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UNHCR seeks more viable answers to refugee pile-up
Seeking safety: An asylum seeker holds her baby in the Kebon Sirih area in Central Jakarta on June 5
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eeking safety: An asylum seeker holds her baby in the Kebon Sirih area in Central Jakarta on June 5. A number of asylum seekers from Somalia, Sudan and Afghanistan have asked the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for help after living in dire conditions.(JP/Dhoni Setiawan)
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Indonesia is scrambling to find the right model to accommodate refugees who in the past few weeks had “peacefully assembled” on the sidewalks in front of the organization’s office in Jakarta to demand progress in their asylum applications.
UNHCR country director Thomas Vargas said his office had been working hard to provide assistance “for the most needy among the refugee population”, but warned that not all of their needs can be met.
Since late last month, dozens of people claiming to be asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Somalia and Sudan have gathered on the sidewalks of Jl. Kebon Sirih in Central Jakarta.
Many are hopeful of being resettled in a third country, with the UNHCR handling their applications and giving them handouts while they wait for good news.
“However, some traditional [partner] countries have unfortunately reduced the [number of] opportunities that they’re providing for refugees to be resettled in their countries,” Vargas told reporters in Jakarta on Tuesday.
He did not name the countries that had decided to complicate resettlement arrangements.
According to Global Trends, the annual flagship report of the UNHCR released last month, developing countries and not rich Western nations are bearing the brunt of the world’s refugee crisis, hosting most of the record 70.8 million displaced people who have fled war and persecution.
The report said more than two-thirds of the world’s refugees come from five countries: Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar and Somalia.
Refugees are faced with either the possibility of repatriation or resettlement in third countries, but the Foreign Affairs Ministry’s human rights director, Achsanul Habib, said the latter was becoming increasingly unlikely.
“With the waning commitment of traditional [partner] countries and funding for relevant bodies like the UNHCR and IOM [International Organization for Migration], those who find themselves transiting in Indonesia have evidently become frustrated,” he said at the briefing.
“It is these frustrated refugees that we have seen in demonstrations [...] This is what we’re up against at the moment.”
As of May this year, Indonesia has hosted 13,997 refugees from 43 countries, mostly from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Myanmar. The figure, provided by the UNHCR, is significantly lower than other countries’ in the region, like Malaysia and Thailand, which have had to take in more than 140,000 refugees.
Achsanul said the government had discussed with the UNHCR and the Jakarta administration ways to persuade the refugees to return to their temporary shelters, including those in Kalideres and Cengkareng in West Jakarta that are provided by IOM and the UNHCR.
In the meantime, Vargas said his agency had come up with several projects to empower the refugees, including an entrepreneurship program that pairs refugees with local entrepreneurs, which began last year.
“We’re working with a range of partners to see how best we can help, but in the end, handouts [are] not sustainable,” he said.
“Eventually, refugees have to be able to find the tools to take care of themselves and that’s why we’re working on these different projects with the [Indonesian] government and other partners to see how we can prepare them for the future.”
Indonesia is not a signatory to the 1951 UN convention on refugees and is therefore not bound to the responsibility of taking in any refugees.
But officials have claimed the government had gone “above and beyond” in ensuring the safety of inbound refugees, having allowed the UNHCR and IOM to step in and facilitate repatriation or resettlement to another country.
Indonesia’s stance also complicates matters for refugees in that they are not allowed to seek official employment during their temporary stay.
However, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo issued a decree in 2016 on the treatment of refugees that provides legal certainty and standards for government agencies to coordinate and collaborate on the handling of refugees. (tjs)
