• How Refugees’ Trauma Became ‘Currency’ in Resettlement

    For many, seeking asylum requires repeatedly recounting your story, compounding its impact. Refugees feel pressured not only to prove persecution, but also that they’ve also been damaged by it. Betsy Joles reports from Malaysia.

    https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/articles/2018/08/10/how-refugees-trauma-became-currency-in-resettlement
    #réinstallation #asile #migrations #réfugiés #audition #preuve #persécution #trauma #traumatisme #interview

    • Not Without Dignity: Views of Syrian Refugees in Lebanon on Displacement, Conditions of Return, and Coexistence

      Discussions about a future return of refugees and coexistence among groups currently at war in Syria must begin now, even in the face of ongoing violence and displacement. This report, based on interviews with refugees, makes it clear that the restoration of dignity will be important to creating the necessary conditions for return and peaceful coexistence — and building a stable post-war Syria one day.


      https://www.ictj.org/publication/syria-refugees-lebanon-displacement-return-coexistence
      #rapport

    • New ICTJ Study: Syrian Refugees in Lebanon See Security, Restoration of Dignity as Key Conditions for Return

      A new report from the International Center for Transitional Justice argues that discussions about a future return of refugees and coexistence among groups currently at war in Syria must begin now, even in the face of ongoing violence and displacement. The report makes it clear that the restoration of refugees’ sense of dignity will be important to creating the necessary conditions for return and peaceful coexistence — and building a stable post-war Syria one day.

      https://www.ictj.org/news/study-syrian-refugees-lebanon-conditions-return

    • We Must Start the Conversation About Return of Syrian Refugees Now

      If millions of displaced Syrians are to go home one day, we need to understand refugees’ conditions for returning, attitudes to justice and the possibility of coexistence, say the authors of an International Center for Transitional Justice study of refugees in Lebanon.

      https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/community/2017/06/21/we-must-start-the-conversation-about-return-of-syrian-refugees-now

    • Nowhere Left to Run: Refugee Evictions in Lebanon in Shadow of Return

      Lebanon wants to evict 12,000 refugees who live near an air base where foreign military assistance is delivered. The evictions, which began in spring and recently resumed after a short respite, have left refugees more vulnerable amid rising demands they return to Syria.


      https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/articles/2017/09/28/nowhere-left-to-run-refugee-evictions-in-lebanon-in-shadow-of-return
      #Liban

    • Syrian Refugees Return From Lebanon Only to Flee War Yet Again

      Refugees who returned to Syria from Lebanon under cease-fire deals this summer have been displaced again by fighting. Those who stayed behind are pressing for international guarantees of safety on return, as Lebanese officials explore ways to get more refugees to leave.


      https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/articles/2017/10/11/syrian-refugees-return-from-lebanon-only-to-flee-war-yet-again

    • Dangerous Exit: Who Controls How Syrians in Lebanon Go Home

      AS HALIMA clambered into a truck leaving Lebanon in late June, she resolved that if the men driving the vehicle were arrested at the Syrian border, she would get out and walk back to her village on her own. The 66-year-old grandmother had not seen the son and daughter she left behind in Syria for five years. Wearing an embroidered black dress and a traditional headdress, her crinkled eyes shone with determination. “I’m coming back to my land,” she said.

      Having begged her not to leave, Halima’s two daughters staying in Lebanon wept on her shoulders. “We’re afraid she won’t come back,” 42-year-old Sherifa said, as her voice cracked. Sherifa cannot follow her mother to Syria; her eldest son, who has single-handedly kept the family afloat with odd jobs because of his father’s disability, would be sent to war.

      Huddled in groups at the checkpoint in northeast Lebanon, other families also said their goodbyes. A teenage girl knelt on the dirt road, refusing to let go of her 19-year-old brother’s legs. Their mother, Nawal, held her as he left for a truck to the border. “I don’t know how he will live on his own in Syria. Only God knows what will happen to him,” Nawal said. “I didn’t think he would actually leave. It all happened very fast.”

      A few months earlier, 3,000 Syrians in the Lebanese border town of Arsal had registered their names with Syrian and Lebanese intelligence agencies to return to their villages just over the mountains in Syria’s Qalamoun region. When the first group of several hundred people was approved to leave on June 28, many families were separated, as some members either decided not to register or were not approved by Syrian authorities.

      “We need a political solution for these people to go back, but the politics doesn’t start here in Lebanon,” a Lebanese intelligence agent said, as a scuffle broke out that scorching June morning. A Syrian man lunged at Khaled Abdel Aziz, a real estate businessman who had been put in charge of signing up fellow refugees to return. Abdel Aziz sweated in his suit as he dashed between television interviews, repeating that Syrians had a country of their own to go back to. “You’re protecting the army, not protecting yourself,” the man yelled, before being pulled away.

      The TV cameras rolled as dozens of trucks and tractors piled high with timber, water tanks and chicken coops were checked off a list by Lebanese intelligence agents and headed with an army escort to the Syrian border. A line of TV reporters announced to their Lebanese viewers that these refugees were going home.

      The next day, on the other side of Arsal, a small group of refugees held a sit-in, to much less fanfare. “We’re asking for return with dignity,” one banner read, “with guarantees from the international community and the U.N.”

      “We’re not against the return, but we want conditions, guarantees,” said Khaled Raad, one of the organizers. His refugee committee has been petitioning the U.N. and sympathetic Lebanese politicians for international protection for returning Syrians for a year. “I mean, this is not like taking a cup of tea or coffee to say, after seven years, go ahead and return to your houses. It’s not an easy thing.”

      “WE NEED A POLITICAL SOLUTION FOR THESE PEOPLE TO GO BACK, BUT THE POLITICS DOESN’T START HERE IN LEBANON.”

      By then, Halima had arrived back in Syria. Apart from some tractors breaking down en route, they had no problem crossing the border. Halima went to stay with her son while she waited to hear about the situation in her hometown, the mountaintop village of Fleeta. Her granddaughters had grown up quickly while she was in Lebanon, and she loved spending time with them in the neighboring town.

      But as more of their friends and relatives returned to Fleeta, with subsequent groups departing Arsal in July, word came to the family of empty homes and little power, water or work in the Syrian village. Sherifa received messages from relatives who had returned to Fleeta but now wanted to escape again. With no easy way to come back to Lebanon legally, they planned to smuggle themselves back across the border.

      Without her mother, and with bad news from Fleeta making it less likely she would ever return to Syria, Sherifa became increasingly desperate. Her husband, who is unable to work for health reasons, sunk into depression. “By God, dying is better than living,” Sherifa said. “I seek refuge in God from this return.”

      LONGING FOR HOME, AFRAID TO RETURN
      RETURNING TO SYRIA during this eighth year of conflict is both an excruciating personal decision and a political calculation: by refugees, the government in Syria, and other nations with a stake in the war. As the government recaptures more territory from opposition groups, and fighting quells in certain areas, some refugees are considering returning, while others are terrified of the increasing pressure to go back. After Lebanon began organizing small group returns this year, including from Arsal, these dilemmas became more urgent.

      To return is to take a political gamble: Refugees must weigh the risks of staying against the risks of going. They try to figure out who can be trusted to tell them the truth. They gather snippets of information from their cities, towns and villages about what happens to people who return. They struggle to decipher the intentions of the mercurial and multi-layered Syrian authorities and their foreign allies.

