Four of the refugee communities living in India have demanded that the Government enact a law for setting up a well-defined refugee protection mechanism ensuring their right to work, education, and basic health services.

In a joint statement, issued by the Afghan, Somali, Ethiopian and the Burmese refugees in India to mark World Refugee Day on Wednesday, they made an appeal to the Government of India for better legal protection, access to health care, education and the right to work.

“There is no law in India that protects refugees and this is evident in the kind of problems that we face on a day-to-day basis. An ad-hoc administrative policy and a recalcitrant bureaucracy that does not implement court orders have lead to arbitrary executive action and discrimination,” said Ali Ahmad Perooz, a representative from the Afghan refugee community.

Pointing out that Government did not recognise any of the communities — Afghan, Somali, Ethiopian and the Burmese — as refugees, he said that they were considered illegal foreigners in the eyes of law.

‘Unusually long’

Alleging that the UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) refugee status determination process was “unusually long” in India, Liban, a representative from the Somali refugee community, said the process should be made more efficient and less time-consuming.

“Subsistence allowance, the only source of income in the absence of the right to work in India, which recognised refugees receive for a year, is also barely sufficient to take care of housing, food and health,” he said.

There are about 1,800 Burmese refugees in New Delhi and over 75,000 in the North-Eastern, particularly Mizoram, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh.

“We are about 30 Afghan families living in India,” Ali Ahmad said. The Somali community here  has less than 300 people living in Pune, New Delhi, Chennai, Mysore, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Aurangabad.