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Jakarta meeting to explore root causes of asylum seeker issue

Indonesian marine police officers watch as Afghan asylum seekers sit on their ship heading to Australia was caught off Java island upon docking at Tanjung Perak port in Surabaya, East Java

Marguerite Afra Sapiie (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Tue, November 10, 2015

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Jakarta meeting to explore root causes of asylum seeker issue Indonesian marine police officers watch as Afghan asylum seekers sit on their ship heading to Australia was caught off Java island upon docking at Tanjung Perak port in Surabaya, East Java. (AP/Trisnadi) (AP/Trisnadi)

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span class="inline inline-center">Indonesian marine police officers watch as Afghan asylum seekers sit on their ship heading to Australia was caught off Java island upon docking at Tanjung Perak port in Surabaya, East Java. (AP/Trisnadi)

Indonesia will soon cohost the Jakarta Meeting, gathering government representatives from 14 countries to address the root causes of irregular migration, an official said on Tuesday.

'€œWe should find the reason why these migrants are willing to sacrifice their wealth and take dangerous paths to countries that can'€™t promise they can stay,'€ said the Foreign Ministry'€™s director general for multilateral affairs, Hasan Kleib.

Scheduled for Nov. 27 to 28, the senior officials'€™ meeting will involve 14 countries that are significantly affected by the asylum seeker issue, including countries of origin such as Iran, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Afghanistan; transit countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore; and destination countries such as Australia and New Zealand.

Irregular migrants have become a major humanitarian issue. A high flow of asylum seekers from conflict-affected countries has raised the numbers of migrants crossing the borders of both transit and destination countries.

Hasan said that if the situation continued, Indonesia '€” currently a transit country for asylum seekers hoping to reach Australia or New Zealand '€” could become a destination country.

However, creating solutions for only the countries experiencing a high flow of asylum seekers will not tackle underlying problems which, according to Hasan, lie in the domestic situations of asylum seekers'€™ countries of origin.

'€œWhether it'€™s development, economic, political, or social issues, we should really address this problem by discussing it with countries of origin,'€ Hasan told thejakartapost.com.

Meanwhile, Hasan asserted that as such domestic issues were typically sensitive, countries of origin would be assisted through capacity building and campaigns on the dangers of irregular migration.

'€œWe expect concrete actions to be achieved in the meeting. However, addressing the root causes is of great importance because this irregular migration issue has affected us all,'€ Hasan said.

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