      Some of the broader dangers are well-known: an estimated half a million people killed in Syria’s war, including thousands dead this year; some one million people forced to leave their homes this year alone; a third of all houses and half of all schools and hospitals damaged or destroyed; in government-controlled areas, mandatory conscription into battle for men under 43, fear of arrest and torture, and the difficulties of reintegrating into a society and economy fractured by war.

      Until now, few refugees have considered this a risk worth taking. In 2017, the U.N. said 77,300 refugees went back independently to Syria, out of 5.6 million who had fled the country. The vast majority of Syrian refugees have consistently told U.N. and independent surveys they hoped to return home one day, but do not yet feel safe to do so.

      There are also risks to staying. More than 80 percent of Syrian refugees remain in three neighboring countries: Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. There, they face soaring poverty, years out of work or school, lack of official documents, risk of arrest and, above all, an increasing public clamoring for Syrians to be sent back.

      In Lebanon, where at least 1.5 million Syrians have sought refuge – increasing the country’s population by a quarter – the pressure to leave is the most intense. Few Syrians have legal status, even fewer can work. Many towns have imposed curfews or carried out mass evictions. At the U.N. General Assembly last year, Lebanon’s president Michel Aoun insisted Syrians must return, voluntarily or not. “The claim that they will not be safe should they return to their country is an unacceptable pretext,” he told world leaders.

      https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/articles/2018/08/08/dangerous-exit-who-controls-how-syrians-in-lebanon-go-home
      #Liban

    • Turkish minister: 255,300 Syrian refugees have returned home

      Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu said on Sunday that 255,300 Syrian refugees have returned home over the past two years, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.

      “Some 160,000 of them returned to the Euphrates Shield region after Turkey brought peace there,” added Soylu, speaking to reporters in the southern province of Hatay bordering Syria.

      Turkey carried out Operation Euphrates Shield between August 2016 and March 2017 to eliminate the terrorist threat along the border in the northern Syrian regions of Jarabulus, Al-Rai, Al-Bab and Azaz with the help of the Free Syrian Army.

      Expressing concern about a possible operation in the Idlib region of Syria by regime forces, the minister underlined that Turkey would not be responsible for a wave of migration in the event of an offensive.

      Soylu also noted that an average of 6,800 irregular migrants a day used to enter Greece from western Turkey in 2015 and that now it has been reduced to 79.

      https://www.turkishminute.com/2018/09/09/turkish-minister-255300-syrian-refugees-have-returned-home

    • The fate of Syrian refugees in Lebanon. Between forced displacement and forced return

      Recent news reports have surfaced on a possible United States-Russia deal to arrange for the return of refugees to Syria—reports that coincided both with the announcement that thousands of Syrians have died in regime prisons, and with one of the worst massacres in the conflict, perpetrated by ISIS in the city of Swaida. The US-Russia deal has been welcomed by Lebanese politicians, particularly those who have been scheming to repatriate Syrians for years now. But, unsurprisingly, the absence of a clear and coherent strategy for repatriation by the Lebanese government puts Syrian refugees at grave risk.

      In June, UNHCR interviewed Syrian refugees in Arsal who had expressed their willingness to go back to Syria in order to verify that they had the documentation needed for return and to ensure they were fully aware of the conditions in their home country. In response, caretaker Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil accused the agency of impeding refugees’ free return and ordered a freeze on the renewal of agency staff residency permits.

      This tug of war raises two main questions: What are the conditions in Lebanon that are pushing refugees toward returning to Syria while the conflict is ongoing and dangers persist? And what are the obstacles preventing some Syrians from returning freely to their homes?

      Conditions for Syrians in Lebanon

      Syrians began fleeing to Lebanon as early as 2011, but the Lebanese government failed to produce a single policy response until 2014, leading to ad-hoc practices by donors and host communities.

      By the end of 2014, the government began introducing policies to “reduce the number of displaced Syrians,” including closing the borders and requiring Syrians to either register with UNHCR and pledge not to work, or to secure a Lebanese sponsor to remain legally in the country and pay a $200 residency permit fee every six months. In May 2015, the government directed UNHCR to stop registering refugees. These conditions put many Syrians in a precarious position: without documentation, vulnerable to arrest and detention, and with limited mobility. Municipalities have been impeding freedom of movement as well, by imposing curfews on Syrians and even expelling them from their towns.

      In addition to the difficulties imposed by the state, Syrians face discrimination and violence on a day-to-day basis. Refugee settlements have been set on fire, Syrians have been beaten in the streets, and camps are regularly raided by the Lebanese army. All the while, Lebanese politicians foster and fuel the hatred of Syrians, blaming them for the country’s miseries and painting them as existential and security threats.

      Despite the polarization among Lebanese politicians regarding the situation in Syria, there is a consensus that the Syrian refugees are a burden that Lebanon cannot bear. Politicians across the board have been advocating for the immediate repatriation of refugees, and state officials are beginning to take action. President Michel Aoun made a statement in May declaring that Lebanon would seek a solution regarding the refugee crisis without taking into account the preferences of the UN or the European Union. This was followed by Bassil’s move, to freeze the residency permits of UNHCR staff, the leading agency (despite its many shortcomings) providing services for, and protecting the interests of, Syrian refugees. While UNHCR maintains that there are no safe zones in Syria as of yet, Lebanon’s General Security has begun facilitating the return of hundreds of refugees from Arsal and nearby towns. This process has been monitored by UNHCR to ensure that the returns are voluntary. Hezbollah has also established centers to organize the return of Syrians to their homes in collaboration with the Syrian regime.

      Syrian regime obstructing refugees’ free return

      As the situation for Syrian refugees in Lebanon becomes more and more unbearable, conditions for them back home remain troubling. Since 2012, the Syrian regime has been taking deliberate measures that would effectively make the situation for returning Syrians extremely difficult and dangerous.

      Conscription

      Syrian males aged 18 to 42 must serve in the Syrian Armed Forces. While exemptions were allowed in the past, a decree issued in 2017 bans exemptions from military service. Refusing to serve in the Syrian army results in imprisonment or an $8,000 fine, which most Syrians are unable to pay, thus risking having their assets seized by the regime.

      Property as a weapon of war

      Law No. 66 (2012) allowed for the creation of development zones in specified areas across the country. Under the pretense of redeveloping areas currently hosting informal settlements or unauthorized housing, the law is actually being used to expropriate land from residents in areas identified in the decree, which are mostly former opposition strongholds such as Daraya and Ghouta.

      Law No. 10 (2018), passed in April, speeds up the above process. This law stipulates the designation of development or reconstruction zones, requiring local authorities to request a list of property owners from public real estate authorities. Those whose have property within these zones but are not registered on the list are notified by local authorities and must present proof of property within 30 days. If they are successful in providing proof, they get shares of the redevelopment project; otherwise, ownership reverts to the local authority in the province, town, or city where the property is located. Human Rights Watch has published a detailed Q&A that explains the law and its implications.

      These laws, coupled with systematic destruction of land registries by local authorities, fully equip the regime to dispossess hundreds of thousands of Syrian families. Reports indicate that the regime has already begun reconstruction in areas south of Damascus.

      Statements by Syrian officials

      Syrian officials have made several public statements that reveal their hostility toward refugees. On August 20, 2017, at the opening ceremony of a conference held by Syria’s foreign ministry, President Bashar al-Assad gave a speech in which he said: “It’s true that we lost the best of our young men as well as our infrastructure, but in return we gained a healthier, more homogeneous society.” On another occasion, Assad stated his belief that some refugees are terrorists.

