#choucha

[newyorkarttours]

Samuel Gratacap in ‘Notions of Home’ at Yancey Richardson Gallery

Shot at Choucha, a Tunisian transit camp that has been a temporary home to hundreds of thousands of refugees, Samuel Gratacap’s stark image of cobbled-together UN tents speaks to the innovation and desperation of camp inhabitants. (At Yancey Richardson Gallery in Chelsea through Aug 25th). Samuel Gratacap, Empire, refugee camp of Choucha (Tunisia, 2012 – 14), archival pigment print, 22 3/8 x 23 inches.

[pink-limerence]

She has no idea I want to pick her up like a hamburger and give her a big smooch

[primecollector]

Mind boggling diversity in #choucha refugee camp in #tunisia by #samuelgratacap (at Mudam Luxembourg - Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean)

[rightsinexile]

A personal account from Choucha, officially closed in 2013

This article was contributed by Oliver Tringham, a refugee advocate. It has been lightly edited for style.

All borders are porous. Despite the ditch that has reputedly been dug to deter people crossing irregularly between Tunisia and Libya, it is clear that crossings are still being made – and in both directions. In mid-September, I met six women who had escaped the killing in Timbuctoo and thought to find sanctuary in Libya (they said they knew they didn’t have enough money to get to Europe).  They only found more killing in Libya, so came to Tunisia – where a kind Libyan drove them across the desert border in exchange for their last EUR 100 note. He pointed them in the direction of Choucha, and amazingly, they found their way to the camp – a camp that was officially closed on 30 June 2013, and no longer exists according to its creator, UNHCR.

What is left of the camp deserves an article in Forced Migration Review’s June 2017 issue (Shelter in Displacement) or would it be better in Resurgence?  There can be few better places where the Four Rs have been so rigorously applied: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Recreate.  Arguably less virtuously, the Chouchans have become acculturated to the inhabitants of their nearest town – Ben Gardène – in their attitude to a fifth R: Rubbish. Still, the women from Timbuctoo had been happy to arrive there, to find people “like us” (they stroked their bare, black arms to illustrate) and somewhere to sleep and rest in peace aboveground.

Choucha’s inhabitants have all been men for some time, now. The arrival of the women was therefore especially welcome: they soon started cooking and traditional sub-Saharan society began to re-establish itself.

They had two days of delight, before they were rudely interrupted on the morning of Saturday, 13 August – a Tunisian National holiday for Women and the Family – by a raid from the Tunisian National Guard. The Guards violently rounded everyone up and made them all sit in the hot sun from eleven in the morning, until after the sun had set that evening. They then carted 33 people off to prison in Ben Gardène.

This is not normal practice: no-one can remember anything like this happening at Choucha before. Although the camp at Choucha no longer officially exists, the Tunisian Ministry of the Interior produced a communiqué the following day (on Sunday, 14 August) saying that 33 people had been arrested for illegally trying to get across the border from Tunisia to Libya.  Three of the 33 were considered to be traffickers, as they been found in possession of cash (euros) and passports.  While we don’t know in which direction, the remaining 24 were headed, it’s clear that the Ministry hadn’t checked with the women from Timbuctoo.

The three people arrested as traffickers were all from Côte d’Ivoire, and had been living in the camp, since arriving there from Libya in the Arab Spring of 2011. While the 30 non-trafficker travellers were released into the welcoming arms of the Tunisian Red Crescent (Croissant Rouge Tunisien – CRT) in the next few days, these three were kept in prison.

Fortunately, there were still some of the Ivoirian community at Choucha who were not incarcerated, and one of them got in touch with the Maison des Migrations in Tunis as well as with the author of this report. He thought one of the prisoners was still in Medenine, while the two others were in Tunis.

One’s first problem in these circumstances is to find out where the prisoners are.  If two of the refugees were in Tunis, they were most likely to be in the Detention Centre at Ouardeya – somewhere that I knew from other occasions. It was almost by accident that I discovered they were actually in the prison at Mornaghia – when I asked a prison visitor from an ONG in Tunis, who had seen them a few days before.

The representative from the Forum Tunisien des Droits Économiques et Sociaux sent down to discover the nature of the situation hadn’t even been able to meet any of the 30 travellers in CRT’s care, let alone any of the imprisoned three.

Assuming that the other refugee was in Harboub, the prison on the outskirts of Medènine, the Ivoirian who was still free asked me to take some money to him there. As someone who knows Tunisia’s prisons well, has said:  in prison, you have to get protection – either by having money;  or, if you haven’t got money, by becoming a slave to someone who has; or else you join the Fundamentalists, although people with black skin are generally not welcomed by the latter.

