Judgment reserved in

Teen refugee case

SOUTH Africa was supposed to be the promised land for a Congolese teenager who fled his country with his aunt in 2011 after rebels destroyed their home.

Instead, the 17-year-old boy from the DRC has been left in legal limbo and has missed out on more than four years of school.

He cannot get documentation to allow him to attend school in Pretoria because his paternal aunt, who has looked after him his whole life, is not his parent.

Now the boy’s aunt has, with the help of Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR), approached the court for help.

She wants the court to order the department of home affairs to acknowledge the boy as her dependant and give him the necessary documents as asylum seeker.

LHR argued in the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria yesterday that the nephews and nieces of asylum seekers or refugees should be considered as dependants in order to receive documentation that allows them to access universal children’s rights such as education.

LHR said children who were separated from their parents and enter the country with other caregivers such as aunts, uncles, siblings or cousins, should be able to receive temporary asylum seeker permits before they are entered into the child care and protection system.

“The processes that are in place currently means that these children must first go to the Children’s Court for an order and present it to the department of home affairs before they receive any documentation, ” LHR attorney Neo Chokoe said. “This is a lengthy process ... They can spend four or five years waiting for this process without any documentation, rendering them illegal in the country.”

Lawyers for the government argued that it is in the best interests of children that such separated children are accommodated in South Africa’s child care system before claiming asylum from the home affairs department.

The state’s lawyers suggested that these children should enter the foster care system.

But LHR said that the foster care system was too overburdened.

Judge Tati Makgoka reserved judgment.