PROTECTION OF REFUGEES IN INDIA
Journal Title: International Journal of Research in Social Sciences - Year 2017, Vol 7, Issue 10
Abstract
At present India is not a party to the 1951 UN convention on the Status of Refugees or the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees. Nor has it enacted a national law on refugees. Instead India has chosen to deal with refugees at political and administrative levels. It has therefore only ad hoc mechanisms in place to deal with the status and problems. The absence of a special legal regime on the status of refugee does not however mean that no protection and assistance is offered to the refugees. But its absence has certainly meant that arbitrary executive action and acts of discrimination are not easily remedied. It has also meant that refugees are dependent on the benevolence of the State rather than on the regime of rights to reconstruct their lives in dignity. Even the UNHRC has been granted a limited mandate of protection that is confined to refugees from outside the South Asian region. These are today mainly refugees from Afghanistan.1The most significant thing which deserves to be taken note of is that, there has not been a single occasion of any refugee originating from the Indian soil except the trans-boundary movement of the people during the partition of the country in 1947. On the other hand, it has invariably been a receiving country and in the process, enlarging its multi-cultural and multiethnic fabric. In comparison to other South Asian Countries, India is providing shelter to the highest number of refugees coming from neighboring states. India has the problem of chakma refugees from Bangladesh, Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka, Tibetan refugees, Bhutanese refugees, Arakanese refugees from Myanmar. 2According to the World refugee survey, 2006, the number of refugees and asylum seekers living in India is 515,500.3 The South Asian sub-continent has often witnessed situations where refugees from one or the other neighboring countries have crossed over to India. Considering the sensitivities of national and regional politics in the sub-continent, the problem of refugee crossing over to India cannot be totally disassociated from the overall security issues relevant locally. At the end of 1999, India had well over 2, 51,400 refugees, who do not include those from countries like Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda.
Authors and Affiliations
Namrata Gupta
Keywords
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