Stop deporting African asylum seekers, Amnesty International tells Israel

Charmain Mohamed, Amnesty’s head of refugee and migrant rights, said Israel was one of the most prosperous countries in the Middle East but was “going out of its way to shirk its responsibility to provide refuge to people fleeing war and persecution and who are already on its territory”.

Amnesty, she said, was “calling on the Israeli government to halt these procedures, grant asylum-seekers access to a fair and effective refugee status determination procedure and a pathway for legal status in Israel.”

Israel’s dysfunctional asylum system had “left Eritrean and Sudanese asylum-seekers in limbo for years,” she said. 

The report, Forced and Unlawful: Israel’s Deportations of Eritrean and Sudanese Asylum-Seekers to Uganda, was based on 30 in-depth interviews asylum-seekers, including people deported from Israel to Uganda and Rwanda.

It says Israeli officials have presented asylum-seekers with the alternatives of deportation to a third country, return to their countries of origin or indefinite detention.

But interviewees reported that, while they had been given verbal assurances of being granted residency in Uganda, on arrival they had received only irregular migrant status, leaving them at risk of deportation.

Amnesty said the arrangements do not meet the standards for voluntary transfer.

Earlier this year, the Israeli government was considering a plan to relocate asylum-seekers in return for a cash payment of around £2,500 - but shelved it after realising the country did not have enough prison space to house those who refused to leave.

In spring, Israel revealed a new plan for some 16,000 asylum-seekers to go to Western countries prepared to accept them, while allowing many of the rest to remain.

But the new plan was scrapped only hours after announcing it.