ARMENIA: STAKEHOLDERS IDENTIFY GAPS IN REFUGEE PROTECTION,

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 MOSCOW 000011

DEPARTMENT FOR PRM/ECA
BAGHDAD FOR REFCOORD

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PREF PHUM PREL SMIG AM
SUBJECT: ARMENIA: STAKEHOLDERS IDENTIFY GAPS IN REFUGEE PROTECTION,
BUT FUNDS TO FILL THEM REMAIN ELUSIVE


1. (U) Summary: A draft UNHCR Armenia conference report on November
2008 stakeholders' consultations identifies significant legal,
economic, and social challenges to refugees' integration in the
impoverished former Soviet republic. While it makes dozens of
recommendations for strengthening protection of forced migrants, the
report is vague as to who will have to bear ultimate responsibility
for a durable solution. Sparse donor attendance at the
consultations carries the risk that inter- and non-governmental
organizations and the GOAM itself will lack adequate resources to
achieve their laudable goals. Refugees who participated in the
consultations expressed deep frustration with their living
conditions to date. End Summary.


2. (U) UNHCR Armenia organized national consultations on
"Strengthening Capacity to protect Refugees in Armenia" November
6-7, 2008, in Yerevan. The conference brought together mainly
government, United Nations, and domestic NGO participants to analyze
achievements and remaining gaps in the Armenian refugee protection
system. The only donor representatives present were PRM's
Moscow-based Refcoord, Embassy Yerevan USAID staff, and the Head of
Operations and European Neighborhood Policy Section of the
Delegation of the European Commission to Armenia. UNHCR Armenia
Representative Bushra Halepota reported out the conference findings
in a draft memorandum circulated December 22.

Gaps in Full Integration of Refugees in Armenia
-------------- --


3. (U) While Armenia is a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and
its 1967 protocol, and Yerevan officially welcomes individuals
fleeing persecution, stakeholders participating in the November
consultations agreed that the country's asylum regime does not meet
international standards. Conference participants identified the
follow protection gaps, inter alia:

-- Asylum seekers are not clearly exempt from prosecution for
illegal entry into Armenian territory and are thus at risk for
refoulement. (Note: In response to Refcoord's query, UNHCR said it
had no statistics on actual refoulement; however, a governmental
working group on border management has been meeting periodically
since August to develop a referral mechanism for border guards who
identify would-be asylum seekers. End Note.)

-- Border guards have inadequate knowledge of asylum law, refugee
status determination procedures, and the role of the State Migration
Agency (SMA).

-- Separate application processes exist for temporary asylum (TA)
and refugee statuses, and applicants are not well informed as to the
advantages and disadvantages of one over the other. TA is relatively
easy and quick to obtain but does not afford crucial housing
benefits as refugee status does.

-- Negative asylum decisions are vague and issued only in the
Armenian language, thus hampering effective appeals; furthermore,
asylum seekers are not issued with legal i.d. for the duration of
their cases, putting them at risk of detention and again of
refoulement.

-- No group recognition mechanism exists for prima facie refugees in
mass influxes, e.g. as might have been anticipated from Georgia if
there had not been an early ceasefire. (Note: As of the date of
the consultations, SMA had received 108 asylum applications from
persons from Georgia and nine asylum applications from persons from
South Ossetia. End note.)

-- SMA eligibility and registration staff lack standard operating
procedures and guidelines.

-- Refugee service providers lack adequate awareness of
post-traumatic stress syndromes and sexual and gender-based violence
(SGBV) issues.

-- Access to free health care, supposedly a right of refugees, does
not exist de facto. (Note: As elsewhere in the region, due to
inadequate resourcing by the state doctors and hospitals expect
payments under the table for their services and/or require patients
to purchase necessary medical supplies on the economy. End note.)

-- Housing schemes to house refugees have fallen far short of
meeting the need for climate-appropriate shelter. Existing
collective centers are in such poor repair as in some cases to merit
condemnation.


4. (U) These gaps have resulted in troubling statistics for
Armenia's approximately 5,000 refugees:

-- Unemployment for refugees is 2.5 times higher than for the rest

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of the population.

-- Per capita income of refugees is three times lower than that of
the rest of the population.

-- Many refugees only get one meal a day.

-- School drop-out rates for children of refugee families are two to
three times higher than the national average.

-- With current government budgets, it will take 20 years to house
all the refugee families in need of shelter assistance.

Key Recommendations...
--------------


5. (U) While some GOAM officials present at the consultations spoke
to defend their agencies' existing programs, they were outnumbered
by academics (from, e.g., the American University of Armenia, the
Open University of Armenia, Yerevan State University, and Progress
University of Gyumri),domestic NGO representatives (from, e.g.,
Mission Armenia, the Armenian Center for Health and Education, and
YMCA Shelter),and individual refugees who pled for extensive
reform. These civil society representatives ultimately agreed that
the way forward should involve:

-- Harmonization of legislation pertaining to rights of refugees,
with emphasis on decriminalization of asylum seekers' unlawful
entry.

-- Training of border and SMA officials and introduction of clear
regulations on how effectively and efficiently to identify and
document persons in need of international protection.

-- Training of courts on proper application of refugee law.

-- Elaborating a standard format for justifications of negative
decisions on asylum claims.

