Should the UN take territory from countries that actively or negligently create refugees?

[Boojatta]

Poll question: Should the UN take territory from countries that actively or negligently create refugees?

If a country has been neither attacked nor invaded in recent history and is not being occupied by another power, then what excuse is there for it to create refugees?

Territory could be taken from it to compensate the international community for providing refuge and to reduce the amount of territory controlled by governments that turn citizens into refugees.

If a country's government fails to protect citizens who are being attacked by people not associated with the government and if the victims are essentially forced to become refugees, then the country is negligently creating refugees. However, if a future government apologizes and compensates the people who were forced to flee, then it would of course be possible to return territory to the country. Along with the contemplation of possible changes to borders is the contemplation of reversal of those changes under appropriate circumstances.

[BlooInBloo]

1. Oh gawd.

[Boojatta]

2. "Oh gawd" could be the beginning of a poll answer option.

However, I personally wouldn't offer it standing alone as a poll answer option because it's not very specific.

[uppityperson]

3. You would need other options too.

Oh, God
Oh God
Oh god
Oh! god!
dog ho!

[Boojatta]

4. Kick

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

5. If the UN takes territories...

wouldn't that just create more refugees thanks to the wars involved in the taking of territory?

[GreenPartyVoter]

6. Well, if Israel is anything to go by....

[Indenturedebtor]

9. Yes I agree. We should take territory from Jordan and Syria immediately ;) n/t

[Boojatta]

8. If a driver is speeding and refuses to stop for police,

then should the police not pursue the speeder on the grounds that pursuit will motivate the speeder to speed faster and create a short-term danger to others or increase the short-term danger to others?

[Boojatta]

11. If a particular bank robber is known to be violent towards police,

but non-violent towards compliant bank employees, then should police not confront the bank robber on the grounds that, in addition to the financial loss suffered by the bank, there would likely also be financial costs imposed on society to provide health care to an injured police officer?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

12. If your neighbor is beating his kid...

should you go over and beat his wife to teach him a lesson?

[Boojatta]

14. No, but who proposed such a thing?

You expressed concern about a possible war that could be elicited by attempting to enforce a rule concerning refugees and territory. Unless I seriously misunderstand your analogy, that would be like both the child-beater and his wife organizing and pressuring their other (older) children to put on paramilitary uniforms and attack the police when the police arrive to investigate what is, from the police point of view, an alleged beating of a child.

[Boojatta]

36. If the Hague puts Radovan Karadzic on trial,

then how do you know that his supporters won't start slaughtering thousands of innocent Muslims?

DU News

[baldguy]

7. Like the refugees from Katrina?

[Boojatta]

10. Only if victims of Katrina were forced to leave the USA.

If Hawaii, Alaska, or some other state was a reasonable option and they chose for personal reasons to leave the US altogether, then they're not refugees.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

13. The Katrina refugees weren't really refugees?

They didn't seek refuge?

[Boojatta]

15. Glasses you drink from are glasses, but they're not eyeglasses.

The Original Post is clearly about the kind of refugee who is a citizen of NoEqualProtectionLand and who, for self-protection, is basically forced to leave the juridiction of NoEqualProtectionLand.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

16. The citizens of New Orleans got equal protection?

Hmm.

[Boojatta]

18. I coined the word "NoEqualProtectionLand" and I used it

not because I intended to modify the proposal in the Original Post to suggest that any failure of equal protection should be grounds for the UN to take territory from a country. I had no such intention.

We are conducting this discussion in ordinary English and the English language provides no special apparatus for clearly and conveniently referring to an arbitrary choice of some particular kind of entity. There are also irregularities in the structures that are used to convey the relationships between the arbitrarily chosen entities.

For example, consider the poetic "all that glitters is not gold." Formally that seems to have the same structure as "all who are arrested are not guilty", but it's obviously ridiculous to suggest that the fact that someone is arrested provides a guarantee that the person is not guilty. The intended meaning of "all that glitters is not gold" seems to be something like "There's no reliable rule assuring us that if ChunkOfMineral glitters then ChunkOfMineral is gold."

[baldguy]

32. Why?

Should there be a difference if they were forced to flee to Mexico or Cuba rather than Texas and Arkansas? Through the federal gov'ts inaction thousands of people died, tens of thousands were made homeless or forced to live in the poisonous boxes FEMA had the gall to label "trailer homes", and hundreds of thousands left New Orleans altogether - never to return.

Do you think it's coincidence that since the hurricane the governorship went from Dem to GOP?

[Boojatta]

35. "Why?"

Well, maybe there is no good reason why. Maybe I have enough information to deduce that my initial opinion was actually wrong. Or maybe I only have enough information to be undecided and not to reach any conclusion. I'm open to seeing your ideas, but have little to say on this tangent.

Should there be a difference if they were forced to flee to Mexico or Cuba rather than Texas and Arkansas?

I find it difficult to imagine how under present conditions they could be forced to flee to Cuba. As for Mexico, I suppose that they might temporarily reside there if the authorities in Mexico allow them to, but I don't see how a natural disaster could force them to permanently relocate to Mexico.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

17. Should the UN take parts of the USA for the refugees it has made?

Considering the numbers involved, that would reduce us to the size of Lichtenstein.

[Boojatta]

19. When a new rule of international law is established,

is it customary to apply it retroactively for hundreds of years into the past?

