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- A Stuijt
- Retired South African medical journalist, ex-Sunday Times of Johannesburg.
14:52 | 
Posted by
A Stuijt |
UNHCR office in Pretoria ignores plight of millions of African refugees...
Human rights body asks UN to probe, close down 'useless' UNHCR office in Pretoria
REFUGEES IGNORED BY UNHCR IN PRETORIA:
Somali refugees at the Blue Water camp in the Western Cape tried to commit suicide in desperation of their plight recently by swimming into the dangerous ocean-currents around the Cape of Good Hope. They had to be rescued by emergency services...
- Sept 18 2008 -- Cape Town - The United Nations in Geneva is to be asked to probe the way its South African office has (not) been dealing with the xenophobia crisis, the Aids Law Project says. '
Several civil society groups would lodge a formal request early next week, project spokeswoman Fatima Hassan told a media briefing in Cape Town on Thursday.
"We are asking the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and other UN agencies in Geneva to investigate fully, through a commission of inquiry, the role that the UNHCR office in Pretoria has played in actually standing by while the rights of people who have sought their protection have been violated," she said.
The move follows the latest Amnesty International report which warns that the UN should provide much stronger leadership to deal with these human rights issues of the many millions of starving, homeless and displaced foreigners in South Africa. The country, with its wide-open borders, has at least 5-million refugees from the rest of the African continent, many from civil-strife torn Somalia and Zimbabwe - yet no attempt has been made by the UNHCR office in Pretoria to properly process these arrivals at the borders into UN-run refugee camps and give them proper refugee-status under the UN-statutes.
And Hassan said that when the xenophobia crisis arose, 'civil society groups had first asked, then begged and then pleaded with the UNHCR local office to play a more meaningful role." Now, she believes the UNHCR office in Pretoria should simply be closed down by the UN.
"We do not believe that there's any purpose in leaving open a UNHCR office in Pretoria for South Africa if they fail to advise our government properly and if they fail to condemn the actions of our government where human rights are violated," she said. "This is four and a half months of dealing with an office that doesn't do its job."
Situation in camps 'worse'
She warned that the situation in Cape Town's three remaining refugee camps was 'worse now than in the two weeks following the outbreak of violence in May'. There had been no proper consultation over the consolidation of camps three weeks ago.
Women at Blue Waters camp in the Western Cape for instance, had not received napkins for their babies, or proper baby food, since three weeks earlier. The UN-supplied tents were falling apart and were leaking in the ongoing rainy weather. Some tents had packed in up to 15 families without any privacy.
There was not enough food nor electricity, the hygiene situation was getting worse, and the safety of women and children from rape and assault had still not been assured.
- "We have been lied to, we have been made promises that have not been fulfilled, and we have been given undertakings that have not been carried out," she said. "My sense... is that the situation is worsening and its a deliberate ploy to make the situation so bad that people will be forced to leave the camps, that they will have no other choice."
http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/Xenophobia/0,,2-7-2382_2395728,00.html
Reports placed on this blog by retired South African journalist Ada_Stuijt@hotmail.com
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