I got in touch with a lawyer I knew in Tataouine, to see if he could find out if the third refugee was incarcerated in Harboub. He said that he was going to Court in Medènine the following day and would look up his name in the Court list, there.

The following evening, we met over a cup of tea in a café, outside under the stars and he told me that the refugee was not on the list of inmates.  I insisted that we continue looking, as I felt sure he was there.

The following morning therefore, I went with the lawyer to the Court in Tataouine, as the Director of Harboub was meant to be turning up. The Court is a grand building, built by the former dictatorship in Tataouine’s new administrative district. It has a huge entrance hall, across which lawyers stride back and forth in their black gowns, under three gigantic chandeliers. The Prison Chief didn’t turn up, but there was someone there from the prison, whom we were able to question. If he worked at Harboub, I felt sure that he would know the person we were looking for, but he said that there were dozens of “Africans” in the prison – meaning that they all looked alike. He made some ’phone calls however, and it seemed possible that we had at last located our quarry.

The morning of the next day (a Friday), the lawyer and I went back to the Court in Medènine, to try to talk to the judge about the case. The judge was busy, as he was doing the Clerk’s job as well as his own (the Clerk hadn’t turned up), but we at least got the case number and the law under which he was being charged.

I got the impression that my lawyer had gone about as far as he was prepared to go on a pro bono basis. He said that the charges were serious and that the Government would appoint a lawyer for the defence.

I went to Harboub and tried to talk my way in to see the prisoner – and give him the money.  After all, although only members of his immediate family are allowed to visit, there were no members of his immediate family in Tunisia – and he’d called me “Papa” often enough.

They kept me waiting on the doorstep, while two men, one young and one old, manacled together, were bundled into the prison. The older man, dressed in his traditional Tunisian jebba, now grey and stained, seemed to be almost weeping with shame. The Prison Director refused to grant me an audience, and told me I had to get permission from a judge or the Ministry of Justice in Tunis.

My next step was to contact a renowned lawyer in Sfax. When I rang him, he said that he was coming to Tunis the following day, and we could meet there. So I went back to the capital and waited…  and waited…  Eventually, several days later, this lawyer got in touch, with profuse apologies. However, by this time, I’d contacted Avocats Sans Frontières.

Like all organizations, ASF has its own agenda. As far as I could tell, they were interested in the new law on Human Trafficking and if the case I had brought them was an example of the application of this new law. They said that they would send someone down to the South the following week, and would get back to me with their findings…

More waiting…

I decided to go down to Sfax, myself – thinking of Mohammed and the Mountain. Then things started to move. The lawyer in Sfax rang to say that “our” refugee was going to trial this coming Friday, in the Tribunal Cantonal – the lowest Court – in Ben Gardène, rather than in the Tribunal de Première Instance in Medènine. The lawyer and I discussed what to do – whether to seek legal representation for the hearing in the lower Court. Considering the length of time our refugee had already spent in prison, the lawyer suggested letting the process run its course: he was likely to be released more or less immediately, with or without representation.

The lawyer did write me a letter however, for the Judge in the Tribunal de Première Instance, requesting that I be allowed to visit the prisoner, considering that he had no immediate family in the country.

I arrived at the Court in Medènine early, the following morning and sat and waited for a couple of hours, together with the general Tunisian population. I was eventually invited into the Judge’s presence – where I discovered that it was not the right judge. He made some ‘phone calls however, and assured me that our refugee would not be appearing before the Tribunal Cantonal, the morning after. His Clerk then took me to talk to the judge who was dealing with the case, who was much less amenable.

This judge insisted I sit on one of the hard chairs on the far side of the room, rather than the comfy ones next to his desk. He said several times that the refugee had “friends” in Tunisia, who had got hold of a lawyer for him. Indeed, this lawyer – a woman – had been to see the refugee, just the day before:  she had come all the way from Tunis! So he certainly had no need of my visiting him, and he refused the letter and my application – although he pointed out that had I had a card from some organisation registered in Tunisia, his decision might have been different… Furthermore, the refugee would be coming to Court (the Tribunal de Première Instance) next Wednesday. The judge also deigned to give me the name and phone numbers of the lawyer.

I left the Court and went and sat outside in a café down the road, where I drank an entire bottle of water. I rang the lawyer and she invited me to come and talk to her in Tunis when I was back there. She said that the refugee was definitely not going to Court on Wednesday. When I asked, she also told me that the Maison des Migrations had appointed her to represent this refugee.

