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JAKARTA: Roughly 100 Afghan refugees in Indonesia, with girls and youngsters on the forefront, rallied on Monday in downtown Jakarta, demanding the acceleration of their resettlement course of to a 3rd nation.
That is the third rally the refugees have held in entrance of the UN Excessive Commissioner for Refugees’ workplace since August, following the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan and the height of the third wave of the coronavirus illness (COVID-19) outbreak in Indonesia, defying a crowd-forming ban in Jakarta.
There are 13,273 refugees registered with UNHCR in Indonesia; 1 / 4 of them are adults and greater than half are from Afghanistan. They’re situated in a number of cities in Indonesia and have held rallies voicing the identical calls for in Medan, Kupang, and Surabaya through the previous three months.
A few dozen youngsters shaped the frontline of the protesters, with girls and youngsters standing behind them as they held up placards that pleaded with the UNHCR to handle their plight.
Youngsters took turns holding a speaker and shouting, “We’re human, we would like course of, we would like justice, we would like future, UNHCR assist us.”
Rana Amini, 16, was among the many minors who took heart stage on the rally, talking in fluent Indonesian. Amini defined that protesters had been holding the rally after the UN company didn’t fulfill its guarantees based mostly on talks with the refugees on Aug. 24, referring to the August rally that turned violent as authorities forcefully dispersed the gang on the peak of the delta variant outbreak.
“Refugees have needed to face uncertainty for greater than a decade, which is among the many the reason why 14 refugees dedicated suicide, together with seven prior to now 14 months. Dozens have died, whereas virtually all the remainder of them have been struggling psychological and bodily sickness,” she mentioned.
Amini, who got here to the rally together with her mom, instructed Arab Information that she arrived in Indonesia eight years in the past together with her dad and mom and youthful siblings, however her father has left their household. She now lives together with her mom and siblings in a boarding home in South Jakarta and attends an Islamic center faculty the place she is a ninth grade pupil.
The Indonesian authorities doesn’t permit grownup refugees to work since Indonesia shouldn’t be a celebration to the 1951 UN Refugee Conference and is simply a transit nation. It does, nonetheless, permit refugees who’re minors to go to highschool, as Indonesia is a signatory to the UN Conference on the Rights of the Little one.
In response to the UNHCR, as of September this 12 months, some 778 refugee youngsters are enrolled in accredited nationwide faculties, however 1,700 school-aged youngsters should not but attending formal faculties. Some 1000 of them, nonetheless, are receiving schooling by means of refugee studying facilities organized by the UNHCR, Worldwide Group for Migration or facilities led by refugee communities.
The Indonesian authorities additionally permits asylum seekers and refugees to have entry to main healthcare and to remain within the nation on humanitarian grounds whereas ready for resettlement, despite the fact that the method may take years, as third international locations resembling Canada, the US, and Australia have lowered their refugee consumption.
A consultant from the UNHCR, who didn’t need his identify printed, instructed refugee coordinator Hassan Ramazan that he would convey the refugees’ letter to the UNHCR.
“We requested you to ship your representatives, however you all the time refused,” the officer instructed Ramazan, who argued that a few of the refugees may wish to keep and spend the evening on the location.
“In the event you insist on persevering with the rally, you might be breaking the regulation,” the officer added.
“We are going to proceed this peaceable demonstration till we’ve a response from the UNHCR and an actual answer as a substitute of simply guarantees,” mentioned Bibi Rahima Farhangdost, a 31-year-old former trainer who got here to Indonesia in 2014.
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