Policy | Society

29 Jun 09

Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai was jeered by Zimbabwean exiles during this month’s visit to the UK.

Unaccompanied children as young as seven have fled Zimbabwe and yet have no legal protection because they are not classed as refugees. An independent report by Oxford University highlights the plight of an estimated 2 million forced migrants who have left Zimbabwe since 2005.

The report, to be published by the United Nations next week, says despite the mass exodus the international response has been almost non-existent. It suggests that the definition of ‘refugee’, drawn up in 1951 to protect those fleeing political persecution, needs broadening to be relevant in today’s changed world.

Based on researchers’ interviews and observations, the report says many Zimbabweans said they left because they were starving, jobless, or needed to support families. Many of the migrants who crossed the border into South Africa or Botswana are destitute and exploited. In Botswana, there are significant amounts of female and male prostitution, sometimes under-aged, with Zimbabweans sometimes offering unprotected sex for as little as around $3 US. The study estimates that there are around 3,000 undocumented Zimbabwean children living in Botswana, who have no access to protection or services such as education or health care.

The largest group of Zimbabwean migrants has settled in Johannesburg. Researchers tracked down around 3,400 Zimbabweans living inside and outside a church with no assistance from government or the international community. Over 100 unaccompanied children, as young as seven, were sleeping on the floor of one room. 

Elsewhere in Johannesburg, Zimbabweans stay in urban, crime-ridden ghettos, which have a reputation as no-go areas where gun crime, prostitution and drugs are commonplace. They head for such areas because they are afraid of living alongside South Africans in townships following the xenophobic violence of May 2008, says the report.   

The report concludes that a mass exodus of Zimbabweans has been largely ‘invisible’ to the international community. It recommends the United Nations to review the legal definition of a refugee – drawn up by the UN Convention in 1951 – to reflect the challenges of forced migration in a different world. It says more protection should be applied using existing human rights legislation to protect what it calls ‘survival migrants’ – forced migrants who are not eligible for the legal protection afforded by refugee status, but who nevertheless flee an existential threat to which they have no domestic recourse.

Report author Dr Alexander Betts, Director of the Global Migration Governance Project at Oxford University, said: ‘The world no longer resembles the Europe of 1951, and its current protection framework needs to be supplemented to ensure the protection of a wider range of forced migrants.

‘The majority of Zimbabwean migrants – like an increasing number of migrants elsewhere in the world - have been forced to flee a combination of state failure, severe environmental distress, or widespread livelihood collapse, rather than as individuals fleeing political persecution as required by international refugee law.'