      In September 2017, a video of Issam Zahreddine, a commander in the Syrian Armed Forces, went viral. In the video, Zahreddine threatens refugees against returning, saying: “To everyone who fled Syria to other countries, please do not return. If the government forgives you, we will not. I advise you not to come back.” Zahreddine later clarified that his remarks were meant for rebels and ISIS followers, but that clarification should be taken with a grain of salt given his bloody track record in the war up until his death in October 2017. Along similar lines, leaked information from a meeting of top-ranking army officers just last month reported the following statement by the head of the Syrian Air Force Intelligence administration, General Jamil Al-Hassan: “A Syria with 10 million trustworthy people obedient to the leadership is better than a Syria with 30 million vandals.”

      Unknown fate

      Considering the unwelcoming policies in Lebanon and the treacherous conditions in Syria, what is the fate of Syrian refugees, specifically those who oppose the Assad regime? Until now, the return championed by Lebanese politicians implies return to a fascist regime that has caused the largest refugee crisis since the Second World War and unapologetically committed countless war crimes. While Lebanese politicians continue to focus on repatriation, they are failing to acknowledge the major barriers preventing Syrians from returning home: the Assad regime and ongoing mass violence.

      We cannot speak of safe, dignified, and sustainable returns without demanding justice and accountability. Regime change and trials for those who committed war crimes over the span of the last seven years are a long way off, and all evidence currently points toward the Assad regime retaining power. Any strategy must therefore prioritize the safety of Syrians who are likely to be detained, tortured, and killed for their political views upon return, or simply denied entry to Syria altogether. Lebanese policy makers must take into account that Syrians residing in Lebanon are not a homogenous entity, and some may never be able to return to their homes. Those Syrians should not be forced to choose between a brutal regime that will persecute them and a country that strips away their rights and dignity. It is time for Lebanon to adopt clear policies on asylum, resettlement, and return that ensure the right of all Syrians to lead a safe and dignified life.

      http://www.executive-magazine.com/economics-policy/the-fate-of-syrian-refugees-in-lebanon

    • Le retour des réfugiés en Syrie commence à préoccuper la communauté internationale

      Lors d’une conférence sur la Syrie à Bruxelles, le retour des réfugiés syriens dans leur pays a été évoqué. Démarrée en 2011, la guerre en Syrie touche à sa fin

      La situation en Syrie est loin d’être stabilisée. Les besoins de financement, de nourriture de matériel sont même en constante augmentation. Selon un haut fonctionnaire de l’ONU, un éventuel assaut contre la dernière enclave rebelle pourrait entraîner une « catastrophe humanitaire ». Pourtant, alors que 12 millions de Syriens, soit près de la moitié de la population syrienne avant la guerre, a fui le pays ou a été déplacée à l’intérieur, la question du retour, étape indispensable à la reconstruction, commence à se poser.

      C’est le principal message ressorti de la conférence « Supporting the Future of Syria and the Region » , qui vient de se tenir à Bruxelles. Les diplomates européens ont mis l’accent sur les difficultés de l’Europe à isoler le Président Bashar al-Assad, vainqueur de la guerre, soutenu par la Russie et l’Iran, pendant que les États-Unis retirent leurs troupes.

      L’UE a rappelé qu’un soutien à la reconstruction à long terme dépendrait du processus de paix de l’ONU pour mettre fin à une guerre responsable de la mort de centaines de milliers de personnes.

      Les Européens sont toutefois divisés sur la question de la reconstruction du pays, dans la mesure où le processus de paix de l’ONU est bloqué, que l’intervention militaire russe de 2015 s’avère décisive et que les pays arabes voisins envisagent de rétablir des liens diplomatiques.

      « Les États-Unis se retirent et les Russes n’ont pas l’argent. Voilà le contexte », a expliqué un haut fonctionnaire de l’UE, cité par Reuters. L’Allemagne, la France et les Pays-Bas défendent ouvertement l’idée de libérer les fonds de reconstruction uniquement quand le pays aura démarré sa transition politique et que Bashar-al-Assad ne sera plus au pouvoir. Aucun représentant officiel de la Syrie n’a été invité à la conférence. L’Italie, l’Autriche et la Hongrie, grands détracteurs de la politique migratoire européenne, plaident en revanche pour une négociation avec les autorités syriennes pour que les millions de réfugiés puissent rentrer chez eux.

      Mogherini craint le « ni guerre ni paix »

      La cheffe de la diplomatie européenne, Federica Mogherini, a déclaré qu’il y avait un risque que le pays se retrouve coincé dans une situation de « ni guerre ni paix ». Le Haut Commissaire des Nations Unies pour les réfugiés, Filippo Grandi, a déclaré qu’il était prévisible que 2019 soit la première année depuis le début de la guerre « où il y aura plus de Syriens (réfugiés et déplacés internes) qui rentreront chez eux que de nouveaux déplacés. S’étant rendu en Syrie la semaine dernière, le Haut Commissaire a déclaré avoir été « marqué et touché » par la résilience du peuple syrien.

      « C’est dans un contexte de grandes destructions, avec des zones encore dangereuses et un manque de produits de première nécessité (nourriture, médicaments, eau) et d’emplois que de nombreux Syriens rentrent chez eux. Les agences humanitaires font ce qu’elles peuvent, mais un très grand nombre de déplacés internes et quelques réfugiés prennent la décision difficile de rentrer chez eux, et les besoins en produits de première nécessité ne font qu’augmenter », a-t-il expliqué, ajoutant que la plupart des réfugiés voyaient leur avenir dans leur pays natal et que « nous savons que 56 000 Syriens sont rentrés chez eux via des mouvements organisés l’année dernière, mais ce chiffre est certainement plus élevé ».

      Engagements financiers

      « Je suis heureux de vous annoncer que nous collaborons notamment avec le gouvernement syrien. Et j’aimerais particulièrement remercier la Fédération de Russie pour sa coopération face aux problèmes que le retour des réfugiés syriens implique pour eux », a ajouté Filippo Grandi. Dans le cadre de l’appel de l’ONU, 3,3 milliards de dollars seraient nécessaires pour venir en aide aux déplacés internes et 5,5 milliards de dollars pour les réfugiés et les communautés d’accueil dans les pays voisins.

      Le Secrétaire général adjoint aux affaires humanitaires, Marc Lowcock, a déclaré à la presse que les engagements financiers s’élevaient « au moins à 6,5 milliards de dollars » et peut-être même à près de 7 milliards de dollars. « C’est un très bon résultat, et si nous y parvenons vraiment en fin de compte, nous serons très heureux », a-t-il déclaré. Federica Mogherini a déclaré que l’UE contribuerait à hauteur de 560 millions d’euros pour venir en aide au peuple syrien durant l’année 2019 et que le même montant serait libéré les années suivantes.

      Filippo Grandi a également exprimé son inquiétude quant à la situation en déclin de la ville d’Idlib, près de la frontière turque. Près de 90 personnes y ont été tuées par des obus et des frappes aériennes, et la moitié d’entre elles étaient des enfants.

      « La pire des catastrophes humanitaires »

      « Permettez-moi de répéter ce que nous avons déjà dit à maintes reprises. Une attaque militaire d’envergure sur la ville d’Idlib occasionnerait la pire catastrophe humanitaire du 21ème siècle. Ce serait tout simplement inacceptable », a déclaré Filippo Grandi.

