Refugees in Indonesia are stuck
IBRAHIM Adam fled armed conflict in his home region of Darfur, Sudan, in 2011, and ended up seeking asylum in Indonesia, hoping to be eventually resettled in Australia or another Western country so he could resume his dream of being an economist.
But after nearly seven years in Indonesia – where he cannot legally work, access public services or obtain citizenship – Ibrahim recently received bad news: His resettlement is unlikely to ever happen.
The UN Refugee Agency’s office in Indonesia has begun informing the nearly 14,000 refugees and asylum seekers in Indonesia that they should not expect to be welcomed by another country. Instead, they should prepare to assimilate into Indonesian society as best they can, or consider returning to their strife-torn countries.
“Still no home, and no hope,” said Ibrahim, 33, who was granted UN refugee status in 2015.
Globally, there are more than 24 million certified refugees and asylum seekers, the highest levels since World War II, according to the United Nations. Historically, the chances of refugees ever being resettled are only around 1 percent.
Those refugees residing in Indonesia face the additional obstacle that the United States and Australia, the two main resettlement destinations for refugees here, have put in place more stringent immigration policies, further decreasing their already long odds.
“We are as honest as we can be, and try to explain to them how unpredictable things are,” said Thomas Vargas, head of the UN Refugee Agency office in Indonesia. “We’re trying to tell them, ‘Have realistic expectations’, because we’re having a global crisis and there are limited options.”
Vargas added: “In general, resettlement countries were more generous in the past about providing opportunities in this part of the world.”
For years, asylum seekers from the Middle East and South Asia have used Indonesia as a transit point to reach Australia, boarding rickety wooden boats run by human smugglers for the perilous voyage across the Indian Ocean.
In 2013, however, the Australian government adopted strict new measures to discourage future arrivals by immediately transferring those who made it to its shores to spartan detention centres in Papua New Guinea and Nauru, and refusing to ever consider them for resettlement.
Australia has also towed boats packed with asylum seekers back into Indonesian waters, and has banned the resettlement of refugees who registered with the UN Refugee Agency in Indonesia after July 1, 2014.
The situation of refugees hoping for resettlement in the West became more dire after President Donald Trump took office last January. His administration’s travel ban blocks people from eight countries from entering the US, including Somalia, the country with the second-highest number of refugees and asylum seekers stuck in Indonesia. The Trump administration is planning to cap the number of global refugees allowed to immigrate to the US at as low as 40,000 for fiscal 2018. Last year, only about 400 refugees living in Indonesia were resettled in the US, according to the UN.
Indonesia is not a signatory to the 1951 UN refugee convention, which prohibits governments from returning people fleeing persecution to areas where they face serious threats, but the country has allowed certified refugees to remain here as they await resettlement in a third country. Indonesia also allows asylum seekers to wait in the country as their cases are examined by the UN.
Indonesian officials, however, say that permanent resettle- ment here is not an option.
“Indonesia is only a transit country, to accommodate migrants to their destination country,” said Agung Sampurno, spokesman for the Directorate General of Immigration. “If the UN asks us to make it permanent, Indonesia can’t do that.”
Such a dead end is beyond the comprehension of Hamid Amini and Ali Azimi, two 18year-olds from Afghanistan who made their way to Indonesia as unaccompanied minors in 2014 and 2015, after fleeing attacks by the Taliban against their ethnic minority Hazara communities.
Both have been granted refugee status by the UN but were forced to move out of a shelter for refugee minors in Jakarta, run by an international aid organisation, when they turned 18. They have been surviving on private donations since.
“We have a dark life,” Azimi said.
Still, Amini has more reason to hope than many refugees. He said he had received a resettlement approval notification in February from the US government but is still waiting for clearance to fly, months later. By comparison, his friend and fellow Afghan refugee, Sardar Hussain, who received resettlement approval during the final weeks of the Obama administration, was on a plane bound for Los Angeles just days later, and is now settled in Washington.
Amini said he fears the Trump administration’s immigration policies have effectively frozen his resettlement in America.
“We all know about Trump,” Amini said. “Trump is a president. He should look at refugees as humans.”