JRS: Dispatches

Dispatches is a fortnightly e-mail bulletin of the JRS International Office. It features refugee news briefings, information from our people in the field, policy issues, JRS vacancies and spiritual reflections.

On 21 September, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) announced that it would assist as many as 12,000 refugees from southern Sudan to return home next year.

In a public statement, the agency stated that nearly half of the 26,492 refugees in western Ethiopia have agreed to be repatriated to Sudan in 2009. However, repatriation has been slow, partly due to logistical and technical support difficulties affecting UNHCR and partly due to the general security situation.

Since March 2006, more than 35,000 Sudanese refugees have returned home from Ethiopia with the assistance of UNHCR and the International Organisation on Migration (IOM). The IOM has been mandated to transport the refugees across the border and to carry out their pre-departure medical screening. In addition, Sudan and Ethiopia have signed an agreement on these voluntary return operations.

Last March, UNHCR officially closed two of the four camps hosting refugees from southern Sudan following a successful repatriation season in which some 23,000 refugees from the two camps — Bonga and Dimma — went home. The returns were assisted by UNHCR, mainly to the Blue Nile state and to a number of other states in southern Sudan. About 2,000 refugees made their way home using their own means.

Before the start of the return operation in March 2006, the two camps, which opened in the early 1990s, had a combined population of nearly 28,000 refugees. The closures brought to three the number of camps which have been emptied in western Ethiopia since last year. Yarenja camp was closed in March 2007.

Approximately 275,000 Sudanese refugees and an estimated 1.9 million internally displaced Sudanese have returned home since a peace agreement in January 2005 ended the civil war in the south. Some 260,000 Sudanese refugees remain outside the country's borders, mainly in Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia.

On 18 September, according to the Kenyan daily 'The Standard', more than 2,000 individuals in the western city of Kisumu have said they may have no choice but to return to camps for the displaced.

According to the newspaper, the internally displaced persons (IDPs), displaced by the wave of post-election violence in the country last December, claimed the government has neglected them. The IDPs, who were uprooted from their homes and work places in the Rift Valley, Central and Eastern provinces, said they had been unable to return to their former homes.

They complained that they have been short-changed by the government in the ongoing official compensation programme, known as operation Rudi Nyumbani (operation return home). The IDPs in Kisumu told The Standard that the government has resettled and compensated displaced persons from the Rift Valley province, while ignoring them. According to a spokesperson from the group, none of them had received the promised 160-odd US dollar compensation.

The fortunate ones have been living with relatives, friends and well-wishers in the town and its suburbs. Others, the group stated, have been made homeless. They claimed their children had ended up living on the streets on their own, as their families broke up. They stated that they need the government to assist them to rebuild their houses and send their children to school, if not they would have no choice but to go back to the camps.

In the aftermath of the election, the wave of violence left more than 1,000 people dead and scores of persons injured and their property destroyed.

On 28 September, the Cape Town provincial government announced that displaced migrants were no longer in danger and the camps in which they have been given refuge should be closed.

Despite last week's reports of a Somali family being killed in Queenstown, Eastern Cape, the provincial disaster management centre stated that housing the 2,200 migrants on three sites "cannot continue".

The department of home affairs has found that most migrants at Cape Town's refugee camps do not qualify for refugee status. However, a spokesperson for the department urged refugees to apply for asylum. All efforts of the disaster management centre are now said to be now concentrated on closing the camps.

The Constitutional Court is not expected to rule on what should be done with the camps until next November. In the meantime, the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa urged the South African authorities to sit with civil society groups to examine why the migrants in the emergency shelters had not been reintegrated into communities.

Civil society groups have called for the camps to remain open until the government publishes a detailed reintegration plan, and is hoping an interim court order will delay closure, set for the beginning of October by the Gauteng provincial government.

According to the Gauteng provincial government, the camps have to close as the funding will run out in October. The provincial authorities added that the refugees have received financial incentives to leave the camps and find private accommodation.

However, refugee groups claim that the assistance, ranging from 100 to 200 US dollars, provided in many cases by JRS South Africa, is insufficient.

The camps were established in May after 60 people were killed and 30,000 African migrants and refugees were displaced in a wave of xenophobic violence which started in Alexandra, Johannesburg and swept through the province and other parts of the country. In Gauteng alone, the authorities set up seven tent camps to temporarily house those displaced by the violence.

According to 'The Age' newspaper on 23 September, the deportation of a suspected Melbourne mafia member was overturned by former immigration minister Amanda Vanstone 14 months after a large donation was made to the Liberal Party by the man's brother — an alleged Italian crime figure from the region of Calabria.

