Meaningful protection of exiled human rights defenders in asylum
GASHDC lobbies for the classifying of asylum and a fast-track asylum procedural for human rights defenders who have endured torture and imprisonment in countries of origin, provides for human rights defenders’ critical safety in exile and seeks to establish a global return amnesty committee to elude the horrendous killer asylums.
The organization fosters human rights defenders’ participation in human rights debates and workshops organized by educational institutions, thinktanks, media, policymakers, and civil society and literary contributes to these debates and workshops about the manipulation of asylum, safety of critical human rights defenders in exile, and tyrants’ espionage in foreign territories. GASHDC seeks to initiate an amnesty return committee composed of former reputable global leaders to enable human rights defenders trapped in critical asylum conditions elude the killer asylums. GASHDC spotlights the decline of the rule of law, human rights, and democratic practices in the asylum procedural and networks with other human rights organizations with similar sentiment.
Activists in exile should benefit from a separate category of ‘asylum’ in contrast to asylum for economic migrants arriving by sea or land and a separate asylum classification for people from war ravaged territories. Temporary safe relocation strategies for human rights defenders at risk are just a solution for human rights defenders to get a breath away from work. It isn’t that actual protection, for a person to leave temporarily, and remain safe upon return! Those who have received real threat to their lives by pressing hard on dictatorship and gotten themselves into prison and torture and had to flee for safety into exile need the most support. Negotiating amnesty to return to elude the killer asylum system can also be a good option, however.
“They tortured me until I spit blood, they broke my teeth and used pliers to pluck flesh off my head. I ended up in hospital for surgery”
Exiled human rights defender in asylum
Our recommendations.
- Human rights defenders waiting for an asylum decision and who can secure a 2-year private sponsorship should automatically be granted 3 years temporary residence.
- States should fast-track asylum applications for human rights defenders who have endured torture or imprisonment in countries of origin whilst providing non-shared accommodation and reliable mental health treatment during the application period and after.
Asylumophobia and rampant human rights abuses
Racial inequity, hate, systemic racism and authoritarianism within asylum seekers communities are a cause of asylum phobia. We provide asylum seekers access to a private comfortable way of reporting such human rights abuses and document human rights abuse complaints by asylum seekers for awareness and justification of the prevailing grave violation of asylum seekers human rights at the office of the United Nations high commissioner for human rights.
GASHDC ensures that asylum seekers have the power to influence the decisions affecting their lives. Relocating asylum seekers to third party countries whilst their applications are being considered will curtail international protection standards.
The organisation monitors and promotes legal aid efficacy for asylum seekers worldwide, empowers and builds the capacity of worldwide asylum seeker human rights defenders to fight for justice in the asylum procedural, promotes transparency, move from camp to camp to verify stories, documents strategic litigation cases and other human rights abuses to enhance research on abuse of people in asylum, and dialogue on equality and justice with immigration and foreigners’ government departments in asylum host countries.
It is evident that of 100 cases of injustice and racial discrimination reported in asylum seekers communities worldwide, not more than 1% are acted upon. This is due to systemic racial inequity and the lack of a collective voice to assert this discrimination. Although the EU now explicitly acknowledges the existence of structural, institutional, and historical dimensions of racism in Europe and the need to address them through wide-ranging policies, the EU’s anti-racism action plan meaningful participation is still extremely weak. Many plans against racism in the past have remained on paper.
“If you apply for asylum in Denmark, you know that you will be sent back to a country outside Europe, and therefore we hope that people will stop seeking asylum in Denmark,”
Rasmus Stoklund, Denmark’s ruling party immigration speaker.
Asylum Seeker worker’s rights
A big number of countries will now allow asylum seekers to work, but with limitation to a particular workplace in countries like Germany. In the US, the Asylum Seeker Work Authorization Act (ASWAA) is a bi-partisan bill in the House that would remove the 180-day waiting period to be allowed into work. Asylum seekers can formally switch from asylum seeker status to skilled worker in Germany and if you were employed in Sweden during your time as an asylum seeker, you can apply for a work permit even if your asylum application was refused. It is now evident that asylum seekers are a labour source for many of the western countries. However, worldwide, asylum seekers are now struggling with low wages, unequal pay, discrimination, exploitation, inappropriate taxi returns that do not commensurate with tax statements and a lack of transparency in the workplace.