      Avec l’aide d’avions russes, l’armée syrienne a attaqué des villes au mains des forces rebelles dans la région d’Idlib, dernier bastion rebelle du pays. Ce bombardement a été le plus important depuis des mois. Les forces rebelles qui se sont battues depuis 8 ans pour faire tomber le Président al-Assad sont désormais confinées dans une enclave du nord est du pays, près de la frontière turque. Près de 4 millions de Syriens y vivent aujourd’hui, dont des centaines de milliers d’opposants au régime qui ont fui d’autres régions du pays.

      La Turquie, qui a commencé à patrouiller dans la zone tampon vendredi, a condamné ce qu’elle a qualifié de provocations croissantes pour mettre fin à la trêve et a averti qu’une offensive des forces russes et syriennes causerait une crise humanitaire majeure. De nombreux résidents sont exaspérés de l’incapacité des forces turques à répondre aux bombardements. L’armée syrienne a appelé au retrait des forces turques.

      L’enclave est protégée par une zone de « désescalade », un accord négocié l’an dernier par les pays qui soutiennent Bashar al-Assad, la Russie, l’Iran ainsi que la Turquie, qui avait auparavant soutenu les forces rebelles et envoyé des troupes pour surveiller la trêve. Le ministre turc des Affaires étrangères, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, a déclaré que 320 000 Syriens avaient pu rentrer chez eux grâce aux « opérations anti-terrorisme » menées par la Turquie et la Syrie.

      https://www.euractiv.fr/section/migrations/news/return-of-refugees-to-syria-timidly-comes-on-the-agenda

    • Assad asks Syrian refugees to come home — then locks them up and interrogates them

      Guarantees offered by the government as part of a ’reconciliation’ process are often hollow, with returnees harassed or extorted.

      Hundreds of Syrian refugees have been arrested after returning home as the war they fled winds down — then interrogated, forced to inform on close family members and in some cases tortured, say returnees and human rights monitors.

      Many more who weathered the conflict in rebel-held territory now retaken by government forces are meeting a similar fate as President Bashar al-Assad’s regime deepens its longtime dependence on informers and surveillance.

      For Syrian refugees, going home usually requires permission from the government and a willingness to provide a full accounting of any involvement they had with the political opposition. But in many cases the guarantees offered by the government as part of this “reconciliation” process turn out to be hollow, with returnees subjected to harassment or extortion by security agencies or detention and torture to extract information about the refugees’ activities while they were away, according to the returnees and monitoring groups.

      Almost 2,000 people have been detained after returning to Syria during the past two years, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, while hundreds more in areas once controlled by the rebels have also been arrested.

      “If I knew then what I know now, I would never have gone back,” said a young man who returned to a government-controlled area outside Damascus. He said he has been harassed for months by members of security forces who repeatedly turn up at his home and stop him at checkpoints to search his phone.

      “People are still being taken by the secret police, and communities are living between suspicion and fear,” he said. “When they come to your door, you cannot say no. You just have to go with them.”

      Returnees interviewed for this report spoke on the condition of anonymity or on the understanding that their family names would be withheld, because of security threats.

      Since the war erupted in 2011, more than 5 million people have fled Syria and 6 million others have been displaced to another part of the country, according to the United Nations – together representing slightly more than half the Syrian population.

      In the past two years, as Assad’s forces have largely routed the rebels and recaptured much of the country, refugees have begun to trickle back. The United Nations says that at least 164,000 refugees have returned to the country since 2016. But citing a lack of access, the United Nations has not been able to document whether they have come back to government- or opposition-held areas.

      Assad has called for more homecomings, encouraging returnees in a televised address in February to “carry out their national duties.” He said forgiveness would be afforded to returnees “when they are honest.”

      According to our data, you are the exception if nothing happens to you

      A recent survey of Syrians who returned to government-held areas found that about 75 percent had been harassed at checkpoints, in government registry offices or in the street, conscripted into the military despite promises they would be exempted, or arrested.

      “According to our data, you are the exception if nothing happens to you,” said Nader Othman, a trustee with the Syrian Association for Citizens’ Dignity, which said it had interviewed 350 returnees across Syria. “One of our most important takeaways is that most of those people who came back had thought that they were cleared by the regime. They thought their lack of opposition would protect them.”

      The Syrian government did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the treatment of returnees and other Syrians now back under government control.

      Outside Syria, many refugees say they were already apprehensive about going home, with fears over a lack of personal security only growing with reports that the government is reneging on its guarantees. Aid groups say there are few signs that a large-scale return will begin anytime soon.

      And in conversations with UN representatives, senior Syrian officials have made it clear that not all returnees are equally welcome. According to two European officials who recounted the conversations, individuals with links to opposition groups, media activism or humanitarian work will be least well received.

      But pressure on the refugees to return is rising across the Middle East, with Syria’s neighbours tightening restrictions on them in part to get them to leave.

      Homs

      Hassan, 30, left his home in the western province of Homs in 2013. Before returning at the end of last year, he secured what he believed were guarantees for his safety after paying a large bribe to a high-ranking security official.

      But officers from the state security directorate met him at the airport and took him for interrogation. “They knew everything – what I’d done abroad, which cafes I’d sat in, even the time I had sat with opposition supporters during football matches,” he recalled.

      A week later, he was arrested during a visit to a government registry office and taken to a nearby police station. In a dingy room, officers took turns beating and questioning him, he said, accusing him of ferrying ammunition for an armed opposition group inside Syria in 2014.

      “I kept telling them that they knew I wasn’t in the country then,” he said. “All they did was ask me for money and tell me that it was the way to my freedom.”

      At one point, he said, the guards dragged in a young woman he had never met. “They beat her with a water pipe until she screamed, (then) told me they would do the same if I didn’t cooperate,” Hassan said.

      He said he was released at the end of January after relatives paid another bribe, this time $7,000.

      Syrians returning from abroad, like Hassan, often have to gain security approval just to re-enter the country, in some cases signing loyalty pledges and providing extensive accounts of any political activities, according to documents listing questions to be asked and statements to be signed.

      https://nationalpost.com/news/world/assad-asks-syrian-refugees-to-come-home-then-locks-them-up-and-interro

    • Weighed down by economic woes, Syrian refugees head home from Jordan

      Rahaf* and Qassem lay out their plans to return to Syria as their five-year-old daughter plays with her toys in their small apartment in the Jordanian capital, Amman.

      It is early October, six years after they fled their home in Damascus, and the couple have decided it’s time to give up trying to make a life for themselves in Jordan.

      Last year, 51-year-old Qassem lost his job at a cleaning supplies factory when the facility shut down, and Rahaf’s home business as a beautician is slow.

      For months, the couple have resorted to borrowing money from friends to cover their 200 Jordanian dinar ($282) monthly rent. They are three months overdue. “There’s nobody else for us to borrow money from,” explains Rahaf.

      Weeks later, Qassem crossed the border and headed back to their old neighbourhood, joining an increasing tide of Syrian refugees who are going home, despite the dangers and a multitude of unknowns.

      According to the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, 34,000 registered Syrian refugees have returned from Jordan since October 2018, when a key border crossing was reopened after years of closure. It’s a fraction of the 650,000 registered Syrian refugees remaining in Jordan, but a dramatic jump from previous years, when annual returns hovered at around 7,000.

      Syrian refugees from the other main host countries – Turkey and Lebanon – are making the trip too. UNHCR has monitored more than 209,000 voluntary refugee returns to Syria since 2016, but the actual figure is likely to be significantly higher.

      Some Syrian refugees face political pressure to return and anti-refugee rhetoric, but that hasn’t taken hold in Jordan.

