The Situation of African Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Israel - Essay Example

The Situation of African Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Israel Beginning in 2003 until the present, non-Jewish immigrants from African countries have arrived in Israel through illegal means. Currently numbering almost 15,000 according to data from the local UN High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR), these refugees come from Sudan’s Darfur region and from the countries of Eritrea and Ethiopia. The Refugee Rights Forum, an aggregation of eight NGOs in the country believes that the number can reach 17,000.1 All of these have fled their countries due to vicious wars. Darfur is the setting of a violent internal strife in Sudan while Eritrea and Ethiopia are engaged in an armed conflict. Israel’s initial response was to grant refugee status to some 600 Sudanese. On the other hand, around 2,000 refugees from Eritrea and Ethiopia were given temporary residence based on humanitarian grounds. The Israeli government believes that granting them refugee status might strain relations with both Ethiopia and Eritrea. The rest of the immigrants continue to live as illegal aliens, which means that they do not enjoy the basic rights and privileges afforded to the citizens and recognized refugees in the country. According to the 1951 International Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, a refuge is a person who… “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country”.2 By this international convention, anyone who is granted a refugee status gains rights and privileges according to international convention and the laws of the host of country. An asylum seeker, on the other hand, is one who seeks immediate protection from a host country from persecution of one’s country of origin. Only after is need for protection is recognized will he be given the refugee status. As the number of refugees and asylum seekers grow, it is observed that Israel has also begun changing its attitude towards the issue. In 2005, nearly a hundred Sudanese from Darfur, who wished to seek asylum in the country were apprehended and detained under the Entry to Israel Law. After being imprisoned for a year, they were released and were allowed to stay in the kibbutzim as suggested by the UNHCR and the NGO Hotline for Migrant Workers.3 This was the first of a series of acts that displayed Israel’s opposition to further entry. At the end of the year, a violent dispersal of a demonstration by Sudanese asylum seekers in Egypt, in which dozens were killed, resulted into an increase of refugee entry into Israel. The country responded by reviving and enforcing a 50’s law, the Prevention of Infiltration Law in the early part of 2006. A wave of arrests followed shortly, putting many Sudanese asylum seekers behind bars without the benefit of a quasi-judicial review. Since then, all those arrested under the Prevention of Infiltration have been held in the Ketsiot prison without their cases heard. Several NGO’s had petitioned the High Court of Justice to put a stop on the use of such law by Israeli authorities.4 The following years saw more attempts of refugees to enter Israel via the border with Egypt. With the state’s strict enforcement of the Prevention of Infiltration Law, refugees were systematically arrested. Many were forcibly sent back to Egypt under a process called ‘hot return’. The refugees only experienced worse human rights abuses in the hands of the Egyptian authorities. Several sympathetic local governments with the help of NGOs briefly accommodated those that remained, specially the Eritreans. However, in 2007, the Ministry of Interior implemented measures took away the rights of the refugees and asylum seekers in getting employment. Many were still tracked for ‘hot return’ and were temporarily detained while waiting to be sent forcibly to the Egyptian border. Despite protests from the UNHCR and pleas from local and international NGOs and humanitarian groups, the Israeli government continued to impose stringent policies on the refugees and asylum seekers. In 2008, the UNHCR reported the existence of asylum seekers numbering about 7,500. A majority of these was Eritrean and followed closely by Sudanese. The Israeli government, under pressure from international and local humanitarian lobby groups, granted temporary protection status to several thousands of these Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers.5 However, there was no let-up in the campaign of arrests and detention. By the end of 2008, the country was detaining 2,000 asylum seekers and for an average of four months. Hundreds of families are detained outside the Ketziot Prison facility. Men were separated from women and children. Visitations have to be requested and processed with the help of a social worker. Israel’s interior and security ministries have not yet released any regulation that would unite families divided by detention locations. Those that have been released do not actually have full access to basic freedoms. Upon release, the Ministry of the Interior usually provides conditional release documents. However, along with this issuance is the provision on movement restrictions that contains the holder to vicinity and disallows him to travel and seek work in employment-rich areas. Detention again awaits asylum seekers who violate this policy. Thos who have obtained refugee status are allowed to get international travel documents only for reasons such as repatriation or resettlement at another country. Asylum seekers in the country do not enjoy the right to earn a livelihood. The government do issue work permits for asylum seekers as well as those that have been granted temporary protection. This led many of them to work in the informal sector instead, which the government tolerates. However, they can open bank accounts provided that they have the necessary documents such as passports, work permits, and other identification papers. Israel does not at all provide education and welfare assistance to asylum seekers. Supposedly, children age five to fifteen, who have lived in the country for not less than three months, have the right to go to school despite questions on their legal status according to Israeli law. However, the government doe not actually facilitate these although it allows NGOs to work on this issue by funding asylum seekers’ and refugee children education. In fact, the Israeli government does not have any system in providing basic services and immediate relief for refugees and asylum seekers. It is often the NGOs, the UNHCR, and various international humanitarian groups that have taken the task of providing these forms of assistance in areas where these people are concentrated. There are localities, however, that have provided such aid and accommodations such as Eilat and Arad due to media and lobby group pressure as well as from the asylums seekers themselves of which both localities have a huge concentration. Strict regulations that restrict the African asylum seekers and refugees’ freedom of movements continue to deprive them of employment opportunities. This issue, consequently, forced many into poverty, with only the help of NGOs to rely on. Israel now has a policy that contains them in the areas within the south of Gedera and north of Hadera, a district that has inadequate job opportunities. This makes the African asylum seekers and refugees suffer the same fate of the many Arab and Palestinian refugees within Israeli