June 3-9, 2024

NORTHEAST ASIA

Stepping up support for ‘third country’ children

A new bill in South Korea may just provide children born to North Korean defectors in third countries, who often fall through the cracks of South Korea’s welfare system, much needed-educational aid to get started in life. 

Last week, lawmaker Park Chung-kwon – himself a North Korean defector-turned-congressman under the ruling People Power Party, put forward a bill seeking to amend the North Korean Defectors Protection and Settlement Support Act to mandate the government to allocate funding for educational support for these children.

“Every citizen of the Republic of Korea has the right to be protected by the state regardless of where they were born,” he said.

Currently, Seoul offers a critical safety net for North Korean defectors adjusting to life in the South. This includes financial aid, housing assistance, vocational training, and even scholarships for further education. But this safety mechanism applies only to children born in North Korea and who then defect to South Korea. 

This leaves many “third-country” children – who are typically children born to North Korean mothers and Chinese fathers – with no choice but to run to religious institutions and nongovernmental organizations for aid. 

According to the state-run Korea Educational Development Institute, over 70 percent of children born to North Korean defectors are born outside of North Korea, largely in China, where a rising number of defectors find themselves detained before they can make their way to South Korea. 

Based on the latest available data, cited in a 2017 study published in the International Journal of Korean Unification Studies, there were around 30,000 children born to North Korean mothers in China – and they were considered “stateless” by both Pyongyang and Beijing.

A study conducted by the Korea Hana Foundation also found that third-country children showed extremely poor academic performance and were twice as likely to drop out of school. 

In 2016, the South Korean government announced a revised program for children born in transit, including more child care and education-related support. Still, much more needs to be done for the unique challenges confronting these children, who have trouble integrating into South Korean society due to language barriers and limited access to educational materials, said Hanna Song, executive director of the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights. 

International politics expert and teacher for North Korean defectors Su Lee also emphasized the need for better transition programs for these children so they can better assimilate in South Korean society. 

SOUTHEAST ASIA

Awaiting one more friendly step for LGBTQI+ people 

That the Philippines may be one of the most gay-friendly countries in the world has not exactly translated into policy, leaving millions of Filipino LGBTQI+ without ample protection. 

At the onset of Pride Month this June, the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) called on the country’s lawmakers to pass the long-overdue anti-discrimination and sexual equality bill, which is viewed as a crucial step to a more inclusive Philippines. 

“We urge Congress to pass this landmark legislation and ensure that the rights and dignity of all Filipinos are protected,” said UNFPA country representative Leila Joudane. “This Pride Month, let us celebrate the progress achieved while recognizing the work that lies ahead.” 

Since 2000, the Philippines has tried to pass its own SOGIE Equality Bill, formally known as the Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity or Expression, and Sex Characteristics (SOGIESC) Equality Act. 

It has since been reintroduced and rejected under different Congresses, but the bill’s most salient provisions have remained unchanged over the past 24 years: to prohibit discrimination based on a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or sex characteristics, in areas like employment, education, access to public services, and housing.

However, fundamentalists in the largely Catholic Philippines continue to oppose the bill, saying it was a precursor to allowing same-sex marriage. 

Some local governments have enacted their own SOGIE ordinances, but advocates say these are not enough to protect a still marginalized community. A 2022 study showed that nine out of 10 LGBTQ+ Filipinos deal with depression and anxiety largely due to discrimination and lack of social support.

The same scenario plays out across Southeast Asia, where archaic laws and attitudes punish LGBTQI+ people. So far, only two countries in the region have Sogie laws: Thailand and Timor-Leste. 

Brunei still has laws that impose death by stoning on gay sex (though the government says it would not enforce it); Malaysia also still allows caning and state-sanctioned conversion therapy against people in same-sex relationships. 

There are, however, significant victories for Asian queer folk: in 2022, Vietnam’s health ministry declared that homosexuality was not an illness and instructed its medical practitioners to stop treating it as such. Singapore also repealed a colonial-era law that criminalizes gay sex but like other Asian nations, stopped short of legalizing same-sex marriage.  

SOUTH ASIA

Stopping the vicious cycle of homelessness

In Afghanistan, thousands of people – who were either displaced by the Taliban takeover, by Pakistan’s deportation order against refugees, or by the series of humanitarian crises that wracked the South Asian country – have been thrust into a vicious cycle of homelessness as the de facto authorities began demolishing their informal settlements.

This prompted the aid agency Norwegian Refugee Council to call on the Taliban to stop the ongoing evictions until it has come up with more humane relocation options for the over 800 families affected by the demolitions.

“Several families … reported that they had nowhere to go after the authorities demolished their homes,” said Neil Turner, NRC’s country director in Afghanistan. “Until legal safeguards, due process, and the provision of alternative housing are in place, the authorities must stop all further evictions and demolitions of informal settlements.”

It’s unclear what prompted the demolitions which Turner said started last week. Nevertheless, it comes at a time when Afghanistan is already grappling with a severe humanitarian and socioeconomic crisis since the Taliban takeover in 2021. 

NRC data estimates that at the end of 2023, there were already 4.2 million people who were internally displaced in Afghanistan due to the ongoing conflict, as well as 1.5 million more displaced by disasters. 

The influx of nearly 600,000 Afghans returning from Pakistan since September last year has significantly worsened the situation. This surge, coupled with ongoing evictions, places a tremendous strain on Afghanistan’s already limited resources.

This is not the first time that the Taliban have demolished settlements of internally displaced people. Last year, authorities also bulldozed a camp sheltering over 2,000 families ostensibly as part of plans to resettle them back to their original homes. Such plans, however, have never been realized.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) and other groups have been calling for increased attention for Afghanistan’s displaced populations, as they often lack access to basic needs like health, protection, and emergency assistance. 

An IOM study showed that only 19 percent of surveyed communities have a functional health clinic located within the confines of their community, which is exacerbated by the lack of female healthcare workers to care for the women and girls. 

GLOBAL / REGIONAL

Still in search of safe pathways for refugees 

With nearly 3 million refugees in dire need of safe havens by 2025, the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) is now appealing to the international community to step up efforts to resettle and provide safe pathways for those who are displaced by conflicts and humanitarian crises.

In a new report published June 5, the UNHCR warned that the dramatic 20 percent rise in refugees compared to 2024 – fueled by ongoing conflicts, climate change, and protracted displacement – demands a global response. 

“In a context where mixed movements of refugees and migrants have become increasingly common, refugee resettlement and complementary pathways for admission provide a safer alternative to refugees who may otherwise be forced to resort to dangerous, irregular movement facilitated by smugglers,” said Ruvendrini Menikdiwela, UNHCR Assistant High Commissioner for Protection. 

The report said a significant number of the projected 2.9 million refugees who will need resettlement in 2025 come from Asia-Pacific (776,500), 94 percent of whom are from Afghanistan and Myanmar. 

Source: UNHCR 

These numbers are on top of the 15.6 million internally displaced people and refugees already in the region, where only 20 out of 45 countries and territories have acceded to the 1951 Refugee Convention. This means that refugees in these countries will be treated as undocumented migrants who do not have access to basic social services and face the risk of deportation. 

Of these countries, Thailand has been the most likely to deport refugees amid warnings from rights groups. A decade ago, in 2015, about a hundred Muslim Uyghurs were deported back to China and have never been heard from again. The Southeast Asian country is also known for deporting exiled dissidents and activists back to Cambodia, Laos, or China, in what Human Rights Watch calls transnational repression.