      Here, many refugees say they are simply fed up with years spent in a dead-end job market with a bleak economic future. The uptick appears to be driven more by the fact that Syrians who wish to go home can now – for the first time in three years – board a bus or a shared taxi from the border, which is about an hour and a half’s drive north of Amman.

      People like Rahaf and Qassem are pinning their hopes on picking up what is left of the lives they led before the war. Their Damascus house, which was damaged in the conflict, is near Qassem’s old shop, where he used to sell basic groceries and cleaning supplies.

      Qassem is staying with relatives for now. But the family had a plan: if and when he gave the green light, Rahaf and their children would join him back in Damascus.

      While she waited for his signal, Rahaf sold off what little furniture and other possessions they acquired in Jordan. “Honestly, we’ve gotten tired of this life, and we’ve lost hope,” she said.
      Money problems

      Before he lost his job, Qassem endured years of verbal abuse in the workplace, and few clients made the trip to Rahaf’s home.

      When she tried to set up a salon elsewhere, their refugee status created bureaucratic hurdles the couple couldn’t overcome. “I did go ask about paying rent for one shop, and they immediately told me no,” Qassem said. “[The owners] wanted a Jordanian renter.”

      Their story echoes those of many other refugees who say they have found peace but little opportunity in Jordan.

      Syrian refugees need a permit to work in Jordan – over 153,000 have been issued so far – but they are limited to working in a few industries in designated economic zones. Many others end up in low-paying jobs, and have long faced harsh economic conditions in Jordan.

      Thousands of urban refugees earn a meagre living either on farms or construction sites, or find informal work as day labourers.

      Abu Omran, who returned to Syria three months ago, fled Damascus with his family in 2013, and for a while was able to find occasional car mechanic jobs in Amman. Work eventually dried up, and he struggled to find ways to make money that did not require hard manual labour.

      “He spent the past three years just sitting at home, with no job,” recalled Abu Omran’s wife, Umm Omran.

      Speaking to The New Humanitarian in her Amman living room several months after her husband’s departure, she was soon joined for coffee and cigarettes by her youngest son, 19-year-old Badr. Newly married, he wore a ring on one finger.

      Times were so hard for the family that Abu Omran left Jordan before he had a chance to attend the wedding, and Badr has also been contemplating a return to Syria – the country he left as a young teenager.

      Badr works in a factory near Amman that produces cleaning products, but the pay is low. And although his older brother brings in a small salary from a pastry shop, it’s getting harder and harder for the family to pull together their rent each month.

      “I’m not returning because I think the situation in Syria is good. But you don’t enter into a difficult situation unless the one you’re currently in is even worse.”

      Entering a void

      While return may seem the best option for some, there are still more unknowns than knowns across the border in Syria.

      President Bashar al-Assad’s government forces control most of the country, but there are still airstrikes in the rebel-held northwest, and the recent Turkish invasion of the northeast has raised new questions about the country’s future.

      “I’m not returning because I think the situation in Syria is good,” said Farah, a mother of three who spoke to TNH in September – about a month before she packed up her things to leave. “But you don’t enter into a difficult situation unless the one you’re currently in is even worse.”

      In 2012, Farah and her husband left their home in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Damascus for Jordan, where she gave birth to her three children.

      Her husband suffers from kidney stones, and the manual labour he has managed to pick up is just enough for them to pay for the rent of a shared house – crammed in with two other refugee families.

      The vast majority of Syrian refugees in Jordan – including Farah and Abu Omran’s families – live in urban areas like Amman, rather than in the country’s three refugee camps. They are still eligible for aid, but Farah had decided by October that she was “no longer able to bear” the poverty in Amman, even though UN food vouchers had covered some of her expenses.

      She took her three young children and crossed the border into Syria to stay with her mother, who lives in a southeastern suburb of Damascus. TNH has not been able to contact her since.

      Farah’s husband stayed behind in Jordan, fearing arrest or forced military conscription by Syrian government authorities.

      This has happened to other people who have gone back to Syria from Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon, or other host countries. Despite promises to the contrary from the government, hundreds – and possibly thousands – of returnees have reportedly been detained.

      “There are issues with what information is made available to refugees… about what is going to happen to them on the other side, in Syria.”

      Lebanese authorities have also forcibly deported thousands of Syrian refugees, and Human Rights Watch says at least three of them were detained by Syrian authorities when they got back. It isn’t clear if any Syrians have faced the same fate returning from Jordan.

      Sara Kayyali, a researcher for Human Rights Watch based in Jordan, told TNH she has yet to verify reports of disappearance, conscription, and detainment of returnees from Jordan.

      “There are issues with what information is made available to refugees… about what is going to happen to them on the other side, in Syria,” said Kayyali. “Partially because people inside are too scared to talk about the conditions in government-held areas, and partially because the restrictions applied and the behaviour of the Syrian security forces is so arbitrary that it’s difficult to predict.”

      Kayyali pointed to the 30 Jordanian citizens detained in Syria since the border opened a year ago – Amman said they entered for tourism and were arrested without reason – as a sign of what could be to come for Syrians.

      “[If those threats] apply to Jordanians, then they’re most certainly going to be applied to Syrians, potentially on an even larger scale,” said Kayyali.

      There are other obstacles to return, or challenges for people who manage to get back, including destroyed homes and lost jobs. Healthcare and water provision is scattershot in certain parts of the country, while violence and war is ongoing in others.

      Francesco Bert, a UNHCR spokesperson in Jordan, said the agency “does not facilitate returns, but offers support to refugees if they voluntarily decide to go home”.

      Asked whether it is safe for refugees to go back to Syria, Bert said the agency “considers refugees’ decisions as the main guideposts”, but gives refugees considering or planning to return “information that might inform their decision-making”, to help ensure it is truly voluntary.
      The waiting game

      Despite the obstacles, more and more people are making the trip. But families often can’t travel back together.

      For Rahaf, that meant packing her things and waiting, before finally joining her husband last weekend.

      For Umm Omran, however, that means wondering if and when she will ever see her husband again.

      The family had hoped that Abu Omran could find a job repairing cars again in Damascus, and if that didn’t work out at least he could live rent-free with his sister’s family.

      But plans for his wife and sons to join him someday, once he had found his footing, now look increasingly unlikely.

      “He hasn’t said yet if he regrets going back home,” said Umm Omran, who communicates regularly via WhatsApp with her husband and other family members who never left Syria. They live in government-controlled Damascus and don’t give away much in their chats for fear of retaliation by security forces, who they worry could be monitoring their communications.

      What Umm Omran has managed to piece together isn’t promising.

      Her husband has yet to find a job in Damascus, and is beginning to feel like a burden at his sister’s home. Their own house, where he and Umm Omran raised their sons, is bombed-out and needs extensive repairs before anyone can move back in.

      For the time-being, Umm Omran has ruled out her own potential return to Syria, fearing her two sons would insist on joining her and end up being conscripted into the armed forces. So, for now, the family remains split in two.

      “When I ask him how things are going, he just says, ‘Thank God’. He says little else,” said Umm Omran, scrolling through chats on her mobile phone. “I think he’s upset about leaving us.”

      https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature/2019/11/19/Syrian-refugees-return-Jordan
      #Amman #Jordanie

  • Immigration au #Qatar : la #kafala toujours en place malgré les promesses

    L’ONG Amnesty International publie ce jeudi un rapport pour rappeler au Qatar qu’il n’a pas tenu ses promesses en matière d’amélioration des droits des ouvriers, et notamment la réforme de la Kafala, ce système qui met tout employé à la merci de son employeur pour changer de travail, sortir du territoire…Une réforme annoncée il y a un an et qui n’a pas eu lieu.

    http://www.rfi.fr/moyen-orient/20150521-immigration-qatar-kafala-rapport-amnesty-travailleurs-migrants
    #migration #travail #exploitation

    • Will Migrant Domestic Workers in the Gulf Ever Be Safe From Abuse?

