CWS News

By Ismira Lutfia.

Refugees of all ages and many nationalities seemed to be enjoying themselves at the Bogor Botanical Garden on Tuesday to celebrate World Refugee Day.

Some faces looked familiar from a year ago, as they have been waiting in Jakarta and Bogor for years for resettlement to a third country.

Frieda Sinanu, operations manager for Church World Service, said these refugees were referred to the CWS by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, for which her organization provides “basic necessities and access to health care and education.”

She said the number of refugees under CWS care was “a little over 200, and we work specifically for refugees who are UNHCR-acknowledged and have gained refugee status.”

Minors performing a dance in World Refugee Day Commemoration in Bogor Botanical Garden. CWS, as UNHCR implementing partner in PURE Program, held a WRD commemoration event on 22 June 2010.
(Samer Majeed )

“We also work with asylum seekers, but on a case-by-case or emergency basis as referred to us by the UNHCR,” Frieda told the Jakarta Globe.

Refugee children, aged 6 to 12, were also provided with primary education at public elementary schools, she said.

According to the UNHCR office in Jakarta, as of February 853 people in the country had obtained refugee status, with another 1,920 asylum seekers.

Frieda said the majority came from war-torn Afghanistan, followed by Iraq, Iran, Burma, Sri Lanka, China and some African countries.

“Resettlement is just one option for them,” she said. “There are also durable solutions that the UNHCR is working on, such as voluntary repatriation.”

Indonesia is a favorite stopover for asylum seekers and refugees bound for Australia. However, because Indonesia is not a signatory to the UN’s 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, it is not mandated to resettle them.

Maroloan Barim­bing, a spokesman for the Directorate General of Immigration, said that the government allowed them to stay here out of “humanitarian considerations.”

“We acknowledge that they have the right to humanitarian assistance, so we let them stay here temporarily under the UNHCR guarantee, which has to find third countries to take them in for resettlement.”

He said illegal immigrants whose claims as asylum seekers could not be verified by the UNHCR were placed in immigration detention centers scattered in 13 locations across the country. The centers have a combined capacity of 1,200 people, the biggest one being in Tanjung Pinang, Riau Islands Province.

“We have repatriated many of them; this year, we repatriated mostly Sri Lankans and Afghans,” Maroloan said.

Seasoned Pakistani journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai, who was in Jakarta in March for a media workshop, said at the time that the “really bad” situation in Afghanistan led to people fleeing

“[Afghan] people are still not sure about the future, and that’s the reason they leave and try to go anywhere,” said Yusufzai, who has covered the Afghan conflict and interviewed Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar.

“They’ve been going to Australia, Western countries, Iraq, everywhere, and even now we have about 1.8 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan.”

Most were from the minority Hazara community, he said.

Some of the refugees in Indonesia who grow impatient of waiting for resettlement try to make their own way to Australia by hiring local fishermen to take them there by boat.

Waleed Aly, a lecturer in politics at Australia’s Monash University, told the Globe in March that the flow of migrants to Australia was “a very difficult political issue” because the last government took a hard line on immigrants.

However, he said there was a real concern that the current government risked “going back to the politics of that really harsh immigration policy that created so much controversy” unless it could stem the human tide.

“It’s an ongoing issue and there’s no easy solution,” he said, adding that Australia had become a popular destination for refugees because “people have the view that life there is going to be very comfortable. And that is true compared [with] other countries in the region.”

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article are not necessarily those of CWS Indonesia. The article is taken from Jakarta Globe website. CWS Indonesia is the implementing partner of UNHCR for PURE program.

More news about refugee, click here.