GASHDC promotes asylum seeker workers participation in civil society activity for asylum seekers equality and protection at the workplace while accelerating earning for better livelihoods and integration. The organisation steers the Global Confederation of Asylum Seeker Workers Unions to impede the manipulation of asylum for unskilled labour in countries experiencing ageing populations and low birth rates. Our priorities include promoting respect of diversity at work and in society and implementing effective measures to combat racism and asylum xenophobia, in particular at the workplace and in the labour market.
The Global Confederation of Asylum Seeker Workers Unions (GCASWU) is the global voice of the world’s working asylum seeker. Its main areas of activity include;
- Trade union and human rights
- Economy, society and the workplace
- Equity, equality and non-discrimination
- International solidarity.
The Global Confederation of Asylum Seeker Workers Unions works closely with many global union workers federations, the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC), the International Labour Organisation, International Trade Union Confederation and with several other UN worker specialised agencies.
Closing the gender human rights gap, sexual health, and sexuality in asylum
The gender human rights gap in the asylum procedural is huge, with frequent sexual exploitation of women promised residence authorization, impacting their sexual and reproductive health and rights with severe implications, e.g. young women often conduct life-threatening unsafe abortion in camps. GASHDC influences international law to critically apprehend sexual exploitation of women in asylum for the first time, lobbying for a comprehensive global law that would make exploitation of women in asylum a capital offense.
There is also widespread sexual minority bullying and lack of sexuality centered health services, and worldwide critical HIV monitored therapy is lacking in the asylum procedural which is a severe abuse of the human rights of marginalized people living with HIV.
GASHDC provides for emergency access to formal HIV therapy treatment in asylum seekers communities and monitors and promotes the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women in asylum by promoting access to sexual and reproductive health services and legal aid efficacy for asylum seekers worldwide to use legal justice to secure sexuality health services. GASHDC documents sexual health rights abuses of sexually marginalized persons in asylum and initiates dialogue on sexuality equality and justice with immigration and foreigners’ government departments in asylum host countries.
From prison to deathly asylums, introducing a Defend Defenders in Asylum Fund
Similar to disabled and lunatic people’s asylums in the 1900s, where people were often kept in the most horrendous conditions, unhygienic living conditions, overcrowding and abuse of patients, asylums packed with 3,700 people but built for 100 times fewer people, this is what is happening behind the walls of the current asylum camps. Accommodations are more less the same, horrific living conditions where men look on as others play sex in shared rooms, where asylum seekers are often held in suspense not knowing when they would ever leave these conditions, where women defecate in small buckets in shared rooms to avoid direct contact with toilets highly infested with urinary tract infections, rampant use of uncertified abortion pills and methods, lack of critical timely monitored HIV therapy, frequent commotion at night causing insomnia, tiresome work that does not commensurate payment in warehouses, factories, and on farms, and worldwide, every year, as they live in a contemporary form of servitude, a substantial number of asylum seekers commit suicide without any investigations.
Huan rights defenders who flee into exile arrive in the asylum system already overwhelmed with trauma and exhaustion. Their nervous systems have been affected by both the torture and overwhelming persecution encountered in their countries of origin and the environments and poor feeding they have gone through during their journey fleeing persecution. Sadly, what they find in the countries of rescue is more less the same, policies built on the hate for asylum seekers. Through the Defend Defenders in Asylum Fund GASHDC provides for emergency costs for emergency mental health support, preferred meals and communication gear and internet, and access to a private sponsorship fellowship to elude the deathly asylums. GASHDC is seeking for donor partnerships in which donors can sponsor individual Human rights defenders in asylum with a 2-year fellowship whilst their asylum is being considered. The fellowship would provide a human rights defender with work authorization, accommodation, and subsidized stipend. If their asylum application is turned down, the HRD should return home upon expiry of the fellowship with support of GASHDC’s amnesty committee if required.
Unlike lunatic and disabled people’s asylums of the 1900s when patients endured forced drugging, currently people in asylum are taking narcotic drugs voluntarily to endure the horrendous living conditions and the inhuman complex asylum procedural. Thus, the future wave of use of drugs among immigrants will be hard to solve and suicidal hostage taking of people with knives etc and gun violence will intolerably increase.