      Jahanara* had had enough. For a year, the Bangladeshi cook had been working 12 to 16 hours a day, eating only leftovers and sleeping on the kitchen floor of her employer’s Abu Dhabi home – all for half the salary she had been promised. She had to prepare four fresh meals a day for the eight-member family, who gave her little rest. She was tired, she had no phone and she was alone. So, in the summer of 2014, in the middle of the night after a long day’s work, she snuck out into the driveway, scaled the front gate and escaped.

      Jahanara ran along the road in the dark. She did not know where she was going. Eventually, a Pakistani taxi driver pulled over, and asked her if she had run away from her employer, and whether she needed help. She admitted she had no money, and no clue where she wanted to go. The driver gave her a ride, dropping her off in the neighboring emirate of Dubai, in the Deira neighborhood. There, he introduced her to Vijaya, an Indian woman in her late fifties who had been working in the Gulf for more than two decades.

      “It’s like I found family here in this strange land.”

      Vijaya gave the nervous young woman a meal of rice, dal and, as Jahanara still recalls, “a beautiful fish fry.” She arranged for Jahanara to rent half a room in her apartment and, within a week, had found her part-time housekeeping work in the homes of two expat families.

      Jahanara is a 31-year-old single woman from north Bangladesh, and Vijaya, 60, is a grandmother of eight from Mumbai, India. Jahanara speaks Bengali, while Vijaya speaks Telugu. Despite the differences in age and background, the two women have become close friends. They communicate in gestures and broken Urdu.

      “It’s like I found family here in this strange land,” Jahanara says.

      The younger woman now cleans four houses a day, and cooks dinner for a fifth, while the older woman works as a masseuse, giving traditional oil massages to mothers and babies.

      Jahanara’s experience in #Abu_Dhabi was not the first time she had been exploited as a domestic worker in the Gulf. She originally left Bangladesh six years ago, and has been home only once since then, when she ran away from abusive employers in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and the police deported her. She had no choice – under the much-criticized kafala system for legally employing migrant workers, a domestic worker is attached to a particular household that sponsors their visa. Employers often keep the worker’s passport to prevent their leaving, although this is illegal in most Gulf countries today.

      Under kafala, quitting a bad boss means losing your passport and vital work visa, and potentially being arrested or deported. This is why, the second time, Jahanara escaped in the dead of night. Now, she works outside official channels.

      “You earn at least three times more if you’re ‘khalli walli,’” Vijaya says, using a colloquial Arabic term for undocumented or freelance migrant workers. The name loosely translates as “take it or leave it.”

      “You get to sleep in your own house, you get paid on time and if your employer misbehaves, you can find a new one,” she says.

      “The Gulf needs us, but like a bad husband, it also exploits us.”

      Ever year, driven by poverty, family pressure, conflict or natural disasters back home, millions of women, mainly from developing countries, get on flights to the Gulf with their fingers crossed that they won’t be abused when they get there.

      It’s a dangerous trade-off, but one that can work out for some. When Jahanara and Vijaya describe their lives, the two women repeatedly weigh the possibility of financial empowerment against inadequate wages, routine abuse and vulnerability.

      By working for 23 years in Dubai and Muscat in Oman, Vijaya has funded the education of her three children, the construction of a house for her son in a Mumbai slum and the weddings of two daughters. She is overworked and underpaid, but she says that’s “normal.” As she sees it, it’s all part of working on the margins of one of the world’s most successful economies.

      “The Gulf needs us,” Vijaya says. “But like a bad husband, it also exploits us.”

      The International Labour Organization (ILO) reports that there are 11.5 million migrant domestic workers around the world – 73 percent of them are women. In 2016, there were 3.77 million domestic workers in Oman, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

      In a single household in these states, it’s common to find several domestic workers employed to do everything from cleaning and cooking, to guarding the home and tutoring the children.

      Unlike other sectors, the demand for domestic workers has been resilient to economic downturns. Estimated to be one of the world’s largest employers of domestic workers, Saudi Arabia hosts around 2.42 million. The majority of these workers (733,000) entered the country between 2016 and 2017, during its fiscal deficit. In 2017, domestic workers comprised a full 22 percent of Kuwait’s working age population. Oman has seen a threefold explosion in its domestic work sector since 2008. Overall, the GCC’s migrant domestic work sector has been growing at an annual average of 8.7 percent for the past decade.

      That growth is partly fueled by the increasing numbers of women entering the workforce. The percentage of Saudi Arabia’s adult female population in the formal labor force has risen from 18 percent to 22 percent over the past decade. In Qatar, the figure has jumped from 49 percent to 58 percent. And as more women go to work, there’s a growing need for others to take over the child and elderly care in their households. Experts call this transfer of care work from unpaid family members to paid workers from other countries the “global care chain.”

      A 2017 report, which examined the effect of changing demographics in the Gulf, found that dramatically decreased fertility – thanks to improved female education and later marriages – and greater numbers of the dependent elderly have resulted in an “increased trend for labour participation of ‘traditional’ informal care givers (usually women).”

      The enduring use of migrant domestic workers in the region is also a result of local traditions. For example, while Saudi Arabia was still the only country in the world that banned women from driving, there was a consistent need for male personal drivers, many coming from abroad. The ban was lifted in June 2018, but the demand for drivers is still high because many women don’t yet have licenses.

      “Without domestic workers, societies could not function here,” says Mohammed Abu Baker, a lawyer in Abu Dhabi and a UAE national. “I was brought up by many Indian nannies, at a time when Indians were our primary migrants. Now, I have a Pakistani driver, an Indonesian cook, an Indian cleaner, a Filipino home nurse and a Sri Lankan nanny. None of them speak Arabic, and they can hardly speak to each other, but they run my household like a well-oiled machine.”

      There is also demand from expatriate families, with dual wage earners looking for professional cleaning services, part-time cooks and full-time childcare workers.

      “When I came from Seattle with my husband, we were determined not to hire servants,” says Laura, a 35-year-old teacher in an American primary school in Abu Dhabi. “But after we got pregnant, and I got my teaching job, we had to get full-time help.”

      “My American guilt about hiring house help disappeared in months!” she says, as her Sri Lankan cook Frida quietly passes around home-baked cookies. “It is impossible to imagine these conveniences back home, at this price.”

      Laura says she pays minimum wage, and funds Frida’s medical insurance – “all as per law.” But she also knows that conveniences for women like her often come at a cost paid by women like Frida. As part of her local church’s “good Samaritan group” – as social workers must call themselves to avoid government scrutiny – Laura has helped fundraise medical and legal expenses for at least 40 abused migrant workers over the past two years.

      Living isolated in a house with limited mobility and no community, many domestic workers, especially women, are vulnerable to abuse. Afraid to lose their right to work, employees can endure a lot before running away, including serious sexual assault. Legal provisions do exist – in many countries, workers can file a criminal complaint against their employers, or approach labor courts for help. But often they are unaware of, or unable to access, the existing labor protections and resources.

      “I never believed the horror stories before, but when you meet woman after woman with bruises or unpaid wages, you start understanding that the same system that makes my life easier is actually broken,” Laura says.

      In 2007, Jayatri* made one of the hardest decisions of her life. She left her two young children at home in Sri Lanka, while the country was at war, to be with another family in Saudi Arabia.

