Since 2008, 16 people have received asylum or subsidiary protection in Serbia. These are those who have managed to overcome all the shortcomings of the asylum procedure, the insufficient interest of the competent institutions, the problems surrounding the accommodation of asylum seekers, the intolerance of the local population... However, what is left for them when they finally receive one of these two protections
Sonja Tošković, a lawyer at the Belgrade Center for Human Rights, an organization that is an executive partner of the UNHCR and a legal representative of a group of asylum seekers in Serbia, told Vreme about this.
First of all, the interlocutor says that due to the lack of integration policy, half of the mentioned number of persons with refugee protection has already left Serbia.
WEATHER: Let's start from the beginning. What happens after a person receives one of the refugee protections?
SONJA TOŠKOVIĆ: The Asylum Law of the Republic of Serbia offers certain rights that are more or less in line with the Geneva Convention. The law guarantees the right to work, the right to social assistance, health care, education, movable and immovable property... Many of these rights are harmonized with the rights of foreigners in the Republic of Serbia. We guarantee it to the person who receives protection, but then we equate him with a foreigner. This means that the rights that a protected person has are very restrictive.
If I understand correctly, a person with one of the refugee protections is before the law the same as a foreigner?
She should have more rights than a foreigner, but in practice - she doesn't. However, this is not the case only in Serbia. It is the same in many countries of the European Union.
Special protection should exist, and our Asylum Act provides for it in some cases. A refugee has the right to accommodation for one year after receiving refugee status. We turned to the Commissariat for Refugees and Migration, which is responsible for integration, with the question of what this means in practice. The Commissariat answered, rather extensively and generally, that this provision will be implemented according to the capabilities of the Republic of Serbia. The law, therefore, guarantees accommodation or monetary compensation with which a person with status would pay for accommodation. So far, we have not had this second case, and as for the first, we have, for example, two persons who have had subsidiary protection for many years and are living in an asylum center.
What about the other 14 people who received some of the refugee protection?
The rest mostly paid for their own accommodation. They did not even address the Commissariat for Accommodation. We asked the Commissariat regarding the integration plan for a couple from Turkey who received refugee protection, however, the Commissariat replied that they currently do not have an integration plan nor are they able to offer anything that would somehow regulate the integration process.
And the integration plan should exist?
It should exist, and not according to the Asylum Law, but according to the Migration Law, which in one part is responsible for the integration of refugees. The commissariat, which has complete freedom in that area, should draw up not only an integration plan but also some kind of by-law, to initiate something, anything... At the moment, there is nothing. There is a whole set of social, economic, cultural rights that refugees should have in order to be able to integrate.
The UN Convention on the Status of Refugees has an article that stipulates that persons who receive refugee protection should be assimilated and naturalized. That article leaves the freedom of interpretation of assimilation and naturalization to the states that ratify the Convention. In translation, assimilation means that the status of a refugee is equated with the status of a citizen.
This, of course, does not exist in practice. Perhaps the literal implementation of that article would be the easiest for a refugee who, after receiving refugee status, would wait three years, as required by the Law on Citizenship, and then apply for citizenship. However, there should be some special, protective measures. Being a foreigner in Serbia and a refugee are not the same. Foreigners are people who came here to work, opened a company, work for someone, have social and health insurance... Refugees have nothing.
What might those special safeguards be??
First of all, to normatively prescribe precise rights and obligations. Other laws, such as the Law on Citizenship, the Law on Foreigners, the Law on Higher Education, the Law on Secondary Education, the Law on Social Assistance and a bunch of other laws, should be harmonized with the Law on Asylum. Although it is not explicitly stated anywhere, refugees may fall under some of the existing legal norms that provide protection to vulnerable groups. On the other hand, our state authorities absolutely do not recognize the category of refugees under the Asylum Law. They recognize refugees from former SFRY states, but this is completely unknown to them now.
We had and still have many difficulties in connection with the integration of one of our clients, with the issuance of his travel document, with the nostrification of his diploma due to his introduction to the labor market - just to get a work card, that is. unique registration number. He can't do anything without a work book. Not to mention the fact that our National Employment Action Plan does not recognize refugees under the Asylum Act as a vulnerable group. That doesn't mean they won't. Such a change should be initiated. The entire asylum system is ineffective, and integration is completely neglected.
What are the consequences of neglected integration?
The consequences are that whoever gets asylum here, and more and more people get it, will not be able to integrate into society, they will be left to fend for themselves. The consequence is that, for example, two Turkish citizens whom we represented and who received refugee status, went to live in another country after less than a year. UNHCR helped them go to a European Union country. They left because they had no chance to integrate here. We asked the Commissariat to enable them to integrate into our society. To begin with, to organize a Serbian language course for them, we asked the MUP to issue them a travel document for refugees so that they could move freely... Unfortunately, none of that was fulfilled.
