Iyufiou
Refugee Watch Issue No. 12, December 2000
Contents
Editorial
Zionism and Palestinian Refugees by Ahmad H. Sadi
Forced Repatriation of Tamil Asylum Seekers from Europe by Didier Bertrand
An Outsider Five Hundred Years ago by Rila Mukherjee
Pakistanis and Indians outside South Asia by Papiya Ghosh
Research Notes
Women Refugees of Kot Chandana by Atta ur Rehman Sheikh
Editorial
There has been a major complaint that the approach of the UNHCR towards 'refugee determination' process has been bureaucratic, and that the UNHCR largely continues to apply the sixties (cold war age) definition of refugees and follows the 'individual status determination' procedure developed during that period to asylum seekers in the nineties. Its 'status' determination procedure has proved patently inadequate in responding to the South Asian reality of masses of people being evicted by ethnic violence and the failure of governments to protect the basic rights of the people. There is reason for the human rights community and peace activists to be unhappy with the UNHCR for its large-scale rejection of people in need of protection. It has been pointed out several times to UNHCR that as the countries of South Asia are not signatories to the 1951 Convention and as they do not have a national refugee policy, UNHCR's 'refugee certificate' is the only form of 'protection' that an asylum seeker in South Asia has.
Experience shows that the UNHCR offices in South Asia, most of the time function on the basis of limited information. When they engage 'investigators' or 'interpreters' they tend to select persons close to the governments. This happened in 1993-1996. The UNHCR office in India had agreed to interview then the Sri Lankan Tamil refugees 'on the ship' about the 'voluntariness' of their return to Jaffna when it knew very well that conditions in the Indian run refugee camps were so inhospitable that the refugees had no option but to 'agree' to return. Similarly, in...
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