A NEW REPORT on the experience of Somali refugees in Ireland claims that, for those living in long-term direct provision, conditions are similar to those of refugee camps in the developing world, the Irish Times reports.

The report, complied by a refugee advocate organisation, also blames the lack of support offered to people leaving direct provision centres for poor integration and high unemployment levels.

The report, From Catastrophe to Marginalisation: the Experiences of Somali Refugees in Ireland, concludes that problems faced by Somali refugees are “emblematic of the limits of Ireland’s integration policies”.

Read the full report compiled by the Trinity Immigration Initiative and Horn of Africa People’s Aid.

It states:

Fleeing catastrophic war conditions and arriving in Europe, often without linguistic or educational skills, Somali refugees experience high unemployment rates, difficult educational trajectories and troublesome resettlement.

Race and religious discrimination, coupled with isolation due to the difficulties in securing family reunification, compound their less than smooth resettlement.

The reports says that the direct provision system has “come to mirror the iconic refugee camps of the developing world in the 1970s and 1980s”.

Its main recommendations are to:

• View people seeking asylum as refugees awaiting formal recognition, rather than criminalising them

• Permit asylum seekers to work to prevent de-skilling and poverty

• Abolish the direct provision and dispersal system, which fails to meet human rights standards

• Follow the new UNHCR guidelines of May 2010, asking governments to assess applications for refugee status from central and southern Somalia in the broadest possible way

• Assist people leaving direct provision to find housing

• Firmly establish anti-racism within integration and resettlement policies

• Deal with family reunification applications in the most humane and expeditious manner

One Somalian woman interviewed by the researchers, Safia Sharif, applied for asylum in Ireland in January 2005. She has been refused refugee status and is now living in Mosney, awaiting a final decision by the Department of Justice on whether she will be deported.

Sharif told the group her story:

I am from Afgooye, a town about 25km west of Mogadishu. I fled my country when I was taken hostage by a militia, who wanted to know the whereabouts of my husband. I was persecuted, harassed and raped by the militia over a four-month period. When my family paid a ransom to the militia I was released, and an aunt living in the US arranged with an agent [trafficker] to get me out of Somalia. The agent got me a Dutch passport and I travelled from Somalia to Dubai and onto England, and finally to Rosslare. When I arrived [there] I was very sick and weak from malnutrition. I spent four days in hospital.

I applied for asylum and was sent to a direct-provision hostel in Kilmacud [Dublin] for three weeks before I was moved on to the Quiet Man hostel in Cong, Co Mayo. This was a tiny village and there were no other Somalis there, and I began to feel isolated and depressed. As a women who is a victim of female genital mutilation, the doctor who was in that place was not very familiar with my problem. This was an issue because I was pregnant.

After I gave birth I was moved to a hostel in Ballyhaunis, Co Mayo, which has to be one of the worst. It was winter and the hostel was cold and the food was bad.

Then I was moved to Mosney, which is better and made me feel like a human being again. But after almost six years waiting for a decision on my case I am feeling very depressed. I risked my life coming to Europe but I can’t stand it any more. If the Government can’t accept me then send me to another country. It’s a big crime to leave human beings in direct provision for this length of time. I have three children and I’m exhausted. I don’t want to end up in a psychiatric hospital.