Also, how would you calculate the net effect of US government actions? For example, have any countries on the Eurasian continent ever started wars and created refugees? Would the number of refugees have been smaller or larger if the US had stayed neutral? Come to think of it, I'm not aware of any rule of international law that requires countries to stay neutral during wars.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

23. It depends on who's doing the governing and the details of the law.

Apparently, you are assuming that any new law would not contain an ex-post facto provision. Why shouldn't it?

Also, how can you calculate the net effect of any future disruptions causing refugees?

So, what countries do you have in mind when dreaming up this new law, if not the United States?

Russia disrupting Chechnya? Israel disrupting Palestine? Turkey disrupting Kurdistan?

[Boojatta]

26. I am experiencing difficulty proceeding at your fast pace.

Do you mind if I return to your question? It was: "Should the UN take parts of the USA for the refugees it has made?"

My answer is "I don't know, but we can discuss that question."

You concluded:

"that would reduce us to the size of Lichtenstein."

Can you support your conclusion? If I am unable to guess how that conclusion can be supported, then am I manifestly jumping to the conclusion that there shall not be any retroactive application of an international law that authorizes the taking of a country's territory in response to the active or negligent creation of refugees?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

27. Sure. Considering the number of refugees that we have created

since our inception and equating that with the territory needed to compensate for their suffering, I felt that I was being generous in reducing our territory to the size of Lichtenstein. More like a bucket of sand would be more apropos.

However, I find the whole concept of the U.N. punitively seizing territory from countries creating refugees absurd.

My grandmother fled Ireland because she selfishly didn't want to starve. Then, she fled England for similar reasons. Then she fled Canada for the same reasons.

Do you include economic displacement due to the failure of government as a viable reason for seizure of territory?

Now, back to the question you ignored. Which countries, now existent, qualify for seizure of territory?

[Boojatta]

28. "Which countries, now existent, qualify for seizure of territory?"

To answer that question would require not only a rule much more detailed than the one I described, but also verified factual information about all the countries on Earth.

If, before driving while intoxicated was a criminal offense, someone had asked whether it should be a criminal offense, then would you have requested the names of the people who should be arrested? If you didn't get an immediate answer, would you repeat the question and complain that it had been ignored?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

29. Gosh. I thought, maybe, you were basing your idea on actual situations.

Usually, laws are enacted in response to an actual need for a law. i.e. people driving while intoxicated.

Why not pass a law outlawing stuffing tennis balls down your toilet?

[Boojatta]

31. If drunk drivers hit nobody but people who have been chosen

for persecution, then there would never have been a need for a law against drunk driving, right?

Well, nobody in this thread has claimed to be a Baha'i refugee from Iran. Nobody in this thread has claimed to be of Asian descent and a refugee from Uganda. Nobody in this thread has claimed to be a descendant of Armenian refugees from Greece. Why do we still hear whining about alleged persecutions within a country? It's obviously a purely imaginary problem that never occurred and never will occur. I cannot even understand why we need to have a word like "refugee" in the English language. What good is it?

:sarcasm:

[cherokeeprogressive]

22. I don't know why the OP couldn't have put the question in such forthright terms.

After all, it WAS the point of this whole exercise.

Why be obtuse?

[Boojatta]

24. You deserve a refund of your tuition fees for the mind-reading course.

Scenario #1:
Country A consists of people who all accept each other as members of tribe T. Country B consists of people who not recognized by the citizens of country A as members of tribe T. They are thought to be members of tribe U. The government of country A invades and absorbs country B. This violates a rule of international law and international law authorizes action to re-establish the independence of country B.

Scenario #2:
Country A includes some ethnic minorities such as tribe U and some religious minorities such as religion R and atheistic philosophy P. The government of country A, controlled primarily by members of tribe T who adhere to a religion incompatible with both religion R and philosophy P, forces all citizens of country A who belong to tribe U or accept religion R or philosophy P (or any combination of those three things) to flee for their lives. Their jobs, homes, farms, other land, and various kinds of personal property are acquired by citizens of country A who belong to tribe T and who don't adhere to religion R and who don't accept philosophy P.

Scenario #2 (continued):
Other countries around the world absorb the refugees and pay the various costs associated with such resettlement. Please, no whining. Just accept that you cannot interfere with these internal affairs of the sovereign country A.

Scenario #2 (final section):
The old days of the pure tribal nation are over. Welcome to a future multi-cultural world of infinitely repeating cycles of encouraging or accepting immigration, and then robbing the immigrants and deporting them without any due process. Hurray for easy pickings and the wacky Wild West idea known as international "law"!

[Iggo]

20. The UN can punitively take territory...

...from countries?

[Boojatta]

21. The poll doesn't ask what are (to the best of your knowledge) today's rules of international law.

It asks what you think the rules should be.

[Iggo]

25. Well then "No." (n/t)

[MellowDem]

30. The UN should not

and it could not either, considering it has no enforcement arm. It would be ineffective anyways, as almost everything else is with the UN, as there are so many competing interests that I doubt the UN would ever agree to "take" territory. And there is the question of the inhabitants in the land the UN would be taking.

It would definitely make the UN look like an imperialistic entity.

No, the UN should not, and it should never have that kind of power either.

[Boojatta]

33. What kinds of things can the UN do without an enforcement arm?

For example, can it prevent or at least delay WWIII?

By the way, welcome to DU, MellowDem!
:toast:

[MellowDem]

34. Thanks for the welcome!

:hi: