As Indonesia did not sign the convention on the status of refugees and lacks any domestic legislations providing refugees rights, refugees in Indonesia do not have the right to employment, permanent residency or citizenship.
As of 2020 there were 13,745 registered refugees temporarily living in Indonesia, most hoping for resettlement elsewhere. They live in precarious circumstances of poverty, unsanitary living conditions and no access to education. These circumstances have a negative effect on their health, including their mental health.
At the end of 2020, there were 13,745 refugees in Indonesia who had fled from 50 countries, the majority of them were from Afghanistan [1] many are Rohingya. [2]
Indonesia is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention nor its 1967 Protocol, and there are no Indonesian laws that provide any rights to refugees. [3] Consequently, the Indonesian government does not perform any assessments of refugees' needs [3] nor do they have any rights to access employment, start a business, or any pathway to get permanent residency or citizenship. [3] [2] Indonesia authorities are perceived to take an "attitude of tolerance" towards refugees. [3]
Registration in with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Jakarta does provide refugees with asylum's seekers identification cards, which permits them to stay in Indonesia. [3] The International Organization for Migration provides basic housing. [2]
In late 2016, the President of Indonesia signed a petition called “The Presidential Regulation on the Handling of Refugees”, stating that needs and safety information should fall under government's responsibility in the future. [1]
The refugee policies of USA and Australia have created circumstances such that refugees become "stranded" in Indonesia. [3] [2]
Since 2000, the Australian government has funded Indonesian border patrols. [2] Between 2001 and 2018, Australia provided $350-million to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to fund community housing in Indonesia, drawing accusations that IOM is an outsourced arm of the Australian Border Force. [2]
Living conditions provided by the IOM were described by the Refugee Council of Australia as inhumane, noting "solitary confinement, lack of basic essentials and medical care, physical and sexual abuse, and severe overcrowding". Rohingya refugee John Joniad described the housing as an "open prison" in 2022. [2]
The role that the IOM played was described as "blue-washing", using United Nations agencies "to present a humanitarian veneer while carrying out rights-violating activities on behalf of Western nations" by researchers Asher Hirsch and Cameron Doig in The Globe and Mail newspaper in 2022. [2]
Refugees find themselves in Indonesia commonly because they intended to pass through Indonesia temporarily on their way to other places such as Australia or Malaysia, [3] or because they have been forcibly relocated to Indonesia by Australian authorities as a consequence of agreements between the Australian and Indonesian government. [3]
The lack of ability to integrate, work for pay, or gain permanent resident status strongly incentivises refugees towards staying in Indonesia as short a time as possible, but resettlement elsewhere is the only logical route out of Indonesia for refugees, and that rarely takes less than two years. [3] 2022 reporting in The Globe and Mail included the story of a Karim Ullah, a Rohingya refugee who has lived in Pekanbaru for eleven years. [2]
The combination of poverty, lack of government protection makes refugees in Indonesia easy targets for theft from authorities and people smugglers. [3] Refugees lack safety, and are subject to boredom, which leads to mental health conditions. [3] No education is provided to child refugees. [3]
Refugee's health is impacted by poverty and unsanitary living conditions, which can include living in tents. [4]
On 27 December 2023, hundreds of students from various universities in Aceh, such as Abulyatama University, Bina Bangsa Getsempena University, and University of Muhammadiyah Aceh, stormed a shelter for Rohingya refugees and forced them out of a convention centre in the city of Banda Aceh, demanding they be deported. [5] [6] The students also seen kicking the belongings of the Rohingya men, women, and children who were seated on the floor and crying in fear. [5] They burned tyres and chanted “Kick them out” and “Reject Rohingya in Aceh”. [5]
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is a United Nations agency mandated to aid and protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and stateless people, and to assist in their voluntary repatriation, local integration or resettlement to a third country. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, with over 18,879 staff working in 138 countries as of 2020.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is a United Nations related organization working in the field of migration. The organization implements operational assistance programmes for migrants, including internally displaced persons, refugees, and migrant workers.
A refugee, conventionally speaking, is a person who has lost the protection of their country of origin and who cannot or is unwilling to return there due to well-founded fear of persecution. Such a person may be called an asylum seeker until granted refugee status by the contracting state or the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) if they formally make a claim for asylum.
In international law, a stateless person is someone who is "not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law". Some stateless people are also refugees. However, not all refugees are stateless, and many people who are stateless have never crossed an international border. At the end of 2022, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated 4.4 million people worldwide as either stateless or of undetermined nationality, 90,800 (+2%) more than at the end of 2021.
The Pacific Solution is the name given to the government of Australia's policy of transporting asylum seekers to detention centres on island nations in the Pacific Ocean, rather than allowing them to land on the Australian mainland. Initially implemented from 2001 to 2007, it had bipartisan support from the Coalition and Labor opposition at the time. The Pacific Solution consisted of three central strategies:
Banda Aceh is the capital and largest city in the province of Aceh, Indonesia. It is located on the island of Sumatra and has an elevation of 35 meters. The city covers an area of 61.36 square kilometers (23.69 sq mi) and had a population of 223,446 people at the 2010 Census, rising to 252,899 at the 2020 Census. The official estimate as at mid 2023 was 261,969.
Non-refoulement is a fundamental principle of international law that forbids a country receiving asylum seekers from returning them to a country in which they would be in probable danger of persecution based on "race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion". Unlike political asylum, which applies to those who can prove a well-grounded fear of political persecution, non-refoulement refers to the generic repatriation of people, including refugees into war zones and other disaster locales.
Afghan refugees are citizens of Afghanistan who were forced to flee from their country as a result the continuous wars that the country has suffered since the Afghan-Soviet war, the Afghan civil war, the Afghanistan war (2001–2021) or either political or religious persecution. The 1978 Saur Revolution, followed by the 1979 Soviet invasion, marked the first major wave of internal displacement and international migration to neighboring Iran and Pakistan; smaller numbers also went to India or to countries of the former Soviet Union. Between 1979 and 1992, more than 20% of Afghanistan's population fled the country as refugees. Following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, many returned to Afghanistan, however many Afghans were again forced to flee during the civil war in the 90s. Over 6 million Afghan refugees were residing in Iran and Pakistan by 2000. Most refugees returned to Afghanistan following the 2001 United States invasion and overthrow of the Taliban regime. Between 2002 and 2012, 5.7 million refugees returned to Afghanistan, increasing the country's population by 25%.
World Refugee Day is an international day organised every year on 20 June by the United Nations. It is designed to celebrate and honour refugees from around the world. The day was first established on 20 June 2001, in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.
Refugees of Iraq are Iraqi nationals who have fled Iraq due to war or persecution. In 1980- 2017, large number of refugees fled Iraq, peaking with the Iraq War and continuing until the end of the War in Iraq (2013–2017). Precipitated by a series of conflicts including the Kurdish rebellions during the Iran–Iraq War, Iraq's Invasion of Kuwait (1990) and the Gulf War (1991), the subsequent sanctions against Iraq (1991–2003), culminating in the Iraq War and the subsequent War in Iraq (2013–2017), millions were forced by insecurity to flee their homes in Iraq. Iraqi refugees established themselves in urban areas in other countries rather than refugee camps.
There is a history of persecution of Muslims in Myanmar that continues to the present day. Myanmar is a Buddhist majority country, with significant Christian and Muslim minorities. While Muslims served in the government of Prime Minister U Nu (1948–63), the situation changed with the 1962 Burmese coup d'état. While a few continued to serve, most Christians and Muslims were excluded from positions in the government and army. In 1982, the government introduced regulations that denied citizenship to anyone who could not prove Burmese ancestry from before 1823. This disenfranchised many Muslims in Myanmar, even though they had lived in Myanmar for several generations.
Palestinians in Iraq are people of Palestinians, most of whom have been residing in Iraq after they were displaced in 1948. Before 2003, there were approximately 34,000 Palestinians thought to be living in Iraq, mainly concentrated in Baghdad. However, since the 2003 Iraq War, the figure lies between 10,000–13,000, although a precise figure has been hard to determine. The situation of Palestinians in Iraq deteriorated after the fall of Saddam Hussein and particularly following the bombing of the Al-Askari Mosque in 2006. Since then, with the rise in insecurity throughout Iraq, they have been the target of expulsion, persecution and violence by Shia militants, and the new Iraqi Government with militant groups targeting them for preferential treatment they received under the Ba'ath Party rule. Currently, several hundred Palestinians from Iraq are living in border camps, after being refused entry to neighbouring Jordan and Syria. Others have been resettled to third countries.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Representation in Cyprus is an office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) opened in August 1974 upon the request of the Government of Cyprus and the Secretary-General of the United Nations. UNHCR Representation in Cyprus was designated as Coordinator of the United Nations Humanitarian Assistance for Cyprus. UNHCR was also responsible upon the request of the Cyprus Government to examine applications for refugee status.
Asylum in Australia has been granted to many refugees since 1945, when half a million Europeans displaced by World War II were given asylum. Since then, there have been periodic waves of asylum seekers from South East Asia and the Middle East, with government policy and public opinion changing over the years.
In 2015, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya people were forcibly displaced from their villages and IDP camps in Rakhine State, Myanmar, due to sectarian violence. Nearly one million fled to neighbouring Bangladesh and some travelled to Southeast Asian countries including Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand by rickety boats via the waters of the Strait of Malacca, Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea.
A refugee crisis can refer to difficulties and dangerous situations in the reception of large groups of forcibly displaced persons. These could be either internally displaced, refugees, asylum seekers or any other huge groups of migrants.
Voluntary return or voluntary repatriation is usually the return of an illegal immigrant or over-stayer, a rejected asylum seeker, a refugee or displaced person, or an unaccompanied minor; sometimes it is the emigration of a second-generation immigrant who makes an autonomous decision to return to their ethnic homeland when they are unable or unwilling to remain in the host country.
Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh mostly refer to forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals from Myanmar who are living in Bangladesh. The Rohingya people have experienced ethnic and religious persecution in Myanmar for decades. Hundreds of thousands have fled to other countries in Southeast Asia, including Malaysia, Indonesia, and Philippines. The majority have escaped to Bangladesh, where there are two official, registered refugee camps. Recently violence in Myanmar has escalated, so the number of refugees in Bangladesh has increased rapidly. According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), more than 723,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since 25 August 2017.
Immigration detention of refugee and asylum seeking children in Thailand violates the rights of children under international law. The undocumented migrant children are detained for indefinite and prolonged periods without proper access to legal support. Thailand is key transit route, host and final destination for refugees seeking asylum in southeast Asia and Australia. During the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) session in May 2016, various human rights issues including detention of refugee and asylum seeking children were reported. Currently, there are no effective alternatives to immigration detention and all sectors of population including children are subject to detention.
In December 2023, students from various universities in Aceh, Indonesia protested and rioted against Rohingya refugees. The protests took place at the Balee Meuseuraya Hall in Banda Aceh.
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