      It was near the end of Sri Lanka’s protracted civil war and 22-year-old Jayatri had been struggling to support her family since her husband’s death in the war two years earlier. The 26-year conflict claimed the lives of tens of thousands of fathers, husbands, sons and brothers, forcing many Tamil women to take on the role of sole breadwinner for their families. But there are few job opportunities for women in a culture that still largely believes their place is in the home. Women who are single or widowed already face stigma, which only gets worse if they also try to find paying work in Sri Lanka.

      S. Senthurajah, executive director of SOND, an organization that raises awareness about safe migration, says that as a result, an increasing number of women are migrating from Sri Lanka to the Gulf. More than 160,000 Sri Lankan women leave home annually to work in other countries, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Malaysia, according to the International Organization for Migration.

      Senthurajah says recruitment agencies specifically target vulnerable female heads of households: widows, single and divorced women and women whose husbands are disabled or otherwise unable to work to support the family. Women like Jayatri.

      When a local recruitment agency approached her and offered her a job as a domestic worker in the Gulf, it was an opportunity she felt she couldn’t turn down. She traveled from Vavuniya, a town in the island’s north – which was then under the control of Tamil Tiger rebels – to Colombo, to undergo a few weeks of housekeeping training.

      She left her young children, a boy and a girl, with her mother. When she eventually arrived in Saudi Arabia, her passport was taken by the local recruitment agency and she was driven to her new home where there were 15 children to look after. From the start, she was abused.

      “I spent five months in that house being tortured, hit and with no proper food and no salary. I worked from 5 a.m. to midnight every day,” she says, not wanting to divulge any more details about how she was treated.

      “I just wanted to go home.”

      Jayatri complained repeatedly to the recruitment agency, who insisted that she’d signed a contract for two years and that there was no way out. She was eventually transferred to another home, but the situation there was just as bad: She worked 18 hours a day and was abused, again.

      “It was like jail,” she says.

      “I spent five months in that house being tortured, hit and with no proper food and no salary. I worked from 5 a.m. to midnight every day.”

      In 2009, Jayatri arrived back in northern Sri Lanka with nothing to show for what she had endured in Saudi Arabia. She was never paid for either job. She now works as a housemaid in Vavuniya earning $60 per month. It’s not enough.

      “This is the only opportunity I have,” she says. “There’s no support. There are so many difficulties here.”

      Jayatri’s traumatic time in Saudi Arabia is one of many stories of abuse that have come out of the country in recent years. While there are no reliable statistics on the number of migrant domestic workers who suffer abuse at the hands of their employers, Human Rights Watch says that each year the Saudi Ministry of Social Affairs and the embassies of source countries shelter thousands of domestic workers with complaints against their employers or recruiters.

      Excessive workload and unpaid wages are the most common complaints. But employers largely act with impunity, Senthurajah says.

      “It’s like a human slave sale,” Ravindra De Silva, cofounder of AFRIEL, an organization that works with returnee migrant workers in northern Sri Lanka, tells News Deeply.

      “Recruitment agencies have agents in different regions of the country and through those agents, they collect women as a group and send them. The agents know which families [to] pick easily – widows and those with financial difficulties,” he says.

      In 2016, a man turned up at Meera’s* mud-brick home on the outskirts of Jaffna, the capital of Sri Lanka’s Northern Province, offering her a job in the Gulf.

      “They told me I could earn well if I went abroad and that they could help me to look after my family,” she says.

      Within a few months of arriving in Saudi Arabia, Meera, 42, couldn’t keep up with the long hours and strenuous housework. She cooked and cleaned for 12 family members and rarely got a break.

      Her employer then became abusive.

      “He started beating me and put acid in my eyes,” she says. He also sexually assaulted her.

      But she endured the attacks and mistreatment, holding on to the hope of making enough money to secure her family’s future. After eight months, she went back home. She was never paid.

      Now Meera makes ends meet by working as a day laborer. “The agency keeps coming back, telling me how poor we are and that I should go back [to Saudi Arabia] for my children,” she says.

      “I’ll never go back again. I got nothing from it, [except] now I can’t see properly because of the acid in my eyes.”

      While thousands of women travel to a foreign country for work and end up exploited and abused, there are also those who make the journey and find what they were looking for: opportunity and self-reliance. Every day, more than 1,500 Nepalis leave the country for employment abroad, primarily in Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, India and Malaysia. Of the estimated 2.5 million Nepalis working overseas, about 11 percent are female.

      Many women from South Asian countries who work in the Gulf send remittances home that are used to improve their family’s socio-economic status, covering the cost of education, health care, food and housing. In addition to financial remittances, the social remittances of female migrants in terms of skills, attitudes, ideas and knowledge can also have wide-ranging benefits, including contributing to economic development and gender equality back home.

      Kunan Gurung, project coordinator at Pourakhi Nepal, an organization focused on supporting female returnee migrants, says those who have “successful” migration journeys are often able to use their experiences abroad to challenge gender norms.

      “Our society is patriarchal and male-dominated, but the boundaries expand for women who return from the Gulf successfully because they have money and thus some power,” he says.

      “The women have left their village, taken a plane and have lived in the developed world. Such experiences leave them feeling empowered.”

      Gurung says many returning migrant workers invest their savings in their own businesses, from tailoring to chicken farms. But it can be difficult, because women often find that the skills they earned while working abroad can’t help them make money back home. To counter this, Pourakhi trains women in entrepreneurship to not only try to limit re-migration and keep families together but also to ensure women are equipped with tangible skills in the context of life in Nepal.

      But for the women in Nepal who, like Jayatri in Sri Lanka, return without having earned any money, deep-rooted stigma can block their chances to work and separate them from their families. Women who come home with nothing are looked at with suspicion and accused of being sexually active, Gurung says.

      “The reality is that women are not looked after in the Gulf, in most cases,” he says.

      In Kathmandu, Pourakhi runs an emergency shelter for returning female migrants. Every evening, staff wait at Kathmandu airport for flights landing from the Gulf. They approach returning migrants – women who stand out because of their conservative clothes and “the look on their faces” – and offer shelter, food and support.

      Of the 2,000 women they have housed over the last nine years, 42 have returned pregnant and 21 with children.

      “There are so many problems returnee migrants face. Most women don’t have contact with their families because their employer didn’t pay, or they have health issues or they’re pregnant,” says Krishna Gurung (no relation to Kunan), Pourakhi’s shelter manager.

      “They don’t reintegrate with their families. Their families don’t accept them.” Which could be the biggest tragedy of all. Because the chance to make life better for their families is what drives so many women to leave home in the first place.

      Realizing how crucial their workers are to the Gulf economies, major labor-sending countries such as Nepal, Bangladesh, India and the Philippines have been using both pressure and dialogue to improve conditions for their citizens.

      Over recent years, they have instituted a wide array of bans and restrictions, often linked to particularly horrifying cases of abuse. Nepal has banned women from working in the Gulf in 2016; the same year, India disallowed women under 30 from migrating to the Gulf. In 2013, Sri Lanka temporarily banned women from leaving the country for domestic work, citing abuse abroad and neglected families at home, and now requires a family background report before women can travel.

      The most high-profile diplomatic dispute over domestic workers unfolded between the Philippines and Kuwait this year. In January, the Philippines banned workers from going to Kuwait, and made the ban “permanent” in February after a 29-year-old Filipino maid, Joanna Demafelis, was found dead in a freezer in her employers’ abandoned apartment in Kuwait City.

