BBC, 29 April 2021
At least 13 Afghans in Indonesia have taken their own lives in the past three years. Each had been waiting between six and 10 years for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to tell them if they’d be given resettlement elsewhere. Nearly 8,000 Afghan refugees and asylum seekers were registered with the UNHCR in Indonesia as of December 2020 (about half of the overall total), but the country hasn’t signed the United Nations Refugee Convention and bars their permanent settlement. It is illegal for them to work, and so they typically cannot access or pay for health services and education. Many are confined to camps. Some have waited more than a decade for a third country to take them in, a process facilitated by the UNHCR.
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This article was last updated on 29 Apr 2021
