THE IMPACT OF REGISTRATION ON REFUGEES AND INTERNALLY DISPLACED PERSONS

Introduction

The restrictions on visiting and residence described above, while burdensome to all Russians and citizens of CIS countries, are especially onerous for people who are fleeing war or persecution and seeking haven in Moscow. They additionally violate the rights of refugees to seek asylum and violate asylum seeker's rights to protection. Asylum seekers typically enter Russia at Moscow (if coming by air) because it is the only destination they know, and typcially remain there because it is the only city in Russia where they can expect to enjoy the support and protection of such international agencies as the UNHCR.38 The Refugee Reception Center, operated under the auspices of the UNHCR, screens asylum seekers and issues refugee identification cards to those it determines are refugees under the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (Refugee Convention) (article 1). The UNHCR provides protection services to asylum seekers it recognizes as refugees and financial and other support, which it channels through other international organizations and NGOs.

A party to the Refugee Convention and Protocol, Russia recognizes the mandate of the UNHCR to offer protection to refugees39 and is duty-bound to cooperate with that office.40 This obligation means that once the UNHCR has recognized an individual as a refugee, federal and local authorities are obligated not to deport that person back to the place from whence he or she fled. Such a deportation is known as refoulement, and the prohibition of this practice is the cardinal rule of refugee law.

Moscow Refugee Regulations: A Rule Apart from International Standards

Russia does not have a centralized bureaucracy for processing asylum claims. The Federal Migration Service (FMS) is the agency tasked with evaluating such claims through its regional divisions. The FMS itself is a highly federated institution that mostly directs migration policy and oversees the work of its ninety regional migration service divisions. Here again, Moscow is a rule apart: the Moscow Migration Service, an anomaly in this system, is answerable not to the FMS but to the Moscow city government, of which is part and from which its staff draw theirsalaries.41 The asylum process itself in Russia generally is grossly deficient in its procedures to identify and protect genuine refugees from refoulement, a topic that is beyond the scope of this report.42

The Moscow Migration Service (MMS), in turn, applies its own rules to asylum seekers, in general refusing to process applications from individuals who have no close relatives in Moscow or who do not have a permanent residence permit for Moscow.43 (As an exception, it accepts applications from asylum seekers from outside the CIS and Baltic states whom the UNHCR recognizes as refugees.)This violates the Refugee Convention (article 1), which classifies as a refugee any individual who flees his or her country "owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, natinality, membership of a social group or political opinion . . ."

The right of asylum is a fundamental human right, and individuals attempting to exercise such a right should not face insuperable bureaucratic obstacles. In particular, an asylum seeker must have the right to stay in the place where his or her claim is being considered for the duration of the process, including, if necessary, appeal of an adverse decision. The refusal of various Moscow authorities to make this possible places a heavy burden on the right to seek asylum, and violates both the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the spirit of the Refugee Convention.44

Russia has chosen not to centralize its asylum procedures, and as a consequence, it is unreasonable for it to place on asylum seekers the burden of searching for a bureau that will process their application, all the while facing deportation by local authorities who refuse to recognize the individual's protected status. Yet the Moscow regulations do just that, especially in the case of refugees from CIS countries. Russia is free to provide services and information that would encourage asylum seekers to submit their claims to offices outside of Moscow, but it is similarly obliged to assist asylum seekers involved in a status determination procedure to remain in Moscow until the end of the asylum process.

Finally, once asylum seekers have been determined to have the legal right to remain in Russia, they should have the same rights as any other person lawfully in the state's territory to choose their residence. This right may not be abridged except by reason of one of the interests enumerated in the ICCPR, discussed above.

For Asylum Seekers from outside the former Soviet Union

As of February 1997 the UNHCR in Russia registered as refugees 27,694 asylum seekers, the vast majority of them from Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq. Many of these refugees have applied to the MMS for refugee status in Russia and received from the MMS a card certifying that their asylum case was awaiting determination (hereinafter, certification card). Under Russian law, asylum seekers-regardless of whether they have been recognized by the UNHCR-must register with the central Directorate for Visas and Registration (UVIR),45 apparently on the same terms as other legal aliens. The new Russian law on refugees46 provides for the registration, but in the present as in the past, the terms, procedures and documentation required for registration are not clear. As a result of this vacuum, Moscow police and registration authorities utterly ignored and continue to ignore the meaning of UNHCR refugee status and MMS certification cards and demand that so-documented asylum seekers register with the police on the same terms as any other foreigner from a country that does not enjoy a visa-free travel regime with Russia. With some exceptions, UVIR, which is authorized to register foreigners, refuses to register them. Asylum seekers are therefore fined, harassed and sometimes threatened them with deportation and refoulement (See below, "Enforcement") because they lack police registration-which UVIR refuses to provide.

Under the new refugee law, MMS certification cards are to serve as "the basis for registration with . . .the [local] internal affairs department (article 4.7)." Four problems continue to plague the registration of asylum seekers. First, it is unclear whether this article applies retroactively to asylum seekers who registered asylum claims with the MMS prior to the law's adoption. Second, the law is silent on whether such registration with the police would serve as adequate documentation for police in regions other than where the asylum seeker registered. Third, the law does not stipulate that the certification cards are the only document required for registration with the police.47 Finally, certification cards are now valid for the period of status determination, which is supposed to take three months, with one three-month extension. But the law remains silent on the status of certification cards and the registration process should the procedure drag out longer than the prescribed time, leaving their validity uncertain after this period and causing problems for many, as cases are rarely if ever determined within six months.

