Racialized Refugee Status in the UK?

categories: Darfur & Sudan, Refugees and IDPs

Published November 05, 2009 @ 04:27AM PT

Did the UK just endorse racial profiling of refugees?

According to a decision announced on Tuesday by Britain's Interior Ministry, all "non-Arab" Darfuri asylum-seekers will be allowed to remain in the country, contingent upon periodic reviews of the situation in Sudan:

"All non-Arab Darfuris, regardless of their political or other affiliations, are at real risk of persecution in Darfur and internal relocation elsewhere in Sudan is not currently to be relied upon," the Interior Ministry's UK Border Agency concluded in its operational guidance note.

Yes, non-Arab Darfuris were the targets of Sudan's genocidal violence, and return from abroad is a very dangerous prospect. But while the situation in Darfur is perilous for those groups singled out by the government, the human rights situation is pretty crummy (in my professional opinion) across the entire country -- for Arabs and non-Arabs and mixed races and foreigners and really anyone who happens to be there.

I'm certainly no lawyer, but I thought that an individual's asylum claim should be evaluated on the specific merits of his/her case. While its laudable for the British government to recognize the need to ensure of asylum to Darfuris, that protection should be extended to all Sudanese fleeing abuse in their home country.

[Photo from Wikimedia Commons: Women at Darfur refugee camp in Chad, March 2005, by Mark Knobil.]

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Comments (1)

Wow that's absurd. There are plenty of persecuted Arabs, too, not to mention Sudanese of mixed backgrounds. Ethnic categories in Sudan aren't as defined as Arab/black anyway. How the hell are British immigration officials going to determine the ethnicity of asylum seekers --using a color chart of some kind? Oh cripes. Ridiculous with refugees, there's no end to it, is there?

Posted by Una Vera on 11/05/2009 @ 08:31AM PT
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Michelle became involved in the anti-genocide cause at a young age, and has been involved in various activist endeavors, including the Teach Against Genocide pilot campaigns, ever since.