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EDUCATION IN TRANSIT: FINDING THE INTERSECTION BETWEEN HOPES AND RIGHTS TRACEY DONEHUE Tracey Donehue is a PhD candidate at the UNSW School of Education. Her research adopts a collaborative approach to facilitating quality education in transitory displacement contexts. She is also the founder and manager of the Cisarua General Education Development (GED) Support Project in Indonesia. Tracey has over 15 years’ experience as an EAL teacher in Australia, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Nauru and Indonesia. After firsthand experience teaching people detained on Nauru, Tracey has also been an outspoken critic of Australia’s offshore detention regime. The Refugee Learning Center is a refugee-led Alternative Learning Centre in Indonesia, which is hosting the GED Support Project in Cisarua. To learn more or make a donation, visit: www.refugeelearningcenter.com
When newly I arrived in Indonesia, I had the hope that I should study, continue my own education, but then, my surprise when I learned that it is not possible for me because I do not have the right. – Fatemah, 2018
Fatemah was 15 years old when she arrived in Indonesia. Now 20, her words reflect on the incompatibility between the hopes and rights of approximately 14,000 people experiencing protracted transitory displacement in Indonesia. Protracted transitory displacement occurs when the country in which people seek protection does not provide for permanent settlement, but allows them to reside in its territory, temporarily, until such time as they can be permanently resettled in a third country. Like most countries in Southeast Asia,1 Indonesia is not a signatory to the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention nor its 1967 Protocol. Without such legal protection, refugees and people seeking asylum in Indonesia are deprived of access to formal education, employment, and justice.2 The denial of access to formal education in transit countries is amplified by the current record number of people seeking asylum, which has counter-intuitively coincided with the drastic reduction in the refugee intake quotas of traditional
HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDER | VOLUME 29: ISSUE 1 – MARCH 2020
resettlement countries, such as the United States. For refugees in Indonesia, resettlement options are further diminished by Australia’s exclusionary resettlement policy, which limits acceptance of UNHCR referrals from Indonesia to 450 people per year from those registered with UNHCR before 1 July 2014, while excluding resettlement for anyone registering after that date.3 When Fatemah first arrived in Indonesia in early 2014, based on anecdotal advice, she expected to wait around two years for third country resettlement. Since then, the global situation has changed markedly such that in 2017, the UNHCR advised refugees and people seeking asylum in Indonesia that due to a lack of available resettlement options, they may never be resettled.4 This leaves refugees in Indonesia, as in other transit countries in Southeast Asia, in a state of long-term or even permanent temporariness. It further renders an entire generation of children destitute due to a complete lack of education. HOW DOES A LACK OF ACCESS TO EDUCATION IMPACT ON PEOPLE SEEKING ASYLUM?
“One of the problems of living a regular life, a normal life, is no education”. – Ali, 20 years old
