In 2008, Seyed Hasan, a father of six,
fled his home in the Wardak province of eastern
Afghanistan. Hasan and his family were targeted by
the Taliban for resisting their demands. It had
been seven years since the United States had
intervened to oust the group, but the Taliban was
still acting with impunity in broad swaths of the
country.
Hasan's family applied for
refugee status in Turkey, but their initial claim
was rejected, leading them to seek assistance from
the Istanbul-based Helsinki Citizens Assembly
Refugee Advocacy and Support Program (HCA-RASP),
an non-governmental organization for which I work.
Over four years later, the family was finally
granted refugee status. But their situation did
not improve. Employers continued to exploit Hasan
when he was lucky enough to find work, multiple
family members were in need of medical
assistance, and the children
young enough to enroll in school lacked the
resources to do well.
Years of living life
at an impasse led Hasan to recently ask me, his
legal adviser, "Why do they treat us Afghans this
way?"
Turkey is not the worst place in the
world to be a refugee, but nor is it the best.
When signing the 1951 Refugee Convention and the
1967 Protocol, Turkey applied a "geographical
limitation," or reservation whereby only
individuals fleeing European countries would be
recognized and afforded full rights as refugees.
As a result, non-European asylum-seekers are
granted access to "temporary asylum" while they
await a determination of their status by the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR). Once recognized as refugees, they are
allowed residence in Turkey while the UNHCR
attempts to have them resettled to third
countries. Permanent legal residence, or local
integration, is not an option.
Hasan's
question arose from having watched many newly
arrived Iranian and Iraqi refugees pass through
the asylum system with relative ease, spending
sometimes as little as one year in Turkey before
having an opportunity for a fresh start in the
West. Meanwhile, Afghans did not seem to be going
anywhere. Young Afghan men lost prime years of
their lives practically begging for access to
education while others established informal
refugee camps in public parks. Many took notice of
the government's generous provision of camps and
other services for Syrian refugees. Conditions
lead Hasan's eldest son to attempt an illegal
crossing to Greece, only to end up back with his
family after being detained, returned, and fined.
The New York Times and New American Media
each recently featured compelling pieces
highlighting the predicament facing thousands of
Iraqis who have sacrificed their own personal
safety cooperating with American service members
and contractors, but face enduring obstacles in
their ability to gain protection in the United
States. Is the very same thing happening as the
United States plans its withdrawal from
Afghanistan?
The Refugee Admissions
Program, administered by the US State Department's
Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration
(PRM), is the mechanism that allows for recognized
refugees in other parts of the world to start new
lives in the United States. As the world's top
receiver of refugees by far, the United States has
set a ceiling for overall refugee admission at
80,000 for each of the last several years. In
reality, only about 58,000 are actually admitted
annually. The fact that over 20,000 spots have
gone unfilled each year is indeed a problem, but
not the only one.
Only 428 - or 0.8% of
the total refugees admitted to the United States
in 2011 - were from Afghanistan. The US government
had allocated 35,500 of the yearly available spots
for refugees from the Near East and South Asia,
including Iraq, Bhutan, and Afghanistan. Almost
20% of the overall 2011 admissions, or 9,388
persons, were Iraqi. The recent articles advocate
for an increase in this number and an ease in
access to the system, but even a cursory look at
the statistics should elicit a double-take at the
tiny number of Afghans admitted.
Hasan and
other Afghans in Turkey represent only a small
fraction of the over 2.6 million Afghan refugees
worldwide, most of whom live in neighboring
Pakistan and Iran. As new sanctions cripple Iran's
economy, Afghans are crossing the border into
Turkey in increasing numbers and are expected to
surpass Iranians to form the second-largest group
of refugees in Turkey next year.
Certainly
responsibility for these refugees must be shared
by various actors, not just the United States.
Only 26 countries currently have resettlement
programs, and those that do should increase their
quotas. Turkey itself must open up local
integration as a durable solution. But for now,
Hasan must await an answer from the nation that
put boots on the ground in his country in 2001.
What response can our NGO give to Hasan?
Is there anything more to it than the apparent
brutal truth: among the already unwanted, you are
the least favored? The standard explanation by
UNHCR-Turkey, that refugees from countries sharing
a border with Turkey get priority due to security
considerations, has lost credibility, particularly
since three times as many Somalis have left Turkey
in the last seven years than Afghans. Although
they may not know the specific name of the
American law (the Lautenberg Amendment), Afghans
know from experience that Iranian religious
minorities are given priority in the resettlement
system.
The recent attention given to
Iraqi refugees and their resettlement plight
provides an opportunity to take stock of the
broader inequities and inefficiencies of the US
Refugee Admissions Program. If our generous
resettlement program is in fact an indication of
our commitment to international law and
humanitarianism, then we should establish a system
that is transparent and does not favor specific
religious groups while others wait endlessly.
Resettlement quotas should reflect the
size of each refugee group in first-countries of
asylum like Turkey - and barring major
vulnerability, referrals should be made according
to the date of refugee recognition, so that new
arrivals do not jump ahead of others. Simplifying
the system will also lead to more resettlement for
Afghans. In doing so, we will gain back the
confidence and trust of many, like Hasan, who have
lost their home and their future, at least in part
to American geopolitical adventures.
Zaid Hydari is an American
attorney and currently the co-coordinator of the
Helsinki Citizens Assembly Refugee Advocacy and
Support Program's (HCA-RASP) Refugee Status
Determination Legal Assistance Unit in Istanbul.
He is also the founder and chair of the board of
directors of the Refugee Solidarity Network, a
start-up American non-profit organization that
aims to bring together American and Turkish
refugee rights advocates.
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