Latest news
ARDC submits racism report to UN
ARDC, 30/01/2012
On 30 January, the African Refugee Development Center (ARDC) submitted a report to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD). This report demonstrates that Israel continues to ignore its international obligations towards asylum seekers and refugees and that various laws, policies and practices are racially discriminatory at their basis against this vulnerable...
End of group protection for Ivorian asylum seekers
Sari Ganulin, AAA volunteer, 18/01/2012
Following an inspection by Israel’s Foreign Ministry, the Population and Immigration Authority decided, effective January 1, 2012, to end group protection for Ivory Coast citizens currently residing in Israel. Group protection had been in effect since February 2011 and allowed Ivorian refugees to remain in Israel legally for periods of at least four months, at which point the case would...
War refugees? Nobody cares
Nic Schlagman, Humanitarian Coordinator, 17/01/2012
This OpEd was published in the Jerusalem Post on 16 January 2012. The recent amendment to the anti-infiltration bill significantly increases the government’s power to deal with refugees and migrant workers who cross the border into Israel illegally. With the power now to hold people for up to three years without having to hear their cases, the Finance Ministry will approve funding for the...
Protest against the anti-infiltration law
ARDC, 11/01/2012
On the evening of January 10, following the passage of the Anti-Infiltration bill through the Knesset, a demonstration was held at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv. Approximately 300 protesters gathered and in an exercise of civil disobedience blocked traffic on multiple roads in central Tel Aviv for more than an hour. Among the chants were “Human rights for all”, “We demand justice for...
Anti-Infiltration Bill Passes into Law
Shira Lawrence, 11/01/2012
On 9 January 2011, the Israeli Knesset passed the “Anti-Infiltration Bill”. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has supported this bill in efforts to create new policies to deal with the large influx of immigrants crossing into Israel. The purpose of the bill is to deter the arrival of further asylum seekers and is arguably another measure to preserve the Jewish majority. ARDC considers...
Conditions in the Sinai continue to deteriorate
Shira Lawrence, 24/12/2011
African asylum seekers continue to cross the border between Egypt and Israel and are for the most part coming from Eritrea and Sudan. They are being smuggled by two main criminal groups along the way. The Rashida are groups of smugglers along the Eritrean and Sudanese borders with Egypt, who transfer asylum seekers into Egypt, while the Sawarqa are Bedouin smugglers in the Sinai who...
Position vacant
ARDC, 20/12/2011
Job Title: Project Coordinator, Asylum Assistance Application Project (AAA Project) Organization The African Refugee Development Center (ARDC) is a non-profit organization founded in 2004 by refugees and Israeli citizens to assist, support and empower refugees and asylum seekers in Israel. The ARDC seeks to ensure access to basic social services, and to facilitate refugee and asylum...
PRESS RELEASE: PM Netanyahu ignores UN concern
ARDC, 06/12/2011
PM Netanyahu ignores UN concern at level of poverty among asylum seekers and recommendation that national health scheme must extend to refugees Removal of the right to work contradicts recent UN comments Despite the fact that United Nation’s Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights this week expressed concern at the current level of poverty among the asylum seeker population in...
An open letter from ARDC
Nic Schlagman, 05/12/2011
This is an open letter from Nic Schlagman in response to a letter by Aron Adler last week that was circulated widely around the Jewish world. Dear Aron, I take comfort from reading your kind and heartfelt words about your experiences patrolling the Egyptian border, and your feelings on the importance of offering dignified refuge to those who have suffered as we suffered. Like you I...
Eritreans Flee From Dictatorship to Detention
Jillian Kestler-D’Amours, 01/12/2011
Originally published by Inter Press Service on 30 November 2011 Standing across the street from the American embassy in Tel Aviv, more than 200 Eritrean asylum seekers chanted "Yes to justice! Yes to humanity!", and demanded international intervention to stop torture camps in the Egyptian Sinai. Protests by African asylum seekers in Israel are growing, in the face of increasingly tough...
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