International View nzz.ch

The U.N. refugee agency is scaling back its presence in Sri Lanka, and has therefore stopped aid payments to refugees living there. Now they are desperately wondering what is to become of them.

Martin Stürzinger, ColomboSeptember 19, 2024 

Summary

• Hundreds of refugees in Sri Lanka have been left without support following the cessation of aid payments by the U.N. refugee agency.
• Many recognized refugees, including Pakistanis and Rohingya, are now stranded without work permits or prospects of resettlement in a third country.
• With no clear solution, the refugees have few practical options ahead of them.

Riffat Faridun is desperate. «I have lost all hope. We haven’t received any financial support since December, we’re not allowed to work and we can’t borrow money forever,» she says. «We are being driven to our deaths.» Faridun comes from Pakistan, but for the last 12 years she has been living in two tiny rooms in Sri Lanka with her husband Said and their daughters Fatima and Aisha. Hundreds of refugees on the island have felt the same way since UNHCR, the U.N. refugee agency, stopped providing aid at the end of last year.

Previously, recognized refugees received 19,500 rupees per month, around 55 Swiss francs or $65 per person. But after 35 years in Sri Lanka, the UNHCR wants to reduce its presence there. Organization representatives have said that the U.N. presence was mainly because of the many people in Sri Lanka who had been displaced in the course of the civil war with the Tamil Tigers. Now that the majority of internally displaced persons have returned to their homes, this work is done.

For Faridun and other refugees, however, this means that they are stuck in Sri Lanka with no help and no prospect of resettlement in a third country. Faridun comes from a respected family in Karachi, but she chose to marry a man who did not come from the upper class. «My family was against this marriage. They falsely accused my husband of theft,» she says. «He was arrested, they threatened us, and in the end we decided to flee.»

A lawyer advised them to travel to Sri Lanka, where Pakistanis don’t need a visa, and living costs are relatively low. In 2012, they flew to Colombo with their two daughters, then aged 3 and 1, took a hotel room near the airport, and applied for asylum with the UNHCR. «In 2015, we were recognized as refugees by the UNHCR,» says Faridun. «But as yet, the UNHCR has not found a host country for us. Neither the U.S. nor Australia have allowed us to enter.»

Sri Lanka has become a dead end

In Panadura, south of Colombo, more than 100 refugees are stranded. They belong to the Rohingya Muslim minority, which been subject to discrimination and displacement in Myanmar for decades. Hundreds of thousands have sought refuge in Bangladesh. Mohammed Anwar fled across the border to Bangladesh with his family in 1992, at the age of 7. Together with around 1 million other Rohingya, they were taken in at the Kutupalong refugee camp.

«In the camp, you had to be home by 6 p.m. There was no electricity,» says Anwar. But he was hard-working and eager to learn. He started teaching at the age of 18, and after passing an exam became a teacher at the school in the refugee camp at 27. His English is excellent, though he learned it in secret. As a teacher, he was accorded extra privileges, and occasionally received a sack of rice or a piece of clothing. Then a camp boss began to blackmail the family. «I wasn’t safe anymore,» says Anwar.

Together with a friend, he fled first to India, and then by boat to Sri Lanka in 2015. In 2017, he was recognized as a refugee by the UNHCR, but Sri Lanka proved to be a dead end. Today he is stranded in a foreign country with no hope of a fulfilling life. The other Rohingya in Panadura feel the same way. Most of them didn’t actually want to go to Sri Lanka, but had wanted instead to take a boat to Malaysia.

Rescued by the coast guard

This group left the refugee camp in Bangladesh in an overcrowded boat in mid-November 2022. Among them were 35-year-old Roshida and 32-year-old Foriza, along with their children. They wanted to join their husbands, who had already traveled to Malaysia. But after three days, the engine broke down, leaving the boat adrift in the sea. After several weeks, it was discovered by Sri Lankan fishermen who alerted the coast guard. The people rescued were first housed in a prison, then in a refugee camp.

More than anything, Roshida wanted to give her children a better life. «The situation in the camp was terrible, and without a man you are not respected as a woman,» she says. «I no longer see a future for myself, but I wanted to give my three children a future.»

She no longer believes that she will succeed, she says. «How are we supposed to survive here? We have no money for food. Water, electricity and gas are very expensive. And if we don’t pay, they cut off our electricity.»

The UNHCR promises that it will continue to work with the authorities in Sri Lanka to ensure that the refugees are protected from deportation and that their rights are respected. What this specifically means is unclear. None of the refugees know what to do next. Among the Rohingya are unaccompanied children and widows with children. Mohammed Anwar, the teacher, says quietly: «There are only 109 of us here. There ought to be a solution.»

source https://www.nzz.ch/english/un-aid-withdrawal-strands-refugees-in-sri-lanka-ld.1848894