Given the continuing coverage of the refugee\/migrant crisis, and the occasional coverage of the considerable economic importance of the arms industries, further\u00a0 thought could be given to representing the systemic linkage between the two through a new indicator — RPK — as a complement to GDP.<\/p>\n
Refugees Per Kiloton (RPK) might focus on the number of refugees from a country in relation to the kilotons of explosive to which the country was exposed.<\/p>\n
alternatively<\/p>\n
Refugees Per Kiloton (RPK) might focus on the number of refugees entering a (European) country in relation to the kilotons of explosives manufactured there.<\/p>\n
Clearly some such possibility calls for much more careful thought, although the relevant data is presumably readily available or could be deduced.<\/p>\n
My point is that it provides a missing insight into the role of those countries engaging in bombardment in relation to the numbers of incoming refugees giving rise to internal national or regional concerns — especially for Europe.<\/p>\n
Media coverage and debate currently seems to ignore this systemic link, but\u00a0of course the manufacturing countries derive considerable benefit\u00a0from the sales of explosives and their delivery — irrespective of the challenge to their societies of incoming refugees.<\/p>\n
The indicator might have the additional advantage of focusing debate on an equivalent to the Polluter Pays Principle,\u00a0namely on a Provider Pays Principle, as adapted to bombing — a Bomber Pays Principle. This could reframe financial responsibility for the integration of refugees.<\/p>\n
_________________________________<\/p>\n
Anthony Judge (Australia) <\/em>is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment<\/a>. He is the instigator of the Union of Imaginative Associations<\/a> (www.un-imagine.org<\/em><\/a>) — following his retirement in May 2007 as Director of Communications and Research at the Union of International Associations (UIA) (<\/em>www.uia.org<\/em><\/a><\/em>). He had held this operational position since the 1970s in addition to his formal role as Assistant Secretary-General. Based in Brussels for the century since its founding in 1907, the UIA has been a self-financed, international, nonprofit, research clearinghouse for information on all international nonprofit organizations and their preoccupations. He is a thinker, an author, and lives in Brussels.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The indicator might have the additional advantage of focusing debate on an equivalent to the Polluter Pays Principle, namely on a Provider Pays Principle, as adapted to bombing — a Bomber Pays Principle. This could reframe financial responsibility for the integration of refugees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70475\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}