-- Provision to asylum seekers of identity documents valid
throughout the application and appeal processes and accompanied by a
leaflet indicating asylum seekers' rights and obligations.

-- Provision to refugees of social and legal counseling to explain
their shelter and property rights and facilitate the exercise of
these rights.

-- Dissemination of information to the population of concern on
smuggling, trafficking, SGBV, and other forms of abuse.

-- Development of preschool training programs, including language
training, for refugee and asylum seeker children and adolescents;
and of self-reliance and vocational training programs for teens and
adults.

...And Harsh Reality
--------------


6. (U) Entreaties by the invited refugees brought a sense of urgency
to the proceedings. A woman originally from Azerbaijan said that
throughout her 20 years in Armenia she had lived in a remote village
where winter temperatures dropped to minus 35. The closest village
with a school, grocery store, and pharmacy was 14 kilometers away,
making children's education an ongoing challenge (note: as the
state does not provide school buses; end note). Mission Armenia had
been funded to help the community from 2002 to 2006; the year after
it stopped working there, some 19 people, including the woman's
sister and brother-in-law, both 44, had died for lack of medical
care. The woman regretted that various needs assessments have been
performed in the village for the past couple of years, but they have
not led to any new assistance. Being a refugee is undignified, she
mourned, "like a spot that you can't wash away."


7. (U) Lisa Toros, an ethnic-Armenian from Iraq, was present to
represent Armenia's newest refugee population, now numbering close
to a thousand. After two years in Yerevan, Toros, a 41-year-old who
had been managing director of a computer and office equipment
service company in Baghdad, was unemployed and, she confided to
Refcoord, frustrated. Armenian authorities are all talk and no
action when it comes to accommodating forced migrants, she
complained. Armenia is too poor to take refugees and should not
offer to do so, she said. She could not obtain her mother's heart
medicine in Armenia and, ironically, had to continue to import it
from Iraq. Without local connections, she could not find a job.
Acquaintances who had fled to Western Europe received public
assistance, but in Armenia her family did not. Armenian culture
also grated on Toros - she rued the lack of friendly greetings in
the market and the small apartments that felt confining after Iraq's

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big houses with gardens.


8. (U) Toros is lucky, after a fashion: she and her family (mother,
sister, twin brother, and brother's wife and three daughters) were
able to bring some money and belongings with them from Baghdad.
Newer Iraqi refugees are arriving without any means to survive
because they did not have a chance to sell their properties before
leaving Iraq. And what very few middle class jobs exist in Armenia
generally require fluency not only in Eastern Armenian language
(whereas the Iraqis speak Western Armenian) but in Russian (which
the Iraqis do not speak at all). One Iraqi at the consultations
said his mother had come to visit from Iraq and, when she saw how
his family was living in Armenia, advised them to return with her.

Directions for Donors
--------------


9. (U) UNHCR's Halepota appeared to take an ambivalent view toward
her agency's - and, by extension, government donors' --
responsibility to meet the demands on it inherent in the
stakeholders' recommendations and refugees' frustrations. On the
one hand, she stressed in November and reiterated in the draft
conference report that "refugees naturalize without being fully
integrated socially and economically in the Armenian society.
Therefore, UNHCR seeks...to continue to assist the most vulnerable
refugees including the naturalized former refugees until a durable
solution is achieved through their full local integration." On the
other hand, she openly acknowledged the dubiousness of UNHCR
continuing to fund shelter for refugees from Azerbaijan 20 years
after they were uprooted. And in implicit acknowledgment of the
dearth of donors present, she announced plans to raise consciousness
in wealthy Armenian communities abroad of refugees' struggles in the
motherland.


10. (U) The consultations' conclusions were rather vague regarding
to whom would fall responsibility for acting on stakeholders'
recommendations. The draft report mentions donors only three times
in 29 pages, advising as follows:

-- donors (and others) should initiate projects targeting vocational
training needs for refugees while widening the choice of
professions.

-- donors and other relevant partners should develop a strategy for
elaborating an effective SGBV reporting and response mechanism.

-- donors and other relevant partners should assist the GOAM in
providing health care to the population of concern "through a
rights-based advocacy approach and jointly elaborated effective
referral mechanisms."

In addition, the report quotes Deputy Head of the SMA David Hakobyan
calling on the "international community" to help resolve housing
needs.


11. (U) In championing Armenia's claim to the international
community's consideration, Halepota repeatedly returned to the
country's uniquely constructive attitude toward refugee reception.
"It is no exaggeration that the hospitality shown refugees here
exceeds that in many places with fewer refugees and greater wealth,"
she declared. The challenge is to leverage the positive
governmental and societal attitudes into resources for
capacity-building and programming that facilitate full legal,
social, and economic integration. Refugees, Halepota urged
listeners, should not have to leave Armenia because the means do not
exist for them to live in dignity there.

Comment
--------------


12. (U) Host nation poverty combined with the donor world's focus on
areas with ongoing violent conflict mean that financial solutions to
refugees' duress will likely only emerge from the private sector.
The GOAM will need to incentivize domestic corporate donorship, and
IGO's and NGO's will need to approach wealthy diaspora communities
in order to re-resource modest existing assistance programs.
Fortunately the flow of Iraqi refugees to Armenia seems to have
slowed, if only because word has gotten back about poor economic
prospects and high barriers to social integration in their ancestral
home.

RUBIN