'Development requires peace'

Politicians routinely say that stopping the flow of refugees into Europe requires changing things for the better in the countries people are fleeing from. That's easily said, but what does it mean in practice?

"Brot für die Welt," the non-government development charity operated by Germany's Protestant churches, spends a quarter of a billion euros a year trying to provide concrete, on-the-ground answers to that question.

"Brot für die Welt" means "Bread for the World." In Berlin on Wednesday, the globally active charity presented its annual report amid a flow of refugees unprecedented since World War 2.

The NGO's simple and penetrating message: Development requires peace.

"Long-term work on the causes of conflicts and consequent refugee streams is a core focus for us," said Cornelia Füllkrug-Weitzel, who is president of Brot für die Welt and of its sister organization, "Diakonie Katastrophenhilfe" (DKH).

The two charities work in tandem. Brot für die Welt tries to help prevent the problems which cause refugee flows. DKH focuses on disaster relief - and with wars raging in various countries of the Middle East and Africa, DKH has had a lot to do in the past few years.

Peace as a shared responsibility

Brot für die Welt's report said the poverty and violence currently causing huge numbers of refugees to flee their homes are ultimately caused by inequality and injustice, political instability, and destruction of natural resources.

"A long-term transformation of politics in the global North as well as the South is necessary," the charity's CEO said. To help refugees, the North must help arrange safe passage for people fleeing danger, and offer them refuge and protection.

But she added that 95 percent of refugees end up in developing countries, not in the global North, so Germany should step up its help to poorer countries - for example Jordan or Lebanon - as they struggle with an influx of millions of Syrians.

A flood of guns

Füllkrug-Weitzel said one thing the industrialized world in general and Germany in particular can do to stem the flood of refugees is to stop making the problem worse. She called on the government to stop exports of armaments into developing-world regions.

"90 percent of the victims of war are civilians, and the overwhelming majority of these are killed by small arms," she said. "Guns are the main weapons of mass destruction."

German gunmaker Heckler & Koch is the third-largest small arms producer in the world, and overall German arms exports are rising fast - sales in the first half of 2015 exceeded total sales in 2014, Füllkrug-Weitzel said. She called for the German government to take its own armaments exports guidelines seriously. They forbid exports into conflict zones.

Funding efficiency

Brot für die Welt works by funding the work of civil society partner organizations around the world - independently of religion, tribe, nation or gender. Its money is distributed widely.

The charity reported spending 255 million euros on projects in 90 countries in 2014, with 636 new projects launched during the year. Africa benefited from 210 projects; 204 were in the Asia-Pacific region.

Füllkrug-Weitzel gave special thanks for the 55.7 million euros of donations and offertories given by ordinary churchgoers in 2014. She said their money was efficiently spent, with just 5.5 percent of the organization's budget was spent on advertising, public relations and administration. The rest was spent directly on projects in the field.

DKH had separate funding of 41.6 million euros for 172 projects in 40 countries to deal with emergencies, like floods or refugee camps.

Addressing root causes

Around 400,000 refugees are expected to arrive in Germany in 2015, the highest number of any country in Europe and the highest in postwar German history. German politicians routinely say the root causes of refugee flows must be addressed. That's easily said, but the question is what, in concrete terms, can be done.

The root causes of refugee flows differ dramatically from region to region. For Germany, two of the most important current sources of refugees - though by no means the only ones - are Syria and Eritrea. Both can serve as examples of how difficult it is to put some flesh on the bones of the cliché that Europe should help change the conditions in the countries of origin, so that less people flee their homes.

War in Syria

The fires of the disastrous war in Syria are being fed by a tangled mess of factors. The conflict combines aspects of civil revolt against an authoritarian regime, sectarian rivalry between Sunnis, Alawites and Shiites, power plays between three countries all competing for regional hegemony - Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey - and spillover from the crumbling of the Iraqi state after the US invasion and occuption. Germany's influence over the course of events in Syria is limited.

But a spokesman for the German foreign ministry told DW that there currently seems to be some movement in the Syrian stalemate - for two reasons:

"First, the military situation of the Assad regime has been getting increasingly untenable, and a further encroachment of ISIS is threatening the existence of the Syrian state," he said. "Second, the recent nuclear agreement with Iran is opening new channels of communication."

He added that Germany was doing all it can in support of the mediation efforts of UN Special Envoy Staffan De Mistura to restart peace negotiations.

Malgovernance in Eritrea

As many as a million Eritreans, out of a total population of 6.5 million, have left the country, which is governed by an authoritarian military regime that has been in power since 1991 and has largely isolated the country from the rest of the world.

Most Eritrean refugees end up in neighboring Ethiopia or Sudan, but Eritreans are also the second-most common refugees arriving on Italian shores.

They report fleeing a permanent recruitment drive into mandatory and often open-ended national service which exploits military recruits as cheap or unpaid labor.

Development Minister Gerd Müller is planning a trip to the capital Asmara in order to initiate a dialogue with the Eritrean government that could lead to renewed ties - and fresh efforts to address the root causes of emigration from the country.

Germany can offer to help Eritrea improve its political, economic and technical systems, but that won't lead anywhere unless its leaders accept the offer - and even then, it'll require years of successful cooperation.