Somali Woman Wins Nansen Refugee Award

The Nansen Refugee Award has been called the “Nobel Prize for refugee workers.”  The award is bestowed annually on a person or group that has “provided extraordinary and dedicated service to the forcibly displaced.”  Past honorees include Senator Edward Kennedy, Medecins Sans Frontiers, and Eleanor Roosevelt.

The award is named for Fridtjof Nansen, a polar explorer, diplomat, and the High Commissioner for Refugees for the League of Nations (the precursor to the UN) from 1920 to 1930.  Mr. Nansen helped hundreds of thousands of refugees return home or resettle in new countries after World War I.  He also organized a relief effort to help famine victims in Russia in 1921 and 1922.  For his efforts in Russia, Mr. Nansen received the 1922 Nobel Peace Prize.

Funny how the people with the toughest jobs often have the biggest smiles.

This year’s honoree is Hawa Aden Mohamed, who has helped thousands of displaced women and girls in Somalia.  Ms. Mohamed, who is widely known as Mama Hawa, escaped violence in Somalia and was a refugee in Kenya, the U.S., and Canada.  She left the (relative) comfort of Canada in 1995 and returned to Somalia, where she established the Galkayo Education Centre for Peace and Development.  Through this organization, she has worked to secure women’s rights and bring free schooling, health care, and skills training to nine communities in the Mudug region of Somalia.

In the early days of the Education Centre, it was attacked with rocks, grenades and gunfire.  Its gate was bombed.  But Mama Hawa and her colleagues did not give up.  “We persevered,” she recalled, “and slowly we convinced the elders and the women that what we were doing was for the benefit of the community.”

Today the Education Centre teaches girls and women to see themselves as full members of society who possess fundamental human rights.  It openly addresses the issues of female genital cutting, puberty, early marriage, sexual and gender-based violence, and HIV/AIDS.  It prepares women to play an active role in achieving peace, reconciliation, democracy, and development in their country.

Mama Hawa will receive the Nansen Award on October 1st in Geneva.  If you find yourself in the neighborhood, the ceremony looks to be worth attending.  If you would like to learn more about Mama Hawa and her organization, or if you would like to contribute to her worthy cause, you can do so here.

Pirates Brought to the U.S. for Prosecution Might Seek Asylum

During the first half of 2011, piracy attacks in the Indian Ocean increased by 36%.  But prosecution of captured pirates remains relatively rare.  In fact, four-fifths of captured pirates are released without further ado.  

A recent incident is proving an exception to the rule.  A group of Somali pirates was captured last February after they murdered four American on a sailboat off the coast of East Africa.  The men were transported to Virginia (which apparently has a long history of prosecuting pirates).  Eleven plead guilty and three others will be indicted on various charges later this month.  They could face the death penalty.     

The Virginia example notwithstanding, why are so few pirates being prosecuted?  One reason may be logistics.  It’s not easy to transport pirates from the high seas near African to a courtroom in the West (or even to Kenya, where some pirates are tried based on an international agreement).  Another reason might be a fear that the pirates would claim asylum once they reached a Western country.  A recent law review article by Yvonne M. Dutton explores this very question.

In her article, Pirates and Impunity: Is the Threat of Asylum Claims a Reason to Allow Pirates to Escape Justice, Professor Dutton argues that there is little danger of pirates gaining asylum (or Withholding of Removal  or relief under the UN Convention Against Torture).  Any danger of a pirate claiming asylum, she writes, is offset by the need to bring the pirates to justice.

Yaar! I'll be claimin' political asylum.

Professor Dutton writes that most Somali pirates would not qualify for asylum–they do not fear persecution in their country based on race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.  She also writes that many pirate-asylum seekers would automatically be disqualified from asylum due to their criminal histories.  She believes that pirates would generally not qualify for relief under the Torture Convention because they could not demonstrate a likelihood of torture if they return to their home country.  And, even if a pirate-asylum seeker demonstrates that he faces torture, the U.S. could seek diplomatic assurances that he would not be tortured if returned home.  Also, pirates could possibly be removed to a safe third country.  Finally, Professor Dutton concludes that even if some pirates do seek asylum, that is a reasonable price to pay for assuring that pirates are prosecuted: “Captured pirates should not be able to get away with murder simply because developed nations do not wish to deal with a relatively few additional asylum claims.”

While I generally agree with her conclusions, I can’t help but think that Professor Dutton is underestimating the creativity of Somali asylum seekers (and their attorneys).  There are plenty of former gang members from Central America who seek–and sometimes obtain–asylum, Withholding of Removal or Torture Convention relief.  In some ways, their cases are not very different from the Somali pirates (though one key difference is that the pirates are being transported to the U.S. for prosecution, while the former gang members usually make their own way here).

