‘You are home now, you are NZers now’
accepted but held up due to Covid-19, that New Zealand is a good place to be. They will be welcome.
‘‘When we arrived at Auckland we were told by our volunteers ‘You are home now. You are New Zealanders now’.
‘‘That meant a lot to us. We were always told in Lebanon that we were not welcome there.’’
Of the current annual quota of 1000, some 795 refugees made it to New Zealand before the borders closed, leaving 205 in limbo. From July 1 the quota extends to 1500, but there has been no decision on when the refugee programme will resume.
There are hundreds of refugees waiting to come here. They are people, not just numbers, says Rachel O’Connor, Red Cross New Zealand’s general manager migration.
‘‘We know their names. We know who the families are, where they are from. We are waiting for them to come.’’
Under the quota programme, 200 refugees arrive every two months. The last group arrived in March. The May intake and possibly the next scheduled group have been put on hold. Every time the programme is delayed, the numbers grow.
The Red Cross wants to see the Government play catch-up by increasing the number New Zealand can take when the programme starts up again. No date has been set yet.
It can take up to two years to be accepted as a refugee in New Zealand. People often wait a long time in desperate situations and any delay has potentially very high costs for people’s lives, O’Connor says.
‘‘The reason we resettle refugees here is to save lives and provide protection from war or persecution, so any delay in that puts them at risk.
‘‘The majority of refugees are living in urban migrant communities in countries where they have sought immediate refuge from their own. In some countries they will not have the right to work, they can be arrested and detained if they are identified. Children can’t go to school, they can’t access healthcare in many cases.
‘‘You have people who have been in those asylum countries for prolonged periods without good access to food. Life can be pretty dire.’’
There are refugees who have been accepted into countries like New Zealand waiting in camps like Cox’s Bazar, who are falling prey to trafficking, forced marriage and violence let alone being susceptible to the coronavirus.
‘‘It’s very difficult thinking about those people who have been promised they can come to New Zealand – knowing they are in limbo, to be watching how well New Zealand has been doing and knowing they could be there.
‘‘Without actually having set foot on New Zealand soil, those people are almost Kiwis. They no longer have a country of their own. New Zealand has promised them refuge here, a chance to rebuild their lives, raise their families. They are just so close, but yet so far away from being able to realise that.’’
The Red Cross wants to see the quota programme resumed as soon as it’s safe, but believes it can happen even with the borders closed. ‘‘The Government has a humanitarian criteria as part of the border closure, and we think that the refugee quota absolutely fits under that humanitarian exemption and believe it can be done safely,’’ O’Connor insists.
‘‘They have health checks offshore and onshore. They have six weeks at the Ma¯ ngere Resettlement Centre, which is 10 minutes down the road from the airport and built to quarantine people, if required,’’ she says.
‘‘It’s safer than bringing Kiwis back into the country.’’
But O’Connor acknowledges it might not be as simple as New Zealand allowing refugees in. There’s another side of the equation to be considered.
One of the challenges is that you have to have the country sending refugees in a position to do so.
That requires the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in the country of asylum to be able to arrange all the departures, the appropriate visas to exit the country and flights.
This is complicated further when you have to move people through different routes. It’s not going to be easy to restart the quota but it should be possible, says O’Connor.
‘‘We have to make sure we are doing our part as a global citizen and step up to the international commitments we have made.’’
Despite being in level 1, refugee resettlement departures are still on hold says Fiona Whiteridge, General Manager Refugee and Migrant Services.
‘‘Immigration New Zealand is currently working with agencies in New Zealand and overseas, on requirements to resume refugee resettlement once border restrictions are lifted.
‘‘This includes ensuring travel routes are available to facilitate refugee movements and appropriate health measures and controls are in place. This is also dependent on the UNHCR and IOM removing the suspension on refugee resettlement departures.’’
‘‘We have to make sure we are doing our part as a global citizen and step up to the international commitments we have made.’’ Rachel O’Connor
Red Cross New Zealand’s General Manager Migration
Migrants, refugees and internally displaced people are among those hardest hit by this pandemic, says Ezekiel Simperingham, Asia Pacific migration and displacement co-ordinator at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
‘‘Our first concern was the health impacts and exposure to the virus. Migrants and refugees are often the most at risk because they live in cramped conditions, whether that’s in a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar or cramped migrant worker dormitories in southeast Asia.’’
Simperingham, a Kiwi based in Kuala Lumpur, cited a chronic situation in the Maldives, where Covid has infiltrated migrant workers’ communities.
‘‘We had a call from our Red Cross colleagues in the Maldives who described how 50 migrant workers lived in one room by day and another 50 lived in the room while the other group went on a night shift.
‘‘There are extremely cramped living conditions in camps and communities serving migrant workers which makes social or social distancing a luxury for them.’’
Health is not just a right for some people within the community but for everyone in the community and what this virus has shown us is that we are not safe till everyone is safe, he says. The socioeconomic fallout, not from the virus but from the containment policies and border closures, reveal secondary and devastating impacts of the virus.
The economic fallout is going to be massive and disproportionately affect refugees and migrants, Simperingham says.
‘‘Refugees and migrants, particularly those working in the informal sector, are the first to lose their jobs and the last to receive social protection, wage subsidies.’’
There are 1.3 billion people, including many migrants, working in the informal sector in AsiaPacific out of 1.9 billion people working in the region. If you are a daily worker or labourer you are the first to be laid off, he says.
Migrant workers would not able to send money home to support their families and communities in their countries.
The economic impact on those migrant workers and the decline in their livelihoods is going to have a massive impact on remittances, he adds.
‘‘Latest figures are that remittances will go down $100 billion globally.’’
Simperingham says they are also starting to see concerns relating to human trafficking, particularly when people have lost their livelihoods.
‘‘They are becoming destitute and have less and less options so they are more likely to go into conditions of exploitation, and we are seeing clear links to trafficking,’’ he says.
As World Refugee Day on June 20 approaches, the number of refugees worldwide reaches higher than ever before. According to latest UNHCR figures, there are 70.8 million forcibly displaced people, including more than 41 million internally displaced people and 25 million refugees.
Only 1 per cent of those 25 million refugees are ever resettled, but that number is now at zero because of Covid-19. More than 150 countries have closed their borders or put in border restrictions,
and the vast majority of them have no exceptions for people claiming asylum.
They have no exceptions for refugees who need to flee their countries because of persecution, human rights abuses or war to be able to bypass border restrictions connected to Covid-19.
‘‘New Zealand may only take 1500 refugees a year but it’s an extremely important solution for those people who are stuck in a refugee camp for one or two or five or 20 years with no hope of getting out, no hope of returning to their own country,’’ Simperingham says.
As part of the slight reopening of the border to certain categories of people, refugees could or should be considered eligible, he says.
‘‘Humanitarian refugee quota is a highly managed process. There are already extensive health checks so to include Covid-19-related health checks would not be complicated.’’
It’s great that New Zealand has been able to manage this crisis so well, he says.
‘‘We are in a privileged position in New Zealand so it’s important that we turn our attention to some of the groups of people around the world who are not in such a fortunate situation.’’