UNHCR concerned over implementation of new refugee law

The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Kyrgyzstan has raised concern over the enforcement of the country's new refugee law. "The UNHCR is not in a position to determine whether the enacted changes, when implemented, will correspond to international refugee law," the UN refugee agency said in a statement on Thursday, adding that the country's parliament adopted the amendments without waiting for the refugee agency's comments on the issue. Under the amended law, which was signed by President Kurmanbek Bakiev on 13 May, an asylum-seeker now has a legal definition. However, asylum-seekers will not enjoy the right to choose their place of residence, as was the case before. According to UNHCR, the new 'asylum-seeker' definition does not include foreigners who stay in the former Soviet republic illegally. If this provision would deny access by such persons to refugee status determination procedures, this would be a violation of the UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, UNHCR maintained. As for the actual implementation of the law, Vitaly Maslousky, a UNHCR protection officer, said from the capital, Bishkek that time would show "whether the Kyrgyz Committee on Migration and Employment will implement this law in line with the Convention or not". "If any asylum-seeker's case is rejected based on this law, we will definitely raise our concern with the government," Maslousky added. The Kyrgyz migration agency has registered some 25 new Uzbek asylum-seekers over the past few months. The majority of them live mainly in the southern city of Osh and adjacent Kara-Suu district, with some of them in the neighbouring province of Jalal-Abad. The most recent influx of asylum-seekers to Kyrgyzstan occurred one year ago, when a group of several hundred Uzbeks fled their government's violent clampdown on dissent in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan and crossed into Kyrgyzstan in mid-May 2005. Around 440 of them were later granted refugee status by UNHCR and airlifted in July to Romania for third-country resettlement - despite pressure from Tashkent to extradite them. AT/SC