For almost a full week, me and 13 other graduate students
from the University of San Francisco School of Management have spent a great
deal of time in Rome meeting with local and international organizations to
better understand the rights of refugees. The majority of this week is being
used to understand what it means to be an asylum seeker in the European Union.
There are various organizations located in Rome that can provide many essential
services to refugees and asylum seekers from food, shelter, psycho-social
therapy, job training, and assistance with filing paperwork to apply for asylum.
What is an asylum seeker and what does it mean to be one? According
to United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), an asylum
seeker is “someone who says he or she is a refugee, but whose claim has not yet
been definitively evaluated.” Once a refugee enters into a country within the
European Union they have the right to apply for asylum. If a refugee requests
asylum, they must meet certain criteria before any approval is given. During
the time it takes to process the paperwork the refugee is granted full rights
and protection as a refugee. If the asylum is approved the refugee has
permission to stay in the approved country and may only leave the approved
county for limited reasons such as travel. At this point it becomes extremely
difficult for the refugee to legally leave the country where they are applying
for or have been granted asylum. A major problem is each country interprets the
definition of an asylum seeker differently. So this causes an inconsistence in
the application of the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of
Refugees.
The most recent news is reporting on the suicide bomber that
struck in Istanbul’s Sultan Ahmet Center on January 12 that left 12 people dead
and 13 people injured. The suicide bomber is believed to be linked to ISIL and
is considered to be a terrorist attack. A detail that is striking fear into
individuals everywhere is that the ISIL suicide bomber presented himself only
days before the attack to the Turkish government as a Saudi-born Syrian seeking
asylum. This is the second time ISIL has been able to infiltrate and exploit
the use of refugee’s to carry out terrorist attacks. This fear brings anger and
furthers resistance of refugees. On January 14, 2016 Al Jazeera’s Galip
Dalay wrote, “Turkish authorities bear full responsibility for
ensuring that this attack is not used as a pretext to demonize refugees and the
victims of war. Syrian refugees living in Turkey are victims of the same terror
as those caught in Tuesday's bomb blast. Stranded between ISIL's state of
terror and Assad's regime, these people had almost no option but to flee their
country and seek a better future elsewhere.”
As of June 2015 Turkey has hosted over 1.8 million Syrian
refugees and 145,335 asylum
seekers. As a signer of the 1951 Convention on Refugees, Turkey
recognizes refugees and asylum seekers under the law, however they have chosen
to reserve the power to choose which country they will accept
refugees from. As a candidate to join the European Union, Turkey has
received a lot of pressure to join the EU and adopt the same protocols for
refugees and asylum seekers. Because Turkey has not and the pressure has been
building, in 2013 Turkey announced that they will allow full refugee status to
anyone from Europe and everyone else will still receive “conditional refugee”
status.
Click
here for more information Turkey’s response to the terrorist attack.
