Development & Aid, Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean, Migration & Refugees, Population

NICARAGUA: Asylum for Refugees – At Last

José Adán Silva

MANAGUA, Jun 24 2008 (IPS) - Salvadoran refugee Matías Carazo has lived in legal limbo in Nicaragua for more than 26 years. In 1982 he fled from the military in his country who accused him of being a sympathiser of the leftwing guerrillas, and only now is he able to seek protection under a law granting him official refugee status.

For all these years, Carazo has been an immigrant without residence or citizenship documents in Nicaragua or even El Salvador. His children had to find sponsors and witnesses in order to register at schools and hospitals, under the surnames of their guardians.

"My children carry my blood in their veins, but they don’t carry my surname. I’m a poor campesino (peasant farmer), and I never knew what to do, and now they tell me they’re going to make me legal. I hope so, because then I can live legally," he told IPS with a happy smile.

Carazo’s new opportunity came on Jun. 3, when after five years of debate, the Nicaraguan Congress approved the Law for the Protection of Refugees which will benefit 3,986 people who have fled to this country for asylum since 1980.

Most of them are campesinos who live in rural areas, according to a census by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the national Office of Migration and Alien Affairs.

Blanca Fonseca, the UNHCR delegate in Nicaragua, welcomed the parliamentary decision and told IPS that the law fills a vacuum that has existed since 1984, when the then government of the leftwing Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) opened the country’s borders to foreigners who were persecuted for political and ideological reasons.

Fonseca said that at that time refugees were temporarily registered in the Nicaraguan Social Security Institute, but that in 1990, after the FSLN was voted out of government, the law was changed and foreigners were excluded from social security benefits. Now the FSLN, headed by President Daniel Ortega, is ruling the country once again.

"There has been no law on the matter until now, and refugees have had to resign themselves to living without documents, or seek temporary solutions with the Office of Migration and Alien Affairs," she said.

According to the president of Congress, René Núñez Téllez, the new law "addresses important concepts such as the definition of ‘refugee’, non-discrimination, the principle of family unity, the principle of non-refoulement (no forced return), the prohibition of expulsion and the mediating role of the UNHCR."

The law provides for the creation of a national council made up of migration, human rights and social security authorities, and delegates from the UNHCR, religious and human rights organisations and other civil society groups.

Núñez Téllez said that legal counsel will also be provided for asylum seekers, particularly unaccompanied minors and vulnerable adults, and that asylum seekers and refugees will have the right to work and will have access to all state services.

At the same time, the law obliges security and migration officials to identify and promptly refer asylum seekers to the eligibility procedure established by the law.

The law was approved unanimously and was applauded by civil society organisations and representatives of the UNHCR.

"The passing of the Nicaraguan refugee law demonstrates how the refugee experience of a country can translate into a positive step forward in upholding refugee rights as human rights," said Marion Hoffmann, the Mexico City-based regional representative for the UNHCR.

The U.N. agency noted that Nicaragua is a transit country for migrants rather than a destination country, located as it is along a major migration route to the United States. However, migrants are frequently detained, and left with neither money nor alternatives, many end up staying on in the country.

UNHCR statistics indicate that in the past two years, over 94 people have requested asylum in Nicaragua.

"Asylum seekers from Angola, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Pakistan, and Somalia have arrived in Nicaragua, some having stowed away on ships in Africa. The Nicaraguan refugee law will assist authorities in identifying and assisting those persons who are in need of international protection," says a UNHCR communiqué dated Jun. 5.

Nicaraguan Human Rights Centre (CENIDH) representative Gonzalo Carrión, one of the authors of the law, said the UNHCR was instrumental in reuniting Nicaraguans after more than 10 years of civil war between FSLN leftwing guerrillas and the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza (1967-1979), when many of the country’s citizens were dispersed throughout the rest of Central America and the United States.

The parliamentary debate was unexpectedly heated because two months ago the Ortega administration granted diplomatic asylum to three young women who survived a Colombian army attack on a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla camp in Ecuadorean territory, which unleashed a serious regional diplomatic crisis.

Managua granted Mexican citizen Lucía Morett refugee status and humanitarian asylum to 21-year old Doris Torres Bohórquez and 24-year-old Martha Pérez Gutiérrez, both Colombian nationals, who were in the FARC camp when it was bombed on Mar. 1. Twenty-six people died in the bombing raid, including one of the FARC’s top leaders, "Raúl Reyes".

The three women were rescued by Ecuadorean soldiers after the attack.

Carrión said there is a difference between the power of each country to grant asylum to those whom the authorities deem to be qualified, and the status of refugees, whom the Nicaraguan state is legally bound to protect.

"Refugees, legally speaking, are persons who are in this country and apply for protection because of well-founded fears of persecution in their country of origin," Carrión said.

In 1980, Nicaragua ratified the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol.

Martha Cranshaw, of the Nicaraguan Civil Society Network for Migration, said the law "is the outcome of a consultation effort lasting more than four years, which included the voice of civil society and that of expert international organisations on the subject."

Cranshaw said the most positive aspects of the law are that it establishes the right to family reunification, prioritises protection of children and adolescents, and regards gender violence and sexual discrimination as valid arguments for seeking asylum.