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​People protest!
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Refugees in Libya are not the only ones protesting. In fact, the unfair treatment that refugees have to face by UNHCR in the past has sparked many powerful protests. From Cairo to Pretoria, from Tunis to Ankara, refugees around the world raised their voices and have taken their protest to the streets against UNHCR. The agency’s response is always the same: pretend to care, change nothing, neglect, repress.
And yet, they will not be silenced. We will listen to their stories and amplify their voices until UNHCR takes on its responsibility and acts up to its mandate: protecting those forcibly displaced and in need of assistance.
The protests of people on the move against UNHCR listed here are only a few of the most recent ones. Accordingly, this selection does not claim to be exhaustive.
Protests in Egypt​​​​​​​
Cairo 2005, 2011, 2016, 2020, 2021
In June 2004, UNHCR stopped issuing protection status to people from Sudan, leaving thousands of refugees in a legal limbo. At the same time, the UN agency did not tolerate anyone speaking out against their decision. Faced with unbearable living conditions, poverty, unemployment, arbitrary detention, daily harassments and racism by Egyptian authorities as well as a general lack of prospects, a group of refugees began to educate themselves about their rights through visiting the local university library. Applying their knowledge, they started a peaceful sit-in protest close to the UNHCR headquarters in Cairo in September 2005 that soon involved over 3000 refugees claiming their rights. The protesters referred to themselves as ‘Refugee Voice in Egypt’ and with having nowhere else to turn to, they presented their claims to the UNHCR office, demanding the reopening of previously closed asylum cases and future possibilities of international resettlement.1
“Until our demands are met, we will not relent. We would rather die here than face the conditions the UNHCR is imposing by closing its doors to us.” – Amer Khaled, one of the spokespersons of the protest, expressing his convictions 2
As the protest camp was not on UNHCR property but on the nearby Mustapha Mahmoud Square, UNHCR could not order the (immediate) removal of the demonstrators. Instead, as a form of collective punishment, the agency suspended its services and declared all protesters as “not of concern to UNHCR” by withdrawing their refugee status3 and labelling them as “economic migrants”. In consequence, UNHCR assumed to no longer have an obligation or responsibility to care for the group and demanded the Egyptian government to intervene and break up the protest various times. 4
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"I was not aware of anything
until they were hitting me."
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In light of UNHCR’s efforts to delegitimize the protest, the refugees did not back down and took it upon themselves to re-take their political voice and to define their own norms of care, protection, and security. The protest grew and became self-organised in a remarkably structured way. The camp had separate spaces for women and children, kitchens, and an own ‘camp economy’. The protesters even set up their own security structure that made the camp a safer environment for everyone. Throughout the whole camp, the demonstrators hung banners with demands and information and gave daily speeches to the participants, but also interested people passing by, many of whom learned about the challenging circumstances of refugees for the first time. Moreover, the protesters created a politics of mediation in which initially five elected ‘‘leaders’’ gradually became the spokespersons of the Sudanese refugee community.5
“On the fourth day, as we became more and we were almost 800, so we realized that we had to be organized. So there were committees, one for the press, one who collected money and gave donations, and there was one for security. The members in this committee searched anybody who came into the camp. They did not want anyone to enter with alcohol. When some came drunk to the camp, the security committee held them for some hours, until they became sober.” – An anonymous protester explaining the organisational structure of the protest camp 6
As the sit-in went on, the hopes for their situation becoming better grew high. However, at the end of Ramadan, the police forcefully raided the protest camp. The event was described as “the night the screams never stopped”. Police first made an effort to persuade the refugees to board the buses they had provided. When they resisted, the officials began to fire water cannons and attack the refugees with batons, killing 28 and arresting 650 humans.7 According to a Sudanese human rights monitoring group, another 1,280 Sudanese people were forced onto buses and taken to camps outside the city.8Those responsible for the raid have still not been held accountable, and many refugees who have been missing since the brutal crackdown on their peaceful protest remain unaccounted for to this day.9