I took a taxi out to see the women from Timbuctoo, still in their CRT flat on the outskirts of the town. I brought them copies of the Rights in Exile Programme’s “Self-Help Kit for Asylum-Seekers” in French, although it turned out that they’d already made their asylum applications.

Before returning to Tunis, I made another visit to Choucha, picking up more information on the situation and their needs, and taking them lemons and bananas, tea, sugar and bread.

Although the Maison des Migration’s focus may be on trafficking and the problems of Sub-Saharan students (they work closely with the Association des Étudiants et Stagiaires Africains en Tunisie), it was good to see them taking on this case.  We look forward to seeing what comes of it.

[rightsinexile]

Where is the justice and the moral responsibility of the international community?

Written on behalf of the refugees remaining in Choucha emergency refugee camp in Tunisia by Yagoub Adam Saadelnour, a Sudanese novelist.

Following the direct, rapid and sudden military intervention of the coalition countries against Libya, many of us have been compelled to flee from the hell of war in Libya to Tunisia, to an emergency refugee camp set up by UNHCR in Choucha. Others among us fled to another UNHCR emergency camp in Saloum, Egypt.

It seems that it is the moral responsibility of the coalition countries against Libya to be concerned with the refugees forced to flee Libya because of their direct action in that country. UNHCR began speeding up refugee resettlement operations and procedures, which were carried out with unprecedented speed in the history of UNHCR. However after the killing of Gaddafi, the resettlement operations for the remaining refugees in the UNHCR emergency camp in Choucha, Tunisia, were suddenly stopped.

Officials at the UNHCR emergency office in Choucha said that UNHCR had suspended resettlement procedures for the remaining refugees and issued a decision to close the emergency refugee camps in Choucha and Saloum. The remaining refugees in these two camps were told that they would have to enter cities in Tunisia and Egypt, respectively, to find assistance.

According to the UNHCR emergency office in Choucha, there is no resettlement for those refugees who remain in the emergency camp, because the European coalition countries that intervened militarily in Libya to change the regime, thereby causing the crisis there, have taken sufficient numbers of refugees and do not want more of them. So, these countries have left the remaining refugees in the desert to die.

But it is not clear to the refugees in Tunisia why the UNHCR emergency office in Choucha stopped the resettlement procedures, when the emergency office in Saloum did not do the same until the last refugee affected by the coalition countries was processed. There was a single UNHCR decision regarding the two camps, but this decision was implemented differently in Tunisia and Egypt. UNHCR has provided no explanation for this.

The refugees also wonder why none have been resettled in certain coalition countries, despite the fact that these governments have accepted moral, humanitarian and legal responsibility for the people whose lives they destroyed, and have publicly committed themselves to resettling these refugees in their own countries. They point to the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia, in particular. Not a single refugee has been resettled in any of these countries.

If there is international justice and respect for international humanitarian law, the world must take moral responsibility for the actions of these countries, i.e., the coalition countries that destroyed Libya. They must take action and oblige the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia to compensate the refugees who have not been resettled and the countries that have been taking them in following their exit from Libya. Perhaps this will deter them from irresponsible interference in the internal affairs of other countries, and prevent them from destroying the lives of people who have not sinned through their governments’ policies, as it is happening now in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

There is a legal precedent on the issue of compensation for refugees for acts of military intervention. Iraqis were compensated after the military intervention of the coalition against Iraq led by the United States.

Will the European countries and the US now immediately move to compel the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia to pay full compensation to those refugees who have fled Libya and remain in UNHCR emergency camps?

We, the registered refugees remaining in the UNHCR emergency office in Choucha, Tunisia, appeal to the European Union and American bar associations, as organisations concerned with human rights. We appeal to you to contact us, to collect our signatures and file lawsuits in our names in the European or American courts against the coalition countries that destroyed Libya. We demand that they pay us financial compensation to redress the damage inflicted upon us through the actions of these countries.

[rightsinexile]

The case of the wandering Chadian

Submitted by Oliver Tringham, a refugee advocate and regular contributor to the Rights in Exile newsletter, based in the UK and Tunisia.

On 16 June 2015, Isaac Bahraddin Nahaar, a Chadian refugee from the Choucha camp in Southern Tunisia, incarcerated in the Ouardeya Detention Centre in Tunis was woken in the early hours and threatened with a second deportation to Algeria. He had already been deported there from Ouardeya a couple of months previously and forced across the border at gunpoint (see: Who’s in Charge in Tunisia – The Tunisian Government or UNHCR?)– and he had no desire to repeat the experience.

