistic writing give her a unique perspective from which to approach various topics of international relations. Her written work has been featured in Austin Monthly magazine, The Chronicle, and The Ten-Twenty. She also rocks a (very raw) personal travel memoir blog There She Goes travels[dot]com. Bridget has trekked the Markha Valley in the southern Himalayan Region, sailed the Mekong River from Thailand into Laos, and traveled and lived in her 1986 Mini-Cruiser camper in the desert of West Texas. Her grit and passion make her one hell of a story teller.

Blow Out or No Show: Voter Participation in Upcoming European Parliament Elections Uncertain

By Katie Loscher

April 2019

Between May 23 and 26 the European Parliament elections will take place. Held once every five years, the elections are an opportunity for European citizens to actively participate in the selection of European Parliament officials who will be representing them for the next five years and making decisions on how Europe will act on jobs, security, migration, and climate change.

The EP is effectively the lower house of the EU’s legislative branch. It can’t propose legislation (the European Commission does that) or decide on a budget. However, all EU laws must be approved by a majority of EP members to then be applied in all 28 member states.

Although these elections will directly affect all those living within Europe, trends have shown that voter turnout has drastically decreased throughout the years.  A recent study has shown that the majority of Europeans choose to abstain from voting in the European Parliament elections. Turnout has decreased from 62 percent in the first direct election that took place in 1979 to 42.61 percent in the most recent 2014 elections. As of late, there has been a push to get more Europeans to vote in the upcoming elections, but it is unclear how successful the movement has been.

Perhaps Article 13 of the EU’s new copyright directive was the push voters needed to get them to the polls this month. Brexit, marking the first time a country will leave the EU, could also be an important factor contributing to voter turnout.

The British and Dutch will begin the voting process on May 23, but most EU citizens will cast their votes on May 26. The EP elections are a chance to take part in deciding what Europe will be in the years to come -- only  time will tell if Europeans will take it.

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For more on the European Parliament elections, check out:

Kentmen, C. C. (2017). What about Ambivalence and Indifference? Rethinking the Effects of European Attitudes on Voter Turnout in European Parliament Elections. Journal of Common Market Studies, 55(6), 1343–1359.

Faure, Stephanie. (2019). All you need to know about the European elections. Al Jazeera.

Katie Loscher, originally from Illinois, has spent the past five years living in Vienna. Currently a graduate student at Webster Vienna Private University, Katie studies international relations and would like to focus her research on security studies and foreign policy. This summer she will be interning for Globsec, a security forum, in Bratislava, Slovakia.

Terror awaits migrants in EU-backed Libyan detention centers

An estimated 700,000 migrants are currently held in Libyan detention centers where human rights violations are commonplace. The European Union’s backing of these facilities is drawing criticism from the international community.

by Rebecca Canak

April 2019

“I can honestly tell the members of this Council that in 30 years in this line of work, those were among the most harrowing accounts I have ever heard.” Speaking at the Palais des Nations in Geneva on 21 March 2019, Andrew Gilmour, the United Nations’ Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, expressed his concerns over Libyan detention centers. And he is not alone: the Women’s Refugee Commission and the African Union have similarly described the ‘unimaginable horrors’ that await all migrants who enter.

Personal accounts of those who had been freed from detention almost unanimously account rape, electrocution, and other forms of torture against men, women, and children alike. Testimonies also depict explicit scenes of extortion in which migrants are subjected to torture until their family members pay a ransom. Only those with large sums of money are able to escape the worst of the cruelty.

While traffickers, smugglers, members of armed rebel groups, and Libyan government officials are directly responsible for these flagrant human rights violations, the European Union has increasingly come under fire for its involvement in these atrocities.

In February 2017, the EU signed an agreement with Libya in an effort to curb migration from North Africa into Italy.

The deal impels the Libyan capital of Tripoli to block migrants from leaving its shores while the EU agrees to provide support for the Libyan coastguard.

The effects of this deal have been devastating. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees reports over 15,000 people had been forced to return to Libya in 2018 alone, with several thousands of them being sold into slavery. Since its signing, over 5,300 migrants fleeing to Italy from Libya have died on the Mediterranean, making it the deadliest sea in the world.

International response to these reports have been widespread among human rights organizations, with multiple state and non-state actors accusing the EU of being ‘complicit in tragedy’. In a joint letter signed by Oxfam and 43 other aid organizations across Europe, the NGOs have urged the EU to end their deal with the Libyan coastguard and stop sending migrants back to inhumane Libyan detention centers.

In addition, the letter revealed that several EU countries had deliberately blocked search and rescue teams on the Mediterranean by preventing ships from leaving ports. UN Assistant Secretary-General Gilmour has called upon the EU to end these restrictions and allow NGOs to once again operate rescue missions at sea.

Libya’s reaction to these accusations has been impenitent at best, with the country’s Charge d’affaires Adel Shaltut arguing that Libya has made major contributions in assisting migrants to safety. Human rights violations at these detention centers are being framed as an inevitable consequence of illegal migrant status with no clear strategy in place to prevent current or future abuses.

Unfortunately, while these incidences of violence and exploitation are among the most harrowing, they are far from unique to Libya with over 2,100 detention centers worldwide. According to the World Health Organization, there are roughly 65 million people around the world today who have been forcibly displaced from their homes due to poverty, persecution, armed conflict, and other reasons. It is a reminder of the disturbing paradigm of human cruelty and the global culpability we all face in the permittance of these crimes against the world’s most vulnerable.

While the refugee crisis remains a hot topic in international discourse, the European Union has yet to respond to the criticism directed its way. With Oxfam’s letter dated in January of this year, it may be too early to tell when, how, or if the EU will claim any responsibility and reverse their agreement with the Libyan coastguard. But continued and active pressure from the international community would significantly impact its decision.

For more on this topic, check out:

Al Jazeera. (2019). Complicit in tragedy: EU urged to end migrant returns to Libya.

Gilmour, Andrew. (2019). Oral update of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on Libya pursuant to Human Rights Council resolution 37/41.

Kakissis, J. (2018). A U.N. migration pact is dividing Europe. Oxfam. (2019). Open letter on search and rescue.

Rebecca Canak is a graduate student in Webster University’s Global International Relations program, where she is earning her MA while studying in the Netherlands, Thailand, Ghana, Austria, and Switzerland. She attributes her interest in international affairs to growing up in the U.S. - Mexico border town of El Paso, Texas. Following a degree in Creative Writing and Global Studies, she spent three years traveling around Southeast Asia and South America as a freelance writer and ESL teacher. Her areas of interest include education, the refugee crisis, and women’s rights.