“I was not aware of anything until they were hitting me. I think there were five policemen for every refugee. When we started to defend ourselves, there were many more coming. They came and attacked. I saw one person I knew. They were beating him and when he fell down, they broke his neck. One of the police broke his neck with his baton. One pregnant woman also died in the same place.” – An anonymous protester attesting the horrific events during the violent dispersion of the protest 10
Although UNHCR expressed “deep shock and sadness” and stressed “that such situations needed to be resolved peacefully”,11 Egyptian human rights organisations called the events a “massacre” and condemned them as “a full-blown crime committed by Egyptian security forces in collaboration with UNHCR against unarmed refugees”.12
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Sudanese refugees hold their ground in the face of the Egyptian police forces in the first moments of the sit-in dispersal, 2005
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In addition to the events of 2005, there are various records of sporadic protests by refugees in front of the UNHCR office in Cairo dating back to 1994, and many more followed.1 As in 2011, when dozens of Sudanese refugees appealed to the UN agency for protection and resettlement through a sit-in protest after experiencing severe racism, harassment, and beatings by members of Egyptian civil society.14
After Ethiopian refugees had repeatedly protested against their mistreatment in front of the UNHCR office in Cairo over the past years15, April 2016 became the scene of further tragic events in the history of refugee protests. Getu Ayana set himself on fire in front of the UNHCR office after he and other members of the Oromo community were denied asylum seeker status by the agency. Asli Nure, one of the 40 Ethiopian protesters, tried to put out the flames. Her clothes also caught fire. Both eventually died due to their injuries.16
In 2020, Egyptian authorities again violently cracked down on dozens of Sudanese refugees, using batons and racist insults. The refugees were holding a peaceful protest and commemoration of the cruel murder of Mohamed Hasan, a 12-year-old Sudanese child. As so often before, UNHCR again remained silent, choosing not to comment on the brutality enforced outside its offices.17
More recently, Egyptian police again used violence against Sudanese protesters. They arbitrarily arrested at least 30 people in December 2021 and January 2022. The sit-in took place outside the Egyptian headquarters of the UN refugee agency. The protest was again directed against the ongoing everyday harassments and racism, the continuous lack of protection, and further delays in resettlement that people have faced in Egypt for many years.18 In the course of the protests, Sudanese community activists also regularly published accounts of the abuses, raids, arrests, and persecution they have experienced by Egyptian authorities.19
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Sudanese protesters sit on the ground in front of a line of Egyptian riot police, 2004
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1 https://www.unhcr.org/protection/basic/526a22cb6/mandate-high-commissioner-refugees-office.html
2 See UNHCR Statute, as well as Article 35 of the 1951 Refugee Convention and Article II of the 1967 Protocol.
1 https://documents.aucegypt.edu/Docs/GAPP/Report_Edited_v.pdf
2 https://sudantribune.com/article12670
3 Harrell-Bond, B. (2008). Protests Against the UNHCR to Achieve Rights: Some Reflections. In K. Grabska, & L. Mehta (Eds.), Forced Displacement. Why Rights Matter (pp. 222-243). Palgrave Macmillan.
4 Moulin, C., & Nyers, P. (2007). “We Live in a Country of UNHCR” – Refugee Protests and Global Political Society. International Political Sociology, 1 (4), 356-372.
5 Additional information was provided by members of the Refugees Platform in Egypt (RPE), https://rpegy.org/en/
6 https://documents.aucegypt.edu/Docs/GAPP/Report_Edited_v.pdf
7 https://www.fmreview.org/sites/fmr/files/FMRdownloads/en/sexualviolence/mahmoud.pdf
8 https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/report/25718/egypt-unhcr-office-temporarily-halts-operations
9 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/dec/31/sudan.brianwhitaker
10 https://documents.aucegypt.edu/Docs/GAPP/Report_Edited_v.pdf
11 https://www.unhcr.org/news/press/2005/12/43bbf82f2/unhcr-shocked-saddened-cairo-deaths.html
12 https://sudantribune.com/article13918/
13 Moro, L. (2004). Interethnic relations in exile: The politics of ethnicity among Sudanese refugees in Uganda and Egypt. Journal of Refugee Studies, 17 (4), 420-436.
14 https://egyptindependent.com/sudanese-protests-force-unhcr-close-cairo-office
15 https://www.opride.com/2013/06/23/unhcr-moving-oromo-refugees-to-a-safer-area-within-cairo
16 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-egypt-oromos-idUSKBN13V1FC
18 hhttps://www.hrw.org/news/2022/03/27/egypt-police-target-sudanese-refugee-activists
