Obstacles in the process of granting the humanitarian visa created by the Brazilian government for Afghan refugees are making it impossible for people fleeing the Taliban-controlled country to obtain the document, say human rights and immigrant support organizations.
According to a group of 11 entities, including Conectas Human Rights, Doctors Without Borders and Cáritas Arquidiocesana, the main problem is the suspension of scheduling interviews at the consulates closest to Afghanistan, in the cities of Islamabad and Tehran.
As there is no Brazilian diplomatic representation in Kabul, it is necessary to travel to other countries to request the document, and neighboring Pakistan and Iran are the most viable options. However, since April and June, respectively, the consular posts of these places have stopped scheduling interviews – in the case of Islamabad, there are no vacancies for 2022.
The 11 organizations sent a letter to the MRE (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) this week asking for action. The letter, addressed to Minister Carlos França, says that the entities “have been faced daily” with problems that “end up exposing Afghans to lengthy processes, preventing them from rebuilding their lives in the places they want and prolonging the precarious situation”.
According to the text, the suspension of interviews makes the ordinance for humanitarian reception of Afghans a “dead letter”, since the main escape routes for them are precisely Iran and Pakistan.
The letter also says that the deadline for responding to requests is lengthy, with reports of up to ten months of waiting for the interview, and that some consulates require documents not provided for in the norm. Questioned by the report, the MRE denied that there are obstacles and said that it has already issued more than 5,000 visas in less than a year.
The humanitarian visa for refugees from Afghanistan was announced by President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) on September 3, 2021, less than a month after the Taliban fundamentalist group seized the capital, Kabul, and returned to power after 20 years.
THE Sheet has been accompanying Afghans who have been trying to leave the country and obtain a visa for months – many are relatives of refugees who already live in Brazil or are being helped by NGOs in the repatriation process, in the case of a group of former collaborators of Doctors Without Borders.
As the interviews are only scheduled for those who are already in the country where the consulate is located, many of those who crossed the border were surprised by the closing of appointments and are now in limbo, with expenses they cannot afford.
Also, as Afghans need visas to virtually anywhere in the world, they have nowhere to run. Pakistan and Iran, by the way, also require visas from their neighbors, and those waiting for interviews in those countries fear that the document, which is temporary, will expire, which could lead to deportation – Turkey, for example, sent back more than 18 thousand Afghans since the beginning of the year.
Hosted at a ranch in a Pakistani border town, 16 family members (ten of them children and teenagers) are trying to renew temporary visas they have already paid hundreds of dollars for while waiting for appointments to reopen at the Brazilian embassy in Islamabad. They are the father-in-law, brothers-in-law and nephews of Brazilian Magda Amiri, 47.
“It took us a long time to issue their passport and get a Pakistani visa,” says the engineer, who lives in Rio de Janeiro with her Afghan husband. “As soon as they arrived in Pakistan I sent the documents to the embassy, but they replied that they are not arranging interviews.”
Magda is especially tense because one of the family members is wanted by the Taliban, for having done business with Western military personnel who supported the deposed government. “He could end up putting the rest of the family at risk,” she says.
The couple managed to bring other relatives, who already had passports. “They arrive full of hope, but it is difficult to adapt because of the language”, recognizes Magda. The other option, however, would be to face the lack of prospects in an Afghanistan in deep economic and humanitarian crisis. “Girls are not studying, violence has grown internally. With the war in Ukraine, the Afghan issue was forgotten, but the situation there remains complicated.”
Some Afghans and organizations that help refugees have turned to lawyers to try to get answers about the family case. One of these professionals, Vitor Bastos, has been following up at least 220 cases since last year, of which 140 are still awaiting a decision or scheduling an interview.
“People are in a temporary country, hostage to a visa term given by that country, which has no guarantee that it will be renewed. And there are places with ultra-severe policies, Iran predicts a very high fine when the visa expires.” He also claims that even approved visas have taken weeks to be delivered. “When talking to the embassy, there is no space for respectful clarification. The staff is overloaded, without patience”, he says.
“Brazil has recognized the situation of emergency rape in which Afghan people find themselves, but in practice the consular service does not treat it as an emergency”, says João Chaves, coordinator of Migration and Refuge of the Federal Public Defender’s Office in SP. “There was no satisfactory expansion of the system, the number of interviews was insufficient. A funnel was created that prevents the realization of the right.”
According to Chaves, the DPU will send a request for information to Itamaraty. “It is necessary to invest in an emergency, whether with joint efforts, simplification of the procedure or the search for institutional partners”, he says. “The consular service is a public service, and today the situation is dramatic.”
Other side
In a note, Itamaraty declared that the statement that the visa system makes humanitarian policy unfeasible “does not correspond to reality” and that it has already issued an unprecedented number of humanitarian visas for Afghans: 5,579 visas until this Wednesday (3).
The text says that new appointments “are made available according to the processing capacity of the embassies” and gives the example of Tehran, which conducts 50 interviews a day. “Servers were assigned on transitional missions in order to contribute to the process,” says the folder.
The ministry says it has made the process easier for Afghans, accepting, for example, expired passports and exempting them from proof of vaccination against Covid-19. “The aforementioned policy represents a substantial advance in national migration policy, as it strengthens ties of solidarity with the Afghan people. It differs from the policy practiced by other countries, as it does not limit the number of visas granted to Afghan nationals.”
The note also states that consulate employees have been working overtime to handle the demand and that they have a duty “to carry out careful document analysis”, to avoid approving people involved in crimes and to curb human trafficking.
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