Refugees

Knocking at the Gate – Flawed Access to the Asylum System due to the influx of applicants from the Ukraine and Georgia Since the start of 2016, Israel has seen a sharp rise in the number of Ukrainian and Georgian citizens applying for asylum. Data collected by the Hotline for Refugees and Migrant (HRM) shows that Israeli entities are involved in the increase in the number of migrants from these countries, and that they include human resource companies, which spread misinformation in the countries of origin about working legally in Israel by exploiting the dysfunctional2 asylum system. They charge high fees for mediation and are allegedly involved in selling fake documents. The emerging picture is that of a new channel of human trafficking3 . Due to the backlog at the Population and Immigration Authority’s (PIBA) Refugee Status Determination (RSD) Unit in Tel Aviv, all asylum seekers now face limited access to the asylum process. Despite the extended period during which the authorities have had to serve an ever growing population, the necessary changes have yet to be made. Every night, dozens of people wait outside the offices of the RSD Unit in harsh physical conditions hoping to be first in the queue the following morning in order to submit their asylum application.

This is the second annual monitoring report on the conditions of the detention of migrants and asylum seekers held in administrative detention in Israeli facilities. In February 2016, the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants (HRM) published its first annual monitoring report, which focused on the conditions in which migrants were held in detention in 2015.

Over recent decades, Israel has become a target destination for tens of thousands of migrants: asylum seekers1 fleeing wars, massacres, and oppressive regimes and migrant workers seeking to improve their standard of living. Israeli law permits the detention of any person who does not have status in Israel, provided that the detention is not for a punitive purpose, but serves as a tool intended to enable removal.  

This report aims to be one of the first comprehensive reports that monitors the conditions of migrant detention centers in Israel. As the laws around detention have only grown stricter in recent years, it is not out of the realm of possibility that detention will continue to be a major tool in the Israeli government’s policy towards migrant-workers and asylum-seekers. 

A new report on the Holot facility exposes; substantial asylum requests of detainees rejected by Israel now about to be jailed in Saharonim indefinitely, grave shortcomings in food, rights violations in the form of punishment

The Hotline for Refugees and Migrants' latest report, sponsored by the Heinrich Boell Foundation, is a critical analysis of Israel's Refugee Status Determination process for Eritrean and Sudanese nationals. This report builds upon the Hotline's 2012 report, titled Until our Hearts are Completely Hardened, in which they examined at length the Refugee Status Determination process for all asylum seekers. At the time, Israel's state run apparatus for protection did not accept applications from Eritrean and Sudanese nationals. Since formally accepting their applications the state has not recognized even one Sudanese refugee, and less than a handful of Eritreans. The following report addresses how the asylum policy is being applied, the shortcomings of the state's legal interpretation of the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees as well as numerous other flaws leading to the sweeping denial of refugee claims made by asylum seekers.

The Hotline for Refugees and Migrant's second monitoring report on the Holot facility covers the months of April to September 2014 in which between 2,300 asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea were held in the facility in Israel's south. The detainees, most of whom had been living in Israel for a number of years, were taken to the geographically isolated facility where they were far from the public eye. This report, published by the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants together with Physicians for Human Rights and with the support of the Heinreich Boell Foundation, is the only report of its type to document what is happening in Holot, the administrative issues faced by Holot residents and the effects of indefinite incarceration on the health and spirit of the detainees.  The report was published just prior to Israel's High Court decision (22.09.2014) to void the Anti-Infiltration Law under which the Holot facility was created. The report received extensive media coverage emphasizing that despite the government referring to Holot as an open facility, it is in effect a prison and is having a debilitating affect on detainees physical and mental health. As the Knesset is expected to legislate a new law before the end of 2014 this report will be fundamental to the Hotline's work to lobby the Knesset to take a more humane approach to asylum policy.