On the first occasion (towards the end of April 2015), the Tunisian National Guard had refused to return his only travel document – an asylum seeker card issued by UNHCR (his request for asylum had long been refused, but like everyone else at Choucha, this was the only identity document he possessed). Fortunately, Isaac had made a copy of his card, which he was able to show the Algerian authorities when he was arrested in Tebessa, soon after his first deportation to Algeria in April. Following their usual practice, the Algerian authorities took his details, and issued him with an ‘invitation’ to leave the country within 15 days. On this occasion, Isaac decided to go to the UNHCR office in Algiers– it was a long way from Tebessa, but UNHCR had helped him and his compatriots, when he had escaped to Tunisia from Libya some four years before.

Isaac arrived in Algiers on Friday, 8 May 2015, and went to the UNHCR office. There were police stationed outside and they wouldn’t let him enter. They told him to return in four days’ time. Unable to get anything to eat or find a place to stay in Algiers, he decided to return to Tunisia where at least he knew people.

He retraced his steps to Tebessa and tried crossing the border at Bou Chebka. With just his UNHCR asylum seeker card, the border guards refused to let him pass, so Isaac walked off into the wilderness. He eventually crossed back into Tunisia perhaps not far from where he had been deported a few weeks previously.

Once in Tunisia and still seeking a way to get back to Choucha, Isaac went to a National Guard post, but rather than helping him to get back to the camp, the officers arrested him. How the National Guard treat the refugees they apprehend appears to depend largely on the opinion of the UNHCR officer they telephone at the time (see: Who’s in Charge in Tunisia – The Tunisian Government or UNHCR?). On this occasion, after a couple of days’ detention, the National Guard passed him on to the police in Feriana. A few days after his transfer, the police took him before a judge in the town.

The Court offered Isaac a lawyer, but he said he didn’t need one, as he hadn’t done anything wrong. The judge sentenced him to six months’ imprisonment. However, Isaac was invited to appeal against the sentence. When he did this, he told the Court his whole story and the Judge reduced his sentence to just one month – which is the usual tariff for crossing the border illegally.

Isaac was transferred to the prison in Kasserine and spent a month there, until Wednesday, 10 June when he was transferred to Ouardeya. Although some refugees in Tunisia are released from prison after serving their sentences and then allowed to travel to the hostel run by the Tunisian Red Crescent in Medènine, others, such as Isaac, are transferred directly to the Ouardeya Detention Centre. The basis on which these decisions are made (who goes where) is currently unclear, although it might be worth pointing out that Isaac had not been in trouble with the authorities before his recent adventures began (in March 2015). Indeed, he was one of those who seldom left the camp in the four years he had lived there.

After being transferred back to Ouardeya on 10 June, Isaac got to know an Ethiopian refugee and was able to borrow his phone to ring his friends in Choucha and let them know where he was (which is how we know this story). The Ethiopian, his prison companion, was worried because he’d been told that he was going to be deported to Algeria in the next few days, as he hadn’t been able to buy a plane ticket back to Ethiopia. Due to the situation in their country, Ethiopians can at least apply for refugee status in Tunisia, unlike those refugees from countries that UNHCR Tunis deems to be ‘safe’ – such as Djibouti. We don’t (yet) know why this Ethiopian was being detained, let alone deported.

Isaac was worried that he too was in danger of being deported with the Ethiopian – which turned out to be the case. They were both deported to Algeria on the morning of Tuesday, 16 June 2015. Isaac resisted and was beaten: he complained of the resulting pain the following day, but as far as we know, both have survived the experience and are currently somewhere in Algeria.

One small mercy perhaps is that refugees from Ouardeya seem to be being deported to less remote spots, so that there is less likelihood of them dying in the desert. We should perhaps also commend the Tunisian authorities for offering Isaac a lawyer in Feriana, and encouraging him to appeal his initial prison sentence.

On the other hand, it still appears that:

UNHCR has inordinate influence on deportation decisions being taken by the Tunisian authorities;

Decisions on deportation are being taken by National Guard officers without any possibility of appeal: there is no judicial or administrative oversight of this practice, and it is not open to judicial review;

Beating arrested refugees, and stealing their cash, mobile phones and identity documents all seem to be common behaviour by National Guard officers;

No consideration is being given to the possibility of subsequent refoulement: UNHCR Tunisia recognises that refugees from both Chad and Ethiopia may have a good case for being granted refugee status, yet refugees from these countries would appear to be in danger of arbitrary refoulement once they are in Algeria.

