Refugees vulnerable without security
FOR dozens of refugees at Paint City in Bellville, living in tents with no fence around them or security has made them as vulnerable as they were when they fled their countries of origin.
This as the UN marked World Refugee Day yesterday under the theme, Together We Heal, Learn and Shine.
World Refugee Day is aimed at celebrating the strength and courage of people who have been forced to flee their home countries to escape conflict or persecution.
However, Hafiz Mohammad, one of the leaders of the refugees at Paint City, said there was nothing to celebrate because their lives were not valued.
“We came to this country because it was praised for championing human rights but that is not the case. I have been in this country for 17 years and all I have seen is xenophobia in different communities. Looting of foreign nationals’ shops and killings. Look at our current situation now; the government and other local authorities keep on threatening to remove ablution facilities and the tents sometime in July. The fence erected around the tents was removed and homeless people were stealing and forcefully using our facilities. No one cares, we are just vulnerable out here,” said Mohammad.
He also accused the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) of doing little to assist them, including not helping them to finalise legal documents, which had allegedly prevented children from being accepted at schools and parents getting jobs.
“We are told to choose to go back to the same communities that don’t want us or go back to our countries of origin which we fled,” Mohammad said.
Paint City and the Wingfield base in Kensington were established as centres for refugees during the lockdown, to temporarily house hundreds of them and asylum seekers, including children.
UNHCR spokesperson in South Africa Kate Pond said the organisation continued to assist people who approached it for support to be reintegrated into local communities or to return to their countries of origin in safety and dignity. “To date, more than 600 people who approached us for support with reintegration into the community have been assessed,” she said.
“We provide families with counselling, three months’ rent, food and household items to promote sustainable reintegration. Only a small number of people from the sites have approached the UNHCR for support with voluntary repatriation to their countries of origin.”
Pond said the organisation ran peerled support groups for all refugees and asylum seekers to support healing and learning, and for the acquisition of skills. She said the UNHCR was concerned that children at these sites continued to miss out on education as their parents had allegedly taken them out of schools.
In a statement in March, the UNHCR said a new agreement had been signed between it and the Department of Home Affairs, for the establishment of a project to eliminate delays and the backlog in asylum decisions, in a bid to revamp the refugee management system by 2024.