‘Let UN shelter them’
THE Department of Home Affairs wants the UN to feed and shelter asylum seekers — despite the UN’s insistence that the department must do the job itself.
Caught in the middle of the standoff are what could be hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers who may soon be refused the right to work in South Africa, according to proposals in a revised Refugees Amendment Bill published last week.
The bill has angered key government partners, who believe it contradicts South Africa’s international obligations.
The bill’s proposed curbs on the right of asylum seekers to live and work in the country are also in stark contrast to President Jacob Zuma’s comments in New York last week, when he gave a glowing appraisal of South Africa’s asylum-seeker policy.
“South Africa . . . continues to provide shelter and support to forcibly displaced persons in line with the fundamental rights contained in our constitution‚ such as the right to live wherever you like and the right to work‚” he said.
In fact, the new bill proposes severely limiting the right to work, pending refugee status adjudication.
If they have no other means of support, asylum seekers “may be offered shelter and basic necessities provided by the UNHCR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees]”, the bill says.
The UNHCR has repeatedly denied responsibility for the envisaged assistance programme. A memo written in August last year after a meeting with South African officials in Geneva said: “It would be highly irregular for UNHCR to engage in a full-scale social assistance programme for asylum seekers.”
However, home affairs spokesman Mayihlome Tshwete told the Sunday Times this week that the UNHCR was not opposed to assisting. “Our officials are in Geneva right now with the UN and the discussion on that hasn’t been closed,” he said.
Corey Johnson of Cape Town’s Scalabrini Centre for Migrants and Refugees said home affairs had jumped the gun by publishing the bill while the green paper on international migration, which seeks to define broad policy parameters, is still up for discussion.
The UNHCR could not be reached for comment.