The United Nations General Assembly, held in New York last December, agreed unanimously that today, June 20th, 2001, would be designated as International Refugee Day. The decision was taken in recognition of the increasing numbers of refugees world-wide, and specifically to mark the 50th anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Status of Refugees.
Respect is the theme of International Refugee Day: respect for the human dignity of people who are fleeing persecution, respect for the human right to claim asylum, and respect for the international law which protects refugees.
There are 22.3 million refugees in the world, up from 14.9 million in 1990, and 5.7 million in 1980. The trend continues as armed conflicts from Sudan to Colombia cause havoc with the lives of ordinary people just like us. Over 80 per cent of people in flight are hosted by poor countries. The destitute of Angola and the Congo are fleeing to Zambia, the refugees of Afghanistan are finding shelter in Iran and Pakistan, while the ravaged citizens of Sierra Leone are sheltering in Guinea.
Less than 5 per cent of refugees make it to the European Union and must penetrate the labyrinth of Amsterdam Treaty-related obstacles which heralded the so-called Fortress Europe. Only one in 50 of these, or approximately 0.11 per cent of the global refugee population, seeks sanctuary in Ireland.
Since the Refugee Act 1996 became law on November 20th, 2000, various agencies, policies and procedures have been put in place by the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform. The Refugee Applications Commissioner and the Reception and Integration Agency are handling almost 800 applications for asylum per month.
As this apparatus of State swings into place, the Government has set the welcome objective of processing all applications within six months by the end of the summer. Many civil servants are working to achieve this, and resources continue to increase in an effort to meet the target.
The number of recommendations to declare an applicant a refugee or not has increased to 1,685 since January 2001. Yet there is little evidence the target will be reached as the appeals to the Refugee Appeals Tribunal continue to rise and people wait months or even years for a decision.
More worrying is the increasing reliance on accelerated procedures which do not always consider the individual circumstances of a case. Worse still is denying people the very right to claim asylum. Boarding checks at points of embarkation, carrier restrictions, premature deportations, and the negotiation of repatriation agreements all give cause for concern.
Asylum-seekers who have arrived in Ireland since April 2000 are accommodated in 63 dispersed accommodation centres located in 45 towns. The services to support them are found largely in Dublin or Cork, so many services are being provided by local community and health workers, and voluntary groups, but with minimal allocation of extra resources by the Department.
In the dispersed centres, people are not allowed to work, cannot avail of training facilities, have few recreational facilities, are not allowed to cook their own food, and face restrictions in relation to visitors and travel. The centres are often on the outskirts of towns, serving as a barrier to even the simplest forms of integration with host communities.
The boring and mundane existence of asylum-seekers on direct provision in dispersed accommodation is described in stark fashion by a Limerick-based asylum-seeker in a book entitled Refugee Lives to be published today by Comhlamh:
"A day in the hostel, let me tell you what a day in the hostel is like. We wake up to breakfast under the watchful eyes of the security men. Afterwards, we retreat to our rooms, exchange pleasantries with each other, hop onto our bunk beds and watch the afternoon roll by on the TV screen.
"Sleep is expensive, for with more than three persons in a room, TV time varies and these variations clash miserably. A loud clanging sound, raised voices . . . another misunderstanding has erupted, tempers run helter-skelter from monotony and boredom. Raised voices again, this time in jocular tones as they assess football teams, talk about women and clubbing.
"The cycle flows to dinner, which melts into sleep as night worms in. Then another day dawns. Another day at the hostel."
Adult asylum-seekers in dispersed accommodation centres are given a Residual Income Maintenance Payment of £15 per week, while £7.50 is allocated for each child.
When introducing the system it was decided that the needs of asylum-seekers were analogous to people in long-term institutional care, who receive £15 per week for "hospital comforts". The fact that the hospital comforts allowance is paid to people who are in long-term residential care, in contrast to asylum-seekers, who have all the daily needs of any average adult in Ireland, was not taken into consideration.
On a day when respect for refugees is being highlighted globally by the United Nations, it is important to focus on practical ways in which respect can be demonstrated in Ireland. £15 per week is clearly inadequate when one considers the likely needs of asylum-seekers during the long months and years of enforced idleness.
A working group in the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform is considering the figure of £15 with a view to recommending a possible change to the Minister. The Minister may also consider that people have a fundamental right to work. Should his Department fail to meet its six-month goal for processing asylum applications, then he should respect people's dignity and allow them to work. The irony is that many of our asylum-seekers have professional and technical skills which could be of great advantage to our labour-scarce economy.
On International Refugee Day the abolition of this discriminatory system of direct provision and a return to normal social welfare payments for the first six months, with the right to work thereafter, is the only respectful and respectable thing to do.
Refugee Lives is available from Comhlamh, 10 Upper Camden Street, Dublin 2; Phone: 478 3490; email: comhlamh@iol.ie
Colm Cuanachin is co-ordinator of Comhlamh, a voluntary association of development workers who have returned to Ireland. The organisation has refugee support groups in Dublin, Cork and Limerick.