20 June World Refugee Day:
World Peace and Coexistence Are Possible
20 June 2021
Ankara
20 June was designated as the World Refugee Day in 2001 and this day offers us an important opportunity to honor refugees, to call attention to the challenges faced by millions of refugees, to discover solutions together, and to strengthen solidarity and human rights endeavors with the maxim “human rights for all.” Millions of people are forced to relocate all around the world due to such reasons as crossing to safer regions from areas of armed conflict, economic dire straits, facing political threats in their own countries, environmental problems and natural disasters (climate refugees) etc. while this figure keeps on rising each year. Wars that threaten people’s lives and freedom, economic injustice, prevalence of inequality in income and access to fundamental rights, global warming and natural disasters along with climate change render the increase in migration unavoidable. We, as human rights defenders, would like to note that protection and development of human rights values would minimize the number of refugees/asylum-seekers/immigrants in the world and would help maintain world peace.
According to the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency) Global Trends in Forced Displacement 2020 Report, 82.4 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide at the end of 2020 as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations or events seriously disturbing public order. Children account for 30% of the world’s population but for 42% of all forcibly displaced people. UNHCR estimates that between 2018 and 2020, about one million children were born into a refugee life. The report also indicates that more than 160 countries closed their borders, while 99 states did not offer any exceptions for persons in need of protection when the pandemic hit hard in 2020.
According to UNHCR’s Mid-Year Trends 2020 report, the number of persons in need of international protection (those under temporary protection) was 3.65 million, while those who applied for international protection was 330,000. In Turkey, Syria leads the list of countries in the distribution of persons under temporary protection with 3,574,800 persons, followed by Iraq with 1,000 and Iran with 980 persons. There are also foreign nationals who came to Turkey to work other than those in the country under temporary protection.
Solely citizens of the member states of the Council of Europe are recognized as refugees by Turkey, while people from other countries are not eligible to apply for a refugee status because of the geographical limitation Turkey maintained in the 1951 Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. Therefore Syrians are subjected to “temporary protection” that is more uncertain and precarious than the refugee status, while non-Europeans are subjected to “international protection” that again is “temporary” and “uncertain.” All those that fall outside the refugee status risk deportation and are deported most of the time without any rights in spite of all the risks.
People under temporary protection status in Turkey and foreign nationals who immigrated to the country to work face various rights violations. They have been trying to stay together by forming urban islets in certain areas of cities due to the lack of equal opportunities in the economic and social field. They have been trying to hold on to life in the midst of challenging living conditions because of extreme poverty and insufficient urban opportunities. Their labor is exploited forcing them to work for precarious and low-wage jobs in the agricultural sector, industrial sites, construction sector, and under the counter shops. Children of refugee families, too, are subjected to such exploitation of labor in similar places, suffer from violence and lose their lives in workspaces with no safety measures. Moreover, only a small number of refugee children have access to education. Refugee women also face multidimensional problems like violence, sexual harassment of girls through forced marriages, forcing women to second marriages, and enforced sex work. Women’s and children’s problems in access to application mechanisms and the language barrier prevent the documentation and elimination of rights violations. It is compulsory to render the related articles of the İstanbul Convention in order to protect the rights of the LGBTI+ and women that account for the majority of the refugee population.
Removal centers top the list of places where significant rights violations are committed and from where İHD receives applications. Violence, battery, insult, incarceration in rooms except for telephone or lawyer conferences, suicide cases etc. have been expressed in applications on rights violations in removal centers in 2020. These problems deteriorate for women who are held in removal centers with their children and violations become even more varied. Children are subjected to a sort of incarceration away from education and social life. Foreign national prisoners are deprived of books, letters and social activity opportunities without any chance of communication because of language barriers, are subjected to violence, and do not have access to their right to a fair trial. İHD has also received applications from refugees facing deportation.
