Under new management, the National Committee for Refugees (Conare) launches this Monday (23) a project to develop and accelerate asylum policies aimed at people of African descent. The measure focuses on immigrants from countries in Africa and also from nations like Haiti and Cuba.
The idea stems from the diagnosis that, in recent governments, immigrants from these nations have been somewhat marginalized and that it is necessary to expose and combat racism that mixes with xenophobia for black immigrants, says the new president of the body, lawyer Sheila de Oak.
One of the arms of the project, an observatory on violence against refugees that will seek partnerships with universities and social organizations, will honor the Congolese Moïse Kabagambe, who was beaten to death in Rio. The murder of the immigrant completes one year this Tuesday (24).
“We want to look at requests for refuge from a more racialized perspective”, says Carvalho, who was part of the working group that was dedicated to Public Security and Justice in the transitional office of the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) and became known for her work in the black movement.
In 2022, 49,200 people asked for asylum in Brazil, show data collected by the Observatory of International Migrations (OBMigra) at the request of the Sheet. The figure represents an increase of 40% compared to 2021 (29,107) and 2020 (28,899), in an already expected post-Covid pandemic resumption.
Still, the number is below previous years, such as 2019 (82,552). The countries of origin of most requests were Venezuela (33.6 thousand), Cuba (5,198) and Angola (3,427).
Part of the program launched by the Ministry of Justice involves the creation of a task force to expedite the analysis of requests for asylum by people of African descent. The initiative dialogues with one of the problems inherited by the Lula government 3: the huge queue of waiting requests.
Data provided by the folder suggest that there are at least 115,000, but the number is imprecise and may be lower, since it is not possible to say how many of these immigrants left Brazil while waiting for a response. Most of the contingent comes from Venezuela, a country that is experiencing a serious economic and social crisis and forms the largest migratory flow to Brazil today.
The president of Conare and specialists in migration draw attention to the fact that immigrants from Africa, a continent that since the beginning of the last decade has had a continuous flow of migration to Brazil, wait for long periods. There are requests for asylum made by citizens of the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, who have been waiting for an opinion for ten years, says Carvalho.
Conare has mechanisms that can speed up analysis. Today, the committee recognizes that in six countries —Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Iraq, Mali, Syria and Venezuela— there is a serious and widespread violation of human rights, which facilitates the recognition of citizens of these countries as refugees in Brazil. But, as you can see from the size of the queue, the device is limited.
Part of the challenge also involves the body’s structure. According to Carvalho, Conare is made up of 58 professionals, responsible for formulating asylum policies, creating partnerships and analyzing requests.
Carvalho says that, initially, the successful policies of the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) government for migration will be maintained. One of them is the Acolhida Operation, aimed at welcoming Venezuelans.
The management also does not rule out the defense of a kind of migratory amnesty, through which all applicants would be granted refuge. Carvalho, however, states that it is necessary to study the proposal carefully, in partnership with other bodies responsible for migration, and understand its consequences.
“It is necessary to think about the maximum protection of the refugee, to regulate the national refugee policy, so that we stop doing small government actions and have a State policy”, she adds.
For the launch of the initiative, this Monday, Moïse’s relatives will travel from Rio to Brasília. Maurice, his brother, says the family has not yet recovered psychologically since the murder.
They have been working in a kiosk provided by the city of Rio and by the Orla Rio concessionaire in Parque de Madureira, but the space has presented infrastructure problems.
According to Rodrigo Mondego, the family’s lawyer, three lawsuits are ongoing. The first, criminal, accuses the three arrested aggressors and three more people who respond in freedom for omission of help. Another, a civilian, tries to blame the owners of the kiosk where Moïse died. The last one, labor, investigates his working conditions and suggests that he was subject to a situation analogous to slavery.
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