territory, particularly in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. While significantly limiting the right to live decently, the Israeli Defense Forces have fortified the border with Egypt to defend it from further intrusion by African asylum seekers. Most of the asylum seekers are men in their 30’s and 40’s, ages and health that allowed them to make it to Israel on foot. However, their population also includes hundreds of women and thousands of minors. Most of them have relatively fine health but many have post-traumatic stress disorder, as a result of their journey and of the civil strife in their homelands. The Israeli government was one of the signatories of the UN-sanctioned International Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. Many sovereign countries expected it from a newly established state, which as a people were dispersed all over the world but have come back to their homeland to finally build a nation. From a people who have experienced the worst of being driven out of their land, the Israelis would naturally concur with the principles of the 1951 convention. After all, it was a stated founded by Jewish refugees. However, it registered disagreement over several articles of the convention. Until the present, it maintains its objections to Articles 8, 12, 28 and 30. These articles contain provisions that would not have allowed Israel to treat with discrimination individual refugees or asylum seekers from what it considers as ‘enemy states’ such as Sudan. These also touch on the issue of personal status, freedom of movement, and ownership and transfer of assets. Despite being a party to the 1967 Protocol of the 1951 Convention, which recommended that party states enact laws adhering to the agreements reached in the treatment of asylum seekers and refugees, Israel still has no specific refugee law. Because of this, its government and courts are expected to adhere to the principles of the 1951 Convention. Instead of granting refugee status to asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea, they merely provide them with temporary protection status. In the absence of such law, petitions for asylum do not undergo a formal and free system of decision-making. Any petition is just submitted to the National Status Granting Body, which is merely an advisory board. The NSGB will then submit its recommendations over a certain request to the Ministry of Interior, which has the final say on the issue. The ministry, with its defense and security orientation, tends to focus more on the potential threats posed by the asylum seekers rather than the humanitarian grounds for granting them refugee status. Ultimately, the ministry rarely issues decisions favorable to asylum seekers. Its decisions, however, may be appealed to the courts but that is another protracted legal battle in which the asylums seekers must face. Without enough funds for such processes, Israeli NGOs with help from the UNHCR have become the asylum seekers source of legal aid. It is clear that the Israeli government is found wanting in terms of providing security and better opportunities for asylum seekers. Israel has taken an even tougher stance against asylum seekers and refugees from its ‘enemy countries’, which include Sudan, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Libya, Lebanon, and Syria. Very few refugees from most on the list come to Israel. Sudan, however, has quite a number of asylum seekers and these are the ones most affected by its latest restrictive measures. In the middle of 2009, Knesset, Israel’s parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of a new Infiltration Law on its first and second readings. In November of this year, despite the opposition of the NGO community in the country and the international human rights groups such as Amnesty International, the law is expected to be passed and take effect soon. According to the NGOs, the Infiltration Law has all the draconian measures that would lead into the violation of the asylum seekers’ rights. It virtually criminalizes also the act of aiding asylum seekers and refugees. Therefore, the work being done by Israeli aid organizations supporting the cause of the asylum seekers can become illegal. If passed, the law will definitely result in more arrests and detention while the NGOs, who are the only entities lending the asylum seekers a hand, will be paralyzed or banned from continuing their efforts. According to a statement released by the Refugee Rights Forum, an umbrella group of eight NGOs working for the promotion of the asylum seekers’ interests, the Infiltration Law will result into the following rights violations. 1. Expel immediately anyone who enters Israeli territory illegally, including those at risk of being victims of genocides in their homelands. 2. If the refugees come from an ‘enemy state’, they may be imposed with a 7-year imprisonment. 3. The same 7-year imprisonment awaits Israeli NGO workers that assist the refugees. 4. This will legalize longer and arbitrary detention of refugees without the benefit of a trial and defend themselves in court. 5. This will permit detaining of children indefinitely, without due respect to the rights of a child according to internationally accepted standards 6. This ignores an established fact since August 2007 that Sudanese nationals are not to be automatically considered a threat to Israel’s security. 7. This is another legislation will cover what the Law of Entry in 1935 has been concerned with since its enactment. The statement was signed by:6 Kav Laoved - Workers Hotline and Asylum Seekers IRAC- Israel Religious Action Center ARDC- African Refugees Development Center Activists for Refugees Rabbis for Human Rights Hashomer Hatsair – Youth Movement Betsedek Hotline for Migrant Workers ACRI- Association for Civil Rights in Israel Mahanot Haolim Youth Movement Amnesty Israel PHR- Physicians for Human Rights However, while these NGOs have been consistently lobbying opposition to the Infiltration Law with the support of international human rights organizations, the Israeli government, as a whole, has not backed down. In fact, has ordered the IDF to strengthen the security measures on the Egyptian border by constructing fences on the most like routes the illegal migrants use. The Israeli government has indeed shown to the international community its seriousness in securing its territory from what it perceives as ‘enemies’. While there is sense in this effort, especially in these times of heightened terrorist activities, it may fall into the tendency of violating people’s basic rights instead. In fact, its practice in treating refugees and asylum seekers prove how easily it falls into such draconian tendencies. It would have been better if it had made efforts at the same time at strengthening the judicial process of cases involving the asylum seekers. At least, certain measures can be taken to defend their rights in court. However, this did not happen. Instead, it continues to push the implantation of the Infiltration Law, which human rights groups have considered as inhuman. Prime Minister Menachem Begin in granting asylum to Vietnamese ‘boat people’ in the 70’s said, "It is natural for us to grant you asylum in our country, for it is our Jewish-Humanistic tradition".7 This is was then. Today, the steps taken by the state is much different. Obviously, the current Israeli government has decided to turn its back on the tradition that was started by the nation’s early leaders and founders. Read More