SANAA, 17 February 2008 (IRIN) - A technical committee of Yemen's Ministry of Human Rights recently finished drafting a 17-article parliamentary bill which, if ratified by parliament, aims to clarify the country's asylum law and give the government more control over asylum seekers and refugees in the country.

Officials could not say when the draft law will be presented before the legislature.

Sulaiman Tabrizi head of the rights ministry's International Organisations Department, told IRIN that the driving motivation behind the draft law was to clarify the status of the continuous stream of Africans fleeing to Yemen. "Their legal status is not clear. Should all of them be regarded as refugees or migrants? Is the Refugee Convention applicable to them? Does Yemen have the capacity to deal with all of them?" he said.

Yemen is the only country in the Arabian Peninsula that has signed the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its related 1967 Protocol, which removed a deadline and geographical restrictions from the Convention.

Tabrizi said if passed the new law would spell out the Yemeni government's responsibilities towards would-be refugees. "There is a need to show how someone who has been persecuted in his country should be treated. In some cases, refugees [in Yemen] are not treated in accordance with the 1951 Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol," he said, adding that the new law would rectify this.

"The 1991 Yemeni Migration Law is the only law that is applied to refugees, but that does not comply with the Refugee Convention," Tabrizi said.

New law defines refugees

Yemen's draft law defines a refugee as anyone who has left his country of origin for fear of prosecution as a result of his race, religion, nationality, political views or social class; or as a result of foreign assault on, or occupation of, his country, riots or unrest.

The new law seeks to give the government more control over who is given refugee status, what they are entitled to and where they live.

At present in Yemen, the government gives Somalis, who make up the vast majority of African asylum seekers, automatic refugee status once they apply for it, while non-Somali Africans (mostly Ethiopians and Eritreans) must apply to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) for refugee status.

New restrictions

Under the new law, a governmental committee would be formed to consider asylum applications from all nationalities and decide whether or not to grant applicants refugee status. The committee would be chaired by an elected official from the rights ministry and its membership would consist of officials from the interior and foreign affairs ministries among others. The committee would work in coordination with UNHCR.

Yemen's government currently allows African refugees to move freely in the country and work in non-government jobs. Under the draft law, refugees would only be allowed to live in areas assigned by the rights ministry.

According to Yemeni security authorities, many African migrants enter Yemen illegally and many do not register at any of the country's seven government/UNHCR-run reception centres. Under the new law, the rights ministry would have the authority to expel any asylum seeker or refugee in Yemen, after consulting with security authorities and UNHCR, if it is deemed necessary to protect national or public security.

Ahmed Hayel, an official at the interior ministry, told IRIN that by the end of 2007 the number of Africans (both legal and illegal migrants) in Yemen had reached about 800,000 out of a total population of 21 million. Most were Somalis.

The UNHCR office in Yemen put the total number of African registered (legal) migrants at over 100,000, mostly from Somalia, although, Abdul-Malik Aboud, a UNHCR official, recently conceded that the number of Africans in Yemen was more than the number registered.

maj/ar/ed

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