Human Rights Watch/Helsinki has sound reason to believe the Moscow Main Directorate for Internal Affairs (GUVD) will soon issue implementing instructions that will on all four points continue to restrict the freedom of movement rights of asylum seekers. Especially of concern is the potential requirement that they present the same documentation as other legal aliens in order to register with the police. As the sections below demonstrate, this system is so fraught with barriers-primary among them, landlords who for various reasons48 do not want to inform the police that a foreigner lives in their dwellings-and its active enforcement is so overwhelmingly arbitrary and racist that it effectively treats such asylum seekers as illegal aliens. These actions consequently interfere with the right, upheld in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to seek and enjoy asylum. We maintain that UVIR must accept UNHCR identification as adequate and exhaustive grounds for registration. Moreover, under the Refugee Convention all Russian authorities are obligated to issue identity papers to any refugee in their territory who does not possess a valid travel document (article 27).49

Asylum Seekers from the CIS and Baltic States and the Internally Displaced from Russia

The overwhelming majority of refugees from the CIS in Russia are from Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Tajikistan.50 In 1996, the majority of newly registered asylum seekers in Moscow were Russian citizens fleeing the war in Chechnya and applying for status as internally displaced persons (IDPs).51 In March 1996, the Moscow city government issued Resolution 121-RM, limiting refugee or IDP status to those applicants who had a relative willing to house them for longer than one year and those who were already registered as a permanent resident of Moscow.52 As an exception, the Moscow Migration Service accepts applications from asylum seekers from outside the former Soviet Union- albeit sporadically and often with great resistance. However, it adamantly refuses to accept applications from asylum seekers from the CIS and Baltic states, other than within the terms set out in Resolution 121-RM.53 Notably, neither the Law on Refugees nor the Law on Internally Displaced Persons allows for constituent parts of the Russian Federation to exclude refugees and IDPs. Moreover, the minimum space requirements for registering close relatives for permanent residence, in combination with the Resolution 121-RM, directly contravene the Russian Law on Internally Displaced Persons forced migrants, which in article 6 grants them the right to "live with relatives or other persons, subject to their consent to live together, regardless of housing space possessed by relatives or other persons."

Some refugees who fled to Moscow before the break-up of the Soviet Union (and before the formation of the FMS) have been able to remain in the city while the MMS (which, after it was formed, issued them certification cards) and FMS attempt to resettle them elsewhere. Most of these refugees are ethnic Armenians and Russians who fled anti-Armenian pogroms in Azerbaijan in 1988 and 1990; in many cases the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs evacuated them to Moscow, and the Moscow city government settled them temporarily in hotels and sanatoria.54 In 1992, the Moscow city government began a concerted effort to resettle the refugees elsewhere in Russia, often to regions thousands of kilometers from the capital. The privatization of hotels led to an acceleration of this effort, as hotel directors came under intense pressure to clear out the refugees in preparation for sale. The hotel directors harass their refugee tenants, in attempts to force them out, by cutting heat and electricity or forcing the refugees to pay commercial rates for utilities. Moreover, they frequently resist issuing the certificate necessary for refugees to register with the police. The MMS, eager to settle the resettle the refugees outside of Moscow and Moscow region, consistently fails to protect them against this harassment.

Resettlement of these refugees has been extremely problematic. Some refugees claim that the housing offered in Russia's regions is unsuitable for various reasons, is occupied by other families, or may not even exist. Beginning in 1994, the FMS became exasperated with these refugees whom it felt had rejected reasonable offers of alternative accommodation.55 Resettlements of any kind have dwindled: the hotels and migration service-operated sanatoria have made increasing efforts to evict the refugees from their hotels or sanatoria (where many have been living since 1988 or 1990) without providing any housing whatsoever. In many court appeals, judges uphold the evictions, but order the FMS to assign alternative housing. In at least several cases, however, refugees were evicted without alternative housing (which also means losing one's basis for registration in Moscow and losing all social benefits); two of these cases involved elderly women.56

Because Russia's migration service is so decentralized, there is no centralized body under the Federal Migration Service that receives asylum applications from refugees and IDPs and could forward them to another region's migration service for determination (the case of 1988 and 1990 refugees from Azerbajan was an exception). In addition, there is a dearth of complete information about immigration policies and migration opportunities-including objective information on housing, jobs, the general economic situation and the availability of refugee services-in Russia's other regions. Hence, before they reach Moscow, refugees and IDPs are likely to make their decision to go there on the basis of, at best, incomplete information. Once in Moscow, they have neither the needed information nor the opportunity to file asylum claims elsewhere, but are mostly unable to gain refugee or IDP status there because such recognition is tied to residency requirements that they will be unable meet. They consequently become locked into a vicious Catch-22 in Moscow, where they have no status, no protection, and are, due to their often distinctive looks, constantly targeted by the police for violations of registration rules (see below). International and federal norms for asylum effectively become a dead letter under Moscow rules.

Applicants should be permitted to remain in the country pending decisions on the initial request by the competent authority referred to in paragraph (3) above, unless it has been established by that authority that the request is clearly abusive. They should also be permitted to remain in the country while an appeal to a higher administrative authority or to the courts is pending. Executive Committee Conclusion No. 8, paragraph 7 (1977).

This would preclude, for example, the police taking unilateral action to deport asylum seekers before the relevant migration office has issued a decision and the asylum seeker has had a chance to appeal any adverse decision. In a country the size of Russia, this injunction should bar municipal authorities from expelling asylum seekers who await a decision as well.