      “Bans provide some political leverage for the sending country.”

      At the time, the Philippines’ firebrand president, Rodrigo Duterte, said he would “sell my soul to the devil” to get his citizens home from Kuwait to live comfortably back home. Thousands of Filipino citizens were repatriated through a voluntary return scheme in the first half of 2018, while Kuwait made overtures to Ethiopia to recruit more maids to replace the lost labor force. Duterte’s ban was eventually lifted in May, after Kuwait agreed to reform its migrant work sector, ending the seizure of passports and phones, and instituting a 24-hour hotline for abused workers.

      It’s well established that bans do not stop women from traveling to the Gulf to become domestic workers. Bandana Pattanaik, the international coordinator of the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women, has criticized bans as being “patriarchal, limiting to female agency and also ending up encouraging illegal human smuggling.”

      But others point out that the international pressure generated by travel bans has had some effect, as in the case with the Philippines and Kuwait. “Bans provide some political leverage for the sending country,” says Kathmandu-based researcher Upasana Khadka. “But bans do not work as permanent solutions.”
      ATTEMPTS AT REFORM

      Today, after decades of criticism and campaigning around labor rights violations, the Gulf is seeing a slow shift toward building better policies for domestic workers.

      “In the past five years, five of the six GCC countries have started to adopt laws for the protection of migrant domestic workers for the very first time,” says Rothna Begum, women’s rights researcher for Middle East and North Africa at Human Rights Watch.

      “The GCC countries have long cultivated the image of being luxurious economies meant for the good life,” Begum says. “This image is hard to maintain as labor exploitation comes to light. So, while they try to shut the reporting down, they have also been forced to address some of the issues raised by their critics.”

      Legal and institutional reforms have been announced in the domestic work sector in all GCC countries except Oman. These regulate and standardize contracts, mandate better living conditions, formalize recruitment, and plan rehabilitation and legal redress for abused workers.

      This gradual reform is due to international pressure and monitoring by human rights groups and international worker unions. After the 2014 crash in the oil economy, the sudden need for foreign investment exposed the GCC and the multinational companies doing business there to more global scrutiny.

      Countries in the Gulf are also hoping that the new national policies will attract more professional and skilled home workers. “Domestic work is a corrupt, messy sector. The host countries are trying to make it more professional,” says M. Bheem Reddy, vice president of the Hyderabad-based Migrant Rights Council, which engages with women workers from the southern districts of India.

      Many of the Gulf states are moving toward nationalization – creating more space for their own citizens in the private sector – this means they also want to regulate one of the fastest growing job sectors in the region. “This starts with dignity and proper pay for the existing migrant workers,” Reddy says.

      There have been attempts to develop a regional standard for domestic labor rights, with little success. In 2011, the ILO set standards on decent work and minimum protection through the landmark Domestic Workers Convention. All the GCC countries adopted the Convention, but none have ratified it, which means the rules are not binding.

      Instead, each Gulf country has taken its own steps to try to protect household workers who come from abroad.

      After reports of forced labor in the lead-up to the 2022 FIFA World Cup, Qatar faced a formal inquiry by the ILO if it didn’t put in place migrant labor protections. Under that pressure, in 2017, the country passed a law on domestic work. The law stipulates free health care, a regular monthly salary, maximum 10-hour work days, and three weeks’ severance pay. Later, it set a temporary minimum wage for migrant workers, at $200 a month.

      The UAE’s new reforms are motivated by the Gulf crisis – which has seen Qatar blockaded by its neighbors – as well as a desire to be seen as one of the more progressive GCC countries. The UAE had a draft law on domestic work since 2012, but only passed it in 2017, after Kuwait published its own law. The royal decree gives household workers a regular weekly day off, daily rest of at least 12 hours, access to a mobile phone, 30 days paid annual leave and the right to retain personal documents like passports. Most importantly, it has moved domestic work from the purview of the interior ministry to the labor ministry – a long-standing demand from rights advocates.

      The UAE has also become the first Gulf country to allow inspectors access to a household after securing a warrant from the prosecutor. This process would be triggered by a worker’s distress call or complaint, but it’s unclear if regular state inspections will also occur. Before this law, says Begum, the biggest obstacle to enforcing labor protection in domestic work was the inability for authorities to monitor the workspace of a cleaner or cook, because it is a private home, unlike a hotel or a construction site.

      The UAE has not followed Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia in stipulating a minimum wage for domestic workers. But it has issued licenses for 40 Tadbeer Service Centers, which will replace recruitment agencies by the end of the year. Employers in the UAE will have to submit their requests for workers through these centers, which are run by private licensed agents but supervised by the Ministry of Human Resources. Each of the centers has accommodation for workers and can also sponsor their visas, freeing them up to take on part-time jobs while also catering to growing demand from UAE nationals and expats for legal part-timers.

      “You focus on the success stories you hear, and hope you’ll have that luck.”

      B. L. Surendranath, general secretary of the Immigration Protection Center in Hyderabad, India, visited some of these centers in Dubai earlier this year, on the invitation of the UAE human resources ministry. “I was pleasantly surprised at the well-thought-out ideas at the model Tadbeer Center,” he says. “Half the conflicts [between employer and worker] are because of miscommunication, which the center will sort out through conflict resolution counselors.”

      Saudi Arabia passed a labor law in 2015, but it didn’t extend to domestic work. Now, as unemployment among its nationals touches a high of 12.8 percent, its efforts to create more jobs include regulating the migrant workforce. The Saudi government has launched an electronic platform called Musaned to directly hire migrant domestic workers, cutting out recruitment agencies altogether. Women migrant workers will soon live in dormitories and hostels run by labor supply agencies, not the homes of their employers. The labor ministry has also launched a multi-language hotline for domestic workers to lodge complaints.

      Dhaka-based migrant rights activist Shakirul Islam, from Ovibashi Karmi Unnayan Programme, welcomes these changes, but remains circumspect. “Most women who return to Bangladesh from Saudi [Arabia] say that the revised laws have no impact on their lives,” he says. “My understanding is that the employers are not aware of the law on the one hand, and on the other, do not care about it.”

      Migrant rights activists, ILO officials, the governments of source countries and workers themselves are cautiously optimistic about the progressive direction of reforms in the Gulf. “But it is clear that none of the laws penalize employers of domestic workers for labor rights violations,” says Islam.

      Rights activists and reports from the ILO, U.N. and migrants’ rights forums have for decades repeated that full protection of domestic workers is impossible as long as GCC countries continue to have some form of the kafala sponsorship system.

      Saudi Arabia continues to require workers to secure an exit permit from their employers if they want to leave the country, while Qatar’s 2015 law to replace the kafala sponsorship system does not extend to domestic workers. Reddy of the Migrant Rights Council says the UAE’s attempt to tackle kafala by allowing Tadbeer Center agents to sponsor visas does not make agents accountable if they repeatedly send different workers to the same abusive employer.

      For now, it seems the women working on the margins of some of the richest economies in the world will remain vulnerable to abuse and exploitation from their employers. And as long as opportunities exist for them in the Gulf that they can’t find at home, thousands will come to fulfil the demand for domestic and care work, knowing they could be risking everything for little or no return.

      Jahanara says the only thing for women in her position to do is to take the chance and hope for the best.

      “You focus on the success stories you hear, and hope you’ll have that luck.”


      https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/articles/2018/08/31/will-migrant-domestic-workers-in-the-gulf-ever-be-safe-from-abuse-2

      #travail_domestique #migrations #pays_du_golfe