LEBANON: Sudanese refugees stage hunger strike outside the U.N. refugee agency in Beirut to demand better rights and living conditions

Record ID: 340841

  • Title: LEBANON: Sudanese refugees stage hunger strike outside the U.N. refugee agency in Beirut to demand better rights and living conditions
  • Date: 20th June 2012
  • Summary: EXTERIOR OF UNHCR BUILDING IN BEIRUT
  • Embargoed: 5th July 2012 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Lebanon
  • Country: Lebanon
  • Topics: International Relations,Politics,People
  • Reuters ID: LVA2URFA8HK9FEW6BTWBN7EMAOZD
  • Story Text: Dozens of Sudanese refugees went into their tenth day of hunger strike in Lebanon's capital on Wednesday (June 20), calling on the United Nations' refugee agency to speed up the asylum process.
    At least 25 hunger-strikers have been sitting outside the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office in Beirut for ten days, and they say 12 more imprisoned refugees are also on hunger strike.
    The protesters are demanding refugee status for illegal Sudanese migrants and for asylum to be implemented quickly. Many say they have been waiting for years to be resettled by the Lebanese authorities.
    There are hundreds of U.N. registered refugees who fled the violence in Sudan to Lebanon in recent years. The migrants say there are thousands more without refugee status.
    Stretched out on cardboard boxes and tattered pillows on pavements outside the UNHCR office in Beirut, the hunger-strikers said they wanted to call attention to their plight on Wednesday, which is the U.N. World Refugee Day.
    "Briefly, we started our hunger strike and now we are on the tenth day, and the UN commissioner has not been able to find solutions. Some of us want to travel, some are waiting for their files to be processed, and some want to be identified as refugees. The commissioner is now negotiating with the protesters. We've been under the hot sun for ten days. People (from UNHCR) came to give us some aid and we asked them to leave. It looks like they are entertaining us, and they don't have a solution." Mohammed Abdullatif, a hunger-striker, told Reuters.
    "Since the (UNHCR) commissioner here is paralysed and unable to help us, we are calling on the world and the commissioner in Geneva, the international organizations and the Lebanese civil society to help us. We are in miserable circumstance. We are in Lebanon illegally and we are chased from one place to another," he added.
    Refugee status is particularly tricky in Lebanon, which never ratified the 1950 Refugee Convention under international law. Even those the UNHCR has deemed refugees have few rights in Lebanon and can be deported or imprisoned for staying illegally beyond their visas.
    "This time we went on hunger strike, we have four demands. Firstly we are seeking asylum in other countries, Second demand is regarding the asylum seekers, their files should be processed quickly. Third demand is regarding the closed files. Fourth demand is regarding the registration certificate which is the first time we are hearing about it, They give us this registration certificate and then they tell you that you documents are not complete. We are staying here until we achieve our demands," said Haroun Abdulaziz, another protester.
    He said the refugee agency wanted to put an end to the hunger strike ahead of Wednesday's World Refugee Day.
    "They came and negotiate with us after nine days. They said the refugee day is coming and it's not proper to have this situation on that day. They offered us some aid supplies but we rejected them," he added.
    The UNHCR said that it was working with over 11,000 Iraqi and Sudanese refugees and 27,000 displaced Syrians and was working as quickly as possible to help.
    "The UNHCR lobbies for legal recognition, intervenes on refugees' behalf, provides assistance to the most vulnerable and seeks solutions for them outside Lebanon," the agency said in a statement. "But the hard reality remains that relatively few refugees will be resettled to a third country because of the limited number of resettlement places made available."
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2012. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
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