Some 300 asylum seekers have yet to vacate a temporary shelter in Kalideres, West Jakarta despite the government instructing them to vacate the premises by Aug 31.
Last month, a group of around 300 refugees spent weeks living on the streets in front of the offices of the United Nations High Council on Refugees (UNHCR) in Jakarta before they were relocated to the temporary shelter in Kalideres. While West Jakarta locals opposed the refugees’ presence in the subdistrict, more arrived to take refuge at the shelter.
The Jakarta Provincial Government gave them a deadline of Aug 31 to vacate the shelter as they could no longer afford to provide aid to the asylum seekers due to budgetary constraints, leaving the fates of the refugees up to the United Nations High Council on Refugees (UNHCR).
While around 500 asylum seekers have vacated the shelter after UNHCR, through CSR programs, subsidized their rents elsewhere, several hundred still remain in Kalideres as of yesterday.
“Those who haven’t [vacated] are around 300 people. That’s because more asylum seekers are coming in [to Kalideres], some recently came from Cisarua,” Head of Jakarta’s National and Political Unity Office Taufan Bakri told Kompas.
Cisarua, a district in the Bogor regency, is known for having a sizeable population of asylum seekers from across Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
Taufan added that the remaining refugees in Kalideres will be allowed to stay at the shelter while the Jakarta government, the central government, and UNHCR work out a solution for them.
“We see this negotiation as a humanitarian act. The deadline [to vacate the shelter], whether we like it or not, is now flexible. But there will be clear action, we will meet with UNHCR,” he said.
The plight of refugees stuck in Indonesia is immense. Even those who attain official UN refugee status face an estimated wait that has gone from “many years” to “likely never” before they can be resettled to a refugee-friendly country. Stuck in legal limbo and with no right to work in Indonesia, unsurprisingly, many have ended up homeless.
According to UN data, Indonesia is home to about 14,000 refugees, consisting mostly of people from Afghanistan, Somalia and Sudan. Not so long ago, UNHCR promised resettlement times of two to three years, but in the intervening time the number of refugees has increased while many of those countries willing to take them in are being pressured to close their doors, leading the UN agency to tell refugees that they may have to wait in Indonesia indefinitely to have any hope of resettlement.
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