The visa was granted to Francesco Madafferi — who was arrested last month for an alleged major drug trafficking conspiracy — around a year after his supporters donated money to the Liberal Party and four Liberal MPs made representations or contacted Ms Vanstone about his case.

A document signed by Ms Vanstone, who is now Australia's ambassador to Italy, reveals that she granted Mr Madafferi a visa in November 2005 after "having regard to this person's particular circumstances and personal characteristics". Mr Madafferi was arrested and charged with conspiracy to traffic a commercial quantity of ecstasy. In March 2006, a document tabled in parliament stated that Ms Vanstone decided to exercise her discretionary powers in the Madafferi case because it was "in the public interest".

"The debate about the propriety of Ms Vanstone's decision to grant the visa follows an earlier debate about the cancellation of Dr Mohamed Haneef's visa by former Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews, and raises larger questions about the character provisions in the Australian immigration regime", according to a JRS Australia statement.

Mohamed Haneef, a 29-year old Indian physician, was accused of aiding terrorists. After leaving Australia in July last year, a subsequent Federal Court judgment overturned the withdrawal of his visa.

"The issue raised by the cases of Mr Madaferri and Dr Haneef is the onerous and unaccountable power vested in the minister to make decisions to cancel visas and to decide appeals. These powers constitute bad governance, and the determination of Immigration Minister Chris Evans to review the way they are exercised is welcome. Those working with clients seeking review of immigration decisions by the minister have long complained that ministerial decisions have been arbitrary", the statement continued.

"The powers vested in the minister have also inevitably led to the accusation that particular decisions have been venally or vindictively motivated. Such appeals require a statutory and independent board that can review decisions taken by departmental officers. Where an appeal is based on the grounds of feared violations of human rights on return, the decision should be made legally and transparently, and not by ministerial discretion", the statement ended.

According to the UN news agency IRIN on 17 September, trafficking in Cambodia is set to rise with the sharp increase in food and fuel prices.

Men, women and children are susceptible to trafficking, some trafficked inside the country and others sent abroad — mostly for labour exploitation. Many people, often at a very young age, are compelled to move away from their home area, accepting promises of work which reveal to be very different from what they were offered. Others are sold like slaves out of the despair of their families.

Some women and children are recruited, with promises of legitimate jobs, from the countryside by gangs and inducted into the sex trade in Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and Sihanoukville, while most end up in domestic service, factories, ships or as beggars. There have also been reports of women being trafficked abroad for sexual exploitation.

Many of them are under-age, a Cambodian aid worker who monitors the situation, told IRIN. Another disturbing trend is children being trafficked to neighbouring Thailand and Vietnam to work as street sellers or beggars. Most of the girls selling flowers in Bangkok's red light districts are Cambodian — including seven-year-old Kimmi from Phnom Penh, who has been selling roses in Nana for more than two years after her father sold her to a trafficker for US$50.

Cambodian children, especially from the western provinces, are being trafficked to Vietnam to beg and, to a lesser extent, work as scavengers in the southern city of Ho Chi Minh.

Yet, most Cambodians who are trafficked end up in sweat shops, construction sites, fishing trawlers and domestic service, mainly in Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan.

More than 4,000 people per year were being trafficked, passing through a network, from one local recruiter to another in Phnom Penh or the border town of Poipet, to a Thai gang and then sold on to the owners of a boat, according to UN estimates.

On 24 September, the prime minister of Nepal, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, met his Bhutanese counterpart Jigme Thinley in New York and urged him to allow Bhutanese refugees living in Nepal to return home. According to reports, Thinley assured him he would "take initiatives towards finding a solution to the refugee problem". The two prime ministers met on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.

This is the first time the refugee issue has been discussed at the prime ministerial level since talks back in 2004. The Bhutanese authorities have continually refused to take back the refugees evicted 18 years ago.

Nepal and Bhutan engaged in 15 rounds of bilateral negotiations to resolve the issue. The results of a joint verification process, made public in June 2003, only offered four percent of refugees the right of unconditional return, while a further 74 percent were offered the possibility of return subject to the fulfilment of stringent conditions, such as passing language tests, living in special housing, etc.

With hopes for repatriation fading away, more than 50,000 Bhutanese refugees have expressed interest in resettlement — just under half of the total 107,000 refugees from Bhutan who live in seven camps in eastern Nepal. The US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Netherlands and Denmark have pledged to resettle around 70,000 refugees during the coming five years. Some 5,300 refugees have already been resettled in these countries, with the majority moving to the US.

JRS Nepal manages a number of education, teacher training, counselling and guidance, disability, youth, pre-school, and vocational training programmes, benefiting more than 50,000 refugees, as well as lobbying the international community to create durable solutions for the Bhutanese refugees. Regular meetings have been held with the refugees to discuss resettlement and other durable solutions, as well as provide information for women at risk and people with disabilities.