Clearly, all four of these factors need to be addressed, urgently. Furthermore, if the current efforts by the European Union to stem the flow of refugees from Libya towards Europe are successful, then the most likely place to which they will turn is Tunisia.

UNHCR and IOM in Tunisia have been preparing for a new influx: UNHCR has taken over a hostel in Medènine in the South of Tunisia (in addition to those run there by the Croissant Rouge Tunisien), and has publicised its policy of directing refugees towards urban centres, rather than camps (i.e. Choucha). It is clear from the above account, however, that the Tunisian state will need to overhaul its practice and procedures if it is to cope at all effectively with a new influx. Tunisia’s current solution of deporting, to Algeria, those refugees who will not take up IOM’s offers of free flights “home” (where these are offered) and whose presence the Tunisian state is no longer prepared to tolerate, is neither just nor sustainable. If Tunisia is not prepared to incur the cost of flights back to their country of origin, and a proper judicial procedure to decide who should go, the Tunisian government should provide these refugees with a residence permit and allow them to stay, without being in danger of arbitrary arrest and all that follows.

As mentioned in last month’s Rights in Exile article, the Prime Minister of Tunisia announced almost two years ago (on 16 July 2013) that all those still living at Choucha, both with refugee status and without, would be furnished with Residence Permits (temporary but renewable), accommodation and access to services (principally health and education). They could also apply for offers of employment in Tunisia through UNHCR. All they had to do in exchange was to present themselves at police or National Guard stations and allow their fingerprints to be taken – as all Tunisian citizens do to get an Identity Card. A first step would be to honour this commitment to those who still consider themselves People of Choucha.

[rightsinexile]

Who’s in Charge in Tunisia – the Tunisian Government or UNHCR?

Submitted by Oliver Tringham, a refugee advocate and regular contributor to the Rights in Exile newsletter, based in the UK and Tunisia.

Isaac Bahraddin Nahaar is not the first of the “failed asylum seekers” in Tunisia to be deported to the Algerian border by the Tunisian National Guard - forced to walk across at the point of a gun. He’s unlikely to be the last - but he is one of those who have lived to tell the tale. As far as we know, he is also the first of those still remaining inhabitants of the Choucha refugee camp to suffer this fate.

Isaac fled the fighting in Libya in March 2011. He crossed the border into Tunisia on 31 March 2011 and moved to Choucha, where he has lived in a tent ever since.

He applied for refugee status, as he believed he would be in danger of persecution if he returned to Chad, his country of origin. UNHCR - which still decides claims for asylum in Tunisia - rejected his application. Along with several hundred others who had been refused, he stayed in Choucha despite UNHCR’s efforts to dislodge them (see: Surviving Choucha and Stuck at Choucha). Even when the camp closed, 30 June 2013, Isaac stayed on, along with many others.

A fortnight after the camp’s closure, the Prime Minister of Tunisia announced (on 16 July 2013) that all those still living at Choucha, both with refugee status and without, would be furnished with Residence Permits (temporary but renewable), accommodation and access to services (principally health and education). They could also apply for offers of employment in Tunisia through UNHCR. All they had to do in exchange was to present themselves at Police or National Guard stations and allow their fingerprints to be taken - as all Tunisian citizens do to get an Identity Card.

As a result, most, although not all, Chouchans presented themselves and gave their fingerprints. Unfortunately, up to now, none have received any of the promised benefits, least of all the residency card. For further information on these events, see: 'Don't even talk to them': Tunisia's forgotten refugees.

In due course, like many others in the camp, Isaac’s brother and other family members returned to Libya. From there, they caught a boat to Italy and are now living in Germany.

At the beginning of March 2015, having spent almost four years at Choucha and still with no sign of any progress, Isaac decided to try to join his family in Germany. None of the rejected refugees at the camp have passports or identity cards, as these were taken by UNHCR when they arrived at Choucha. UNHCR claims that they have since all been ‘lost’ somewhere between their Zarzis and Tunis offices. However, like the others, Isaac had his UNHCR ‘asylum-seeker’ card, which is usually accepted by the Tunisian authorities.

Isaac set off through the desert to Libya, but was arrested before he could cross the border. He was taken first to the prison at Mornaguia outside Tunis, which is a prison for ordinary criminals, but he was soon transferred to the National Guard Detention Centre at Ouardeya in Tunis, whose residents are all foreigners.

