(MintPress) — Several countries across the world are being criticized for their treatment of refugees who arrive at their borders seeking asylum, many whom have lived through dangerous and harrowing ordeals before even making it to these nations.
Moreover, the United Nations Refugee Convention, which provides a definition of who is a refugee and lays out guideline for treatment of refugees, is being violated by many countries.
While the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a foundational document for various international treaties, regional human rights instruments, national constitutions and laws, recognizes, “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution,” many countries today disregard this edict and enact policies which endanger the rights and lives of refugees from Australia to the Middle East.
Australian panel draws heat for discouraging refugees
In Australia this week, a panel of experts charged with advising the Australian government how to deal with refugees who have arrived by boat drew criticism for recommending that they be processed offshore in a third country.
The panel was convened in June after Australia’s parliament failed to reach an agreement on the offshore processing of refugees (the policy of both major political parties in the country), following the sinking of two refugee boats in a week between Indonesia and Australia’s Christmas Island.
Both legal and human rights groups, such as Amnesty International, decried the measure after learning that the panel recommended that refugees be sent to the Pacific island of Nauru and to Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island for processing as a way to discourage others considering embarking upon a similar, dangerous voyage to Australia.
“We recommend a policy approach that is hard-headed but not hard-hearted. That is realistic not idealistic. That is driven by a sense of humanity as well as fairness,” the panel’s chair, retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, was quoted by the Guardian as saying.
The panel also recommended changes to the countries’ asylum policy and increasing Australia’s humanitarian intake from 13,750 a year to 20,000 (rising to 27,000 over five years), as an incentive for refugees to apply through regular immigration channels.
However, groups such as Amnesty International are saying that the current recommendations are worthy of condemnation and in breach of Australia’s obligations under the refugee convention, which lays out that “refugees should not be penalized for their illegal entry or stay. This recognizes that the seeking of asylum can require refugees to breach immigration rules.”
“Penalising people based on their mode of arrival is clearly in breach of our obligations,” Graham Thom, of Amnesty International said. “We are only talking about people who come by boat, we’re not talking about the thousands of people who come by plane and seek asylum in this country. What we are doing is penalising one particular group and actually taking them to a very remote place where we know they’ve been damaged in the past and holding them hostage to stop other people from coming,” he added.
And Pamela Curr, of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, described the panel’s report as “a comprehensive package of harm.
“People will still drown. What this [report] is making sure is that people drown elsewhere and don’t drown right in front of us,” she said.
In Australia, almost 700 refugees trying to reach Australia by boat have been picked up this month alone, while in the past three years, 600 others have died at sea.
But even once an immigrant arrives safely in a country like Australia, they face many challenges.
“One of the biggest fears asylum seekers and refugees face is the threat of arrest and deportation. As a result, many do not take advantage of the limited determination procedures that might be available to them through the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees,”
John Menadue and Arja Keski-Nummi write in an opinion column published in the Sydney Morning Herald.
They prefer to stay under the radar, work as illegal migrants on paltry wages or keep moving. “Refugees and asylum seekers face huge problems in transit countries, not least neglect of their rights – the right to food, water, shelter, livelihood and healthcare.”
But as Menadue and Keski-Nummi noted, the real challenge for Australia and many other nations is figuring out how to develop a refugee policy “that would give some assurances to people that while they are waiting they can live in dignity, security and safety.”
Plight of Syrian refugees overlooked
In Jordan, authorities are building camps to accommodate refugees from Syria’s south – where the uprising against President Bashar Assad’s regime began more than 17 months ago, unleashed a wave of refugees from the tumultuous political state in the country. On one recent night alone, an estimated 4,000 Syrians arrived in Jordan on Aug. 8, a report from the Associated Press confirmed.
In Jordan’s Zataari camp, which opened a few weeks ago on a desolate desert plain, some 3,300 displaced Syrians have raised complaints about conditions that include dust storms and finding dangerous snakes and scorpions in their tents.
Zataari is being described as a “death camp,” according to a sign in Arabic stuck on a tent bearing the U.N. refugee agency’s emblem.
“In Syria, it’s a quick death,” a 30-year-old refugee who gave his name as Abu Sami, who protested the conditions told the AP. “But here in Zataari camp, it’s a slow death for us all. We escaped shelling and bombardment of our homes and now face this torment.”
The U.N. has approximated the overall figure of those displaced from Syria at 115,000, but officials say the actual number could be much greater, as the U.N figure only counts Syrians who have registered as refugees. There are likely tens of thousands more refugees from Syria.
However, the report also points out that “the flight from Syria has not brought the humanitarian crisis that gripped battlefields such as the Balkans or Afghanistan. Many among the first wave of refugees were absorbed into communities in Jordan and Lebanon, which now have at least 200,000 displaced Syrians between them. In Turkey, officials have set up camps that now hold about 50,000 Syrians. Smaller numbers have fled to Iraq.”
Moreover, the plight of Syrian refugees has an added twist, as Jordanian officials as well as the Syrian refugees believe Syrian agents are operating in the kingdom on a campaign to hunt down activists and other opponents, and intimidate those who have fled. This has prompted officials in Jordan to take extra precautions. However, Jordanian authorities have refused to respond to allegations of poor conditions in the camps.
Israel continues to enact policies in violation of UN doctrines
In Israel, policies which violate United Nations decrees on refugee status are well documented, and the country continues to enact more and more of such policies without rebuke.
For example, last month, Israel’s Population and Immigration Authority issued a statement to the media regarding a new decree to be imposed upon foreign residents in Israel, Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported. The measure was part of an increased focus on arresting infiltrators with a criminal background, officials said, with a spokesperson confirming that “as part of this process, which was drafted in collaboration with the Israel Police and with the consent of the Justice Ministry, when police arrest an infiltrator for criminal activity, they may hand him over to the Population and Immigration Authority under the Prevention of Infiltration Law and hold the detainee in custody.”
Israel maintains that the policy is being undertaken because the country does not want to incur the expense of prosecuting a foreigner who is accused of crimes in his or her country of origin.
However, the policy does not take into account refugee status, which as the U.N. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees states the deporting a refugee (defined as a foreign individual who has “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”) prohibited. Under the same convention, refugees also are granted the right to freedom of movement in the country where he or she has taken refuge.
Many of the refugees being targeted by the measure are Sudanese or Eritrean, seeking refuge from ongoing military conflicts in their home countries.
Because Sudan is defined as a “hostile state” by Israel, the official status of its refugees is still a highly debated issue by Israeli authorities, and only several hundred of some 4,000 have been officially recognized by Israel as refugees.
However, as Israeli human rights advocate and law professor at Tel Aviv University Yuval Livnat points out the policy violates not only the U.N. Refugee Convention, but the country’s own laws.
“Israel cannot deny these people their basic rights under the U.N. convention on the grounds that they are not refugees,” Yuval concludes.