On 12 September, the Belgian minister for Asylum and Immigration, Annemie Turtelboom, announced that families with children irregular resident in the country will no longer to be held in detention centres. From the start of October, such families will be placed in open family housing and assigned a case manager or 'coach'.

The move comes following research carried out in February 2007 by Sum Research into alternatives to immigration detention. The research found two particular problems with the detention of families, in that it impedes the natural family dynamics by surrendering parental authority to a third party (the detention centre), and that the confinement of a child who has committed no crime is hazardous to the child's development.

Ms Turtelboom has admitted that with the new system comes a certain risk, considering the possibility that families awaiting deportation may abscond. However, she is confident that the new, more humane system will be a success.

Regarding the assignment of coaches, Ms Turtelboom has said "they will have an essential role. They will humanely prepare these families for their return". This idea of coaching has been adopted from Australian and Swedish models.

This announcement by Ms Turtelboom has come as a surprise to many Belgian NGOs. JRS Belgium report they were informed of this proposal at its early stage, but are quite surprised at how quickly a decision has come. In general, JRS Belgium Director Christophe Renders SJ is supportive of the announcement and sees it as an acknowledgement that the detention of minors constitutes a violation of the Convention of the Rights of the Child.

However, Fr Renders expressed concern that the minister's decision is somewhat hasty, taken without consulting other actors in the field (with the exception of the board responsible for non-EU nationals responsible for the project's implementation).

"Many questions arise which need further clarification. Does the minister mean to stop the detention of all families with children, including the detained families who requested asylum at the border and the families who are detained in virtue of the Dublin II convention? Or does her decision apply only to the families who are staying illegally on the territory?" asked Fr Renders.

In addition, the role of the 'coach' remains unclear. Coaches are to be civil servants from the migration office, in contrary to how the successful Australian scheme was operated. Coaches will be appointed only once all other procedures are exhausted, instead of from the moment the families are intercepted. Consequently, coaches will be able to advise the families about their expected deportation and reintegration in their countries of origin, and not regarding their possible alternatives.

Finally, JRS Belgium and other NGOs fear that this is a badly prepared and incomplete plan, and is being used to demonstrate that detention is the only way to host undocumented migrants on Belgian territory.

On 12 September, Guillermo Rovayo, JRS Ecuador Director, welcomed the proposal for the new constitution as a step forward for refugees, migrants and Ecuadorian emigrants. He also urged nationals to ensure that the state respects its commitments to these groups.

JRS provides Ecuadorians who return home, voluntarily or forcibly, with food, transport and other assistance upon arrival in the country. Subsequently, it provides follow-up assistance to ensure they are reintegrated into the local labour market. According to Mr Rovayo, JRS has been quite critical in demanding that more be done for migrants and refugees.

However, JRS is now supporting the new constitution because it strengthens human rights. Article 392, Rovayo stated, establishes a migration office, important to consolidate the issue in the country, because until now the authorities had not developed a clear policy on migration. The present migration law, he added, dates from the era of the dictatorship, the doctrine of state security and the foreigner as an enemy. The new constitution should help to change this approach.

Even though NGOs were quite critical of the government's approach, he admitted that the approach of NGOs has often been scattered and fragmented. NGOs, he added, have been too makeshift, while the migration situation requires focused and concrete responses providing rights to migrants.

Erratum (14 October)

The statements in article number eight of Dispatches 245 about the new constitution were erroneously attributed to JRS Ecuador Director, Guillermo Rovayo. The declarations should have been attributed to Ambassador Hernán Holguín, Sub-Secretary for Citizenship and Solidarity of the National Migration Secretariat (SENAMI). This state agency provides assistance to Ecuadorian migrants and their families at home, including assistance to returnee migrants.

JRS Ecuador wished to clarify that even though it is a humanitarian organisation, it does not provide any direct financial assistance to the refugee or migrant population, or indirectly by way of assistance for travel, food or housing. Given the huge demand for this type of assistance, it would put unsustainable pressure on the organisation. This role is rightly the responsibility of the state and organisations such as the UN refugee agency (UNHCR).

All the same, on 14 October JRS Ecuador confirmed to Dispatches that during the said programme, Mr Rovayo reiterated the organisation’s backing for the new constitution. This support is based on the importance the new constitution gives to the issues of human mobility. The present economic, social and political context in the world today, including ongoing human rights violations, places ‘people on the move’ (immigrants, emigrants, refugees and internally displaced persons) in vulnerable circumstances. According to Mr Rovayo, the constitution recognises this fact and seeks to promote the implementation of state policies which respect and guarantee their human rights.

