Afghans in Indonesia protest slow UN resettlement process

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Hundreds of Afghan refugees and asylum seekers surviving successful Indonesia rallied successful beforehand of the U.N. exile bureau agency successful Jakarta connected Monday to impulse it to velocity up their resettlement.

They held ample banners speechmaking “Our families are successful danger. Please enactment now” and “Resettle refugees and prevention lives” during the rally successful beforehand of the bureau of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Some children of asylum seeker joined the rally and held banners successful their hands.

Bibi Rahima Farhangdost, 31, said she near her occupation arsenic a teacher successful Afghanistan’s Ghazni state and arrived successful Indonesia successful 2014 aft the Taliban ordered her not to enactment extracurricular her house.

She said she received a exile paper from the UNHCR successful 2016, but since past determination has been nary further enactment connected her resettlement.

“I lone enactment location arsenic I cannot enactment here. I consciousness disappointed. Eight years is simply a precise agelong time,” she said.

Indonesia is not a signatory to the U.N. Refugee Convention, and the authorities does not let asylum seekers to enactment oregon person entree to schools oregon nationalist hospitals. It is surrounded by countries that big ample numbers of asylum-seekers and refugees specified arsenic Malaysia, Thailand and Australia.

In December 2020, astir 14,000 refugees from 50 countries were registered successful Indonesia, astir of them Afghan refugees.

Many asylum seekers person fled to Indonesia arsenic a jumping-off constituent to scope Australia by boat. Since 2013, the Australian authorities has sent the often hardly seaworthy vessels backmost to Indonesian waters.