RIGHTS-EGYPT: Little to Celebrate at Refugee Party

By Cam McGrath Reprint | | Print |

Cam McGrath

CAIRO, Jun 25 2002 (IPS) - The American University in Cairo hosted a festival Monday to celebrate World Refugee Day. But most refugees in Egypt find little to celebrate.

The United Nations has adopted June 20 as World Refugee Day, but celebrations are often held over a week. Last year the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) held a fund-raising concert but forgot to invite refugees. This year hundreds of mostly African refugees and their families attended the afternoon event in the shady courtyard of the university campus.

Vendors offered traditional foods and handicrafts, and Sudanese women showed off their skills of henna tattoo art. Singers and dancers from Sudan, Ethiopia, Liberia, Comoro Islands and Palestine performed and encouraged spectators on to the dance floor.

“It is a great day,” said a Sudanese refugee. “But where are the Egyptians?”

Egypt is more tolerant of refugees than most Middle Eastern countries, but there is growing public resentment towards refugees, particularly migrant Africans. A recession has made refugees a scapegoat for frustrated Egyptians, who see refugees stealing their jobs. Harassment is widespread, and reports of race-related violence have become frequent.

“Most refugees do not report crimes to the police out of fear that they will be deported,” says a rights activist. “Sometimes the police beat them up.”

No one knows how many refugees live in Egypt. What is known is that in addition to 7,000 recognised non-Palestinian refugees, more than 18,000 asylum-seekers are on the waiting list. Over the past five years the UNHCR has rejected nearly 20,000 people. Unable or unwilling to return to their country, they remain in Egypt on the fringe of society.

Egypt has ratified a number of agreements on refugees, including the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees and the 1969 Organisation of African Unity (OAU) Convention on Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa. The latter recog nises an asylum-seeker as having “a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion or political opinion.” That applies to many of the Sudanese and Somalis whose applications for refugee status are pending or have been rejected.

“It’s crazy to spend hours and hours on the case of a Somalian when you know very well that you can’t send them back,” says Barbara Harrell-Bond, visiting professor at the university. “There is no reason why UNHCR couldn’t give refugee status on the basis of nationality.”

The government established a Refugees Affairs Section in 1993, but has relegated the task of determining refugee status to the UNHCR. Applicants for refugee status are given a slip that lists their passport number, if any, and a hearing date.

“They will hold that (slip) for two years,” says Harrell-Bond. “So it is the only thing between them and the police to prove they are people of concern to UNHCR, and it’s not enough of course. During the two years they’re waiting to get interviewed, they are extremely vulnerable.”

Asylum-seekers are not permitted to work and they receive no government benefits. They are also ineligible for economic assistance.

Asylum-seekers must rely on relatives living abroad or on church organisations for survival. The latter provide medical care, training and education, but are unable to offer financial support. Muslim refugees face additional challenges because Christian charities are often exclusive. Refugees say local mosques do not help. Faced with these walls, asylum-seekers often turn to the informal economy.

“The fact that refugees are working illegally means that they are not protected by labour legislation and social security, and are liable to be exploited by their employers,” Stephen Sperl, senior lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, said in a report last year on the UNHCR’s refugee policies in Cairo.

Often living in conditions where entire families share a one-bedroom apartment without running water, refugees share the cost of rent and utilities. Some find work as house cleaners, nannies, car mechanics or waiters. Others peddle consumer goods and handicrafts on the streets of Cairo. A few turn to prostitution, alcohol brewing and drug peddling.

Despite numerous appeals by rights activists, the UNHCR has not increased staff to speed up processing of applications. The screening process, Sperl says, is designed to discourage movement of refugees between countries. The backlog of 18,000 claims is seen as a deterrent against economic migrants.

“Experience in other countries has shown, however, that the existence of such a backlog will not deter new arrivals,” Sperl says. “But it certainly adds greatly to the hardship suffered by genuine refugees, and endangers their protection situation.”

About 70 per cent of all refugee applications are rejected. That means in effect that the asylum-seekers once again disappear through the cracks. The rest are given a refugee identity card by the Ministry of Interior that can be used to obtain legal residence status and limited benefits while the UNHCR attempts to resettle the refugee in a western country.

Refugee status offers a sense of security, but little else. Two years ago, the government lifted restrictions that prevented recognised refugees from obtaining work permits and enrolling their children in state schools. In practice, however, work permits are never issued to refugees. Overcrowded public schools simply shut their doors, leaving recognised refugees in the same precarious situation as asylum-seekers.

Budget constraints have forced the UNHCR to cut back its assistance programmes and shelve recommendations that could reduce its application backlog. Harrell-Bond says the situation could improve if the Egyptian government agreed to handle the refugee status determination procedure.

“We would all hope that the government would take it over because then the UNHCR could do what it’s supposed to do,” she says. “UNHCR is not supposed to be the judge and jury of refugees, it is supposed to be the protector of refugees. It cannot do two contradictory jobs at the same time.”