Apart from language learning, what concretely could still exist that would help them in their integration?
Apart from language learning, there is certainly access to the labor market. This would also mean retraining, additional training, recognition of foreign diplomas, which is very difficult, learning the culture and historical heritage of the country in which they now live, access to primary and secondary education for children, the right to one-year accommodation, the right to health care and the right to social assistance that otherwise, it is prescribed by the Law on Asylum, but so far none of the asylum seekers or persons with refugee protection have received it. It is a set of rights prescribed by the Geneva Convention and EU directives.
How refugees are treated? They do not have health care?
Refugees have the right to free health care. In Croatia, for example, they only have the right to basic health care or emergency care and nothing beyond that, and that has now been changed with the latest changes to their Asylum Law.
In our country, refugees and persons with subsidiary health care have the right to complete health care. The costs are partly borne by the Ministry of Health, and partly by UNHCR and the Danish Refugee Institute. The same applies to asylum seekers. That is commendable, but again, it does not mean that something will not change if the number of people who need such help increases.
The Belgrade Center for Human Rights is the legal representative of refugees from Tunisia and Iraq. What do they mention to you in communication? Do they mention exactly these problems??
Why not? Our client, originally from Iraq, was, for example, completely unfairly neglected for six years and he hardly realized even the minimum of his rights. His only right to accommodation is regulated. He lives in a house in the courtyard of the Asylum Center in Banja Koviljača, and that is more than the law prescribes, but he has nothing else. Thanks to the Danish Refugee Institute, he managed to get a job by translating and that's it.
The right to family reunification, for example, which I didn't mention before... He hasn't seen his son for six years. He also did not realize the right to a travel document, the right to freedom of movement. It's nothing arranged. There are no normative rules as to what a travel document should look like for a person who has subsidiary protection or asylum, there is no paper with which he could go to see his son.
We tried to get his diploma certified, but the Commissariat did not want to pay the fee because it is too expensive. They made a very strange request that we prove that his degree will be certified if they pay the fee. It is completely impossible…
As for language and culture, he educated himself. It can be said that he is the first, pilot victim of the bad integration policy in Serbia and because of that he is in a very difficult psychosocial state.
What is the significance of integration in the other direction? How much better the local population in Serbia would understand refugees if there was a better system of integration?
As for attitudes, I think that the latest research by the UNHCR showed how intolerant we really are. I think migration flows should be seen as an advantage, not a disadvantage. Sensitizing the local population is a long-term process that is up to all of us. On the other hand, competent state institutions should carefully choose the places where they will open centers for the accommodation of migrants. This should be preceded by some educational policy that would explain to people who is coming to their place, why and so on.
Is that also part of the integration??
I think it belongs. It is not so in the law, but sensitization of society and their familiarization with different cultures and peoples can only be a positive process in accepting diversity. The procedure for obtaining refugee protection is a long period during which these people have to live with each other. It is a natural process.
Basically, the good thing about us now is that we have few people who need to integrate. Small pilot projects should be created with them, through which good models for integration would be found.
Let's face it, some people don't need integration. Some have been in Serbia for a long time, have families, jobs, know the language... It's not easy for others, and the system needs to be improved because of them.
What is the state of integration in the mentioned Croatia?
Croatia has gone through the process of EU integration and can serve as a good example for us. Croatia had similar problems to us before it became part of the EU. There are even now, especially when we talk about integration.
Looking at the example of the EU, the answer to the question of whether the integration will be successful depends on how economically strong the country is. Croatia is at the bottom of the economic and social ladder of EU countries. They have some funds at their disposal that we do not have, and what is successful with them is housing care that lasts up to two years. The monthly financial assistance amounts to about HRK 600 - about EUR 80. The refugees also receive some humanitarian aid in the form of food packages. The education process is carried out quite poorly, because children are not included in the education system during the process of obtaining status, but only afterwards, and a lot of time is wasted there. They learn the language at the Faculty of Philology in Zagreb, and it lasts, admittedly, for six weeks, but at least it is somehow organized. Nostrification is practically not possible, and the conditions for citizenship are quite demanding.
What is the situation in the European Union??
The classification directive, which deals with integration policies, prescribes only minimum integration conditions due to the unequal economic strength of the member states. The fact that Croatia guarantees the right to accommodation for two years is above the minimum required by the directive.
On the other hand, some of the member states are very restrictive. Austria and Germany, for example. There, the academic and professional public is fighting to equalize the rights and obligations of persons with subsidiary protection and persons with refugee status. Therefore, they are at that level... Everyone is advocating that the two protections be equalized, but the state rejects it because it is a huge number of people who have subsidiary protection. The highest level of integration rights is given by Sweden and Great Britain.