I also disagree with Professor Dutton’s idea that pirates could be returned to Somalia after receiving diplomatic assurances that they will not be tortured.  To the extent that Somalia has a government, I doubt it can be trusted with any diplomatic assurances. 

Finally, I have real doubts that a third country would be willing to accept the pirates who we cannot return home. 

These points are all pretty minor.  Very few Somali pirates would qualify for asylum or any other relief if they are brought to the U.S. for trial.  And–given the scope of the problem–it seems well worth the risk to end the culture of impunity that allows piracy to flourish off the African coast.  

Somali Asylee Sues His Torturer in U.S. Court

A Somali human rights activist who received asylum in Great Britain has sued his alleged torturer, Abdi Aden Magan, in a U.S. District Court in Ohio.  According to the Associated Press:

Abukar Hassan Ahmed filed suit against his alleged torturer.

The lawsuit claims Abdi Aden Magan of Columbus[, Ohio] authorized the torture of Abukar Hassan Ahmed when Magan served as investigations chief of the National Security Service of Somalia, a force dubbed the “Gestapo of Somalia.”  The suit… seeks unspecified damages from Magan, who served under Somali dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.

The allegations are a chance for Ahmed to tell the world what happened to him, said Andrea Evans, legal director of the Center for Justice & Accountability, a San Francisco-based center that has brought a number of similar lawsuits.  “We see it as a much broader call for justice than just financial gain,” Evans said. “It really is kind of telling history accurately.”

Last week, the State Department weighed in with a letter indicating that Mr. Magan does not enjoy immunity from suit:

[T]aking into account the relevant principles of customary international law, and considering the overall impact of this matter on the foreign policy of the United States, the Department of State has determined that Defendant Magan does not enjoy immunity from the jurisdiction of U.S. courts.

I wonder about the immigration status of the alleged torturer, Mr. Magan.  If the civil suit demonstrates that he is, in fact, a torturer, it seems to me that DHS should move to deport Mr. Magan, or perhaps DOJ would choose to prosecute him criminally (for the torture and–most likely–for committing immigration fraud by lying to cover up the torture).  Our nation should not be in the business of harboring human rights abusers, and once such an abuser is identified, we should move swiftly to see that justice is done.   

Are Terrorists Taking Advantage of the Asylum System?

In a recent broadcast on San Diego Public Radio, Amita Sharma reports on Somali asylum seekers who “are taking a suspicious route” to the United States.  This, at a time when “the Al-Qaeda-linked Somali Islamist group al-Shabab has threatened to attack the United States.” 

The asylum seekers leave Somalia for Kenya, where they obtain false passports.  From there, they travel to Cuba and then Central America, where they make their way to Mexico.  In Mexico, they surrender to the authorities and receive an expulsion document, which allows them to travel through Mexico.  The Somalis then enter the U.S. illegally and file for asylum.

According to the KPBS report, the Somalis have no identification and use the Mexican expulsion document–which is issued by the Mexican government based on the alien’s representations–as their ID when they apply for asylum.  The fear, of course, is that these Somalis are terrorists coming here to attack our country.  Federal agents say that the criminal background check performed on all asylum seekers is inadequate: “if they’ve never been to America, there won’t be any criminal record of them.”

I have represented many Africans who have traveled to the U.S. in a similar fashion.  The route often takes them through different African countries, then to South America, Central America, Mexico, and the United States.  They use one or more false passports and meet several different smugglers along the way.  The trip is circuitous and strange, and it is not clear why people pass through so many different countries (my guess is that the smugglers can get more money if they make the journey longer).

Many of my clients have been instructed to surrender to the Mexican authorities in order to obtain the “expulsion document,” which they use to prove their date of entry into the United States (aliens are only eligible for asylum if they show that they filed their application within one year of arrival; the Mexican document demonstrates that they were in Mexico on the date that the document was issued).  In my experience, the Mexican document does not–as the article states–prove the alien’s identity.  To establish identity, we submit other documents, such as school and work records, a driver’s license or a birth certificate.

Nevertheless, people are crossing our Southern border and applying for asylum, and we do not know much about them.  This certainly does present a security threat, but it must be viewed in context–Many more people cross the border, never claim asylum, and live here illegally.  Given that asylum seekers undergo a background check (albeit imperfect) and government interviews (also imperfect), it seems that any terrorist would be better off entering the U.S. and not seeking asylum.  Why initiiate contact with government authorities if you plan to engage in criminal activity? 

I can imagine scenerios where a terrorist would come here and falsely claim asylum.  However, given the level of government scrutiny involved, asylum is probably one of the least effective means for a terrorist to infiltrate our country.