JRS work focuses on human rights law, the strengthening of refugee and migrant community organisations and education and psychological assistance. All JRS Ecuador programmes seek to empower forcibly displaced persons and promote the exercise of citizenship, with the exception of the provision of services such as legal advice and representation, and psychological and education assistance in the capital, Quito, and the northern border city of Lago Agrio.

Article 392 of the new constitution of Ecuador, approved by referendum on 28 September, refers to the establishment and implementation of programmes and polices by the state with regard to the assistance of those affected by human mobility, and is not limited to the establishment of an office dedicated to these issues.

The original article was based on a debate between Hernán Holguín and Guillermo Rovayo on Radio Visión (during Buenos Días programme transmitted locally) on 12 September.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO (DRC): JRS LAUNCHES NEW PROJECTS FOR DISPLACED PERSONS

During the last six months, JRS has opened six projects in the east of the DRC. The latest project for support for secondary school education will begin in October.

Within a year, in 2007, almost half a million people were been displaced, bringing the total number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) to 800,000 in the North Kivu province alone. This situation pushed JRS Great Lakes in December 2007 to launch a major intervention in and around Goma, the capital of North Kivu, and Rutshuru, 60 km north of Goma, particularly in the field of education, as only a small number of organisations were active in the area.

In cooperation with international UN agencies and NGOs specialised in education, as well as with the North Kivu local authorities, JRS developed five projects to increase the capacity of existing primary schools to cater for displaced children. This strategy is in accordance with the UN education cluster approach, which seeks to avoid assisting only displaced persons in camps and benefit both, the host and displaced communities.

The first programme started as early as March and supported 30 primary schools in the Goma area which had welcomed a significant number of displaced children. The activities include the provision of teacher training and school furniture, and the construction of schools. In mid-August, JRS opened another two projects which seek to improve the quality of teaching and the infrastructure (building and sanitation) in 20 primary schools in the nearby area of Rutshuru.

In mid-July, JRS initiated another programme, which is very much at the heart of its mission. In four camps near Goma, JRS pays daily visits to displaced persons in the most vulnerable circumstances (in particular older persons, orphans, and those with disabilities), spending time listening to their stories and providing pastoral and emotional support. In the near future, JRS plans to provide displaced persons in particularly vulnerable circumstances with material assistance, such as assistance accessing food and shelter.

As there were no agencies providing secondary education, JRS decided to fill this important gap. The problem of unemployed adolescents in camps convinced JRS of the need to develop vocational training and secondary education. From October onwards, JRS plans to provide teacher training and school textbooks to four secondary schools, as well as renovate the buildings around the four camps in west Goma. This autumn, more than 2,000 young people will also receive courses in baking, cooking, hairdressing, sewing and bicycle repair.

At the end of 2007, intense fighting in the eastern province of North Kivu forced thousands of civilians to flee their homes. It is estimated that 70% of the displaced live with host families; the remainder finds shelter in managed or spontaneous camps. The social and economic pressure on host communities and the already fragile public infrastructures have left the population in dire poverty. Civilians continue to suffer widespread human rights violations including rape, killing, looting and forced child recruitment.

While most activities are planned from before on a yearly basis, depending on the developments, JRS is open to expanding its programmes to meet new needs as they arise.

On 13 October 2008, the third edition of the Pedro Arrupe Award will be officially launched by JRS-Europe.

As part of JRS-Europe's awareness raising projects, the award gives students of Jesuit schools, and students associated with the Jesuit network, the opportunity to develop projects on refugee themes and issues. The award promotes understanding and tolerance of the refugee issue among young people and seeks to encourage their creative engagement with the issue.

The project can be best described as a educational learning programme for participants, in which students and teachers together complete specially designed lessons which can be found on the following internet link: http://www.jrseurope.org/pedroarrupe-award. Then, from using what they have learned, attempt to fuse the analytical with the artistic and create a unique project or piece of work.

This project must demonstrate, to some degree, the students' understanding of the issue at hand and their own creative ability. Projects from previous editions of the competition have ranged from documentary films, educational board-games, sculpture making and songs, to photo exhibits and interviews with refugees.

Students may focus on any area they wish to within the general theme of the refugee issue, be it 'war and conflict', 'humanitarian organisations', 'women and children refugees', etc.

It is JRS' hope that through the Pedro Arrupe Award, students will familiarise themselves with the plight of refugees and forced migrants, and that the award will enable them to become responsible citizens with an understanding of human rights.

For more information about the Pedro Arrupe Award 2008/2009, or to obtain promotional material for your school, readers can contact Carola Jiménez-Asenjo at pedro.arrupe.award at jrs.net.

For how to take part, visit: http://www.jrseurope.org/pedroarrupe-award

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