The government must implement the Refugee Convention in refugee procedures and treatment and prepare measures against racism
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At 11:50 a.m. today (8/1), the Blue House and the Ministry of Justice issued a press release whose core was the “release of responses to the petitions on ‘abolishing the Refugee Act, visa-free entry and the approval of refugee applications.’” In its response, the Blue House said that, while taking into account the international responsibility to protect refugees, it would strengthen identity verification of asylum seekers for the safety of citizens, would not refer applicants who abuse the refugee system to the formal refugee screening procedure, and would increase screening personnel and establish a refugee tribunal for faster refugee screening. The Refugee Network and the Pan-Jeju Committee for Refugee Human Rights express serious concern about these complacent government measures and strongly urge the government to establish refugee policy in a direction that implements the Refugee Convention and overcomes racism.
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First, the Blue House’s and the Ministry of Justice’s perception that refugees are not being properly protected, in terms of the level of refugee protection in Korea, can be said to be appropriate, as the following shows. The average refugee protection rate among the world’s states party to the Refugee Convention is 38%, and the world average refugee protection rate is 50%. Germany, whose GDP is twice that of Korea, whose area is three times as large and whose population is twice as large, has protected nearly 1 million refugees over the last five years, which is 200 times as many as Korea. Korea currently protects a total of 849 refugees, with a refugee recognition rate of only 4%, and in terms of the number of protected refugees per 1,000 population, it ranks 139th among 193 UN member states (142 states party to the Refugee Convention) and 34th among the 35 OECD countries.
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Given this level of refugee protection in Korea, it is very complacent and inappropriate for the Blue House and the Ministry of Justice to offer general positions such as “it is realistically difficult to abolish the Refugee Act or withdraw from the Refugee Convention,” “a reasonable refugee policy suited to our circumstances is needed,” and “we will take the side effects in Western societies as a lesson.”
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The Refugee Convention, which the Korean government ratified in 1992, is a legally binding norm and, under Article 6, paragraph 1 of the Constitution, has the same effect as domestic law. The position of the Blue House and the Ministry of Justice, as the bodies that enforce the law, should therefore first be how to properly implement the Refugee Convention. Yet regarding the refugee recognition procedure and the rights of refugees, they hardly reflect the wording, purpose and intent of the Refugee Convention.
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It has been pointed out several times that the screening of persons who apply for refugee status in Korea lacks independence, expertise, speed, fairness and transparency. The Blue House’s statement in this response that it would “increase the insufficient screening personnel and interpreting experts and expand the specialized personnel who collect country-of-origin information” seems to stem from this awareness of the problem. However, the establishment of a refugee tribunal, which it proposed as the alternative, cannot be a solution to the problem. A more appropriate solution is to expand and replace the officials currently in charge of refugee recognition screening with people who have expertise and to give them independence from the immigration authorities. It is also urgently necessary to establish a country information center so that proper screening can be carried out.
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In addition, regarding speed, the Blue House and the Ministry of Justice said, “We will protect genuine refugees and quickly sift out false asylum applicants,” and, as a means of doing so, “We will also consider not referring applicants who clearly abuse the refugee system to the formal refugee screening procedure.” But the formal refugee screening procedure consists of interviewing the asylum seeker and verifying country-of-origin information, so how do they intend to identify genuine refugees without going through these procedures? For people who come to another country to escape persecution and apply for refugee status, recognition of refugee status is a matter on which their lives depend. A person’s life must not be decided in a hasty manner without proper review merely on the ground that it must be decided “quickly.” The speed of the refugee procedure cannot be an absolute value in itself and must go together with the values of independence, expertise, fairness and transparency.
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Regarding the treatment of refugees, the Refugee Convention provides for the rights of asylum seekers and recognized refugees in Articles 3 to 34, and the obligation to protect, respect and promote those rights lies with Korea as a state party. The Korean government therefore had to present measures on how it would protect the Yemeni asylum seekers in accordance with the Refugee Convention. Because a threat to the right to survival at the asylum application stage in effect leads to forced return, the government must take the guaranteeing of the rights of Yemeni asylum seekers in Jeju more seriously. Regarding the treatment of recognized refugees, the intent proposed by the government to “prepare relevant policies so that refugees do not remain passive recipients of support and protection but can become self-reliant by making full use of their capacities” is welcome in itself. However, a “mentoring system” and the like should be geared toward having experts such as case workers enable refugees to enjoy their rights under the Refugee Convention, and should not be carried out, as in the government’s announced plan, for the purpose of unilaterally integrating and managing them.
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Finally, the Blue House’s and the Ministry of Justice’s response contains no measures against discrimination and hatred toward refugees and asylum seekers, and no measures against deepening racism. Racism, which can be called a deep illness of Korean society, has evolved over a long period with emotional racism and institutional racism reinforcing each other. Overcoming racism is therefore above all important in refugee protection, yet the government’s response not only has no measures against racism but even raises serious concern because the government’s policy itself is based on racism.
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In particular, the plan to carry out “strict screening, including mandatory submission of social media accounts, drug tests, and checks for infectious diseases and violent crime” is an attempt to introduce a system that regards foreigners who are not Korean, and in particular all asylum seekers, as potential criminals, and it is a typical racially discriminatory policy. Korea has already been criticized several times by the international community for similar policies. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has found that the Korean government’s policy of requiring HIV and drug tests for the renewal of the employment contracts of foreign English teachers violates the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD/C/86/D/51/2012), and the UN Human Rights Committee decided in July of this year that the requirement of HIV and drug tests for the visa renewal of foreign English teachers violates the prohibition of discrimination and the freedom of privacy under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (CCPR/C/123/D/2273/2013). Such government measures therefore violate the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which is a legally binding norm, and are also unlawful because they run counter to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
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At the end of their response, the Blue House and the Ministry of Justice said they would actively gather the opinions of civil society in establishing policy, and we actively welcome that attitude in itself. However, such gathering of opinions must never become a process that relies on refugee hatred and a racist view to justify the government’s failure to protect refugees, and it must be carried out in a direction that implements the Refugee Convention and overcomes racism.
2018.8.1 (Fri)
Refugee Network · Pan-Jeju Committee for Refugee Human Rights