One of the most important factors that trigger rights violations against refugees are racist hate speech and exclusionary policies. Particularly the fact that politicians instrumentalize such rhetoric in their attempt to manufacture political advantage is another problem and political parties do not develop any rights-based policy to stop this. The refugee issue is misused as a bargaining chip by the government in negotiations with European countries. It should always be remembered that being a refugee is not a reason but a consequence. The fact that people had to immigrate due to exigent circumstances cannot mean that they would be deprived of their inalienable rights and refugees cannot be rendered as a bargaining issue. States are responsible for the protection of the rights of refugees and should enable their access to equal rights as with their citizens.
Human life and people’s innate rights are enshrined in international conventions, covenants as well as national legislation. Article 4 of the Law on Foreigners and International Protection, which went into effect on 11 April 2013 after being published in the Official Gazette, prescribes: “No one within the scope of this Law shall be returned to a place where he or she may be subjected to torture, inhuman or degrading punishment or treatment or, where his or her life or freedom would be threatened on account of his/her race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion” underlining the non-refoulement principle. Among the binding conventions for countries about the rights of refugees are the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 New York Protocol, the European Convention on Human Rights, 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1984 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, 2003 UN Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, 2000 UN Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air, Supplementing the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime.
While the COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare social inequality and injustice in all their forms, refugee/immigrant groups have had to endure it in tougher and heavier circumstances. There is still no clear information about the ways in which the refugees and immigrants were affected by the pandemic and their vaccination rates as the Ministry of Health has not shared data with the public and civil society organizations. Every registered person living in Turkey has the right to vaccination. Yet the pre-pandemic problems in refugees’ and immigrants’ access to vaccination still persist. Refugees do not even kept informed of the right to vaccination due to problems like poor living conditions, health literacy, the language barrier. It should be reiterated that refugees have the right to lead lives in circumstances compatible with human dignity like every other person. We should build up our solidarity and promote human rights even more during these days when the impossibility of peaceful coexistence has reemerged if we ignored and disregarded the rights and lives of the “other” remembering that we, living beings, are related to one another and borders are meaningless. To this end, we invite all actors, notably politicians, to assume responsibility and to provide solutions.
İHD, therefore, recommends the following for the resolution of refugees’ problems:
- Turkey should withdraw its geographical limitation in the 1951 Geneva Convention and provide for the equal exercise of the defined rights in the convention by all groups.
- Gross human rights violations in removal centers should immediately be stopped; these centers should be made available for the monitoring of civil society organizations; although the former are urgent demands, administrative supervision and removal centers, which are significant causes of these problems, should be closed for a genuine resolution.
- The non-refoulement principle should be implemented in line with international law. Refoulement decisions solely based on criminal charges should not be delivered without finalized court rulings and without review of the refoulement ban.
- Humane living conditions should be provided for refugees; secured and equal paying jobs, free healthcare, education, and accommodation opportunities should be offered.
- Initiatives supportive of coexistence should be taken and information should be provided to prevent racist hate speech within the society.
- The Readmission Agreement signed between the European Union and Turkey should be annulled; readmissions to Turkey should be stopped.
- Refugees should not be used as political bargaining chips.
- The Directorate General of Migration Management should cooperate with civil society organizations working in the field of refugees, transparency should be maintained and information should be shared with the public.
- Monitoring and documentation of all procedures and acts that fall outside international law should be enabled; those responsible for such wrongdoing should be identified.
- UNHCR should take on active works in Turkey again having regard to the problems associated with the structural shortcomings of the Directorate General of Migration Management during the submission and evaluation of international protection applications, to the complaints by particularly the LGBTI+, conscientious objectors and non-Muslims about the negative attitudes of officials at the Migration Management in cases that go against the official ideology.
- An adequate number of information centers should be opened up under the control of the provincial migration management directorates that will offer free services to refugees in their own languages about issues like residence, identification cards, right to work, access to justice, and international protection applications.
- The provisions of the İstanbul Convention should be implemented in full for refugee women+ based on the fact that victims of gender-based violence require international protection.
- Pro bono legal assistance should be extended to refugees, notably to women, children and the disabled.
- Border permeability should be increased in order to stop human trafficking and deaths along immigration routes; all borders should be opened up to refugees.
Human Rights Association