After hearing about Isaac’s case, I went to Ouardeya to look for him on Monday, 13 April. The National Guards certainly knew about him in the Detention Centre, but told me I should go to the Border Police Station on rue 18 janvier 1952 if I wanted more information. The officer there was misleading (he told me that Isaac had entered Tunisia in 2012 rather than 2011, for example) and said that the only thing I could do to help him was to buy him a flight to Chad, as a decision had been taken to deport him.

Who had taken this decision to deport him? Was it an administrative decision or a judicial decision, I inquired. The only decision that I could elicit from the officer was that one of the senior staff at UNHCR’s Tunis office had told him that Isaac’s claim for refugee status had been rejected and that he should therefore be deported. It appears that the word of one person - on the phone at UNHCR - is enough to get somebody deported. Actually, it appears that even refugees with status, recognized by UNHCR, have been deported from Ouardeya, see: Migrants in Tunisia: Detained and Deported.

The following day, I got in touch with Terre d’Asile, Tunisie, who have a programme for helping refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants in the area of “Greater Tunis”. They agreed to put a lawyer on Isaac’s case.

Ten days later, however, Isaac was removed from Ouardeya and once again taken into the desert. Terre d’Asile, Tunisie’s lawyers knew nothing about this, until they were told by Isaac’s friends at Choucha several days afterwards.

If Isaac’s experience was anything like that of others deported in this fashion, he was taken without warning, early in the morning, before dawn, one among ten prisoners in the back of an unmarked van without windows. They would drive a long way - down to the Cha’ambi Mountains, as far as we can ascertain - where they would be let out in the desert landscape, without food or water. Their guards would tell them to walk across into Algeria and that if they turned back, they would be shot. (We have the testimony of one of the survivors of this form of deportation that took place in December 2014. There were ten at the beginning and only four survived, as far as we know.)

Isaac survived this ordeal and made his way to the Algerian town of Tébessa, where he was once again, arrested. The Algerian authorities told him that they would deport him to Chad: Isaac believes that he will be killed if he returns there. Although he had no travel documents, with his UNHCR asylum-seeker card, he persuaded the Algerians to release him to allow him to travel to Algiers to visit the UNHCR office.

On Friday, 8 May, Isaac phoned his friends in Choucha to tell them that he had arrived in Algiers, and that UNHCR there had agreed to give him an interview “in the next few days.” He must have had his interview quickly, as on Monday (11 May), Isaac phoned to say that he was back in Tunisia, although it wasn’t at first clear where or in what circumstances. It is also unclear how he managed to cross the border without any travel documents. Is UNHCR’s power so great that countries will make their borders permeable at its behest?

On Thursday, 14 May, Isaac rang to tell his friends at Choucha, that he was now in Police or National Guard custody in Khasserine. He said that he had been told he would be detained there for 15 days, before being transported somewhere else for further detention.

Since then, we have heard nothing from him.

It is of concern that:

The Tunisian Government continues to resist honouring its commitment to providing legal status, accommodation and access to residency and services for those refugees (both with and without status) who were at Choucha and who presented themselves at Police or National Guard stations as requested;

The Tunisian National Guard is continuing to deport refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants into the desert and forcing them to cross the border into Algeria at gunpoint: from the little evidence we have, this practice is at least as dangerous as crossing the Mediterranean;

Refugees are apparently also being transported across borders, without documents, by state or international institutions;

Decision-making on refugees and others is apparently being taken by UNHCR Tunis, rather than by the judicial or administrative organs of the Tunisian state;

Individual officials at UNHCR’s Tunis office appear to have excessive influence on how refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants are treated by the Tunisian authorities;

There appears to be no judicial or administrative oversight of any of these practices, and they do not appear to be open to judicial review.

[rightsinexile]

Request: Tunisian nationals to support feasibility study on refugee legal aid

The EUROMED Foundation has funded a feasibility study of the potential for establishing legal aid for refugees seeking asylum in Tunisia. The study is to be carried out in March 2015, by Reda Oulamine, who heads the law firm Droit et Justice in Casablanca, Maud Depressle, and Oliver Tringham. Currently, UNHCR conducts refugee status adjudication (RSD) in Tunisia and there is no domestic legal provision for this. The Red Crescent is responsible for initial screening. Oliver Tringham and Reda Oulamine have already made contact with a number of NGOs, law firms, and individuals, but if any readers have contacts with Tunisians who would be interested in supporting this initiative, please contact Oliver Tringham.