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  • 2018-11-06 (xsd:date)
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  • Is George Soros Funding U.N.-Distributed Debit Cards to Refugees? (en)
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  • In November 2018, various conspiracy-pushing web sites glommed onto a dubious post emanating from Europe to gin up hysteria about both refugees and the United Nations. The original story, published on the right-wing Slovenian website Nova24TV, revealed that immigrants were spotted in Bosnia and Herzegovina using MasterCard debit cards and included an accusation sourced to an anonymous local police officer: The story also included a stock photograph of young black men who had no relationship to the events described in the article, alongside the caption The image is symbolic: The report was soon picked up by equally dubious websites, some of which included the same image without mentioning that it was a stock photo used only for symbolic purposes: What those sites did do, however, was expand on the original story by employing a familiar anti-Semitic dog whistle and attempting to tie the claim to liberal billionaire George Soros by falsely citing Nova24TV's piece -- even though it did not mention him -- and saying that the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) was working in cooperation with Soros. In reality, these posts conflated an existing United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) program with a separate humanitarian partnership involving Soros and the credit card provider MasterCard. The UNCHR's program was launched in Moldova in 2011 and expanded in 2016. That program provided aid to 10.5 million people across 94 countries between 2016 and August 2018, with recipients accessing their money via cash machines or mobile money electronic payments distributed through specialized cell phones: The UNCHR initiative was unrelated to either of two similar separate MasterCard-sponsored aid programs. The first, a June 2016 partnership between the credit card company, the Serbian Ministry of Labor, and the humanitarian group the Mercy Corps, sought to provide prepaid debit cards to refugees to help meet basic needs: A separate partnership between MasterCard and Soros to launch a standalone entity, Humanity Ventures, was first announced in January 2017. That program sought to provide private sector solutions to social issues such as joblessness, lack of access to healthcare, inadequate education, and financial exclusion among migrants and their host communities: The UNCHR has been involved with a program to provide cash to refugees via debit cards to help meet immediate needs, and George Soros has been involved with a program to assist migrants in partnership with MasterCard, but Soros is not funding the distribution of MasterCard debit cards to refugees via the United Nations. (en)
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