Wes­ley Gib­bings

The in­ter­na­tion­al NGO, Refugees In­ter­na­tion­al (RI), can­not be said NOT to have a horse in the race when it comes to this coun­try’s poor per­for­mance on the ques­tion of refugee rights. As in the case of Amnesty In­ter­na­tion­al, Mr Min­is­ter, RI has a very clear hu­man and hu­man­i­tar­i­an rights “agen­da”.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion in fact clear­ly and res­olute­ly stands on the side of peo­ple in dis­tress world­wide and for whom lit­tle re­dress is seem­ing­ly forth­com­ing from both of­fi­cial and un­of­fi­cial quar­ters. It has been ac­tive in coun­tries such as Myan­mar, with re­spect to the Ro­hingya; South Su­dan with the in­ter­nal­ly dis­placed there, and RI has al­so been vo­cal on the US re­sponse to the Cen­tral Amer­i­can mi­grant “car­a­van”, among oth­er emerg­ing is­sues glob­al­ly.

The fact that such an or­gan­i­sa­tion has paid close at­ten­tion to de­vel­op­ments in T&T in­volv­ing Venezue­lan refugees and mi­grants is thus high­ly in­struc­tive. It is even more so that the re­port re­leased last week ap­pears to have cap­tured the essence of the chal­lenge we face in shap­ing an ap­pro­pri­ate na­tion­al re­sponse.

The re­port has, how­ev­er, per­haps diplo­mat­i­cal­ly so, not ful­ly cap­tured one of the more em­bar­rass­ing fea­tures of the co­nun­drum—a per­va­sive xeno­pho­bia in part fu­elled by a view that Venezuela’s hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis was, at least at one stage, care­ful­ly craft­ed pro­pa­gan­da.

Syco­phan­tic chav­is­tas par­rot­ing the pre­dictable or­tho­doxy of “US sanc­tions, covert/overt un­der­min­ing of de­mo­c­ra­t­ic in­sti­tu­tions, Venezue­lan oli­garchy, and com­mod­i­ty war­fare” (an ac­tu­al quote from one com­ment on last week’s col­umn) have as­sist­ed in turn­ing at­ten­tion away from hu­man dis­tress and more in the di­rec­tion of Cold War fan­ta­sy.

It is not sur­pris­ing, in that con­text, that there has been no groundswell of mul­ti-sec­toral pub­lic opin­ion, in­clud­ing sound­ings from the ma­jor po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tions, favour­ing a more or­der­ly process to ad­dress de­fi­cien­cies in meet­ing stat­ed in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man­i­tar­i­an oblig­a­tions as ex­pressed via our en­dorse­ment of con­ven­tions and treaties.

Nei­ther of the two ma­jor po­lit­i­cal par­ties has al­so ever at­tempt­ed to prop­er­ly op­er­a­tionalise key com­po­nents of the 2014 Na­tion­al Refugee Pol­i­cy which pre­scribes “a phased ap­proach” to the is­sue. For, had that been the case, of­fi­cial pos­ture and ac­tu­al prac­tice over the past two years would not have wit­nessed rou­tinised dero­ga­tions of the six gen­er­al prin­ci­ples of the Pol­i­cy.

These in­clude: con­fi­den­tial­i­ty; fair, ef­fi­cient and ex­pe­di­tious ad­ju­di­ca­tion of claims; fam­i­ly uni­ty (sounds fa­mil­iar?); non-re­foule­ment, and the prin­ci­ple of non-de­ten­tion (which con­sid­ers such ac­tion to be “a mea­sure of last re­sort”). Tell me the last time the pro-Maduro devo­tees, and even now the Guaidó ad­vo­cates, have cit­ed any of these.

As a con­se­quence, much of what Refugees In­ter­na­tion­al is now propos­ing re­mains some dis­tance from the front burn­er of the pub­lic dis­course but de­serves crit­i­cal at­ten­tion.

For one, there has to be, in the words of RI: “a tem­po­rary spe­cial reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion or oth­er emer­gency mea­sures to give un­doc­u­ment­ed Venezue­lans and oth­er ir­reg­u­lar mi­grants, asy­lum seek­ers and refugees an av­enue to ap­ply for short-term res­i­dence and work per­mits.”

This, of course, should al­so in­clude the right of the chil­dren of asy­lum seek­ers to an ed­u­ca­tion. From the prime min­is­ter’s be­lat­ed ut­ter­ances, it ap­pears some­thing is about to be done about such a need. Hope­ful­ly, there will be strong bi­lat­er­al sup­port for this and none of the xeno­pho­bic re­spons­es rem­i­nis­cent of the move to bring Do­mini­can stu­dents here fol­low­ing Hur­ri­cane Maria in 2017.

The oth­er vex­ing is­sue that oc­cu­pies the at­ten­tion of the RI re­port is the gra­tu­itous use of the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre. The or­gan­i­sa­tion’s rec­om­men­da­tion makes em­i­nent sense: Or­ders of Su­per­vi­sion should be an op­tion in lieu of cur­rent, over­ly-oner­ous se­cu­ri­ty bonds to se­cure the free move­ment of asy­lum-seek­ers. This was ac­tu­al­ly the case in the past. The IDC has not al­ways been op­tion num­ber one.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, and among oth­er things, RI has al­so sug­gest­ed that the gov­ern­ment de­vel­op “an an­ti-xeno­pho­bia cam­paign to counter pop­u­lar mis­con­cep­tions” about asy­lum-seek­ers. Had I not been fol­low­ing this mat­ter close­ly, I would have con­sid­ered such a pro­pos­al high­ly em­bar­rass­ing and prob­a­bly gross­ly out of place. Sad­ly, our col­lec­tive be­hav­iour as a peo­ple has not built a case against such a per­cep­tion. You would have to try very hard to con­vince me oth­er­wise.